"The first thing that jumps to your mind isn't always what you truly think. Sometimes, it's just what you've been trained to think. What matters, is what you do next"

I grew up in a really racist, queerphobic environment, and that comment really helped me by letting me give myself space to undo the bigoted indoctrination I had been taught, without getting trapped in guilt and self disgust whenever one of the racist or bigoted things I was raised with jumped in to my mind.

It let me recognise the bigoted thought as something I was trained to think, rather than being what I actually believe, and by recognising it, I could disempower the thought, and start to unlearn it

"Everyone you know is facing a battle you know nothing about. Be kind always."

Be excellent to each other, and party on dudes.

a tumblr meme about replacing self deprecating humor with over the top self belief humor.

not even kidding, was doomscrolling, this jumped into my feed and burnt itself into my brain and 4 years of doing precisely that later, i'm better than ever and it's also just a way to break the ice sometimes.

"I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops"

-Stephen Jay Gould

This saying in my local tounge

Which roughly translates to

"You small, I big , this thought of world is incorrect, A Thirsty man feels the the ocean is smaller than than a glass of fresh water"

Imagine above is a really Catchy rhyming.

I don't think anyone will understand but here it is in local tounge trying to write the sound in English.

Tu nano, hu moto, e khyal jagat no koto. Tarsa ne to dariya karta loto lage moto.

“You cannot love someone else until you love yourself.”

My dad raised me on this. If don’t see yourself worthy of love from even yourself, you’ll never be able to accept it from someone else. Healthy love is mutual. Also, this ties back into the idea that if you don’t see yourself worthy of love, it means you need to work on yourself until you do rather than trying to fill that gap with someone else.

“The most important step a man can take is the next one”
And
“Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing”

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
    - Ferris Bueller, from the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

”Do you miss the person or do you miss the memories?”

It really helps me get over friendship breakups and cope in a more reasonable way, since most of the time I just miss the memories associated with the person.

I am not older than you, i just have been young longer

"Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Life either a daring adventure or nothing.”

• Helen Keller

“There were all kinds of things I was afraid of at first, ranging from grizzly bears to ‘mean' horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.” ― Theodore Roosevelt

" I use Arch btw."

When I started my now mostly unused school laptop with dualboot (Windows/Debian) at 3 AM in the basement to solve a router issue. This pretty cheap laptop booted in mere seconds to a completely usable state, sparing my tired self from waiting in the cold for too long.

Right there, in the middle of the night, a flash of inspiration struck me!

How could it be that my way too expensive desktop gaming PC took longer to be ready for everything than this old piece of plastic? What if I completely switched my main machine to Linux, not only for testing, but for real? How awesome would it be to have customization freedom and full control over my own device, without a company spying on me, taking away options or using me as their guinea pig for the next untested updates?

And that's how it began. Linux Mint as a safe start, then Kubuntu for more customization with KDE Plasma. After that, EndeavourOS for the latest software, and finally Arch Linux ... for the lulz (btw).

"Excellence is not an act, but a habit" - Aristotle teaching that good comes from the whole, not from a single step. Focus on the whole, and the steps will follow.

"So, what's the next action for this?" - the GTD approach to task management teaching me to be specific and then go do it (or plan it, or delegate it). This really kicks me into productivity mode.

If you won’t care in 10 years, don’t care now.

(In reference to bad things happening)

As someone with anxiety: "the best way out is always through" - Robert Frost

"Erfahrung heißt gar nichts. Man kann seine Sache auch 35 Jahre lang schlecht machen." - Kurt Tucholsky

Which DeepL translates to

"Experience means nothing. You can do a bad job for 35 years."

Not strictly life changing, but a very valuable reminder, if you need to deal with 'that' kind of person.

"Never perfect. Perfection goal that changes. Never stops moving. Can chase, cannot catch."

It's a video game quote but it helped me realise that there is always some aspect that can be changed for the better

Here in darkness, everything's okay. Listen to the waves and let them fade away. Here comes a thought.

Here Comes a Thought from Steven Universe was genuinely life-changing for me. It's all about mindfulness and allowing yourself to process negative thoughts without punishing yourself for having them.

This episode came when I was really struggling with anxiety, like multiple crying breakdowns a week. It finally lead me to getting therapy and I'm in a much better place now, but I still come back to it when I'm feeling overwhelmed.

"This too, shall pass"

"In the corporate world, nobody has any compassion, ever." - A friend told me as I was about to take my first real job. Brutal and maybe exaggerated, but exactly what I needed to manage my own expectations.

The big lez show. It a comedy on youtube that you can watch now for free. It's one of, if not the, best series I've watched and, although strange at times, is unbelievable deep. Specifically, what stuck with me was as when lez, the main character, asks sassy, his friend, how he's supposed to achieve his dreams and be happy in a world that's fucked up, and sassy tells him, "what's the first thing anyone does to start they're day? You wake up."

Probably most speeches by Conan O'Brien.

"Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen" at 23:09 in Conan O'Brien's 2011 Dartmouth College Commencement Address: https://youtu.be/KmDYXaaT9sA

Conan Addresses The Harvard Class Of 2020: https://youtu.be/VI2B3sZ1GaY

Very riveting stuff.

I’ve always prided myself on being empathetic and sympathetic to people no matter what. During the me too times, a lady was being interviewed about why survivors and victims don’t go to the authorities about their treatment from (men) powerful people.

She said something along the lines of “stand with us if you want things to change, but don’t you dare stand opposite to tell me how offended I’m allowed to be”. In an instant I realised I’d been guilty of minimizing the suffering of others simply because I’d not been through what they’d been through (in a sense - if I wouldn’t be offended why should they?). Changed my whole outlook on life actually

"Do what you can, where you are, with what you've got." - Teddy Roosevelt

"There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen

"Perfect is the enemy of good." - unknown

"Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering." - Yoda

This is a very brief summary of my 2 year MBA: business school is the scientific method applied to business.