Don’t panic and drown

As every scuba diver knows, panic is your worst enemy: when it hits, your mind starts to thrash and you are likely to do something really stupid and self-destructive. Daniel Dennett 1942 – I grew up in a small town in east central Mississippi. In my high school years, I hung out with a group of friends that enjoyed fishing, hunting and camping. One of the more affluent members of our group had access to a flat-bottomed boat with an outboard motor, and we got to use it occasionally. One of our favorite spots was a small river a few miles outside …
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Lessons in fear from the whaling ship Essex

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. Marcus Aurelius 121 – 180 AD On August 12, 1819, the whale ship Essex and its crew of 29 sailors set out from Nantucket, Massachusetts on what was intended to be a two and a half year journey to whaling grounds off the west coast of South America. Only two days after leaving port, the Essex encountered a storm that did considerable damage to the vessel. But …
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Want better answers? Improve your problem-solving skills

It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. Abraham Harold Maslow 1908 – 1970 From time to time, everyone has problems. No matter how successful you think someone is, they still encounter setbacks. Most people take a somewhat limited approach to solving problems, and consequently, they don’t always get the best results. I’d like to share a better approach with you. But to drive the lesson home, I want you to try a quick experiment. I want you to stop reading for thirty seconds, get a pen …
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