Quotes About Change

Stocks usually change slowly. They can act as delays, lags, buffers, ballast, and sources of momentum in a system.

Now imagine starting again with a full tub, and again open the drain, but this time, when the tub is about half empty, turn on the inflow faucet so the rate of water flowing in is just equal to that flowing out. What happens? The amount of water in the tub stays constant at whatever level it had reached when the inflow became equal to the outflow. It is in a state of dynamic equilibrium—its level does not change, although water is continuously flowing through it.

Before you disturb the system in any way, watch how it behaves.

A system consists of elements, interconnections, and a purpose. Changing elements usually has the least effect on the system.

As we try to imagine restructured rules and what our behavior would be under them, we come to understand the power of rules. They are high leverage points. Power over the rules is real power.

It is in this space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia.

We can't control systems or figure them out. But we can dance with them!

Mental flexibility—the willingness to redraw boundaries, to notice that a system has shifted into a new mode, to see how to redesign structure—is a necessity when you live in a world of flexible systems.

There is yet one leverage point that is even higher than changing a paradigm. That is to keep oneself unattached in the arena of paradigms, to stay flexible, to realize that no paradigm is "true," that every one, including the one that sweetly shapes your own worldview, is a tremendously limited understanding of an immense and amazing universe that is far beyond human comprehension.

The only way to fix a system that is laid out poorly is to rebuild it, if you can.

Physical structure is crucial in a system, but is rarely a leverage point, because changing it is rarely quick or simple. The leverage point is in proper design in the first place.

If you have a sense of the rates of change of stocks, you don't expect things to happen faster than they can happen. You don't give up too soon.

Wouldn't it be most logical for her to change herself into a living thing, like a cat or dog, a bird or mouse?' That would be the easiest transformation, but Risto is above doing something simple.' Still, I'd be happier if Dibl would quit eating those bugs. Dibl, stop it. You might eat Gilda.

Focus on what's ahead. Use what is behind.

It's amazing how the world begins to change through the eyes of a cup of coffee!

To become a welcome vessel for the breath is to live life without trying to control, grasp, or push away. And how easy is this? The process of breathing is the most accurate metaphor we have for the way that we personally approach life, how we live our lives, and how we react to the inevitable changes that life brings us.

This is why working with our most deeply held resentments and grudges can bring about the greatest change, because it is here that we start to deconstruct the scaffolding upon which all our other points of view are based.

yoga is not about self-improvement or making ourselves better. It is a process of deconstructing all the barriers we may have erected that prevent us from having an authentic connection with ourselves and with the world. This tenet is an extremely important one because the effort to change and improve ourselves is fraught with the risk of subtle self-aggression that only produces more unhappiness. We cannot strive toward something that we already are.

Why is it that when we lose something big, we begin to lose everything else along with it?

Yet little by little, I was also becoming the girl who was learning to live with this, all of it, letting it weave together with everything else, the good and the bad, as life moved forward, because that's what life did, regardless of whether we were ready for it or not.

How quickly the brain, the body adapts to this new presence in life; how quickly the brain, the body develops a sense for it, for her--the ebb and flow of Addie's nearness and farness, the awareness of her location, her safety, her comfort and well-being.

Interregnum of old life and new. Angry with you for this dislocation. I loved you in my other life.

I won't repeat the dream in which you leave me. Let's just say I know the world, how it alters in an instant, that I awaken sick in remorse and dread.

Gone was the cream and rose complexion he'd remembered. She was tan, which changed everything. What with the loose, wild hair, it lent an almost... heathenish edge, giving her normally pretty blue gaze a somewhat piercing, laser-like quality. Conversely, though she'd always been a sturdy thing, lithe, but strong and solid, at the moment, she looked... enveloped by the chef coat she wore, as if it were a size too big, or she'd suddenly grown smaller.