#us

Among these temperamentally unhappy campers are "reactant" personalities, who focus on what they often wrongly perceive as others' attempts to control them. In one experiment, some of these touchy individuals were asked to think of two people they knew: a bossy sort who advocated hard work and a mellow type who preached la dolce vita. Then, one of the names was flashed before the subjects too briefly to register in their conscious awareness. Next, the subjects were given a task to perform. Those who had been exposed to the hard-driving name performed markedly worse than those exposed to the easygoing name. Even this weak, subliminal attention to an emotional cue that suggested control was enough to get their reactant backs up and cause them to act to their own disadvantage. All relationships involve give-and-take and cooperation, so a person who habitually attends to ordinary requests or suggestions like a bull to a red flag is in for big trouble in both home and workplace. ↗

— Winifred Gallagher

#control #focus #reactant #experience

You're like a half-tamed creature, still shy of the bridle. 'Except you enthrall me, never shall be free.' But freedom is an illusion, anyway. ↗

— Nenia Campbell

#creepy #dangerous #dating #evil-men #scary

Let us be about setting high standards for life, love, creativity, and wisdom. If our expectations in these areas are low, we are not likely to experience wellness. Setting high standards makes every day and every decade worth looking forward to. ↗

— Greg Anderson

#areas #creativity #day #decade #every

I thank you, God, who lives always, and Who, as i awaken, has in mercy returned my soul to me; we can ever trust in you. ↗

— Priscilla Warner

#religious #spiritual #faith

Music [is] the third rail of life. You grabbed it to shock yourself out of the dull drag of hours. To feel something. To burn with all the emotions you didn't get to experience in the ordinary run of school, TV, and loading the dishwasher after dinner. ↗

— Joe Hill

#experience

When I feel confused or depressed, I remember back to junior high and I silently repeat, 'This, too, shall pass.' ↗

— Josh Groban

#confused #depressed #feel #high #i

[Jane] Austen was not a novelist for nothing: she knew that our stories are what make us human, and that listening to someone else's stories -- entering into their feelings, validating their experiences -- is the highest way of acknowledging their humanity, the sweetest form of usefulness. ↗

— William Deresiewicz

#stories #experience

One must not forget that recovery is brought about not by the physician, but by the sick man himself. He heals himself, by his own power, exactly as he walks by means of his own power, or eats, or thinks, breathes or sleeps. ↗

— Georg Groddeck

#breathes #brought #eats #exactly #forget

The opera is like a husband with a foreign title - expensive to support, hard to understand and therefore a supreme social challenge. ↗

— Cleveland Amory

#expensive #foreign #hard #husband #like

How much easier is it to be generous than just. ↗

— Junius

#generous #how #just #much #than