Habits are massive. They are the great trends of your life that lead you either upwards or downwards. They have so much power! Your spending habits determine whether you’re rich or poor (not the only factor I know, but it’s probably as high as 90% at the least). What you do with negative thoughts and feelings determines whether you’re happy or sad for the most part (same deal).

Habits have enormous value. The decisions that form them have tiny value. For example, whether or not you stay in bed that extra 10 minutes (which turns into 40 minutes and makes you late). Or buying that extra coffee (£2 a day is £730 a year — what could you do with that!). Or just that one cigarette ([insert dangers of smoking here]).

It’s so true that “look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves”. Just getting up 10 minutes earlier can change your life — 10 minutes you could spend on breakfast! £2 isn’t a lot, but £730 is! Telling yourself, “just this once won’t hurt,” can quickly become a life long habit if you don’t notice it and do something about it. Similarly, though, small positive steps work in the same way, which is the major bonus.

Putting in the hard work to change your habits pays off big time.

The only reason you think about problems is to solve them or learn from them. That’s it. Anything else adds to them, or detracts from you.

Obsessing and dwelling on things creates “impossibility” attitudes: cynicism, despair. These disempower you.

Great problem solving is in everyone, and it’s unlocked when you use it. Stop looking at the problem and get creative.

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blueprints of your ultimate accomplishments.

Napoleon Hill

Great advice. I love that phrase — “they are the children of your soul”.

More quotes: Apple Seeds.

How strange that there should be life forms on Earth that aren’t conscious. How incredibly strange. It just strikes me as so incredibly odd that there should be life forms that spend their whole life not thinking, perceiving, seeing … just amazes me.

They’re just as complex, biochemically, as animals. They have strategies for reproducing themselves just like animals do, but they don’t rely on behaviour. Isn’t that amazing? They can move, just like animals, (think of Mimosa plants — read more on wikipedia).

I find it amazing. Makes me think about what it means to be alive. What counts as “alive”? I know we get taught that it’s those seven things, MRS GREN — movement, respiration, sensitivity, growth, reproduction, excretion, nutrition, but that’s because science education is horribly limited. Our education system doesn’t teach us how to think for ourselves. It makes me really angry, actually. Our education system is all about fulfilling the syllabus requirements. Literally checking off items on a list.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a pop at teachers. It’s teachers who have the difficult task of somehow inspiring kids whilst at the same time burdening them down with mindless, task-driven drivel (thanks, exam boards and the government!). But, I guess this is life, and this is the world we live in. Frustration can lead to freedom if you treat it right.

As I was saying … science education is horribly limited. It teaches nice little neat theories and nothing of the process of science, or how these nice little theories can suddenly be thrown out in a matter of a year or two. In the 20s everyone thought that physics had reached its limits and would soon be out of questions. Then along came quantum theory and everyone suddenly revised pretty much everything, and they’re still going.

And yet this isn’t even heard of in science education. There’s no philosophy or history of science — which surely must be vital in science education, otherwise there’s no context for present day theories nor is there any sense of connection between science and other disciplines — or the importance of science to everyday life. Without knowing the pitfalls and successes of science, all the struggles and failures, frauds and geniuses, science is just a dry, dull subject with no human interest.

Anyway. I’m going back to my sense of wonder at the world. Thanks for listening, if you got this far :)

Taking responsibility isn’t the same thing as taking the blame. Taking responsibility for a mess means that you get to clear it up. It’s a positive thing because fixing things is always positive.

Taking the blame means being lumbered with a problem: taking responsibility means being lumbered with the solution.

This is especially important to remember when it really is your fault. If there’s a mess in your life, don’t just take the blame. (E.g. “I’m crap, I’m useless, I’m going nowhere.”) Take the responsibility too, because otherwise you’re just taking the weight of a problem without being empowered to do anything about it.

One of the most freeing things to realise is that life can be crap sometimes. That’s just the way it is. You’re not doing anything wrong. No amount of direction, resolve, discipline or whatever is going to change that. Some parts of your life will always be … crap. The Crap Factor is here to stay.

Normally this thought would make me question the value of life — surely something so “defective” must be worthless, right? But actually instead of letting that make me depressed, it’s left me feeling hopeful, happy and more positive and determined about the future than I have ever been before.

I have a print out of something written by Mother Teresa about life that a friend gave me. It may not have been Mother Teresa that wrote it, but who cares, it’s actually really good. I never thought that I would “fall” for one of these quote things, but it’s actually really grabbed me.

Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is a promise, fulfill it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
Life is life, fight for it.

I’ve been thinking about the double nature of life — how it can be both brilliant and awful. I have to confess, the whole optimism thing is a little new to me. I have long been a pessimist but I’m practising optimism, and I’m finding it sticks! I never thought it would, but all it takes is practise apparently. Did you know, it’s easier to be an optimist than it is to be a pessimist. You go through the same struggles, the same problems, so you might as well enjoy yourself while you’re having such a miserable time :)

So, the title of this post comes from my thinking about life, and how it’s good but it hurts sometimes. It’s like a diamond, covered in dog turd. Imagine that! I came up with that image all by myself!

It struck me that there’s diamonds all over the place, but frequently they’re covered in dog turd. A pessimist sees only the turd. But it’s a fool that passes up the diamond just because they don’t want to get turd on their hands.

Sorry, that was going to be the last paragraph, but I just couldn’t help myself. I had to comment on how funny that image is! Diamonds covered in dog turd!

Well. I’ll leave it with you.

Blackouts are when everything familiar and reliable seems to disappear. You know how it goes … whatever you use to keep yourself stable suddenly seems to be gone. For me, it’s a panicky feeling that usually builds after I’ve been feeling depressed for a while.

One thing that will greatly eradicate these times, and reduce their power effectively, is to simply remember that it hasn’t always been like this. You had good moods once, remember? You had hopes for the future at one time. The world wasn’t always going to hell in a handbasket.

Help yourself remember by writing things down when you’re in a good place. When the world looks great, why does it look great? What about it makes you feel optimistic? Write things down, even if they look obvious to you when you’re in a great mood, because in the middle of a blackout they won’t be obvious and you will have forgotten them.

Simply remembering this in the middle of a blackout will do you a world of good. It helps bring unity to your life, remove some of those “schizophrenia” style mood swings. Depression can be like black clouds that block out the sunlight — just remembering that there are good things in life as well as bad helps to clear those clouds a little more quickly. Or at least it makes them a bit more patchy, which is a step towards them completely clearing. Learning to accept “patchy” instead of demanding completely clear skies is a healthy step too. I’m writing a post about optimism and pessimism that looks at this in more detail, though.

The value of blackouts

Seeing blackouts like periods that you just need to escape means that we have chunks of our life that are worth nothing. It’s like having a painting with large holes in it. But actually, we shouldn’t see life as just lurching from one good moment to the next, treating “blackouts” as unnecessary and unwanted periods. Blackouts are an important part of life. Instead of damaging the good times, they actually help build them. For those that read the Bible, Paul writes in Romans 5 that suffering produces endurance, which in turn produces character, and character produces hope. “Blackouts” are a really valuable thing, you just have to flip your attitude and how you handle them.