1. Your body;
2. Your mind.

Abusing your body usually results in pretty nasty health problems when its youth starts wearing off.

Abusing your mind on the other hand, through constant thinking and study, has very pleasant results in time. You won’t be one of those using the “I’m old, my memory isn’t as good” excuse at 65. You won’t forget why you’re holding a toothbrush in your hand, or that your birthday is five months from today. No memory loss at old age sounds too good to be true? Read on.

Holbrook Jackson (1874 – 1948)  a British journalist, writer and publisher, recognised as one of the leading bibliophiles of his time, maintains on the matter of studies and old age:

No labour in the world is like unto study, for no other labour is less dependent upon the rise and fall of bodily condition; and, although learning is not quickly got, there are ripe wits and scholarly capacities among men of all physical degrees, whilst for those of advancing years study is of unsurpassed advantage, both for enjoyment and as a preventative of mental decay. Old men retain their intellects well enough, said Cicero, then on the full tide of his own vigorous old age, if only they keep their minds active and fully employed; [De Senectate, 22, tr. E. S. Shuckburgh, 38] and Dr. Johnson holds the same opinion: There must be a diseased mind, he said, where there is a failure of memory at seventy. [Life, ed. Hill, iii, 191] Cato (so Cicero tells us) was a tireless student in old age; when past sixty he composed the seventh book of his Origins, collected and revised his speeches, wrote a treatise on augural, pontifical, and civil law, and studied Greek to keep his memory in working order; he held that such studies were the training grounds of the mind, and prophylactics against consciousness of old age.

~ Holbrook Jackson – The Anatomy of Bibliomania (free full text!)

Constant study is one possible way of avoiding unpleasantries such as Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and depression, while keeping a good memory capacity. A lazier more comfy way would be waiting for science to advance enough and allow an emulation of the same process – but this option isn’t sure to be available, let alone in time for us to use it.

I’ve noticed that people tend to get mentally lazy as they age. Their jobs usually tire them out and they lose their appetite for thought and creative action, being content with what other people and the media think and do for them. It is at that point that their mental abilities start to decline, and the quality of their lives usually follows this descending trend. And that is a sad depressing picture, considering that old age can be a perfectly creative, functional stage of life, if only the mind was constantly kept challenged over the years.

The American Academy of Neurology released a study (February 17th, 2009) saying that participating in certain mental activities may delay or prevent memory loss.

“This study is exciting because it demonstrates that aging does not need to be a passive process. By simply engaging in cognitive exercise, you can protect against future memory loss,” said study author Yonas Geda, MD, MSc, a neuropsychiatrist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, and a member of the American Academy of Neurology.”

The study will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 61st Annual Meeting in Seattle, April 25 to May 2, 2009.

Don’t let your old age be an age of memory loss. Keep thinking, keep your mind alive! When playing with the brain, it’s a case of use it or lose it, so use it.

Pleasures arising out of several joys are not happiness. They are, in fact, unhappiness because they have the restlessness, which makes one unhappy. Happiness means ease and complete lack of restlessness and pleasures of senses do not have that mental ease. Whatever we enjoy with the help of the senses is sensual pleasure only. It is a kind of unhappiness. It is happiness in name only. Psychic bliss is above senses and cannot be had from their objects. Just as the soul, being psychic, cannot be achieved with the help of the senses; non-sensory happiness, being in the nature of the soul, cannot be obtained with the help of the senses.

We have to find a thing, where it is. How can we find it where it is not possible to have it at all. For example, consciousness is an attribute of the soul, and can be found in the sentient soul only, not in inanimate entities. Likewise happiness is also an attribute of the soul, not of inanimate beings. Happiness can, therefore, be had in the soul only, not in inanimate objects like human bodies. This soul does not know itself and is, therefore, wandering with wrong faith; in the same manner this being attempts to find happiness in non-self objects and that is the root cause of his unhappiness. The direction of the search for happiness itself is wrong. When the direction is wrong, the present state will also be full of unhappiness. For getting real happiness, we have to see within, to know our own being, for our happiness lies in ourselves. The soul is a depository of eternal bliss, full of everlasting joy. Therefore, those, in pursuit of happiness should turn their efforts towards their inner beings. Those looking for happiness elsewhere, will never get it.

Real happiness is a matter of experience, not of speech, not of demonstration. It can be had only by being introvert, cutting ourselves from all the non-self entities and being one with our soul itself. Since the soul is full of happiness, experience of the soul is the experience of happiness. Just as one cannot achieve the soul without experience, in the same manner one cannot get real happiness without the experience of the soul.

