“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes a sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
– Melody Beattie
Via PeaceLoveYoga
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/06/steve-cohen-insider-trading-case
Not so conscious but nonetheless a very detailed account of insider trading and greed.
http://nickchirls.com/my-time-at-lehman
Interesting Quotes:
“What I discovered, quite starkly, is that the part of Wall Street that I worked in was simply transferring wealth from the less sophisticated investors, often teachers’ pension funds and factory workers’ retirement accounts, to the more sophisticated investors that call themselves proprietary trading desks and hedge funds. Of course, the traders had all sorts of excuses and jargon to deal with this truth. “Oh no,” they would say, “We are important providers of liquidity that create stable financial markets. We’re a crucial part of a system. And besides, if we don’t do it, someone else will.” These are the lies that people tell themselves so that they can buy larger homes.”
“To do that sort of work, you have to either really love it or convince yourself that it somehow has worth. Otherwise the hours, stress, and bullying will eat you alive. I remember taking the subway home each night asking myself “What have I done today? What have I created?” And it meant that I couldn’t sleep well, I was embarrassed to tell people what I did, and I felt as though I personally owed every single person that I mucked over in the markets each day.”
“The people around me measured themselves by one metric: The amount of money he or she made for the firm. Their bonus determined the respect they received. And yet, every last person felt poor. I remember during the first bonus season hearing that one reasonably successful trader was thinking about leaving the firm. I asked one of my colleagues why that was and he responded, “He made just under a million. They fucked him.” I was astonished. I had the incredibly good fortune to live a comfortable childhood. I received a wonderful education at a top public high-school in NYC and never really needed anything. But the lens through which the people around me at Lehman looked at the world was so distorted that I couldn’t figure out where they came from. In what possible reality can someone receive a million dollars and feel as though they got fucked?”
“I found much solace in reading literature and novels that had nothing to do with my job.”
“We created a running joke: “Would you rather have someone shit on your face, but then be able to spend the day however you please, or would you rather go to work today?” Eventually the answer for all of us was unequivocally, “Shit on the face.” So something I know now: When you’d rather have someone shit on your face than go to work, it’s probably time to leave.”
Watch your thoughts, they become words.
Watch your words, they become actions.
Watch your actions, they become habits.
Watch your habits, they become your character.
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny
http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-9302/why-i-love-when-my-patients-meditate-an-md-explains.html
“Meditation is, in fact, about creating time and space for your body and mind to work in synchrony. Often that’s achieved by focusing as much as possible on the breath or perhaps on a mantra, a repeated neutral phrase or an affirmation. It’s called apractice for a reason. And the more we practice, the more space we create, the more healing can occur. That monkey mind is always lurking, I’ve merely learned to pay it less attention and maybe more importantly: to forgive myself when I cant.”
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/05/interpreting-statistical-evidence.html
1) In evaluating any study try to take into account the amount of background noise. That is, remember that the more hypotheses which are tested and the less selection which goes into choosing hypotheses the more likely it is that you are looking at noise.
2) Bigger samples are better. (But note that even big samples won’t help to solve the problems of observational studies which is a whole other problem).
3) Small effects are to be distrusted.
4) Multiple sources and types of evidence are desirable.
5) Evaluate literatures not individual papers.
6) Trust empirical papers which test other people’s theories more than empirical papers which test the author’s theory.
7) As an editor or referee, don’t reject papers that fail to reject the null.
“Have you ever noticed that those who exercise regularly look younger than those who don’t? Although we have no control over our chronological age, our biological age is within our control. Biological age refers to the time that has passed since body cells last regenerated. When exercised, the body must regenerate its cells more rapidly than when idle. Depending on activity level, six to eight months from now our bodies will have regenerated nearly 100 percent of their tissue at the cellular level. This new tissue will literally be made up of what we eat between now and then.” ~ Brendan Brazier from The Thrive Diet
Via entheos.com
“Being happy, that’s the main thing I’m trying to help with. If you’re happy, not much else matters in life, at least in my experience. There’s various ways to be happy, of course. I’m trying to tell people the things that I have learned.
I’m trying to teach them to be curious, independent. It’s very hard to think independently, as you probably know. Extremely hard. Most people are not very curious, If they see it on TV, that’s what they accept instead of thinking, what’s really going on here? I’m teaching readers to be curious, skeptical, independent thinkers.”
~Jim Rogers in Business Insider
Sabra and others are tackling the growing demand for hummus.
