How To Improve Ourselves Quotes

We cannot improve ourselves or our country without improving our educational system and educating ourselves. ~ Debasish Mridha

I want gaming to be something that everybody does, because they understand that games can be a real solution to problems and a real source of happiness. I want games to be something everybody learns how to design and develop, because they understand that games are a real platform for change and getting things done. And I want families, schools, companies, industries, cities, countries, and the whole world to come together to play them, because we're finally making games that tackle real dilemmas and improve real lives. ~ Jane McGonigal

Wisdom is a seed in our brains and it's on ourselves to improve this and develop by feeding it with the knowledge on account of experiences. ~ Jan Jansen

So how can we improve the educational system? We should probably first rethink school curricula, and link them in more obvious ways to social goals (elimination of poverty and crime, elevation of human rights, etc.), technological goals (boosting energy conservation, space exploration, nanotechnology, etc.), and medical goals (cures for cancer, diabetes, obesity, etc.) that we care about as a society. ~ Dan Ariely

The problem to me with environmentalism is the idea that we're all gonna die and we need to save ourselves. I don't think it's necessarily the right way to go about it, because I think we need to really just improve our every moment and improve our quality of life. And that will, sort of by default, save us. ~ Adrian Grenier

We do not have to improve ourselves; we just have to let go of what blocks our heart. ~ Jack Kornfield

Our wisdom is all mixed up with what we call our neurosis. Our brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness, is all mixed up with our craziness and our confusion, and therefore it doesn't do any good to try to get rid of our so-called negative aspects, because in that process we also get rid of our basic wonderfulness. We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we're doing rather than trying to improve or change or get rid of who we are or what we're doing. The key is to wake up, to become more alert, more inquisitive and curious about ourselves. ~ Pema Chodron

Elite Performance Know your brain. Elite athletes know their bodies and train their bodies; elite mental athletes must know their brains and train their brains. Elite athletes commit serious time to intentional improvement programs, not just haphazard training. They work with a coach, do diagnosis, learn which muscles to work on and how much. Following the suggestions in the book will help you improve your mental fitness. Train your brain. It's important to train your brain: It will help you personally, not only in your career but also in your later years, by reducing your risk of Alzheimer's disease and cognitive decline. It will also help your ~ David Silverstein

Here are a few patterns you may have seen that indicate the person you're managing is avoiding their next step of growth: covering up or attempting to brush off the severity of a mistake; hoarding data; embedding themselves as a go-to person (aka: bottleneck) by creating a system or process that only they know how to use; resorting to quick fixes instead of asking questions and looking for root causes; asking for more time or resources beyond what was agreed on in order to complete a project, instead of coming to you to talk about what went wrong so you can work together to improve it; letting tension build with a teammate or between departments instead of coming to you for advice on how to handle it. When ~ Jonathan Raymond

Even as a child, I told my whole family how to improve their looks. ~ Jil Sander

Hadrian walked over to where the boys were fighting and sat on the grass near Denek to watch. Denek, who was only twelve years old, glanced at him curiously. "Who are you?"

"My name is Hadrian," he replied as he extended his hand. The boy shook it, squeezing harder than was necessary. "You're Denek, right? The Pickerings' third son? Perhaps you should speak with my friend Myron, seeing as how I hear you are monastery-bound."

"Am not!" he shouted. "Going to the monastery, I mean. I can fight as well as Fanen."

"I wouldn't be surprised," Hadrian said. "Fanen is flat-footed, and his balance is off. He's not going to improve much either, because Mauvin is teaching him, and Mauvin is favoring his right and rocks back on his left too much."

Denek grinned at Hadrian and then turned to his brothers. "Hadrian says you both fight like girls!"

"What's that?" Mauvin said, whacking aside Fanen's loose attack once more.

"Oh, ah, nothing," Hadrian said, trying to recant, and glared at Denek, who just kept grinning. "Thanks a lot," he told the boy. ~ Michael J. Sullivan

What is the possible benefit? Can this material save lives? Can it improve the quality of life in Iraq? Can it tend to shape our perceptions of how war should and should not be conducted? Can it shape our perceptions of who should be conducting war and in what manner? And the answer to that is a clear yes. ~ Julian Assange