If we ponder deeply over the question, we realise that happiness is not to be had from somewhere else, for the soul is itself made of this happiness, is nothing but happiness alone. That which is happiness incarnate has not to find happiness anywhere else. Happiness is not to be possessed, it is to be enjoyed, to be experienced. It is not necessary to torment ourselves for getting happiness. There is no trouble whatsoever in happiness; restlessness has no happiness. Restlessness is itself unhappiness and its absence is happiness. As such there should be no desire for happiness, for desires themselves make us unhappy. Absence of desires is real happiness.

I completely agree with all the above text says, so there’s no point in me commenting it. Just a note: if it sounds too metaphysical for you, replace ‘soul’ with ‘mind’ in the text.

A dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste.
— Jules Carlysle

The question is simple: do you know your mind? More specifically, do you know what it is biased towards detecting when you look at things? What is the above picture about? Get voting!

What you have seen in the picture is associated with prior memories that you had (and what is currently on your mind). Sort of like a movie, in which everyone sees what they (mentally) brought to it. Which is a pretty cool and quick way to learn something new about yourself.

This image has been floating around the internet for a while and some say it’s related to some research, but since I couldn’t find anything (scientific) about the ‘research’ part, I’ll just consider it an interesting picture that’s worth a poll (there were no polls on it, and polls are fun, so here you go).

What did the message in a bottle tell you?

“Be pleasant until ten o’clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself.”
— Elbert Hubbard

If you were to rate your mornings, how good would they be? Would your mornings be the great, motivating and inspiring part of the day, or the part which clutters your mind and makes you feel confused and powerless?

Of course, everyone wants their mornings to be joyous, but most people are doing things which can turn mornings into an experience with the opposite effect. And they end up starting the day with an uninspiring, gloomy feeling.

What degrades the mind from its morning freshness is reading the news. News filled with useless facts, badly written opinions and (sometimes seductive) advertising. There is plenty of time later in the day to load up with useless information that we must deal with in order to survive in this imperfect world. Why sacrifice a fresh mind for it.

In the morning all is cool, clean and quiet (at least relatively). If you wake up early enough, the world is asleep and the universe is yours. That feeling, the feeling of freshness, has a great potential to motivate, inspire, improve. It can result in great ideas, it can solve problems, it can teach you and give new meaning to things.

In the morning you should meditate, read a good book that stimulates you, have a delicious breakfast, enjoy the calmness of the world, listen to some good music that makes you feel good. Arrange your life to achieve the maximum quality of morning time, and you will be rewarded with a better future.

My morning was great. How did your morning make you feel?

photography by the  Happy Jumper!

Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Before I knew anything about it, I was attracted to the ideal of philosophy. I thought of it as a practical subject that could make a real difference, that might have wise things to say about everyday worries – like

failing in a job, not having any friends. Philosophy promised something that might sound a little naive, but was in fact rather profound: “the way to learn to be happy.”

And as I found out more, I discovered that there were a few ancient philosophers I was particularly interested in, because they had the wisest things to say about the areas of life that I thought were rather problematic.

Anger

Anger refers especially to that faculty of the mind which subsists between reason and desire and which seeks to direct the latter in accord with the former – a faculty which seeks to ordinate the self and its environment. It is part of the brain response to a perceived threat of pain – mental of physical.

Anger may be expressed actively or passively. When expressed actively, an angry person “lashes out” verbally or physically at a target. When expressed passively, it is often characterized by silent sulking, passive-aggressive behavior, hostility and tension.

Anger is usually magnified and lasts longer when a rational decision is made about the intent of the source of the disturbance. In other words, if one decides the pain infliction was intentional or deliberate, the emotion of anger that results is usually more intense. This also happens when one thinks he can do something to change an unchangeable painful situation.

Getting angry is not a hard thing to achieve. Is is sufficient for one to drive through a city, especially if it is a crowded one, to get very frustrated because of the careless drivers that seem to be everywhere.

The world we live in is a very frustrating one and most of us seem unable to respond very philosophically to it. Anger seems as much a part of our lives today as bad driving and traffic jams.

An interesting thing to know is that anger was even a greater problem in the ancient times than it is now.

Ancient thinking & solutions for anger | Seneca

An article on the benefits of travel that I had written not long ago had its opening quote by Seneca, the most famous and popular philosopher of his day. He authored more than 20 books of practical advice about all aspects of life.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often referred to simply as Seneca, or Seneca the Younger) was a Roman philosopher, statesman and dramatist. Born in Corduba, Hispania (today’s Spain), about 3 B.C., Seneca was the second son of Helvia and Marcus Annaeus Seneca, a wealthy rhetorician known as Seneca the Elder.

