Don’t measure your life with someone else’s ruler
— Kevin Kelly
The key is to choose to look away from the meanings we have been layering onto stimuli. Stop your reflexive response with awareness…
— Beau Lotto in Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently.
“… as one can do when one is able to see the cause of a reflex. Someone bumps into you on the street. Your first automatic response could be: What an asshole! That is “A.” But just stop. Don’t go to A. Go to not-A. Perhaps the person who bumped into me is ill; that’s why they stumbled, and they may need help. Or they may indeed be an asshole. Don’t know more. Stopping gives you the chance of knowing less, of halting the perception-narrowing force of the cognitive biases that we are always trying to confirm, of taking the jerk out of the knee-jerk and sitting with the meaninglessness of the stimuli, even if it doesn’t feel meaningless.”
You become what you give your attention to …
— Epictetus
… If you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will.”