DW's Blog

How To Have A Good Day

by DW Green — January 20, 2021

The ultimate form of self-reliance.

Here is how to guarantee you have a good day: do good things.Any other source of joy is outside your control or is nonrenewable. But this one is all you, all the time, and unending. It is the ultimate form of self-reliance.

Read More – What do you want?

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by DW Green — December 30, 2020

Attention is a habit.

Winifred Gallagher, in her book Rapt, quotes David Meyer, a cognitive scientist at the University of Michigan: “Einstein didn’t invent the theory of relativity while he was multitasking at the Swiss patent office.” It came after, when he really had time to focus and study. Attention matters—and in an era in which our attention is being fought for by every new app, website, article, book, tweet, and post, its value has only gone up.Attention is a habit, and letting your attention slip and wander builds bad habits and enables mistakes.You’ll never complete all your tasks if you allow yourself to be distracted with every tiny interruption. Your attention is one of your most critical resources. Don’t squander it!

Read More – It was the worst of times, it was the best of times…

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by DW Green — December 22, 2020

Not to hesitate our way out of living.

Like the koans of Zen monks and the whit of Shakespeare’s jesters, we may never know if the sayings of this baseball legend are utter nonsense or utter wisdom. But the longer we stay with them, the more they reveal.What this one says to me is not to stall too long at the crossroads of life, not to hesitate our way out of living. We can’t experience everything, and taking one road will always preclude another, but agonizing over which road to take can eventually prevent us knowing any road.Even when taking one road, keeping the other alive in our mind for too long is the beginning of regret. In fact giving over to regret is a way to resist our limitations, a way to still take the other road with us. It’s the heart’s way to be stubborn. Ultimately, keeping the other road so actively with us only keeps us from fully knowing the road we have chosen.We are beautifully limited creatures, capable of great moments of full living, but we can’t experience it all. We can only, paradoxically, experience all there is by giving ourselves completely and humbly to the small path we are drawn to.Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Good Night!

by DW Green — December 16, 2020

Things simply are.

“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”—William ShakespeareOpinions. Everyone’s got one. Think about all the opinions you have: about whether today’s weather is convenient, about what liberals and conservatives believe, about whether so-and-so’s remark is rude or not, about whether you’re successful (or not), and on and on. We’re constantly looking at the world around us and putting our opinion on top of it. And our opinion is often shaped by dogma (religious or cultural), and entitlements, expectations, and in some cases, ignorance.No wonder we feel upset and angry so often! But what if we let these opinions go? Let’s try weeding them out of our lives so that things simply are. Not good or bad, not colored with opinion or judgment. Just are.