Quotes About Perspective

satisfaction is possible—just not with the old formulas. We need to toss out all that bad math and use this one equation instead, which incorporates the wisdom of Siddhartha and Thomas and the best modern social science: Satisfaction = What you have ÷ what you want Your satisfaction is what you have, divided by what you want.

Seeing it as tragedy can be easier than seeing it as opportunity.

That people with a different perspective hate our country and must be completely destroyed? That if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention? That kindness to your ideological foes is tantamount to weakness?

Satisfaction comes not from chasing bigger and bigger things, but paying attention to smaller and smaller things. Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh explains this in his book The Miracle of Mindfulness:

That's when it struck me: people who choose being special over happy are addicts.

Remembering that life won't last forever makes us enjoy it all the more today.

Death is the most normal, natural thing in life itself, and yet we are amazingly adroit at acting as if it were abnormal and a big surprise.

We speed past the questions that would help us get to know another person's story and instead immediately look to the places of greatest difference and disagreement.

the average American considers the beginning of "old age" to be six years after the average person dies. We avoid thinking realistically about the length of our lives and our time left, lulling us into the false belief that we have all the time in the world.

It's better to be pleasantly surprised than disappointed

Further, we have a tendency to assume that traumatic events, from accidents to illnesses to all kinds of personal loss, can only provoke pain and lingering problems, especially if we talk about them with others. However, this isn't generally the case.

Thus, psychologist Carl Jung noted, "what is a normal goal to a young person becomes a neurotic hindrance in old age.

Rule 4. Disagree better. Be part of a healthy competition of ideas.

For example, when asked in 2009 what "being old" means, the most popular response among Americans was "turning eighty-five."[2] In other words, the average American (who lives to seventy-nine) dies six years before entering old age.

Anyone who can't tell the difference between an ordinary Bernie Sanders supporter and a Stalinist revolutionary, or between Donald Trump's average voter and a Nazi, is either willfully ignorant or needs to get out of the house more.

The moral case against objectifying others is fairly straightforward. It starts to get more complicated when the objectifier and the one being objectified are the same person—in other words, with self-objectification, which scholars define as viewing oneself from a third-person perspective that does not consider one's full humanity.

That's because you Westerners see art as being created from nothing. In the East, we believe the art already exists, and our job is simply to reveal it. It is not visible because we add something, but because we take away the parts that are not the art.

the more willing we should be to listen and engage—especially if the person with whom we are in conversation will challenge our deeply held—even our most cherished and identity-forming—beliefs. . .

Rule 3. Never assume the motives of another person.

To adopt parts of life that will make you happy, even if they don't make you special.

Your satisfaction is what you have, divided by what you want.

Satisfaction comes not from chasing bigger and bigger things, but paying attention to smaller and smaller things.

pessimists see people as liabilities to manage, as burdens or threats that we must minimize.

It is often wonderful how putting down on paper a clear statement of a case helps one to see, not perhaps the way out, but the way in.