Are you falling asleep before midnight?" Cassie leaned over the edge of the couch to look at Jack. He was stretched out on the floor, his head resting against a pillow near the center of the couch, his eyes closed. She was now wide awake and headache free. He wasn't in so good a shape. "The new year is eighteen minutes away."
"Come kiss me awake in seventeen minutes."
She blinked at that lazy suggestion, gave a quick grin, and dropped Benji on his chest.
He opened one eye to look up at her as he settled his hand lightly on the kitten. "That's a no?"
She smiled. She was looking forward to dating him, but she was smart enough to know he'd value more what he had to work at.
He sighed. "That was a no. How much longer am I going to be on the fence with you?"
"Is that a rhetorical question or do you want an answer?" If this was the right relationship God had for her future, time taken now would improve it, not hurt it. She was ready to admit she was tired of being alone.
He scratched Benji under the chin and the kitten curled up on his chest and batted a paw at his hand. "Rhetorical. I'd hate to get my hopes up."
She leaned her chin against her hand, looking down at him. "I like you, Jack."
"You just figured that out?"
"I'll like you more when you catch my mouse."
"The only way we are going to catch T.J. is to turn this place into a cheese factory and help her get so fat and slow that she can no longer run and hide."
Or y ~ Dee Henderson

Ask yourself, "Why do I want to be in shape?" and write all ... Put your list everywhere to constantly remind yourself why you're doing what you're doing and how your life will improve by becoming fitter. ~ Jillian Michaels

How astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world improve a sense of its natural beauties upon us. Like poor Falstaff, although I do not 'babble,' I think of green fields; I muse with the greatest affection on every flower I have know from my infancy - their shapes and colours are as new to me as if I had just created them with superhuman fancy. ~ John Keats

Understand, you wretched of the earth, we should strive to improve what we can. Here. Right here, in Moldova. We can clean our own houses; fix our own roads. We can trim our own shrubs and works the fields. We can stop gossiping, drinking and loafing. We can become kinder, more patient, more tender with each other. We can stop ripping pages out of library books and spitting on a cleanly swept floor. Quit deceiving. Start living honest lives. Italy- the real Italy- is in us ourselves! ~ Vladimir Lorchenkov

Softly and kindly remind yourself, 'I cannot own anything.' It is a valuable thought to keep in mind as you struggle to improve your financial picture, worry about investments, and plan how to acquire more and more. It is a universal principle which you are part of. You must release everything when you truly awaken. Are you letting your life go by in frustration and worry over not having enough? If so, relax and remember that you only get what you have for a short period of time. When you awaken you will see the folly of being attached to anything. ~ Wayne Dyer

What motivates me is an ideal of thinking about how football should be. And to try to get near this way of playing. And to try to improve all aspects of my personality that can help me get near this ideal way of playing football. ~ Arsene Wenger

I don't know how we could use it to improve the job that umpires do, ... The human element in sport has always been a big part of the game. I'm a football fan, too, and I hate instant replay in the NFL. Football games are taking four hours. ~ Bud Selig

How can I tell the eighth or ninth man on the team that I want you to work hard every day and I want you to improve and get better, but while you're doing that you're not going to get any minutes? ~ Isaiah Thomas

If you think that it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures. Once again, we need look no further than the Jains: Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: 'Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being.' Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept. Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a theologically defensible reading of the Bible. ~ Sam Harris

There are mainly four types of living beings: vegetables, parasites, animals and humans. Vegetables go through life without any conscience of what it means to be alive, and all they can do is react to what happens around them and unto them. Parasites take advantage of others beings to survive but cannot survive on their own. In fact, they rather kill their host than to improve themselves independently. Animals are driven by basic instincts, like sex and pleasure for food. Animals can have attachments but that is as far as they go in what concerns love. Now human, they are capable of all that, plus the ability to love on will, to change, help others change, and create any reality they want to experience. However, almost everyone I encounter, is either pretending to be a plant, a parasite or an animal, not a human. Few people know what it means to be human, and that's how the waste their own existence. This said, we wouldn't need to answer questions about life purpose when the purpose is understood in being what one was born to be. ~ Robin Sacredfire

Consider that the simplest social interactions between two people requires performing an astonishing array of tasks: interpreting what the other person is saying; reading body language and facial expressions; smoothly taking turns talking and listening; responding to what the other person said; assessing whether you're being understood; determining whether you're well received, and, if not, figuring out how to improve or remove yourself from the situation. Think of what it takes to juggle all this at once! And that's just a one-to-one conversation. Now imagine the multitasking required in a group setting like a dinner party.
(p237) ~ Susan Cain

I think that was one of the things that happened, especially in Ireland, that you left in order to improve yourself, and you couldn't write home and tell people, 'Look, I'm really lonely,' because you'd realize how much those letters were going to matter, that you needed to put good news or uplifting news into them. ~ Colm Toibin

