DAVID SEDARIS

HIGHLLY LAUGH OUT LOUD RECOMMEND!

Dress Your Family In Corduroy And Denim

NAKED

ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY

The below I’ve read too, but didn’t think they were funny.

Barrel Fever

Owl

Christmas ones

Squirrel

ALI WONG, DEAR GIRLS

But traveling to Coney Island is the New York equivalent of hiking Machu Picchu..
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My father always praised “the gift of fear,” and that prenup scared the shit out of me.
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This was one of my first jokes: “There’s a saying that people in New York have a lot of ambition and a lot of talent. And people in LA have a lot of ambition and no talent. And people who live in San Francisco go to Burning Man.”
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The first place I went to perform was the Brainwash Cafe in Folsom Street.
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As much as I would love having you girls live near me, you will thrive if you move somewhere else. At some point you gotta go. Mama loves you but it’s so important to get out of your hometown and get the fuck away from your family. As the youngest of four kids, I was always being observed by my siblings, who would judge my every decision. They had a set idea of who I was and it affected me. It was limiting. Everything I said had no credence because I was at least ten years younger than every single person in my family, so what did I really know? When I got away from them, I finally felt like I could be the person I was meant to be...
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Female comic moms:
Natasha Leggero, Amy Schumer, Chelsea Peretti, Christina Pazsitzky, Sabrina Jalees
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Funny white comics:
Jimmy Kimmel, John Mulaney, Nick Kroll, Bill Hader, Sebastian Maniscalo, Joe Roman, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, James Corden, Neal Brennan, Jeff Ross, Moshe Kasher, John Cena, Ike Barinholtz, Judd Apatow, Seth Rogan, Chris D’elia, Dave Attell, Jeff Ross, Brian Regan, Ron White, Marc Marion, Jerry Seinfeld, Ricky Gervais, Conana O’Brien, JimGaffagan, Jeff Dunham, Patton Oswalt, Steve Martin, Bill Burr, Steven Wright, Jon Stewart, David Letterman, John Oliver, Ben Stiller, Bo Burnham, Mike Mysers, Will Ferrell... 
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Those street vendors were so ephemeral, like an occult gift shop that vanishes after selfing you a cursed monkey’s paw. 
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Ayahuasca is a psychedelic plant moisture that helps you heal and find answers to the questions that have been burning inside of you.
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The answers to making it, to me, are a lot more universal than anyone’s race or gender, and center on having a tolerance for delayed gratification, a passion for the craft, and a willingness to fail. 
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Asians like predictability. We like safety. We want to know that if we work hard, there will be a payoff.  ...  And in entertainment, you very well might not make it despite all of those years you invested. There is no linear path to success, and no linear path to maintaining it even if you do achieve it. 
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One Asian value that I’m grateful was passed down to me is knowing how to ave money.
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But it was a blessing. Being cheap came in handy when I moved to NYC, the most expensive city in America.  I cooked every single on e of my meals and brought Tupperware container of quinoa, vegetables, and canned sardines with me wherever I went.
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Challenge yourself to get out of the community. Don’t just drink boba, do your laundry at home, take pictures of food, go outlet shopping, and talk exclusively to other Asian Americans. Even if you end up doing something totally unrelated to entertainment, I want you to take this advice, because I want you to become interesting, confident, and cultured women. Expose yourself to how other people in America live, how they think, and you will discover the universal struggles that connect us all... If you hang with the same. People, you will only be able to make those people laugh. Go to Burning Man. Travel to different cities in America. Travel the world. See concerts. Go to plays. Eat Ethiopian food. Introduce yourself to everything there is. When in doubt, go out. Not just for material, but to experience new people, new social situations, and unfamiliar surroundings.
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i fantasized about having a mother who was also raised on Sesame Street, Happy Meals, and John Hughes  movies. Maybe she could ask me white mom questions like “How are you feeling?” Or say white mom things like “I love you to the moon and back.” We would share the same first language. She could help me pick out a dress that I actually liked, instead of the dress that was more discounted. We would understand each other and not fight as much. 
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Your grandfather once told me that when I find the right opportunity in life, all of my prior random experience will suddenly fit together and make sense. This is what happened when I met your mother.
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Later in life, I would come to realize how empowering it was to have a father who lived his passions and didn’t let the fact that he was the only Asian person in the room hold him back. Watching your grandpa Ken defy racial and career norms to build his own creative universe ranging from toys to television and art, your uncles and I directly experienced how full the world is of creative opportunity. There was no bamboo ceiling for us. We were free to carve our own parts as individuals, a drive and passion i late recognized in your mother when we first met.
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There are people who can root you, and then there are things you can do on your own to ground and balance when the winds of celebrity pick up. I learned young how to be with myself even when my father was focused on his career, away for business, and being pulled in a thousand different directions. I immersed myself in practices like meditation, journaling, fasting, entheogenic ceremonies... 
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I am comfortable being in your mothers jokes thanks to my mindfulness practice, which grounds and roots me. No matter what is said onstage, I know who I am and support her in her fullest expression. But it wasn’t always this easy. 
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She was speaking to people’s truths and making them laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. This was what our ayahuasca ceremonies were about: sourcing the most potent parts of ourselves and letting go of the rest.
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.. find greater personal clarity for yourselves and home in on who you are versus who you think you need to be.
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KUNDALINI AWAKENING

kun·da·li·ni

noun

  1. (in yoga) latent female energy believed to lie coiled at the base of the spine.

