These humbling rituals were important to the Sufis, helping them break down the self, which Sufi teaching considers a barrier to love.
When people say that their lives have meaning, it's because three conditions have been satisfied: they evaluate their lives as significant and worthwhile--as part of something bigger; they believe their lives make sense; and they feel their lives are driven by a sense of purpose.
The search for meaning is far more fulfilling than the pursuit of personal happiness.
The only truth we can absolutely know, Tolstoy believed, is that life ends with death and is punctuated by suffering and sorrow. We and all that we hold dear--our loved ones, our accomplishments, our identities--will eventually perish.
The most important parts of life require hard work and sacrifice.
To live well, we should take to heart the wisdom we learned in our younger years. Only by facing challenges head-on can we truly find meaning in our lives.
The four pillars of meaning: belonging, purpose, storytelling, and transcendence.
We all need to feel understood, recognized, and affirmed by our friends, family members, and romantic partners. We all need to give and receive affection. We all need to find our tribe. In other words, we all need to feel that we belong.
When the hospital cleaners experienced these high quality connections, their relationship to their work changed. They saw themselves as caregivers rather than merely janitors, and they felt more closely tied to the mission of the hospital, which is to heal patients. Small inconsiderate acts, on the other hand, made them reevaluate the significance of their work, their ability to perform their tasks competently, and, even more gravely, their own worth as people.
Meaning largely lies in others. Only through focusing on others do we build the pillar of belonging for both ourselves and for them. If we want to find meaning in our own lives, we have to begin by reaching out.
Living purposefully requires self-reflection and self-knowledge. Each of us has different strengths, talents, insights, and experiences that shape who we are. And so each of us will have a different purpose, one that fits with who we are what we value--one that fits our identity.
Kant asks us to consider a man--one like so many of us today--who "finds in himself a talent that by means of some cultivation could make him a useful human being in all sorts of respects. However, he sees himself in comfortable circumstances and prefers to give himself up to gratification rather than to make the effort to expand and improve his fortunate natural predispositions."
The ability to find purpose in the day-to-day tasks of living and working goes a long way toward building meaning.
The paradox of transcendence simultaneously makes individuals feel insignificant and yet connected to something massive and meaningful.
"Mindfulness," as one of its most famous teachers, Jon Kabat-Zinn, has put it, "means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.
The self-loss felt during a transcendent experience is sometimes called "ego death," and it prepares us for the final loss of self we will all experience: death itself.
Most people have heard about how post-traumatic stress disorder can unravel a person. Fewer have heard about post-traumatic growth...Researchers have found that anywhere from half to two-thirds of trauma survivors report post-traumatic growth, while only a small percentage suffer from PTSD.
After studying a wide array of survivors, Tedeschi and Calhoun identified five specific ways that people can grow after a crisis.
Their relationships strengthen.
They discover new path and purposes in life.
The trauma allows them to find their inner strength.
Their spiritual life deepens.
They feel a renewed appreciation for life.
For those who are less resilient, reframing the task as a challenge erased the gap: those who were told to approach the task as an opportunity rather than a threat suddenly started looking like resilient people in their cardiovascular measures. They were able to bounce back.
As mush as we might wish, none of us will be able to go through life without some kind of suffering. That's why it's crucial for us to learn to suffer well. Those who manage to grow through adversity do so by leaning on the pillars of meaning--and afterward, those pillars are even stronger in their lives.
The "work-and-spend" mentality that characterizes life today, as the author Gregg Easterbrook has written, alienates people from what really matters.
The cultures of meaning highlighted in this book use the four pillars to amplify positive values and goals. Their members recognize and respect the dignity of each individual. They promote virtues like kindness, compassion, and love rather than fear, hatred, and anger. They seek to lift others up, not to inflict harm on them. Rather than sowing the seeds of destruction and chaos, these cultures contribute positively to the world.
Older people who report having more purpose in life live longer than those who report having less. They have a reason to get out of bed in the morning--a reason, even, to go on living.