To improve, we must watch ourselves fail, and learn from our mistakes. ~ Joshua Foer

If you agree with an outside person's interpretation of you, that's a happy bit of affirmation. It means you're communicating externally what you believe to be true internally. If you disagree, it helps clarify how you understand yourself. And maybe makes you productively question how to improve your communication skills. ~ Heidi Julavits

While some select sobering situations may be unlaughable, there are few circumstances that humor, subtle or candid, can't improve. Afterall, remembering not to take ourselves or others too seriously can put a lot of things into perspective. Laughter is healing. Laughter creates bonds and forges enduring friendships. A healthy sense of humor can quell almost any overwhelming anxiety, and can quench the fires of fury and fear unlike anything else when appropriate. Even more so when not.
Connie Kerbs ~ Connie Kerbs

Sometimes, we need an obstacle to challenge us and push us further than we would if things were always status quo. I'd say one example is the market crashing. It's like, just when we started to get into a rhythm, everything changed! But, it taught us a great deal about how we do business and how we can improve. ~ John Varvatos

By running longer it's like I can physically exhaust that portion of my discontent. It also makes me realize again how weak I am, how limited my abilities are. I become aware, physically, of these low points. And one of the results of running a little farther than usual is that I become that much stronger. If I'm angry, I direct that anger toward myself. If I have a frustrating experience, I use that to improve myself. That's the way I've always lived. I quietly absorb the things I'm able to, releasing them later, and in as changed a form as possible, as part of the story line in a novel. ~ Haruki Murakami

Whether you job involves chasing criminals, crouching numbers, or wrestling with paperwork, learning how to recognize and rely on those hunches and gut feelings can dramatically improve your job performance. ~ Laurie Nadel

It is important to recognize the power of our emotions-and to take responsibility for them by creating a light and positive atmosphere around ourselves. This attitude of joy that we create helps alleviate states of hopelessness, loneliness, and despair. Our relationships with others thus naturally improve, and little by little the whole of society becomes more positive and balanced. ~ Tarthang Tulku

Democracy provides the institutional framework for the reform of political institutions (other than this framework). It makes possible the reform of institutions without using violence, and thereby the use of reason in the designing of new institutions and the adjusting of old ones. It cannot provide reason. The question of the intellectual and moral standard of its citizens is to a large degree a personal problem. (The idea that this problem can be tackled, in turn, by an institutional eugenic and educational control is, I believe, mistaken ; some reasons for my belief will be given below.) It is quite wrong to blame democracy for the political shortcomings of a democratic state. We should rather blame ourselves. In a non-democratic state, the only way to achieve reasonable reforms is by the violent overthrow of the government, and the introduction of a democratic framework. Those who criticize democracy on any ' moral ' grounds fail to distinguish between personal and institutional problems. It rests with us to improve matters. The democratic institutions cannot improve themselves. The problem of improving them is always a problem of persons rather than of institutions. ~ Karl Popper

When we get rid of our ego, we stop doing things to impress others, we stop trying to cling to the idea of ourselves and we realize that we are a part of the natural world. This realization will give us the perspective that is greatly needed to improve the state of our society. ~ Joseph P. Kauffman

In other words, you'll pretend to be someone else in order to snag a husband."
"Oh, for heaven's sake," she said defensively, "it's no different than what half the women in society do to catch a man. I don't want to waste my time in pointless flirtation when a little knowledge will improve my aim on the targets."
He flashed her a condescending smile.
"What is it?" she snapped.
"Only you would approach courtship as a marksman approaches a shooting match." He licked the tip of his pencil. "So who are these hapless targets?"
"The Earl of Devonmont, the Duke of Lyons, and Fernandez Valdez, the Viscount de Basto."
His jaw dropped. "Are you insane?"
"I know they're rather beyond my reach, but they seem to like my company-"
"I daresay they do!" He strode up to her, strangely angry. "The earl is a rakehell with a notorious reputation for trying to get beneath the skirts of every woman he meets. The duke's father was mad, and it's said to run in his family, which is why most women steer clear of him. And Basto is a Portuguese idiot who's too old for you and clearly trawling for some sweet young thing to nurse him in his declining years."
"How can you say such things? The only one you know personally is Lord Devonmont, and you barely know even him."
"I don't have to. Their reputations tell me they're utterly unacceptable."
Unacceptable? Three of the most eligible bachelors in London? Mr. Pinter was mad, not her. "Lord Devonmont is ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Shame can be an incredible burden, making us feel not good enough no matter what we do. But shame is also the emotion that makes us honorable and kind, and motivates us to constantly improve ourselves. ~ Jessica Moore

LEADING LESSONS
Excuses hold you back.

