Living Sensical Video Library

A clinical associate professor of psychiatry, Dr. Ari Kiev, writes, "Observing the lives of people who have mastered adversity, I have noted that they have established goals and sought with all their effort to achieve them. From the moment they decide to concentrate all their energies on a specific objective, they began to surmount the most difficult odds." Dr. Kiev continues, "The establishment of a goal is the key to successful living. And the most important step toward achieving an objective is first to define it. I'm sure you have at least 30 minutes a day in which to list your thoughts. At the end of that time, choose from the possible objectives you have listed, the one that seems the most important, and record it separately on a single card. Carry this card with you at all times. Think about this goal every day. Create a concrete mental image of the goal, as if you've already accomplished it." ... Visit and Sign Up Now: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

Studies indicate that the great majority of people have a certain amount of dissatisfaction with their present lives and don't seem to be as happy as they might be. A person often feels when he's accomplished everything he's worked and struggled for so long to achieve, he finds himself depressed more and more of the time. He has a fine job and an excellent income, a beautiful home, a wonderful spouse and children. In fact, everything is finally just as he'd planned it for so many years. And for no reason that he can put his finger on, all the fun and enthusiasm has strongly disappeared. He's listless and unhappy, and he can't think of a single reason why. This has become a common modern malady, especially in retirement, and it's what so often happens when a person runs out of goals. Visit and Sign Up Now: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

There are thousands, yes, millions of people seeking the secret — the key to health, riches, happiness, contentment and a solution of their problems. Through the ages many men and women had the secret, learned and used this Power and I am positive you can acquire it too — if you'll think as you read, accept, and apply the ideas contained herein. Your thoughts — those that predominate — determine your character, your career, indeed your everyday life. Thus, it becomes easy to understand what is meant by the statement that a man's thoughts make or break him. And when we realize that there can be no action or reaction, either good or bad without the generating force of thought initiating it.... VIsit and Join Now: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/expectancyfactor

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Albert Einstein The key word here is “expecting.” This quote from George Santayana also applies to philosophy, religious texts, and classic literature. We find this around us nowadays, where people have refused to learn the wisdom recorded in our legacy texts, there is recurring failure and disaster around them. Because they make the same stupid errors. They should have known better. Businesses, even whole cities, and states are finding themselves facing financial ruin because they've rejected time-proved principles, patterns, and systems that keep organizations solvent and expanding... Visit and Join Now: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/expectancyfactor

Would you like to know how to be happy? The answer, believe it or not, is known, and it took one of the most brilliant minds ever to appear on the earth to come up with the answer. His name was John Stuart Mill, who lived from 1806 to 1873 and became an outstanding philosopher and economist. He is believed to have had perhaps the highest I.Q. of any person who has ever lived. So, unless you think you’re smarter, pay attention. John Stuart Mill said, “Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness: on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way." To my mind there is no doubt whatever that that is the true and only path to lasting and meaningful happiness... Visit and Join Now: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

The other day I was reading about our universe and what we know and don’t know about it – about the billions and billions of stars and planets, and of the millions of galaxies like our Milky Way, separated by voids so vast it takes light (which travels 186,000 miles per second) about two million years to cross these almost incomprehensible distances. There are astronomers today sitting in front of telescopes looking at stars, not as they are now, but as they were five hundred million years ago. That is how long it took the light from these stars to reach us, give or take a few years! I have a hunch I know why astronomers and scientists are so curious, as we all are, about other worlds and other galaxies. It is partly because of what I call “greener pastures.” The hope seems to spring eternal in all human beings that the opportunities are greater elsewhere. I suspect this uniquely human attribute, or frailty, has been at the root of all discovery. Visit and Join Now:

People are often puzzled as to why a successful man continues to be successful, while unsuccessful people tend to remain unsuccessful. It is like the line in the song: “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” This is really not true. The poor do not, as a rule, get poorer; but they do tend to remain poor, or at least at the bottom of the economic ladder, while the more successful and affluent tend to become even more successful. I think the best reason for this is that we are all creatures of habit. People at the bottom of the economic scale are as bound by the habits that have resulted in their lack of financial success as the more successful people are bound by theirs. There is a conservatism of the very poor that is every bit as strong as the conservatism of the very rich. People, in general, tend to avoid anything that smacks of change. You would think the unsuccessful would welcome any kind of change, but they don’t. They have grown used to their way of life and feel that change might be for the worse. Visit and Join Now: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

From time to time you hear somebody say, “You know, those people who got in on the ground floor of the opening of the West, with its gold and silver, really were fortunate. All that gold lying around, waiting to be baled and carried to market!” Or, you will hear: “And what about the early discoverers of our vast oil fields? All those derricks pumping millions of dollars’ worth of black gold, and the folks who discovered it just sitting back and trying to keep their fortunes figured to the nearest million!” When I was a youngster during the depression, we used to sit around and dream of things like that. Maybe you've done the same thing. Well there is one place that is virtually unexplored, where you can find all the wealth you’ll ever need. Perhaps you never thought much about it, but each of us has his own private gold mine, all staked out, with a clear title, just waiting to be developed.... Visit and Join: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

Here are a few thoughts that you can make your own, thoughts which will guarantee you success all the years of your life. Now, that is quite a statement, but it’s true. To begin, let us understand that growth and increase are a part of mankind and all of nature. It is inherent in each of us to desire more. This is not wrong, it is perfectly natural, and the way it should be. This is true of all of us – the members of our families, our friends and associates, our customers. You should want to get rich in every department of your life. But what do I mean by “rich”? Getting rich, for you, is getting what you want very much. For some, it means a bigger income, or a large sum of capital. That is fine. You can get it without hurting, or even competing with, any other person. In fact, you can thereby increase the general well-being of everyone with whom you come in contact. Unfortunately, the uninformed believe that you can only get ahead in the world at the expense of someone else. This is not true. No one can become rich in any way without enriching others. Anyone who adds to prosperity must prosper in turn... Visit and Join: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

Have you ever wondered why one person will make an outstanding success at the same job or business that another person will fail in? While I was, having lunch with an old friend, we got on this subject and it reminded him of a story about a distant relative. It seems this man found himself in Los Angeles right in the middle of the depression of the thirties. For some reason he decided to go into the real estate business. So he took care of the necessary preliminaries and opened a small office in Los Angeles on a street known as “Real Estate Row.” For a month this man sat in his office waiting for someone to come around to buy or sell some real estate. No one did. He began to notice that none of the other real estate offices were doing any business either; they were in fact, dying on the vine. It was the time of a widespread depression and no one was buying much of anything... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

Have you ever heard a man or woman say, “Well, it may not be much of a job, but at least it represents security”? This way of looking at things is probably a hangover from the depression of the thirties. And it seems this word “security” has come to mean the wrong thing to most people. In the first place, there probably is not a job in the world that offers security. If you have a job, any one of a hundred things could happen to cause you to lose it. But there is a form of real security anybody can develop, and once he has it, it can never be lost again. If a man loses the one thing he believes represents security, he has lost everything. He finds himself suddenly in a cold and hostile world. He feels lost and doesn’t know which way to turn... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

Have you ever stopped to think about how much more people could have, know, and do if they would only try? When timidity, self-consciousness, and vague memories of past failures all contrive to erect a phantom wall between us and the things we would like to have or do, we need courage to leap or painfully clamber over it and achieve “ our desires. Emerson wrote: “What a new face courage puts on everything! A determined man, by his very attitude and the tone of his voice, puts a stop to defeat and begins to conquer.” Courage is often a matter of simple logic. Say a boy at a high school prom refrains from asking a girl to dance. He’s afraid she might say “no,” but he hasn’t thought his problem through. By not asking her, he achieves the same result he would if he asked and she said, “no.” ... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