Having meaning in life, for example, has been associated with longevity, better immune functioning, and more gray matter in the brain. Purpose, in particular, has been shown to have a wide range of health benefits. It decreases the likelihood of mild cognitive impairments, Alzheimer's disease, and strokes. Among those who have heart disease, having purpose diminishes the chances of having a heart attack--and people who lack purpose are at higher risk for cardiovascular disease.
Contemplating death can actually help us, if we have the proper mindset, to lead more meaningful lives and to be at peace when our final moment on earth arrives.
No matter how near or far off death may be in each of our individual cases, thinking about death forces us to evaluate our lives as they are and to consider what we would change about them to make them more meaningful. Psychologists call this "the deathbed test." Imagine that you're at the end of your life. Perhaps a freak accident or diagnosis of disease had suddenly shortened your life, or maybe you have lived a long and healthy life, and are now in your eighties or nineties. Sitting on your deathbed, with only days ahead of you to live, reflecting on the way you have led your life and what you have done and not done, are you satisfied with what you see? Did you have a good and fulfilling life? Is it a life you are glad that you led? If you could live your life over again, what would you do differently?
The act of love begins with the very definition of meaning: it begins by stepping outside of the self to connect with and contribute to something bigger.
Every time you earn a dollar, you should make sure to pay yourself first.
They decided to toss the budget and instead take 10 percent of their pay out of their paychecks and put it in a savings account before they ever saw it or had a chance to spend it on anything.
You can't spend what you don't see.
You pay for your purchases with cash or you don't buy.
The problem is not how much we earn...it's how much we spend!
How much you earn has almost no bearing on whether or not you can and will build wealth.
If you are living paycheck to paycheck, spending everything you make, what you are really doing is running an unwinnable race. Here's what the race looks like: GO TO WORK...MAKE MONEY...SPEND MONEY...GO TO WORK...MAKE MONEY...SPEND MONEY...GO TO WORK...
When you spend everything you make (or, worse, spend more than you make), you subject yourself to a life of stress, fear, uncertainty, debt, and even worse -- bankruptcy and the threat of future poverty.
Is your income helping you become more or less free?
The so-called small things on which we waste money every day can add up in a hurry to life-changing amounts that ultimately can cost us our freedom.
I owe, I owe...it's off to work I go.
Start doing what the rich do -- you can get your money to work for you, instead of your working for it.
The point is that whether you waste money on fancy coffee, bottled water, cigarettes, soft drinks, candy bars, fast food, or what it happens to be -- we all have a "Latte Factor." We all throw away too much of our hard-earned money on unnecessary "little" expenditures without realizing how much they can add up to. The sooner you figure out your Latte Factor -- that is, identify those unnecessary expenditures -- the sooner you start eliminating them. And the sooner you do that, the more extra money you'll be able to put aside. And the more money you can put aside, the larger the fortune you'll wind up amassing.
Becoming rich requires nothing more than committing and sticking to a systematic savings and investment plan.
Inspiration unused is merely entertainment. To get new results, you need to take new actions.
When it comes to money, you should control it. You should never let it control you.
When you boil it down, there are basically six routes to wealth in this country. You can:
Win it.
Marry it.
Inherit it.
Sue for it.
Budget for it. Or,
Pay yourself first.
You need to set up a system that guarantees you'll get paid -- a system in which you pay yourself first AUTOMATICALLY.
Last week, I worked a total of [x] hours. I earn $[y] an hour (before taxes). Last week, I put aside $[z] for my retirement. So last week, I worked [a] hours for myself.
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the average American saves well below 5 percent of what he or she earns. In other words, most of us work barely 22 minutes a day for ourselves.
Instead of thinking just about percentages of income, think about hours of your life.
The "Pay Yourself First" Formula:
Dead Broke: Don't pay yourself first. Spend more than you make. Borrow money on credit cards and carry debt you can't pay off.
Poor: Think about paying yourself first, but don't actually do it. Spend everything you make each month and save nothing. Keep telling yourself, "Someday..."