Excuses they keep you from doing what needs to be done and from living your truth. When I was making all those lame excuses for why my performance was going to suck, I was refusing to own it. And when you don't commit wholeheartedly to a situation, you're always somewhere floating in the middle, never really operating at your full potential. We tend to make excuses when things don't go according to our original plans. Or we blame something or someone else for our mistakes. You can also make excuses for the things you don't do--why you haven't left a job you hate, followed your dream, or taken a risk. In the end, all those excuses add up to the same thing: a smoke screen. When you make an excuse, you're rejecting the truth and trying to buffer yourself from the consequences of your actions. Leaders own what they do. This was something I had to learn through experience. I saw how pawning off responsibility (like blaming a bad back for a bad performance) was not helping me improve or grow. People who constantly make excuses are often afraid they're not good enough or can't live up to others' expectations. Maybe in the beginning it makes you feel better: "If I just explain it this way, I won't look so bad." But the end result is always self-defeating. Excuses will always get in the way of a responsible life. ~ Derek Hough

And yet, far off, I can hear something whispering that this compulsion to do, to intrude ourselves, to improve on what is
even when wholly well intentioned, particularly when wholly well intentioned
is the source of all our troubles. ~ Mark Slouka

No conscious person can read Peter D'Adamo's works without considering much more thoughtfully how their genetic inheritance relates to their needs for specific food, lifestyle and environmental factors to improve their health. ~ Jeffrey Bland

Accountability is essential to personal growth, as well as team growth. How can you improve if you're never wrong? If you don't admit a mistake and take responsibility for it, you're bound to make the same one again. ~ Pat Summitt

The secret of success is to try always to improve yourself no matter where you are or what your position. Learn all you can. Don't see how little you can do, but how much you can do. ~ William Walker Atkinson

You wanna know how good bacon is? To improve other food, they wrap it in bacon. ~ Jim Gaffigan

And then also, again, still, what are those boundaries, if they're not baselines, that contain and direct its infinite expansion inward, that make tennis like chess on the run, beautiful and infinitely dense? The true opponent, the enfolding boundary, is the player himself. Always and only the self out there, on court, to be met, fought, brought to the table to hammer out terms. The competing boy on the net's other side: he is not the foe: he is more the partner in the dance. He is the what is the word excuse or occasion for meeting the self. As you are his occasion. Tennis's beauty's infinite roots are self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win. Which is why tennis is an essentially tragic enterprise… You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again…Mario thinks hard again. He's trying to think of how to articulate something like: But then is battling and vanquishing the self the same as destroying yourself? Is that like saying life is pro-death? … And then but so what's the difference between tennis and suicide, life and death, the game and its own end? ~ David Foster Wallace

We did not make ourselves, nor did we fashion a world that could not work without pain, and great pain at that, with a little pleasure, very little, to string us along--a world where all organisms are inexorably pushed by pain throughout their lives to do that which will improve their chances to survive and create more of themselves. Left unchecked, this process will last as long as a single cell remains palpitating in this cesspool of the solar system, this toilet of the galaxy. So why not lend a hand in nature's suicide? For want of a deity that could be held to account for a world in which there is terrible pain, let nature take the blame for our troubles. We did not create an environment uncongenial to our species, nature did. One would think that nature was trying to kill us off, or get us to suicide ourselves once the blunder of consciousness came upon us. What was nature thinking? We tried to anthropomorphize it, to romanticize it, to let it into our hearts. But nature kept its distance, leaving us to our own devices. So be it. Survival is a two-way street. Once we settle ourselves off-world, we can blow up this planet from outer space. It's the only way to be sure its stench will not follow us. Let it save itself if it can--the condemned are known for the acrobatics they will execute to wriggle out of their sentences. But if it cannot destroy what it has made, and what could possibly unmake it, then may it perish along with every other living thing it has introduced t ~ Thomas Ligotti

The lesson of history, then, is that even as institutions and policy makers improve, there will always be a temptation to stretch the limits. Just as an individual can go bankrupt no matter how rich she starts out, a financial system can collapse under the pressure of greed, politics, and profits no matter how well regulated it seems to be. ~ Carmen M. Reinhart