Tradition relates that Seneca he was a sickly child (suffering from tuberculosis) and that he was taken to Rome for schooling, where he was trained in rhetoric and was introduced into Stoic philosophy by Attalos and Sotion.

Around AD 37, Seneca was nearly killed as a result of a conflict with the Emperor Caligula who only spared him because he believed the sickly Seneca would not live long anyway. In AD 41, Messalina, wife of the Emperor Claudius, persuaded Claudius to have Seneca banished to Corsica on a charge of adultery with Julia Livilla (one of Caligula’s sisters). He spent his exile in philosophical and natural study and wrote the Consolations.

In AD 49, Claudius’ new wife Agrippina had Seneca recalled to Rome to tutor her son, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, the future emperor Nero.

Seneca acted as Nero’s advisor for eight years from 54 to 62. Seneca’s influence was said to be especially strong in the first year and many historians consider Nero’s early rule with Seneca and the praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus to be quite competent. Over time however, Seneca and Burrus lost their influence over Nero.

With the death of Burrus in 62 and accusations of embezzlement, Seneca retired and devoted his time to more study and writing.

In AD 65, Seneca was charged with being a co-conspirator in the Pisonian conspiracy (a conspiration in which he probably wasn’t involved), a plot to kill the emperor Nero. Rather than face execution, Seneca chose to slit his wrists.

During his time as advisor of the emperor Nero, Seneca saw very much anger first hand. He even dedicated a whole book, titled “On Anger”, to the subject.

“The most hideous and frenzy of all emotions” he called it. But, crucially, he refused to see it as an irrational outburst, something over which we have no control.

Seneca thought anger was a philosophical problem and that it should be treated with philosophical arguments.

Anger arises from certain rationally held ideas about the world. And the problem with these ideas is that they are far too optimistic.

In Seneca’s analysis, people get angry because they’re too hopeful, too optimistic.

Optimism is an outlook on life such that one maintains a view of the world as a positive place. An optimistic view of life is the overarching mental state wherein people believe that things will more likely go well for them than go badly.

Whenever we get angry there’s an element of surprise of self pity and injustice. When we expect things to go our way and they don’t, we tend to get angry. What Seneca would say is that “bad” things (in the optimistic perception) are neither unfair or surprising. They are predictable features of life. The person who gets angry about them simply has the wrong expectations of the world.

Seneca’s first piece of advice: be more pessimistic, adjust your view of the world so is to be less surprised when reversals occur.

He urges us to bear something else in mind too: if we can accept there’s often nothing we can do about our frustrations, we will be less likely to lose our peace of mind when we encounter them.

Seneca believed that one of the reasons we get so angry is because we imagine that things should basically always go our way. This is more of a problem these days as there is an explosion of “advice” sources that urge people to be overoptimistic and believe that things can always go their way, that they should be able to make the world conform to their wishes.

The reality is that we can’t do that. There are many things that we just have to accept. To make us understand this, Seneca came up with an unusual idea. He said that all of us are esentially rather like dogs, tied to the back of a moving chariot, and the leash is just about long enough to give us some freedom, but not long enough to allow us to move wherever we want. The best way for the dog to have a good life with this constraint is to follow in the direction where he doesn’t want to go than to kick against something that he can’t change. That is because if he kicks against it, he will end up not only going where he doesn’t want to go, but he will also get strangled.

However, we have one advantage over animals: we have reason. And it is reason that gives us the advantage to see what we can change and what we can’t. We may be unable to alter certain events but we’re always able to change our attitude towards them. And its this ability that Seneca believed gave us this distinctive form of freedom.

Seneca’s philosophy isn’t just useful for times when we’re feeling furious, it offers us a way to stay calm and collected whatever life may throw at us.

Being a wealthy person, Seneca noticed a surprising thing in the world around him: being rich tends to make people angrier, not calmer.

Seneca knew of a man, Vedius Pollio, who once hosted a party at which a cup-bearer tripped on a piece of marble, fell, and broke a crystal glass. Vedius was so angered at this that he ordered him thrown to the lampreys.

In Seneca’s analysis, Vedius Pollio believed in a world in which crystal glasses simply don’t get broken. And in a way, all of us are like that.

Seneca believed that the problem with rich people, like Vedius, was that their expectations were absurdly high. If this seems absurd to you, go to an airport and look at the 1st class and the economic class counter; what you will notice is that people tend to shout more at the 1st class counter.