Experts in human psychology say you cannot change your whole personality. It represents a complex of too many long-established conditioned reflexes and behavior patterns all those things that distinguish you as an individual. But regardless of the personality you have (and it's probably better than you think), you can be content with yourself and your world. The way to achieve this peace of mind is to develop yourself as fully as possible. Each of us has a ceiling of performance. This ceiling is high in the areas in which you excel and low in the areas in which you have little or no aptitude. And your peace of mind or dissatisfaction is directly related to how far you develop your own abilities and aptitudes. If you knew how to use yourself fully – completely – you would know complete contentment. If you find yourself discontented, you should realize that it reflects your unfulfilled potential... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

We are all creatures of habit. We can do most things without even thinking about them; our bodies take charge and do them for us. When you dress, for instance, your mind can be completely preoccupied with something else. Your hands take over, independently, and do the whole job for you. All you do consciously is select what you are going to wear. If you’ll forgive a rather bad pun – we are indeed clothed by our habits. Just as a person such as a priest, a policeman, a horseman, or a house painter is known and recognized by the habit he wears, we are all of us known by the habits we form; good and bad. A bad habit resisted is more easily resisted the next time. A good habit deliberately begun is more easily performed the next time. As the spider spins its web from delicate gossamer threads into a tough trap for the unwary, so we daily spin the threads of habit until they form themselves into cables, difficult if not impossible to break. Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

There is a vital balance between tension relieving and goal achieving that each of us should give some thought to. Going overboard in the tension relieving department could lead to some serious problems in the future. Samuel Johnson once said, “Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler.” There is, of course, a time to be idle and a time not to be idle. But if you want to be idle later, in comfort, it is a good idea to make sure you are not spending too much time in idleness now. At any rate, I think it can be said that the success of a person in any undertaking will hinge directly upon his making certain that he relegates his tension relieving acts to a secondary position. We carve out our own worlds in this life. The shape and size of them will be determined in large part by the balance we achieve... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

I remember some time back a man came to me for advice on how he might become a popular, sought-after platform speaker. He told me he enjoyed making speeches and wanted to make a career of it. I asked him what he wanted to say, and he drew a complete blank. It became clear that he was ready to speak on any subject the entertainment committee wanted him to speak on. It wasn’t the subject – it was just that he wanted to make speeches. I told him that he would never become a great and sought-after speaker until he had something he wanted very much to say; something inside him that burned to get out... that he felt needed telling. Speakers become great because of what they want to say; greatness follows the zeal of their subject. And it’s the same with some true course worth sailing... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

The self-image is your own conception of the sort of person you are. It is a product of past experiences, successes and failures, humiliations and triumphs, and the way other people react to you, especially in early childhood. From these factors, and from others, you build up a picture of yourself which you believe is true. The picture may be false – and in many cases is false – but the important fact here is that you act just as if it were true. For all intents and purposes, it is true. If it’s a good, healthy, successful self-image, fine. But if it can stand some improvement, you can change it for the better and start getting the kind of results such a change will bring about... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

George Santayana once wrote, “There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.” It’s being reminded of something like this which can really shake a person. Have you ever thought about how much time we waste, and unhappiness we bring upon ourselves by worrying about the future, and reliving in our minds the mistakes of the past? One of the neatest tricks in the world is to learn to enjoy the present, since the present is the only time we will ever own. Distance is no longer a serious obstacle due to modern means of travel. But time remains unconquerable. It cannot be expanded, accumulated, mortgaged, hastened or retarded. It is the one thing completely beyond man’s control. And while the supply of time is certainly limited for anyone, generally it is squandered as though there is no end to it... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

When we’re young, we tend to think of life as never-ending. Time for us stretches off limitlessly into the future. But as we get older, even in our forties – which should be a time of vigor, interest and activity, really a time of young maturity – we begin to get, from time to time, small reminders of our mortality. It might be a sudden shortness of breath, or a perfectly normal twinge in the chest... a bit of back trouble. But we get these occasional reminders that time is not, after all, standing still for us. That we, like the Caesars of old, are indeed mortal. To the neurotic, this sort of reminder fills him with dread and plunges him into even deeper depression. But to the fairly normal, reasonably well-adjusted person this comes as a reminder to enjoy to the fullest the time that is remaining; that days are not things to be waited through until Saturday, or a birthday, or Christmas... but rather to be savored and enjoyed one by one, hour by hour. We come to an understanding that to kill time, as we so aptly put it, is really nothing more than to kill a little part of ourselves since time is all we have.

