Quotes Archive, 2018
"Contrarians ignite and excite, but usually have no realistic destination or no realistic plan to get there or no realistic plan once they do get there. Discern a person or group that is constructed in opposition (what they are against) instead of proposition (what they are for). Resistance, contrarianism, iconoclasm, even full revolt, are only tools, not destinies." (12/19)
"Parents, when you tell your kids, "Don't talk back!", you are not teaching them to respect authority, you are teaching them to recognize a dictator. Mature, skillful parenting says something like, "If you are respectful, you can share your side/feelings/etc." Suppressing your child's voice has far-reaching consequences and extrapolations that you cannot imagine. It teaches them to stuff, scheme, displace, blow up, revolt...perhaps even become petit-dictators themselves. You are the one that must model healthy, respectful dialogue by doing it with them. Your decision may not change, fine, but they must feel and grow into their voice in a healthy, respectful way." (12/11)
"A bread-n-circus, consumption-with-little-conscience atmosphere deforms a society into the image of Commodus, leading us to tolerate, even celebrate, leaders like him. By trying to live from the outside in--without consistent introspection, self-honesty, and emotional growth--we ignore the internal holes and hurts slowly driving us towards insanity." (12/4)
"Beware of a person/group that gives you pretext without context, or, that uses a predetermined pretext to impose meaning on a partially understood context. A carefully, fully, honestly understood context tends to eliminate pretext and inductively lead to accurate, or at least reasonable, conclusions." (11/26)
"Rediscover privacy and layered living. Being 'an open book for everyone to read' is emotional communism, and Communism always leads to bankruptcy. Some of your layers should only be for those 2-3 people who have proven loyal and healthy, whose heart is truly for you, like Ruth or Epaphroditus or those who stayed with David during Absalom's coup. Some layers should only be for that one person who can go there with you, when the other 99% cannot or would not. These individuals are the rarest of jewels, gifts from God." (11/15)
"Some people are like ringing telephones--noisy, insistent, demanding an answer, but asking no question. Think twice about getting close to someone who is talkative but not inquisitive, assertive but not curious, decisive but not explorative." (11/2)
"When what is inside you (vision, passion, ability) is bigger than what is around you (people, environment, institutions), confusion, frustration, even toxicity, results. A large part of hundred-fold success is having the perception and enterprise to shed environments smaller than your internal reality, while pursuing environments equal to or larger than that reality." (10/21)
"When two or more broken people invent or identify a common enemy, a profound bond is created. Few things are more cathartic than anchoring one's locus of reality to an external enemy. Though it may feel like true love or true intimacy or true purpose, it is not." (10/16)
"The power of silence is not necessarily in talking less or being quieter, but in a spirit of silence that emanates verbal composure in all situations. The ability to administrate word count and word choice is the rudder on a ship, guiding it according to the dynamics of the water." (10/3)
"The Lord will not abolish or dismiss your skill set, rather, He will migrate it to new contexts in line with your ultimate life purpose. Peter went from fisher of fish to fisher of people. Paul went from legalistic Mosaic theologian to grace Christo-centric theologian. David went from the lion to the bear to Goliath to all regional enemies." (9/24)
"It is said, 'You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.' But I say, 'If you consistently take out the trash in your soul and life you will not attract flies in the first place.'" (9/13)
"Your enemies are just as important as your allies. Who dislikes, or even hates, you...and why? Who keeps an aggravated distance from you...and why? Sometimes our enemies are visceral reactions to our destiny design or emotional maturity, and the derivative behaviors issuing from those. But do not be sanctimonious; some of your enemies were created by your own folly, lack of thought, or extremes. Yet even this is helpful, uncovering where you must make immediate and drastic changes so as to not leave yourself vulnerable to your genuine enemies." (9/5)
"Learn to read the props in a person's life. The objects and imagery surrounding a person are parables for who they really are or want to be...usually. Some people use props tactically, as encryptions or misdirections to disguise who they really are or want to be. Either way, props conceal and reveal. Become a codebreaker and arrive at the real person, even before they do." (8/8)
"Children/teenagers will audition various roles. I do not mean the drama program at school, but the drama unfolding in their existence. Through trial and error, observation and feedback, they learn what roles squeeze the most out of their environment. Do not squeeze or suffocate them in return; do not succumb to the theater they create; do not play roles of your own. With calm assertiveness, coach them towards balance and multidimensionality." (7/18)
"Those with a brittle core are quick to rage and quick to recover, like volatile weather. Instead of buying an umbrella, a tank top, a parka, and a windsuit to accommodate the weather, move to a stable climate where the weather accommodates you." (7/12)
"The person with emotional composure will rule. The overemotional, the reactive, the anxious, the dejected, the angry, the manic, the hypersensitive...become
