Stop & Think

For some, living at or visiting the beach can be a time for reflection. I call it “introspection”; a time for quiet exploration of your true feelings, wants and needs. When clients present to me with stress or frustration, I often suggest they keep a journal. It’s one of the hardest things to motivate somebody to do, yet once done, everyone tells me that it’s enlightening and effective.

A journal isn’t a diary. It’s an exercise in thinking, expression and examination. There’s nothing like putting pen to paper to instill a sense of optimism about your aspirations. Seeing something on paper makes it more real than merely thinking it.

It all comes down to living the examined life. We live in an age of insipid acronyms like LOL and OMG, superficial sound bites, half-baked ideas and televised misinformation that generates not-fully-thought-out emotions. It’s the mental equivalent of eating only fast food. Everybody’s capable of deeper thinking, and everybody has a need to be reflective. In fact, a lot of the symptoms we’ve labeled as attention deficit disorder, depression, anxiety and substance abuse are the result of not living an examined life.

Want to give it a try? Consider these sample questions for your journal: “What emotions do I feel right now?” “What percentage of today did I experience each of the following: anger, sadness, irritation, joy, contentment, anxiety, disappointment, frustration?” “Which people or situations stand out most about today?” “What attitudes did I exhibit today? Was I pessimistic, cautious, gloomy, upbeat, energetic, lethargic? Which of these was I aware of that nobody else was aware of?” “What issues did I resolve today?” “What attitude do I wish to project tomorrow?” “Did I feel like a victim today? Could I have made different choices to feel less like that?” “Would my ideal hero operate like I did today? If not, what would he or she do differently?”

These are just a few examples to get you started. Use your personal experiences to generate your own personal approach. Regular readers of this column know that I encourage introspection as a way to solve just about any emotional conflict. To introspect means to live the examined life; to apply focus, thought and awareness to the emotions you’re experiencing. By looking at yourself objectively (i.e., the way you would look at a stranger or an acquaintance), you can correct contradictions in your thinking before they lead to more serious problems.

Contradictions can lurk in the shadows of your emotions, and if you’re not in the habit of looking closely at them, the result can be faulty decision-making and all the turmoil that comes with it. Keeping a regular journal can give you that insight. By writing down your feelings and examining them objectively, you can determine if you’re expecting contradictory things.

Of course there are always the expected responses: “I don’t have the time. It’s not worth the effort.” (People say the same thing about therapy, counseling and self-reflection in general.) Well, at least that’s honest. But think about it from this angle: Do you really have the time for unexplained depression, unexpressed anger and frustration? Are you OK with feeling like a victim and whining about how you “had a bad day?” Slowly and insidiously, these things sap your energy and well-being. Isn’t life too short to put up with all that unnecessary emotional clutter? Don’t you have better things to do?

If I’ve learned anything in my 35+ years of counseling people, it’s that most emotional difficulties can be avoided by leading an examined life and keeping tabs on your feelings. And a journal can be an effective pre-emptive strike against problems that can make your life less enjoyable than it could be. Why not start now?

Why is patriotism thought to be blind loyalty to the government and the politicians who run it, rather than loyalty to the principles of liberty and support for the people? Real patriotism is a willingness to challenge the government when it’s wrong.

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

A fanatic is someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.

Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.

“I’m too old to be governed by fear of dumb people.”

Always read the stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

To swear off making mistakes is very easy. All you have to do is swear off having ideas.

Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.

The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.

Stupidity and cruelty are the attributes of the mob, not wisdom and compassion.

There is a madness in crowds from which even the wisest, caught up in their ranks, are not immune.

Because I place my trust in reason, I place it in the individual.

Do your work with your whole heart and you will succeed — there is so little competition.

How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.

Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

Talk is cheap – except when Congress does it.

Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

You can’t have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

If ‘pro’ is the opposite of ‘con’ what is the opposite of ‘progress’?

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

Christmas is the time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell government what they want and their kids pay for it.

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what’s going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech and practically construct them into syntax.