These icebergs – some so huge that it took days to sail past them – had their roots, 90 percent of their bulk, caught in these great currents. They moved majestically along their way regardless of the winds and tides on the surface. I like this story because to me it’s a wonderful example of the way a person should have his roots deep in a great, moving current – a moving stream of conscious direction – which will keep him on course, sailing steadily toward the destination he has chosen regardless of the economic and social winds which blow first this way and then that on the surface. In such a life, there is no great hurry, no frantic running about, no doubt or confusion. Instead, each day he moves a little way along his course – steadily, unrelentingly... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

There are few things more interesting than words. Here’s one you can add to your vocabulary and to your way of life, if you want to. The word is SERENDIPITY. The meaning of serendipity, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is “the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident.” And it means, also, the good things that almost always happen to a person following a bold course of action; serendipitous things. The word was coined by the British author, Horace Walpole, who based it on the title of an old fairy tale, “The Three Princes of Serendip.” The princes in the story were always making discoveries of things they were not in quest of. Let’s say you’re trying to invent something. Frequently, you will stumble onto something entirely different, and wonderful, that you had no idea of discovering. That’s what serendipity means. Now the point I want to make is that you wouldn’t have made the serendipitous discovery, if you hadn’t been looking for something else.... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

Do each day all that can be done that day. You don't need to overwork or to rush blindly into your work trying to do the greatest possible number of things in the shortest possible time. Don't try to do tomorrow's or next week's work today. It's not the number of things you do, but the quality, the efficiency of each separate action that count. To achieve this "habit of success," you need only to focus on the most important tasks and succeed in each small task of each day. Enough of these and you have a successful week, month, year, and lifetime. Success is not a matter of luck. It can be predicted and guaranteed, and anyone can achieve it by following this plan. But most people live a life of quiet mediocrity and never achieve the success they truly desire because they get impatient. They want easy success or none at all. They see the path to success as a frustration, an impediment.... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

Let me give you some tips on how to be miserable. Don’t laugh – there are literally millions of people who wouldn’t trade their daily misery for all the gold in the world. You may know some of them. In fact, if you know 10 people, you probably know several of these misery-lovers. (This may be an exaggeration – and it may not be, either.) The first step to real, professional-type, solid, unremitting misery is to get all wrapped up in yourself and your problems – real or imagined. Become a kind of island, surrounded on every side by yourself. By turning all of your thoughts inward, upon yourself, naturally you cannot spend much or any time thinking about others and other things. And so, finally, the outside world – the real world – will disappear into a kind of Hitchcock-type fog... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

Carl Sandburg, Dorothy Lee, Benjamin Lee Warth, Edward Hall and numerous others have told us in essence that we create our own space. Now what does this mean? Well, as with Albert Einstein, it means that space is relative. Unlike Newtonian physicists, Einstein did not conceive of space as an absolute entity in relation to which things were organized. Quite the contrary, he defines space as the relationship that exists among things as a result of their organization. Well, the tendency for reality to be a self-fulfilling prophecy rather than an absolute given has been explained by some modern anthropologists. And what all this means for you and me is that our individual worlds will respond to us in the way in which we see them. They will become for us what we expect of them. We are the creators of our own surroundings... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

One time the late Dr. Maxwell Maltz, whom we called Uncle Max, dropped by my office for a chat and lunch. We got to talking on his favorite subject – namely, how a person can come to grips with himself, develop a healthy self-image and find freedom in the world. He told me he had discovered four important steps a person can take on a regular basis to form the new habits that can build a healthy, new self-image. As he talked at lunch, I made notes on a scrap of paper. Here are his four points in the order in which he gave them to me...