Grit Is More Important Than Talent

In the late ’60s, Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel performed a now-iconic experiment called the Marshmallow Test, which analyzed the ability of four year olds to exhibit “delayed gratification.” Here’s what happened: Each child was brought into the room and sat down at a table with a delicious treat on it (maybe a marshmallow, maybe a donut). The scientists told the children that they could have a treat now, or, if they waited 15 minutes, they could have two treats.

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The Possibilities in Hypnosis

“Like many others whose knowledge of hypnotism comes from movies and stage shows, my husband and Mrs. Kanter misunderstood what hypnosis is all about. While in a hypnotic trance, you are neither unconscious nor asleep, but rather in a deeply relaxed state that renders the mind highly focused and ready to accept suggestions to help you accomplish your goals.”

Recent Times Article.

Still Can’t Buy Love

“…just as the human body didn’t evolve to deal well with today’s easy access to abundant fat and sugars, and will crave an extra cheeseburger when it shouldn’t, the human mind, apparently, didn’t evolve to deal with excess money, and will desire more long after wealth has become a burden rather than a comfort.”

Researchers at Boston College prompted the very rich—people with fortunes in excess of $25 million—to speak candidly about their lives and the results are very interesting. It appears that they worry about their children, their relationships, money, religion, spirituality and security. 

Me too. What great wealth does to psychology is a guarded area where little trust survives. This piece was enlightening. 

Thanks to Jay Parkinson for turning me onto this. 

Sigmund Freud, in an interview with Giovanni Papini, 1934.  

… Everyone thinks,” he went on, “that I stand by the scientific character of my work and that my principal scope lies in curing mental maladies. This is a terrible error that has prevailed for years and that I have been unable to set right. I am a scientist by necessity, and not by vocation. I am really by nature an artist… And of this there lies an irrefutable proof: which is that in all countries into which psychoanalysis has penetrated it has been better understood and applied by writers and artists than by doctors. My books, in fact, more resemble works of imagination than treatises on pathology… I have been able to win my destiny in an indirect way, and have attained my dream: to remain a man of letters, though still in appearance a doctor. In all great men of science there is a leaven of fantasy.”

Until One is Committed

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits one-self, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way… Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

-J.W. von Goethe

The David Lynch Foundation

I was sent this New York Times article on a recent surge in the popularity of meditation and the David Lynch Foundation. It starts at a benefit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in December that was M.C.ed by Russell Brand, a practitioner of Transcendental Meditation, and delineates Hollywood’s relationship with meditation since the 70s. Mr. Lynch provides my favorite moment in describing the relationship of meditation to creativity:

“Artists like to say, ‘I like a little bit of suffering and anger,’ but if you had a splitting headache, diarrhea and vomiting how much would you enjoy the work and how much work would you get done? Maybe suffering is a romantic idea to get girls, but it’s an enemy to creativity.”

The David Lynch Foundation offers Transcendental Meditation at no cost to troubled students, veterans, homeless people, prisoners and others in need. They have offices in L.A., New York and Iowa. 

My Most Loving and Best-loved Amazzi

If you ever thought you might be a romantic, read the letter below. Marsilio Ficino (far left) was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance, an astrologer, a reviver of Neoplatonism who was in touch with every major academic thinker and writer of his day, and the first translator of Plato’s complete extant works into Latin. His Florentine Academy, an attempt to revive Plato’s school, had enormous influence on the direction and tenor of the Italian Renaissance and the development of European philosophy. 

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Poetry

Recently rediscovered this poem, Life’s Tragedy, by Paul Laurence Dunbar. First read it in High School and it spoke to me. Although I was too young to fully understand it’s message, I could hear how beautiful it was. Young people have a knack for spotting beauty. The poet, Mr. Dunbar, was the son of freed slaves, born in Ohio less than ten years after the civil war. He was a friend to Orville and Wilbur Wright. They made him a bike, and invested in a newspaper he edited aimed at the black community. His brief life was ended by a bout with tuberculosis at the age of thirty-three.