slave labor." (7/3)
"Windows of grace and opportunity come, offering wonders and new realities, but vanish quickly. If you do not act on them assertively you are doomed to repeat the last season again. We only cycle out of an old reality and into a new reality when we perceive the window before us and, though it might cost all we have, burst into it tenaciously." (6/23)
"Many Christians are like blind and deaf drummer boys, marching uselessly in place to keep an organizational machine running. What about a revelatory and outcome-rich prayer life? A perception of individual calling? A healthy dose of iconoclasm? A creative edge and edgy creativity?" (6/18)
"Expert warriors are not baited by provocations, red herrings, ultimately meaningless concessions, or disingenuous detentes. From the higher ground of strength they control the construct of rapprochement, peace, cold war, or actual war." (6/9)
"In prayer, when the Lord's answer is Yes, He generally manifests that Yes in two ways. Sometimes it manifests the way we imagined or immeasurably more than we asked or imagined. I call this the "unicorn answer", and wow it is dazzling. Our intercessory faith growth-spurts at these moments. At other times, He includes us in the answer's evolutional process from beginning to end. I call this the "seed form answer". It enters our life crude and incomplete, requiring our active participation in its development to what we originally asked and imagined. The euphoric unicorn answer will come, fully formed and ready to ride, but only sometimes. Have the revelatory faculty and maturity to perceive the answer when it appears as a seed." (6/1)
"Some people respond only to deterrence, not pleasant initiatives or privileges or olive branches or concessions. Read this early in the interaction. Deterrence blocks the escalation ladder and saves you mop-up later." (5/22)
"Love has a multiexpressive nature. It mandates different behaviors in different situations. We will occasionally have to ignore our personality type or deeper wishes or spiritual gifts to love accurately across a variety of situations." (5/16)
"What is your personal fiction? Humans have a peculiar vulnerability to incorrect storylines imagined with limited information mixed with excessive emotion. Via interpolation and extrapolation, semi-facts coagulate into narratives, narratives into emotions, emotions into ideas, ideas into actions, actions into life outcomes." (5/9)
"There are bite-size listeners and big-chunk listeners. Bite-sizers can only chew finger food, big-chunkers can listen to buffets. Beware, though, of too quickly assigning valences to either. An 'impatient' bite-sizer might really be for you, while a 'conscientious' big-chunker might simply be sizing you up or phishing for vulnerabilities." (5/3)
"Changing your avatar is not changing your identity. I am not referring to screen names and profile pictures. Call it what you will--heart, core, viscera, subconscious, the deeper self--but it is at this level that epiphany must be experienced for transformation to happen." (4/26)
"Most people are emotional and picturesque (imagery-driven), not analytical and keen, even if they talk fancy and project intelligence. Discover this quickly and it will explain much. Very few people truly live under the dominion of wisdom, and therefore, very few people enjoy her richest of fruits." (4/19)
"You can be a Nice Guy or a Free Man, but, at certain consequential moments, you cannot be both." (4/10)
"I'm amused by pudgy pugilist preachers who jab, uppercut, and right hook drunkenness and immorality and other delicious sins, but seem to always leave out gluttony. I'm sure it was simply an oversized oversight." (3/30)
"Formal credentialed education will always lose to prescient, on-the-ground wisdom. The former will give you job security, the latter will give you the subtle forces that control all financial traffic. The former will get you on C-Span, the latter will get you into people's emotions, imaginations, and decisions." (3/21)
"The born-again life is an unforced life of intuition. God's gifts and serendipity rarely assert themselves to us. They insinuate or hint at us on the sidetracks and edges of our life, requiring a 360-degree intuitive curiosity." (3/13)
"Eliminate subconscious parenting. Parenting is damaging when from unexplored, undefined, unresolved personal emotions. Parenting is lifegiving when from objective understandings and fine-tuned approaches." (3/2)
"Do not miss the importance of the playground and the nightclub. These microcultures display the amusing and dangerous human instinct for superficial hierarchy." (2/26)
"Heart alone or habit alone or help alone cannot create success. Heart keeps you going when habit fails, but habit keeps you going when heart fails, but help keeps you going when heart and habit fail." (2/14)
"God designed life to be a mysterium and imaginarium, not an aquarium." (2/3)
"Upload and resolve buried emotions and live free. Update old emotions and live in the moment. Upgrade melancholy emotions and live buoyant. Upscale serfdom emotions and live as more than a conqueror, a king ." (1/26)
"People listen for two reasons: (1) personalities, stories, and characterizations or (2) underlying concepts, forces, and mechanisms. The former entertains and satisfies your emotional tendencies, the latter illumines you with wisdom and power." (1/14)
"Many parents raise their children with Cold War tactics, like containment, (trying to) outspend bad behavior, and a deterrence-incentive seesaw. But your child is not an idea to be managed, he/she is a living soul with a labyrinth of needs and drives. Humanize your parenting and bring it down to their level." (1/5)
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