Who controls the economy?

The economy shapes much of our lives. It determines what job we can or cannot get; it determines what we can buy or cannot buy; it determines where we live; it determines what healthcare we can get; frankly there is little in our lives which is not influenced by the economy. With something so important …

Habit Tracking January

I found the system for habit tracking I adopted in July last year overall quite insightful and useful for keeping me on track for simple habits. I thus decided to continue following this system in the new year. Due to travel around Christmas and New Years it took me a while to get back into …

Personality Types: Given or Chosen?

Since the ancient times, we were interested in categorising people into categories based on their personality types. Hippocrates distinguished between the four fundamental personality types of sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic. More modern approaches identified different categories, such as Popular Sanguine, Perfect Melancholy, Powerful Choleric and Peaceful Plegmatic from the popular book Personality Plus. Generally …

Habit Tracking December: Lost in Travel

I think I was on a good track in respect to sticking to my habits in November. Alas, things didn't go so well in December: Habit Tracking December This December we were travelling first to New Zealand for a week and then to Taiwan. That made it very difficult to keep up with my usual …

Immortality

The less time you know you have, the richer the experience of living becomes. And your whole perspective changes. All of the little, petty things fall away and you realize how truly wonderful it is to be alive, even if just for a moment. The way I see it — life is all the more …

Habit Tracking November: Getting There

After having done very poorly on keeping to my habits in October, things have greatly improved in November. Here the overview for November: Habit Tracking November Some things to note: Exercise: While in October, I was only able to do exercise twice due to being injured, I exercised eleven times in November. For some time, …

Touch Heaven

By objective standards, our lives are rather drab and pointless. We are biological machines forged by billions of years of natural selection, programmed with the purpose to ensure the propagation of our genes. On a cosmic scale, our lives are insignificant and extremely short. There is little doubt that, in a few thousand years, we …

Habit Tracking October: Injured and Distracted

Following my new system for tracking habits I have again kept track of various habits I try to follow. Here the overview for October. Habit Tracking October Overall, I didn't do very well, just like in September. Here my notes on the individual habits: Exercise and Stretching: Since I injured my rib at the end …

Practice: Healing Compassion

I have already written about a practice centred on the powerful emotion of compassion. However, today I came across an interesting variation of a practice on compassion (in the book Happiness by Matthieu Ricard): one that reflects our own suffering onto others, and helps us heal from our own suffering. This practice works as follows: …

Identity, Habits and Enlightenment

I recently read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. One of the interesting ideas presented in this book was that in order to bring about personal change, we need to start with our identity, then change our practices and processes and thus achieve better outcomes; as in, I am a health conscious person, therefore …