Fred Yankowski

"Craft messages that change minds using these 20 principles of persuasion, all based on established psychological research." - Fred Yankowski

"You change your relationship to the pain by opening up to it and paying attention to it. You "put out the welcome mat." Not because you're masochistic, but because the pain is there. So you need to understand the nature of the experience and the possibilities for, as the doctors might put it, "learning to live with it," or, as the Buddhists might put it, "liberation from the suffering." If you distinguish between pain and suffering, change is possible. As the saying goes, "Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional." Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program; body scan. - Fred Yankowski

"Happy people tend to spend time with friends and family and put emphasis on social and community relationships. Another factor in happiness, perhaps less obvious, is based on the concept of “flow.”  Happy people feel in control of their own lives. A sense of control can be obtained by actively setting goals that are both challenging and achievable. Ultimately, though, there are many things in our lives we cannot control. So it also is important to recognize what is and is not within our control, to cultivate the flexibility to accept unexpected change with equanimity, and to focus our efforts on achieving goals at the limit of, but still within, our reach. Devices like gratitude journals help people remain aware of the fortunate aspects of their lives, offsetting the natural human tendency to take those things for granted after a while." - Fred Yankowski

"letting go of the notion that somehow we own that which is in our life" - Fred Yankowski

Some interesting command line tricks for the bash shell and linux. - Fred Yankowski

"This the curse of uncertainty: it makes everything feel unappealing." - Fred Yankowski

Example of using scan-to-PDF to get rid of archival paperwork. Does OCR and can be searched using spotlight on Mac. - Fred Yankowski

"This is how a mature and healthy mind works: conducting a dialogue not so much between reason and desire as between responsible desires and irresponsible ones." - Fred Yankowski

Excellent summary of an optimistic approach to life. "Look upon the inevitable setbacks that you face as being temporary, specific and external. View the negative situation as a single event that is not connected to other potential events and that is caused largely by external factors over which you can have little control. Simply refuse to see the event as being in any way permanent, pervasive or indicative of personal incompetence of inability." - Fred Yankowski

Nice overview of flash photography setups. - Fred Yankowski

"My favorite piece of research from all the happiness research I’ve read is that self-discipline snowballs. That is, if you can work hard to have self-discipline in one, small area, you create self-discipline almost effortlessly in other areas. The most famous study about this phenomena is from Baumeister, who found that students who walked with a book on their head to fix their posture ended up eating better, studying harder, and sleeping more. Without even noticing they were making those changes. " - Fred Yankowski

"if we bring up opposing arguments, then shoot them down, not only is the audience more likely to be swayed, we also see a boost in our credibility." - Fred Yankowski

"As paradoxical as it sounds, we can only find this genuine happiness by first understanding that the present moment of mind and body is unsatisfactory. By progressing through the stages of insight - experiencing fear, then weariness, then dispassion when noting phenomena—we can give up attachment, the real cause of distress. The more clearly we see the lack of worth in mental and physical sensations, the less desire we'll have for them until, thoroughly disenchanted, craving will be snuffed out automatically. As soon as that occurs, pure happiness will arise by itself." - Fred Yankowski