Beat Adversity and Aspire to Live

Knowledge Knowledge is endless and diffuse; philosophy is universal. Philosophers are interested in everything. But no man can know everything. Philosophy makes use of knowledge to reach the center. Mere knowledge is a heap, philosophy a whole. Knowledge is rational, accessible to every intellect in the same way. Philosophical thinking is a cast of mind that becomes part of a man’s very nature. Interactions with other people are an important trigger of emotional responses. Also, since social situations are generally unpredictable, they are more likely to result in non-routine activities. Knowledge can be a part of making the most of your time. But that means making choices, then working it out so you can do what you choose. Making the most of your time means doing nothing when nothing is what you want to do, and staying up all night to work on a project, read a book, or dance until dawn, when that’s what choose. We can’t always do exactly as we please for many reasons, including the need to earn a living, the desire to stay out of prison, and the hope of maintaining our key relationships. However, we can dramatically increase our life’s options by decreasing our outside dependencies. Personal Freedom While numerous paths lead to personal freedom, our favorite is the path of most resistance—resistance to unnecessary expenditures of our three key assets: time, energy, and money. The more frugal you are with these assets, the less of them you commit to projects that have little meaning for you, the more you’ll have for those that do, and the better you’ll feel about the quality of your life. Even if you take absolutely no intentional action to change your life, it will change. Time refuses to stand still. And as time moves on, we age with it, and our options change and often diminish. Therefore, the best time to begin fine-tuning your life is now and the best place to start is with something easy, where a small change can make a big difference in the quality of your existence. The Choice We Have Do we comprehend ourselves, then, through the freedom of our inner and outer actions? Once we understand our own judgments we confront them in greater freedom. But no understanding can comprehend the powers that produce the comprehensible meaning, which are nevertheless present in us. To recognize that we have a choice in all situations does not have a thing to do with whether or not we are in control of those situations. Remember the definition for wisdom: the growing lists of what we do not control and what we do not know. In the midst of these ever-increasing lists, we maintain authority over our lives, whether we like it or not, whether we admit it or not, and even whether we recognize it or not. We don’t really have any choice in the matter. Resistance to change is natural. One must be mature in their thought process. Maturity and Life It takes maturity to avoid tempting but destructive choices; it takes maturity to want to be in control of your life and not to be controlled; and it takes maturity not to allow yourself in times of crisis to wallow in self-pity. The problem in our time is that maturity is not high on the list of goals we offer the next generation. We stress happiness, success, and intelligence, but not maturity. And that is too bad, both for society, which suffers when too many of its members are immature, and for the individual who wants to be happy. For happiness is not available to the immature. And one of the prominent characteristics of immaturity is seeing oneself primarily as a victim. Become mature and read this book. Make great life choices! The overall objective of this book is to help you strengthen your intuitive decision-making skills and reach success. What defines success? The answer differs for each person. Is becoming a creative genius the same as success? Not for everyone. But for those willing to pay the price the road is accessible, and with effort they are able to tap into those key attributes necessary for creative genius. Remember what you were taught about the right way to make important decision? You were probably told to analyze a problem thoroughly, list all your different options, evaluate those options based on a common set of criteria, figure out how important each criterion is, rate each option on each criterion, do the math, and compare the options against each other to see which best fits your needs. The decision is simply a matter of selecting the option with the highest score. This book aims to show that “nurture,” not “nature,” is the secret for becoming a creative genius.