How New Thoughts for Self Improvement

New thoughts can come from taking a new perspective on things. One way to do that is to challenge the assumptions that exist. For example, is love really a feeling of desire or attachment? This is a common assumption, but what if we challenge this?

New Thoughts on Love

Desire and attachment can be strong feelings, and they are often called love in certain contexts. However, attachment can be for bad reasons too, right? Desire too can come from less than noble places. What is an alternative definition of love?

How about a recognition of value? Seeing the inherent value in a person, like the beauty you see in a painting or hear in a melody. You do not need to be attached or even desirous of beauty to enjoy it. You just have to recognize it. The enjoyment that you take in another’s existence then could be a definition of love. At least the emotion.

Love is more than an emotion, though. How much love does a mother have for her children if she feels fond towards them, but doesn’t feed them? Love in this context has to include action, doesn’t it?

This points up the real problem with defining concepts like love. There are seven or eight or perhaps a hundred things we want to communicate. They are each different, yet we have just one word for them. Maybe rather than re-defining love, we need to create a dozen new words. Now there’s an area for some new thoughts.

Random New Thoughts

Another way to have new thoughts is to just look for new ideas to replace old ones. Then you expand on the new idea, to see what value you might find in it. Here are some examples of new thoughts, without expanding on them (help yourself).

– Why do we encourage uniformed people to vote? Maybe it’s better to encourage people NOT to vote, unless they are willing to educate themselves on the issues.

– Is multitasking really a sign of efficiency? Maybe the fact that we need to be so busy just to get what we want shows that our actions aren’t effective enough.

– Why can’t we pay less for a surgeon who kills more people on the operating table? Why not recognize that there are better and worse doctors, have that information available, and pay accordingly?

– How about wonder instead of faith? Faith is just believing without reason. Wonder is to marvel at the world and accept that we don’t have reasons or explanations for everything.

Finally, what if our level of creativity, and ability to have new thoughts isn’t just something that is set at birth. What if it is a systematic process, one that may not be recognized by those who use it, but can be identified and copied? All of us can train ourselves to have creative new thoughts.

"What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make." - Jane Goodall
"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value." - Albert Einstein
"Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What's important is the action. You don't have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow." - Carrie Fisher
"One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again." - Abraham Maslow
"The swiftest way to triple your success is to double your investment in personal development." - Robin Sharma
"Don't go through life, grow through life." - Eric Butterworth
"We can't become what we need to be by remaining what we are." - Oprah Winfrey
"Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are." - Bernice Johnson Reagan
"The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity." - Amelia Earhart
"People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do." - Rob Siltanen,
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress." - Frederick Douglass
"It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default." - JK Rowling
"Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better." - Maya Angelou
"I've got a theory that if you give 100% all the time, somehow things will work out in the end." - Larry Bird
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain
"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it." - Edith Wharton
"Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure." - Paulo Coelho
"We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong." - Ella Fitzgerald
"Take criticism seriously, but not personally. If there is truth or merit in the criticism, try to learn from it. Otherwise, let it roll right off you." - Hillary Clinton
"You can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them." - Rhonda Rimes
"Sometimes in life we take a leap of faith. Remember, the leap is not about getting from one side to the other. It's simply about taking the leap...and trusting the air, the universal breath, will support your wings so that you may sour." - Kristi Bowman
"Recognizing that you are not where you want to be is a starting point to begin changing your life." - Deborah Day
"Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you have power over instead of craving control over what you don't." - Steve Marabou
"Be patient with yourself. You are growing stronger every day. The weight of the world will become lighter...and you will begin to shine brighter. Don't give up." - Robert Stew
"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." - Thomas Edison
"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you...never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn." - Harriet Beecher Stowe
"Every strike brings me closer to the next home run." - Babe Ruth
"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." - Thomas Jefferson
"Follow your honest convictions, and stay strong." - William Thackeray
"Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still." - Chinese Proverb
"You are the one that possesses the keys to your being. You carry the passport to your own happiness." - Diane von Furstenberg
"What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Though no one can go back and make a brand-new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand- new ending." - Carl Bard
"It is never too late to be who you might have been." - George Eliot
"When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful." - Malala Yousafzai
"Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experiences that reveals the human spirit." - EE Cummings
"There's only one growth strategy: work hard." - William Hague
"The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential...these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence." - Confucius
"We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it." - Rick Warren
"If you don't make the time to work on creating the life you want, you're eventually going to be forced to spend a lot of time dealing with a life you don't want." - Kevin NGO
"The tragedy in life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach." - Benjamin Mays
"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude." - Maya Angelou
"Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it's holy ground. There's no greater investment." - Stephen Covey
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." - Winston Churchill
"The power of imagination makes us infinite." - John Muir
"When someone tells me 'no,' it doesn't mean I can't do it, it simply means I can't do it with them." - Karen E. Quinones Miller
"Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else." - Les Brown
"Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago." - Warren Buffett
"With self-discipline most anything is possible.' - Theodore Roosevelt