You identify with your self. You have a personal history. You have commitments. There are things that you want to experience and other things that you want to avoid.
I think women want freedom. They want to be empowered. They want hope. They want love; they want all the things that I want, and I'm not afraid to say those things and act on them, and I think that's why they identify with me.
Who exactly do you want to be? What kind of person do you
want to be? What are your personal ideals? Whom do you admire? What are their special traits that you would make your own It's time to stop being vague. If you wish to be an extraordinary person, if you wish to become wise, then you should explicitly identify the kind of person you aspire to become. If you have a daybook, write down who you're trying to be, so that you can refer to this self-determination. Precisely describe the demeanor you want to adopt so that you may preserve it when you are by yourself or with other
people.
The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things rotten through and through, to avoid.
I want to be able to experience everything. I want to experience being a husband, experience being a father, experience, maybe, hopefully, someday being a grandfather, and all those things. I want that experience. When I die, I want to be exhausted.
My friends joke that I love planning things - which I do - and the reason is because there's so much I want to do, so many things I want to see and experience. If I don't actively pursue these things, I will never do everything I want to do, in life and in my career. That's what gets me up in the morning.
Feelings are only your history being occasioned by the present moment. If that's your enemy, then your history is your enemy. If sensations are your enemy, your body is your enemy. And if memory is your enemy, you'd better have a way of controlling your mind in such a way that you never are reminded of things that are painful from the past. If you avoid people, avoid having your buttons pushed, avoid going to places that might occasion anxiety; if you're hammering down drugs and alcohol; these are all methods of trying to mount that unhealthy agenda.
History will see advertising as one of the real evil things of our time. It is stimulating people constantly to want things, want this, want that.
Commitments present themselves in delineations of black and white. You either honor your commitments or you don't. Success is the result of making and keeping commitments to your self and others, while all failed or unfinished goals, projects and relationships are the direct result of broken commitments. It's that simple, that profound, and that important.
As a parent, you go through a whole lot of really tough things, and you kind of want other parents to experience those tough things as payback - especially when it's your brother.
You don't want to see things as they are because your ego would have to admit that things outside yourself are necessary for the self to be. You still have fun, as most people do, from manipulating things.
I only know from my own personal experience, and I personally feel that there's a cyclical nature to things, so you don't want to start making generalizations about how bad things have become in comparison to the old days.
When we think of all the things we want to do with our other half the answer should be simple; we should want to do absolutely everything with them. We should want to experience everything, feel everything, see everything with no one but them by our sides. When we look back on our lives it's not the things we did do with them that we'll regret, it's the things we didn't do.
Trust the young people; trust this generation's innovation. They're making things, changing innovation every day. And all the consumers are the same: they want new things, they want cheap things, they want good things, they want unique things. If we can create these kind of things for consumers, they will come.
If we only identify with the mortal world, then we identify with a level of scarcity and lack and brokenness, and that will be our experience. But if we shift our experience of self-identification - and this is what enlightenment is - from the body-self to the spiritual-self, then we place ourselves under an entirely different set of possibilities and probabilities.
In the summer you want fresh, light and sort of quick things; in winter you want things that are comforting, so your body really tells you you want to go towards potatoes, apples, fennel, things that are warm and comforting. And loin of pork.
Buddhism teaches us not to want things, not to avoid things, not to be upset by the loss. In the I Ching, there's a hexagram that says, "Be like the sun at midday". View all things as being equal.