Quotes from Bruce Feiler

them the ABCs of meaning. The A is agency—autonomy, freedom, creativity, mastery; the belief that you can impact the world around you. The B is belonging—relationships, community, friends, family; the people that surround and nurture you. The C is cause—a calling, a mission, a direction, a purpose; a transcendent commitment beyond yourself that makes your life worthwhile.

You do not have to suffer to learn, but if you don't learn from suffering . . . then your life becomes truly meaningless.

Many disruptors, like adopting a child, say, or starting a new job, would not traditionally be defined as negative, yet they're still disruptive. Even the most customarily negative life events, like losing a spouse or being fired, sometimes become catalysts for reinvention. Disruptors are simply deviations from daily life.

May your first word be adventure and last word love.

Religion, Gardner continued, gives us eyes to see and ears to hear in ways that science simply cannot. "With our scientific eyes we can distinguish between true and false. With our religious eyes we can distinguish between right and wrong. When we see with our religious eyes, we live in a world of meaning.

The Exodus scenes were filmed in the sand dunes of Guadalupe, California, and DeMille transported hundreds of Orthodox Jews from New York, because he believed that "in appearance and in their deep feeling of the significance of the Exodus, they would give the best possible performance as the Children of Israel." But on their first day on set, the extras were forced to fast because the commissary served ham for dinner.

First, creativity thrives on isolation and disconnection. Studies of creativity for two decades have found a consistent pattern: Those facing adversity often suffer from social exclusion, a sense of being ostracized from society, and a feeling of being out of sync or out of touch with those around them. These attitudes, in turn, give these individuals more freedom to take risks, to experiment, to explore means of expression outside the social mainstream.

From this ground zero, a modern meaning movement began to rise, eventually growing to include philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. If the symptoms of meaninglessness were alienation and emptiness, the balm was fulfillment and personal sense-making. The "central concept of human psychology is meaning," wrote Jerome Bruner. And the central task of every individual is to make your own meaning. There is no single formula. But

From shame to sadness to fear, from overcoming your resistance to embracing the brutal facts of your situation, the first tool of transitions is to identify the circumstances you're in and accept the emotions that come with this new state. The next tool may seem even harder to master, yet it's the one approach people seem to crave more than any other.

There is a single, most frequent age at which each period begins," he went on: seventeen, forty, sixty, and eighty. Everyone lives through the same developmental periods at the same time. Again, the

Agile terminology describes this type of flowchart as an "information radiator." Having large, highly visible displays lets everyone on the team track everyone else's progress. "If you have something public like this in your home," Jeff said, "I guarantee you'll get twice as much done. Guarantee.

The very roots of destruction are in the achievement of success itself.

Freedom is the right to be free, and then the obligation to accept responsibility. If you don't understand that, then ugly stuff happens. And when you do understand that, you're prepared to meet the obligations straight-on.

She became an obsessive runner and an anorexic. For nine years she barely ate. "When you have an inability to connect with people, and you feel shameful about yourself, the only power you have is over your own body. I couldn't speak up for myself, so this was the only way I could actually exert any influence over myself.

THE LINEAR LIFE IS DEAD ? THE NONLINEAR LIFE INVOLVES MORE LIFE TRANSITIONS ? LIFE TRANSITIONS ARE A SKILL WE CAN, AND MUST, MASTER

Feldenkrais Method. His core insight: When we go through periods of turmoil, our bodies share the brunt. To create new selves, we have to create new ways of moving. We have to tweak how we walk, sit, stand, lie, dance, even have sex. We have to rewrite the story not just of our lives, but of our bodies.

The average person goes through three to five of these massive reorientations in their adult lives; their average duration, my data show, is five years. When you do the math, that means nearly half our lives are spent responding to one of these episodes.

Lifequakes may be voluntary or involuntary, but navigating the transitions that flow from them can only be voluntary. We must choose to deploy the skills.

THE AVERAGE PERSON GOES THROUGH ONE DISRUPTOR EVERY 12–18 MONTHS

This leads to my twin warnings: TRANSITIONS ARE COMING. BE PREPARED.

Life is in the transitions. His point is even more true today: We can't ignore these central times of life; we can't wish or will them away. We have to accept them, name them, mark them, share them, and eventually convert them into a new and vital fuel for remaking our life stories. The

Jacob, more than any other character, embodies the geographical breadth of the Five Books of Moses: He was born in the Promised Land, journeys back to Harran, returns to Canaan, travels to Egypt, and is eventually brought home to the land that bears his name.

study, and cleanse

Their (Council of Dads) wisdom reads like a psalmbook of living: Approach the cow Pack your flip-flops Don't see the wall Tend your tadpoles Live the questions Harvest miracles Always learn to juggle on the side of a hill Take a walk with a turtle