robertcworstell

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

Fiction is a definite thing – something "made up" or imagined in narrative or dramatic form. All other writing falls under the name non-fiction, and the vagueness of that name shows how extensive the field it covers must be. Everybody writes non-fiction, everybody reads it. Whereas millions of people never read any fiction whatever, and millions more read it only during a few years out of their lifetime. In writing we use words. A word has been defined as an articulate sound or series of sounds which is through conventional association with some fixed meaning, communicates an idea, without being divisible into smaller units, capable of independent use... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/audiencefirstbooksales

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.

This subject may be compared to the grain of sand which gets into an oyster and forms the irritating nucleus of a pearl. It is seldom that the author chooses it; rather, it chooses him, inhabits him, and may remain with him throughout life. Every piece of work he turns out has or lacks quality according to the degree in which this intimate subject appears in it. Fortunately for those who wish to write, nearly every human being has a grain of sand in him somewhere. Something ails him, something – a frustration, inhibition, disillusionment, shame, fear, distress, or mere fixation. Any of these will do very nicely, provided the author has the wit to handle it. For literature is the notation of the human heart, and without that grain of sand to set the writer going, there would be nothing to read, nothing written. Subject-matter is only the raw material through which the intimate subject works... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/audiencefirstbooksales

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

Anyone can use cheap knock-off, copy-cat headline. The top pro's use only one universal solvent for each and every copywriting puzzle. Schwartz' book lays out his general prescription for asking and resolving these copywriting problems. And despite how great that book is, it's just the tip of the iceberg. So this field guide. The mastery of Schwartz' materials lies in understanding them thoroughly. Because no one else in all of advertising has covered even half of his materials. The underlying trick is in knowing what the “right questions” are... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/BreakthroughAdvertising

Make all your ads pay for themselves. How? Simple: study the classics. Over and over and over. Again, there's maybe a dozen books that lay out all you need to know. The rest is studying the markets you are trying to reach. And for copywriters, there's a small set of long-lasting ads that ran for decades with minor changes. There are many like this. The reason these ads ran that long was simple – they kept getting sales. Once you internalize those, and also understand how they work – then you can duplicate their success. Routinely... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/BreakthroughAdvertising

Again, this model in practice is more like “an art based on science” than it is a defined formula or recipe that always produces a specific pastry, bread, or cake if you follow it exactly. Weather isn't exactly the same from year to year. Different pastures of your farm will respond differently, depending on the soil that lies beneath it. No two square feet of a paddock are identical, and aren't even the same from year to year. The underlying principles don't change, though. Your forages will also become more diverse as you utilize this grazing. The natural systems in play will then enable seeds which have lain dormant for a hundred years to suddenly show up when the conditions are right. Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/RationalGrazingLibrary

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

A good story consists of intangibles, and an author is not unlike the fisherman in the Arabian Nights who found the brass bottle, drew out the cork and released the genie. In our dreams objects appear extraordinarily bright and glamorous. Everything seems to have a heightened significance, but we are not generally aware of very many things at one time. So in fiction the author presents one fact or a few facts at a time and uses these as a springboard to emotion. ‘The facts in themselves are nothing, and the fewer they are the better... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/BecomingAWriterLibrary

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

Schwartz says that good advertising is based on Mass Desires. He defines those as the “mass spread of a private want”. Meaning – there is something I want out there and someone has produced a product that will help me become or attain that want I need filled. The problem with most advertising is that it's really schlock. (You can fill in any other word you want there.) Most advertising is “schlock” because copywriters, advertising managers, and even CEO's won't look up and study the classic books on copywriting and advertising. By the quality of advertising today, anyone can estimate that it's far more than half-wasted these days. The vast bulk of ads out there are wasted marketing dollars... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/BreakthroughAdvertising

Differences and profitability Continuous grazing means paying the required overhead in haying equipment and hay. Rotational and Mob grazing both can achieve the same results of improving higher efficiencies and so can more than double stocking rates. The higher profits come in when you've improved your land enough to feed them nearly all year round without having to buy much hay. You can get by on a few bales or none – usually only having to provide in emergencies of inclement ice storms or blizzards, where the underlying grass is completely inaccessible for several days or more. The few comparative studies out there really haven't produced an accurate comparison between simple rotational grazing and high-density (mob) grazing. They both work, once you master them. Overall, they seem to produce the same improvement of grazing efficiency and higher returned profit. The difference between these two methods is in what grazing density you set your “stocking rate” to. Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/RationalGrazingLibrary

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...