That man should redeem himself from the sin of eating an apple by committing a murder on Jesus Christ, is the strangest system of religion ever set up.

The Bible is a book that has been read more, and examined less, than any book that ever existed.

Of all the tyrannies that afflict mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.

No falsehood is so fatal as that which is made an article of faith.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead.

Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.

A man will pass better through the world with a thousand open errors upon his back than in being detected in one sly falsehood. When one is detected, a thousand are suspected.

Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.

A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.

Always do right. It will please some people and astonish the rest.

By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.

Glass, china, and reputation are easily cracked, and never mended well.

I never knew a man who was good at making excuses who was good at anything else.

Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

Write your injuries in dust, your benefits in marble.

Drive thy business or it will drive thee.

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.

Diligence is the mother of good luck.

You may delay, but time will not.

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

We must all hang together, or assuredly, we shall all hang separately.

Well done, is better than well said.

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

Love takes up where knowledge leaves off.

The best proof of love is trust.

The freedom of all is essential to my freedom.

From the naturalistic point of view, all men are equal. There are only two exceptions to this rule of naturalistic equality: geniuses and idiots.

Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it.

By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken a single step forward.

A Boss in Heaven is the best excuse for a boss on earth, therefore If God did exist, he would have to be abolished.

Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason.

In those parts of the world where learning and science has prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue.

The Constitution shall never be construed… to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.

It does not take a majority to prevail… but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!

It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.

We have to make America the best place in the world to do business.

The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.

Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims.

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking…

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.

Depression is the inability to construct a future.

Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.

When I look at the world I’m pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.

If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge.

Self esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.

A human being is a deciding being.

Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.

Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.

We must not allow other people’s limited perceptions to define us.

Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly.

The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.

Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.

The power to do good is also the power to do harm.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.

A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.

A government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights …

Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.

Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

Do not ever say that the desire to “do good” by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.

Evil requires the sanction of the victim.

Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority.

The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.

Love is the expression of one’s values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.

Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his fortune no matter where he started.

Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.

So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?

The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.

The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

To say “I love you” one must first be able to say the “I.”

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit.

Facts are stubborn things.

Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion.

I cannot live without books.

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.

In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.

It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.

One man with courage is a majority.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.

Those who trust to chance must abide by the results of chance.

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.

Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

Being busy does not always mean real work.  Seeming to do is not doing.

If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.

An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.

Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.

Life itself is the proper binge.

Compassion is no substitute for justice.

If Thomas Jefferson thought taxation without representation was bad, he should see how it is with representation.

No nation ever taxed itself into prosperity.

You could afford your house without the government if it weren’t for the government.

I am a hero worshiper. I love the number one tennis player. I love the number one baseball player. I want to see those records broken.

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don’t have as many people who believe it.

I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood.

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

The only thing money gives you is the freedom of not worrying about money.

Born again?! No, I’m not. Excuse me for getting it right the first time.

It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.

The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God’s children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.

Never confuse motion with action.

Mine is better than ours.

Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.

Hear reason, or she’ll make you feel her.

Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.

There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.

Concern should drive us into action, not into a depression.

Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.

It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.

A leader is a person you will follow to a place you wouldn’t go by yourself.

I’m very motivated by money. And I found that money makes you happy. So the old adage is WRONG. I’m happiER with money than I was in my studio apartment for seven years.

I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative.

The greatest gift that I have is finding people who know more than I do — and learning from them.

The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.

Man can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown.

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not common.

Those who give too much attention to trifling things become generally incapable of great ones.

Few people think more than two or three times a year. I’ve made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in the world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.

Change is not merely necessary to life – it is life.

You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.

Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive.

Great men can’t be ruled.

The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.

If you fear failure, you shall never succeed.

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.

All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think.

Success isn’t something you chase. It’s something you have to put forth the effort for constantly.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

I always get what I want because I always want what I get.

It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.

Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.

The harder I worked, the luckier I got.

Who is John Galt?

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.

Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this – no dog exchanges bones with another.

Anyone who can walk to the welfare office can walk to work.