Mind Set Central

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” - Carl Gustav Jung

From The Positivity Blog

1. Change yourself.

“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”

“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves.”

2. You are in control.

“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”

3. Forgive and let it go.

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

“An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”

4. Without action you aren’t going anywhere.

“An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.”

5. Take care of this moment.

“I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.”

6. Everyone is human.

“I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.”

“It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.”

7. Persist.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

8. See the good in people and help them.

“I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won’t presume to probe into the faults of others.”

“Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.”

“I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.”

9. Be congruent, be authentic, be your true self.

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”

“Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.”

10. Continue to grow and evolve.

”Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.”

“Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.” - P.J. O’Rourke

CCTV boom has failed to slash crime, say police

Solution, more cameras…

“Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.”

Fangoria 2008

Pictures from the famed Horror event!

Peter Gabriel’s servers stolen

“Web servers hosting musician Peter Gabriel’s web site have gone missing from their data center. “Our servers were stolen from our ISP’s data centre on Sunday night — Monday morning,” reads a notice at PeterGabriel.com.

technologyreview.com Via Brainsturbator

When I applied for my faculty job at the MIT Media Lab, I had to write a teaching statement. One of the things I proposed was to teach a class called “How to Think,” which would focus on how to be creative, thoughtful, and powerful in a world where problems are extremely complex, targets are continuously moving, and our brains often seem like nodes of enormous networks that constantly reconfigure. In the process of thinking about this, I composed 10 rules, which I sometimes share with students. I’ve listed them here, followed by some practical advice on implementation.

1. Synthesize new ideas constantly. Never read passively. Annotate, model, think, and synthesize while you read, even when you’re reading what you conceive to be introductory stuff. That way, you will always aim towards understanding things at a resolution fine enough for you to be creative.

2. Learn how to learn (rapidly). One of the most important talents for the 21st century is the ability to learn almost anything instantly, so cultivate this talent. Be able to rapidly prototype ideas. Know how your brain works. (I often need a 20-minute power nap after loading a lot into my brain, followed by half a cup of coffee. Knowing how my brain operates enables me to use it well.)

3. Work backward from your goal. Or else you may never get there. If you work forward, you may invent something profound–or you might not. If you work backward, then you have at least directed your efforts at something important to you.

4. Always have a long-term plan. Even if you change it every day. The act of making the plan alone is worth it. And even if you revise it often, you’re guaranteed to be learning something.

5. Make contingency maps. Draw all the things you need to do on a big piece of paper, and find out which things depend on other things. Then, find the things that are not dependent on anything but have the most dependents, and finish them first.

6. Collaborate.

7. Make your mistakes quickly. You may mess things up on the first try, but do it fast, and then move on. Document what led to the error so that you learn what to recognize, and then move on. Get the mistakes out of the way. As Shakespeare put it, “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.”

8. As you develop skills, write up best-practices protocols. That way, when you return to something you’ve done, you can make it routine. Instinctualize conscious control.

9. Document everything obsessively. If you don’t record it, it may never have an impact on the world. Much of creativity is learning how to see things properly. Most profound scientific discoveries are surprises. But if you don’t document and digest every observation and learn to trust your eyes, then you will not know when you have seen a surprise.

10. Keep it simple. If it looks like something hard to engineer, it probably is. If you can spend two days thinking of ways to make it 10 times simpler, do it. It will work better, be more reliable, and have a bigger impact on the world. And learn, if only to know what has failed before. Remember the old saying, “Six months in the lab can save an afternoon in the library.”

Every morning as I wake up, at the very moment reality leaps into focus and replaces my sleep state, I begin to talk in my head.  Mind Chatter begins immediately, and I begin rambling about all manner of things.  As I stumble sleepily to the bathroom, my head babbles constantly about my dreams, current life situation and what may or may not be planned for the upcoming day.

What’s amazing about my early morning mental banter, is that up until a few months ago I wasn’t even aware of it, I had no realization that I was yapping away in my head as I stumbled around trying to get my day started, it was only when I tuned into my inner voice and listened to my thoughts that I became aware of what was happening.

What I realized when I began to listen to my internal conversation, was that its content was overwhelmingly negative in nature and highlighted was ‘wrong’ with my life, without presenting any kind of solution or fix for these issues.  This kind of constant complaining is a trait that drives me crazy when I hear it in other people, but I guess I’m not immune either.

I assume that we all do this to some degree in our daily lives also, and I’m beginning to realize that I constantly do it throughout the day!  It appears that our minds are unconsciously talking away in a negative fashion during our waking periods, but to what end?  What does is all mean, and why am I so disturbed by this discovery?

Could there be something more to all this?  If thoughts truly do impact reality, and I think that they do.  What is this constant negative rambling doing to my life, and what is it attracting into my life experience?  Although this internal diatribe is at least for the most part unconscious, it is also mostly negative in its nature which in turn would seem to attract negative experience. 

So what are my options here?  Well firstly I should endeavor to stop all this mind chatter, and attempt to replace it with silence or at the very least some positive thoughts. Once this is achieved I could then judge its results, in the quality of my life. 

Shutting of mind chatter is done mainly through the practice of meditation, something that I occasionally dabble in.  Meditation is something that I have found incredibly useful in my life, but over the past several months it has become increasingly difficult to find the time and space to engage in regular practice. 

So unfortunately, at least for now, shutting off my mind chatter is something that’s far easier said than done. 

How much more in our faces can all this be?
The truth hidden in plain sight…

“Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t.” - Richard Bach