Middle Class: Pay yourself first 5 to 10 percent of your gross income.
Upper Middle Class: Pay yourself first 10 to 15 percent of your gross income.
Rich: Pay yourself first 15 to 20 percent of your gross income.
Rich Enough to Retire Early: Pay yourself first at least 20 percent of your gross income.
The single most important investment decision you ever make may well be how much to automatically pay yourself first into your retirement account.
Small business truly powers our economy; it's the engine that creates economic growth. Recognizing this, the government gives business owners the best tax breaks when it comes to retirement accounts.
If I've learned one true secret to being an investor who does well in both good times and bad, it is this: MANAGING YOUR MONEY SHOULD BE BORING! And the fact is that boring works.
Some people worry about change, while others prepare for it.
In order to be a real Automatic Millionaire, I believe you need a cash cushtion of at least three months' worth of expenses.
You aren't really in the game of building wealth until you own some real estate.
So you want to be a millionaire? Like I said before, there are only three things you really need to do:
Decide to pay yourself first 10 percent of what you earn.
Make it automatic.
Buy a home and pay it off early.
There are five concrete steps you should take to get out of credit card debt and stay out.
Stop digging.
Renegotiate the interest rate on your debt.
Pay for the past; pay for the future.
DOLP your bad debt out of existence. (Pay off the smallest balance first.)
Make it automatic.
"We make a living by what we earn -- we make a life by what we give." Winston Churchill
Although you should give simply for the sake of giving, the reality is that abundance tends to flow back to those who give. The more you give, the more comes back to you. It is the flow of abundance that brings us more joy, more love, more wealth, and more meaning in our lives. Generally speaking, the more you give, the wealthier you feel. And it's not just a feeling. As strange as it may seem, the truth is that money often flows faster to those who give. Why? Because givers attract abundance into their lives rather than scarcity.
If it's so easy to become an Automatic Millionaire, why don't more people do it? The answer is human nature: Most people simply don't do the things they know they should do.
What both halves of my heart-mind can agree on is that I am the one who chooses how to respond to the people and situations I encounter everyday.
Mimi knows that it's a mother's job to draw the lines but it's a grandmother's job to remind everyone in the family that sometimes you have to move them, and, more important, what the cost of holding those lines might be.
Gratitude is at the heart of finding the good in this world -- especially in our relationships with the ones we love.
You never know when a card mailed today will be received, but someone will read it, sooner or later, and be thankful.
The secret to aging more cheerfully is to play like a child.
Isn't it always the ones who don't ask for your time and attention who receive it more willingly than those who clamor for it?
Jean Webster was right when she wrote, "The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go round, if you are only willing to take the kind that comes your way."
It seemed to me that everything she did, she did well. Not because she needed to be perfect but because it made her feel good to do a good job. If Hilma was cleaning the Laundromat floor, why not make it shine?
The life you imagine doesn't just happen while you are daydreaming about it on the drive across the country. It requires effort once you reach your destination.
Give yourself to love.
People don't gather after a death to mourn, but rather to reaffirm why life matters and to remember to exult in the only one we'll ever have. We hold funerals, memorials, celebrations -- whatever you want to call them -- to seek and to find the heart of the matter of this trip we call Life.
I want her to grow up to see beyond a person's appearance so that without prompting or proof, she'll assume the best, and discover that most people ahve a pretty good story behind their cover.
Here's what writing a lot of obituaries of older women, with the help of the younger women who were their caregivers (by birth, marriage, or friendship), has taught me: True love is above all reliable.
Find the good, praise the good, and do good, because you are still able to and because what moves your heart will remain long after you are gone and turn up in the most unexpected places, maybe even clutched tightly in the dirty little hand of a child running along an Alaskan beach. Everyone has heard of hearts turning to stone. But stones can turn into hearts, too. I know, because I've gratefully accepted those heart-shaped rocks, dusted them off, put them in my pocket, and carried them home.