IN WRITING NON-FICTION, the choice of a subject is of the first importance. For non-fiction, unlike fiction, is usually sold before it is written. The author has to sell his bare idea to the editor before it has been dressed in the charms of literary form or style, and this means that the subject must manifestly be a good one, or it will never be approved and published at all. Moreover, the range of possible subject-matter is so vast including, as it does, all knowledge that the danger of choosing unwisely is considerable. The difficulty lies in the fact that, although the reader cannot see the world truly through the veil of his desires, he tends to ignore everything that is not somehow connected with his desires. Other things are not, to him, "interesting." Somehow, we have to overcome this difficulty. It may be overcome... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/audiencefirstbooksales

It's been said that Americans can have anything they want. The trouble is, most don't know what they want, and so they drift through life taking circumstances as they come and settle for "good enough." Yet, 5 percent of the population does achieve an unusual level of success. And here is their secret. The stories of people achieving unusual success despite all manner of handicaps never fail to capture our attention. They're inspirational to be sure. But they're much more than that if we study them closely. The boy whose legs were terribly burned and who was told he'd be lucky to ever walk again becomes a champion track star. The woman blind and deaf from infancy becomes one of the most inspirational figures of the century. And the poor children who rise to fame and fortune have nearly become commonplace. The people we've talked about here and the thousands currently doing the same thing all over the world are in possession of something the average person doesn't have. They have goals... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

Points of Importance There is no end to the amount of stimulation and help you can get from reading with critical attention. Read with every faculty alert. Notice the rhythm of the book, and whether it is accelerated or slowed when the author wishes to be emphatic. Look for mannerisms and favorite words, and decide for yourself whether they are worth trying for practice or whether they are too plainly the author's own to reward you for learning their structure... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/BecomingAWriterLibrary

To get the most benefit from the corrective reading you are going to do after these periodical inventories, you must take a little trouble to learn to read as a writer. Anyone who is at all interested in authorship has some sense of every book as a specimen, and not merely as a means of amusement. But to read effectively it is necessary to learn to consider a book in the light of what it can teach you about the improvement of your own work. Most would-be writers are bookworms, and many of them are fanatical about books and libraries. But there is often a deep distaste at the idea of dissecting a book, or reading it solely for style, or for construction, or to see how its author has handled his problems... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/BecomingAWriterLibrary

EVERYBODY WRITES NON-FICTION. It is almost impossible to become a literate adult before having to write a speech, an article, or at least a letter. Before we leave school, we have commonly written reams of non-fiction. Yet not many people are aware that writing non-fiction is at once an art and a business that is to say, a profession. They do not realize what an opportunity it offers them. The subject matter of non-fiction is co-extensive with the Universe, and includes everything man can observe, know, or imagine. Also, in all work that deals with people, non-fiction uses all the techniques of fiction. Thus non-fiction affords every opportunity open to a writer, whether of subject or technique... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/audiencefirstbooksales

Sit down and make a list of everything you want in life. When you do this, you will make some surprising discoveries. You might find that you have already managed to get many of the things you have wanted seriously. Or, if you don't have most or all of them, chances are you are now in the process of getting them. If your list contains some items you want very much but do not have, you might ask yourself why you have failed to get them. Chances are that you have not tried very hard. Or perhaps you felt, for one reason or another, that these things are completely beyond your ability to achieve. These wants make very worthwhile goals. If you're honest with yourself about the things you want – not idle wishes that change from day to day but things you are serious about – you'll find that they all can be yours, and in a surprisingly short time, if they are taken one at a time... Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary

Eugene Schwartz lays out the premise and breakthrough of his classic “Breakthrough Advertising” within the few pages of its introduction: “I've written this book – not from the mail order perspective alone – but from the universal problem of all copy writing: How to write a headline – and an ad that follows it – that will open up an entirely new market for its product. .... “In copy writing there are the hopes and fears and desires of millions upon millions of men and women, all over the world. And the copy writer does not create the desire of millions of women all over America to lose weight; but he can channel that desire onto a particular product, and make its owner a millionaire...” Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/BreakthroughAdvertising

The whole point to managed grazing is to rebuild your land using cattle (or other ruminants). The cows, grass, and living soil work together as a system. The manager is the one that learns to get them to cooperate naturally and rebuild inches of topsoil in just a few years, which would take Nature over a century by leaving the land fallow. Managed grazing has several methods. Each method is based on pasture areas which have permanent perimeter fences. .... Which choices or combinations of these you utilize depends on a lot of factors, the biggest ones being your own time and your own experience with grazing. Visit:

People can have anything they want. The trouble is that they don't know what they want. The person who knows what they want knows what they must become, and they then fix their attention on the preparation of themselves toward that end. Have you ever noticed that ships operate essentially the same way people ought to, but so few do? Maybe you've never given it much thought, but at any given moment, a ship has a direction and a destination. That is, either she's sailing to a predetermined port of call, or she's in port, getting ready to sail to another one. You can ask the captain of any big, far-sailing ship where they're going, and they can tell you instantly – and in one sentence. How many people do you know who can do the same thing? It seems that most people want too many different things – or at least they think they want them – they're unable to focus their efforts, their minds, and their hearts on anything specific. Visit: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/ChangeYourLifeLibrary