The reason is that the rich believe that money will insulate them from setbacks and frustrations; and that is one of the absurdest expectations of us all.

Seneca’s second piece of advice: lower your expectations.

Another interesting piece of advice coming from Seneca is to meditate. The meditation that he refers to isn’t for relaxation, but for preparation.

We usually tend to reassure people by saying: “don’t worry, it will be fine.” Seneca believed that this cozy advice can potentially be very cruel, because it leaves the target person unprepared if things won’t be fine. So he suggested an opposite strategy.

Seneca’s third piece of advice: every morning, make time for a calm meditation on all the things that might go wrong that day.

Be careful not to start believing that you shouldn’t ever expect things to go to plan. You can expect them to go to plan, but at the same time you must be prepared for the day they don’t.

Balancing the optimistic and the pessimistic sides of our moral, as well as meditating to be prepared for when things don’t go our way, are key elements to living a peaceful life, a life free of frustration and anger.

source: Alain de Botton, Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness – Part 3

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited. – Albert Einstein

In computer security, a sandbox is a security mechanism for safely running programs that is often used to execute untested code or programs from unverified third-parties, suppliers and untrusted users.

In a similar fashion, the psychological sandbox is the space within your mind which allows you to safely exercise ideas, concepts, issues and solutions, without any direct external consequences. You may not be aware that you have this psychological sandbox, but if you ever thought about something that “it can’t work”, you have used it.

The advantages of becoming aware of and consciously using the psychological sandbox are numerous. Here are some of them:

• You can solve difficult or painful situations that may appear in life more easily;
• You can test-run outlandish concepts more thoroughly;
• You can use it in brainstorming sessions to improve your changes of finding new practical ideas;
• You can thoroughly test-run any idea before applying it in your life;
• It is a very powerful imagination exercise;

As you see, the psychological sandbox is a very powerful tool that can assist you in improving yourself.

Setting up the sandbox

The psychological sandbox is basically a skill that everyone is born with. Because of its “skill” state, it can be subject to improvement. And in this case, improvement means learning to set it up correctly and then developing it through exercise.

The installation process is very simple:

Imagine an actual sandbox that has a border around it, to keep the sand in. No matter what one builds or tears down in this sandbox, it all stays inside. Anything that is in the sandbox is provisionally accepted as being real and is subject to the physical laws of the universe – and the moral laws of society, depending on the case.

Using the sandbox

Let’s consider that you face a very difficult situation in your life.

First, bring up in your mind the sandbox that you installed earlier. Now imagine that the sand in it represents the problems you are facing. As you know, you can build up anything or tear down what is already there without actually doing it. Thus, with emotional distance, intelligently use all the options you have and notice their consequences. In order for the results to be accurate, for the duration of the exercise you must accept the environment build inside the sandbox as being real, but untrustworthy – until proven otherwise.

When one idea has a valid beneficial outcome, step outside the psychological sandbox and replicate the process in the real life.

Let’s have another example.

During brainstorming sessions, the habit of thinking “it can’t work” is an abhorrant action that interferes with the process that creates new ideas. Most of us are hardwired to act this way. But an idea shouldn’t be subject to brutal attack in the instant it first comes to our mind. New ideas are delicate, their survival ability is not properly tested by beating them with wooden clubs, but by placing them in our psychological sandbox.

Too much openness and you accept every notion, idea, and hypothesis – which is tantamount to knowing nothing. Too much skepticism – especially rejection of new ideas before they have been adequately tested – and you’re not only unpleasantly grumpy, but also closed to the advance of science. – Carl Sagan

The solution is to place the new idea in the psychological sandbox – a place which is carefully kept separate from where you keep your certain knowledge. In this sandbox all the untested ideas are constantly seen as untrustworthy yet they’re all provisionally accepted as being real. So build the environment for properly testing the idea and then play with it while paying attention to the effects. Does it work, is it valid? If it does, congratulations! your brainstorming has created a new idea.

In a nutshell, the point of the psychological sandbox is to encourage thinking and imagination, while discouraging laziness of thought – saying “I can’t do that” or “that’s not possible” without proper testing.

But I was already doing this!

Congratulations then!

This is a very basic and simple concept, but the fact of the matter is that many of us only imagine that we imagine. Imagining that you imagine and believing what you imagine to imagine is a bad habit to keep.

Bringing the sandbox process of imagination in the awareness spectrum of your mind can only have great positive results. Start using it right away.