rules for living

Yoko Ono on Arguing or Fighting

After a recent, heart-rending, reverberating argument with a friend (everybody was RIGHT, everybody was WRONG), we wondered if the approaches Yoko Ono outlined in Acorn would have been better ways to go.

Message from Cosmos: ‘Expect Miracles Every Day’

Yesterday, a sign written by a stranger stopped me in my tracks. Its message and a question he asked me has become a daily practice.

Finding Your Personal Medicine (Yayoi Kusama)

When we stumbled on an image of the polka-dot cloth-wrapped trees in Yayoi Kusama’s extraordinary Ascension of the Polka Dots on the Trees, we felt instant joy and astonishment and were reminded once again of Kusama’s use of art as her own medicine. It got us thinking about vocations, passions, practices, arts that actually help us to live in the world.

Living is a Martial Art (Bruce Lee)

Legendary martial artist Bruce Lee always carried a small notebook in which he wrote down quotes, affirmations, appearances, poetry, philosophical ideas and his personal practices for training his mind and spirit NOT just his physical skill. Take a look.

Herbie Hancock: Miles Davis’ Essential Lesson on Mistakes

(Video link here.) One short minute of perfection: Herbie Hancock recounts the BIG life lesson he got by example from Miles Davis, when Hancock played what he thought was a seriously WRONG note during a gorgeous riff.

Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed: 3 Rules to Live By

In 2015, when Lou Reed was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of fame, his wife Laurie Anderson gave a moving and very eloquent acceptance speech. Toward the end, she shared the couple’s really handy…rules to live by…With those three things, you don’t need anything else. Here they are:

Pema Chodron + A Site That Envisions Impermanance

+We spend a good amount of time looking for ways to be more accepting of change that seems to be moving faster and faster, the messy processes of life and our lack of control over them: what Buddhist’s call Impermanence. Pema Chodrun’s new book and this clever site help…

Manny Howard’s Rule for Living

Manny Howard is the author the sublime My Empire of Dirt and articles about his Hemingway-esque adventures. On his instagram, we found an essential approach to living.

The Cosmic in a Coffee Cup

Our friend Josh Eisen emailed this image with this message: Was sipping my cappuccino just now, swirled my cup to gather the foam from the sides, looked down and there it was. Yin Yang in a coffee cup.

David Foster Wallace: ‘the only thing that’s capital-T True’

This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life is a teeny book that we return to, and give, frequently. It’s the commencement speech David Foster Wallace gave at Kenyon College in 2005. Reading it is humbling and an instant shift from default setting to compassionate mindset. Here are 229…

Tom Ashcraft: Make the Heart Light Up

(Video link here.) For years, Thomas Ashcraft has been documenting atmospheric phenomena —meteors, space dusts, the sun, fleeting emanations of cosmic light called sprites. Although he’s gained a lot of recognition for the remarkable sightings he’s recorded in his All Sky Observatory in New Mexico, this is the first video that explores the inside of Tom’s thinking and method, of…

Wonders and Possibilities Hiding in Plain Sight

In Fly By Night, artist Duke Riley trained 2,000 pigeons to fly above the Brooklyn Navy Yard at dusk with tiny lights attached to their legs. The performance invites us to really SEE something we are so accustomed to that we’ve become blind to it:

A Practice for Dire Straits

In January, after Improvised Life had been down for several days, I sent out a message to Friends with Benefits members. The message said, in essence: “The site is down, I hope it will be back and that years of writing and images have not been damaged; please send whatever personal magic you employ my way.” Then it seemed, my only option was to wait and practice Improvised Life’s principles…

A Strategy for Tumultuous Times (Bruce Lee)

I was pondering how to remain sane in the tumult and violence that seems to be our world these days, where lunatics of every stripe are taking center stage, when I remembered this quote from Bruce Lee, the great kung fu master:

Weakness of Strength + the Stength of Weakness

(Video link here.) This short animation describes the incredibly useful “Weakness of Strength Theory”: the flip side of a person’s strengths in one context—the qualities you love or admire them for — are often irritating weaknesses in another. “Every virtue has an associated weakness”; one can’t exist without the other. And no one is ALL strengths and virtues; we are…

What if Age, Mood, or Worldview are Nothing but a Mind-Set?

What if Age is Nothing But a Mind-Set in The Sunday Times Magazine describes the astonishing results of Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer‘s studies into the way routines and mental habits determine our behavior. We are especially taken with Langer’s unique practice of mindfulness, achievable without meditation:

Use Envy (+ Other Dark Emotions) To Your Advantage

(Video link here.) This compelling 2-minute video for is based on The School of Life‘s Alain de Botton’s writings about the uses of envy, and the information that often-difficult emotion holds. It offers a kind, rather gentle approach to an emotion we often hold against ourselves as being bad.

Reasons for a Happy Day

We have quite a few friends of various ages who have been having a rough time lately. Whether 23 years old or 73, it seems that no one is exempt from the stresses of a society that values individuals for their “profession”, and an economy in which it can be very difficult to find work — and expression —…

Pruning the Old to Allow the New

When we wrote friend and contributor Susan Dworski of many decisions we had were making to change how we worked — limiting some aspects and dreams to focus on others — she likened it to pruning a tree: the essential process of culling and removing branches of a shrub or tree in order to encourage growth. Her words and…

Falling (and Failing) as Essential Practice and Play

The best performers and athletes in the world know something the rest of us don’t: Failure is not the enemy. Failure is fabulous. Failure —non-fulfillment, defeat, collapse — is not only inevitable, but necessary to get what you want. To try to avoid failure is to eschew progress; it’s trying to stand still in a…

Posts navigation