A Quote by A. J. Jacobs

After a while, if you're committed, you start to believe in the things in which you're praying. It's just cognitive dissonance. You can't live a completely religious life and not start to have it sink in.
If there is a camera or someone making a picture or - just do the things you always want to do, because if you start thinking about everything, then you start changing the things you would do. And that's not the life you want to live.
I grew up, especially as an actor thinking that I had to move to New York to be a good actor. But after a while you start to live the world a little bit and you start to appreciate where you're from.
Forgive everybody for everything. Just forgive and start - most of us can't start with ourselves. We have to forgive the people we think did things to us. So that's fine. Start there - wherever. Start with the dog who peed on the rug. I don't care where you start, just do it.
I was a redhead and a middle child; both can make you feel excluded. It's like fighting to be included, in the swim of things. After a while you start to develop a bit of a victim mentality, which isn't great for a happy life.
I believe that I have created a lot of cognitive dissonance in the minds of people who are comfortable with stereotypes.
You don't have to wait for anyone's approval to do things. You don't have to try to get a job and go through set steps before you start a career or start your life. That's what I want young girls to know - you can do anything you want. Just start.
I believe in method acting. Whenever I'm working on a character, I start behaving like him. I start doing these things which the character would normally do. Maybe that's the way I function as an actor, and I believe in it. And that's how I try and portray a character.
I suspect that a lot of the stress we see around us arises from the cognitive dissonance set up by one side of the brain hearing very plausible spin while the other side knows it just ain't so.
If I were really asked to define myself, I wouldn’t start with race; I wouldn’t start with blackness; I wouldn’t start with gender; I wouldn’t start with feminism. I would start with stripping down to what fundamentally informs my life, which is that I’m a seeker on the path. I think of feminism, and I think of anti-racist struggles as part of it. But where I stand spiritually is, steadfastly, on a path about love.
There's a momentum to being committed to a group that you think is good, and there's a certain amount of cognitive dissonance to make your choice a good choice.
There are no atheists in foxholes, they say, and I was a foxhole atheist for a long time. But after going through a midlife crisis and having many things change very quickly, it made me realize my mortality. And when you start to think about death, you start to think about what's after it. And then you start hoping there is a God.
Decide in your heart of hearts what really excites and challenges you, and start moving your life in that direction. Every decision you make, from what you eat to what you do with your time tonight, turns you into who you are tomorrow, and the day after that. Look at who you want to be, and start sculpting yourself into that person. You may not get exactly where you thought you'd be, but you will be doing things that suit you in a profession you believe in. Don't let life randomly kick you into the adult you don't want to become.
We've got to stop crying and start sweating, stop talking and start walking, stop cursing and start praying. The strength we need will not come from the White House, but from every house in America.
Most people just settle - for a job or relationship, or where we live. Here's the strange thing though: when you start going outside the box and questioning things, then people - because we're taught this - start ridiculing you.
There are some projects where you have to just start doing it, and, after a while, the show starts telling you what it wants to be. You put your spirit in and, after a while, something bigger takes over, and it turns out to be much more fun and creative than what it was at the beginning.
And when you start to think about death, you start to think about what's after it. And then you start hoping there is a God. For me, it's a frightening thought to go nowhere. I also can't believe that people like Stalin and Hitler are gonna go to the same place as Mother Teresa.
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