    • a system of meditation directed toward the release of kundalini energy.

      noun: kundalini yoga; plural noun: kundalini yogas

Kundalini is your life force energy. It’s believed that in those who are unawakened, their energy remains coiled at the base of their spine. For those who have an awakening event and become conscious, the energy spirals upward, activating each chakra, and making the being transition into an enlightened guru.

Many people believe that a Kundalini awakening is a process of coming into complete nirvana, and that’s true – to a degree. A Kundalini awakening is talked about a lot in spiritual circles because prior to experiencing bliss, the energy first cleanses and purifies, and the shifts that you experience can be unnerving at best, and downright painful at worst.

A kundalini awakening can be one of the most traumatic and confusing times of your life. What you cannot tell at the onset is that you’re actually undergoing a deep purification process, in which you will come out on the other end stronger and more level-headed than ever before.

Here’s how to know whether or not you’re in the process:

1. You begin a process of emotional reckoning. You find your mind circling through past experiences that you either miss and feel sad about no longer having, or are mourning for, and feel sad that you had to go through in the first place.

2. You are unpacking years of pent-up energy blocks that have prevented you from being present. This means you’ll spend a lot of time thinking through the past: what happened, and what you wish were different. This is a time to come to peace with it and to release.

3. You may feel physical symptoms, such as waking up at random hours of the night, sweating, crying, or even literally feeling an intense rush of energy going up your spine.

4. You feel a sudden need to make radical changes in your life. This can include everything from your diet to your job to the people you spend time with. More than anything, you realize what isn’t working.

5. You become conscious of how your mind has been the sole force holding you back from presence, and from happiness. You begin to realize that your ego has kept you trapped in trying to “prepare for the worst,” when in reality, it was a ploy to keep you from the current moment, wherein your energy has its most power.

6. Incredible synchronicities begin to appear in your life. Things just have a random way of working themselves out and leave you thinking: hm, that was perfect. 

7. Your empathetic abilities strengthen like never before. It’s as though you can think and feel exactly what another person is experiencing the moment they are experiencing it. This might be overwhelming at first, but it’s really a sign that your third eye is opening and you’re becoming acquainted with your true nature, which is connectedness.

8. You feel a strong urge to be outside, in nature, as often as possible.

9. You feel a strong urge to declutter your life in as many ways as possible: broken relationships, messes in your home, old habits that are holding you back… it all has to go.

10. You begin to seriously question many of the systems and structures that currently exist. You begin to look at things like religion and politics and tradition in a way you never have before, identifying the root need they serve in human beings.

11. You experience “random” influxes of emotion. In reality, you’re dealing with old feelings you never fully addressed.

12. You feel a profound need to be of service to others. You understand that as we are all essentially one, devoting your life to the aide of other people is the noblest and gratifying thing you can do.

13. You begin to feel angry for what you were and weren’t given, for all the pain you did and didn’t have to cope with. Eventually, that anger melts into acceptance, as you see each part of your experience as part of your journey, not an adversary to it.

14. You realize that life was never happening to you, it was simply a reflection of you. What you were putting out into the world was precisely what you were getting back.

15. You feel a mystical, intimate connection with the divine. You see yourself as a god and recognize the god in every other human being alive.

16. You realize that you cannot wait another moment to start living, because life is happening right now, and always has been. You begin to realize that you have denied yourself your joy by waiting for it to begin.

https://thoughtcatalog.com/brianna-wiest/2018/08/16-signs-youre-having-whats-known-as-a-kundalini-awakening/

SIGNET RING

Although signet rings aren’t as prominent in society today as they once were, they are still an accessory with immense cultural and historical significance. Traditionally, signet rings were worn on the pinky finger and used by gentlemen, particularly gentlemen involved with business or politics, as a seal to sign important documents. Engraved with the wearers family crest, the signet ring would be dipped into hot wax before being used to print a signature.

As signet rings were technically the signature of the wearer, they were often considered so powerful that they were destroyed after the man’s death. Most commonly these signatures were a coat of arms or a family crest, but they could also be simple symbols and other combinations of letters or distinct patterns. Above all else, the signet ring represents power, authenticity and the individuality of the owner.

https://www.alicemadethis.com/blogs/journal/which-finger-to-wear-your-signet-ring-on

SELF-ACTUALIZATION, MASLOV'S

Self-actualization is a term first coined by Kurt Goldstein that most often refers to the top level of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In his seminal paper about human motivationwhere he first introduced his hierarchy of needs, Maslow defined self-actualization by claiming that “[w]hat a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization” (Maslow, 1943).

Self-actualization has also been described as:

“the psychological process aimed at maximizing the use of a person’s abilities and resources. This process may vary from one person to another” (Couture et al., 2007). 

In other words, for our purposes, self-actualization can be thought of as the full realization of one’s creative, intellectual, or social potential.

Since self-actualization is based on leveraging one’s abilities to reach their potential, it is a very individual process and can greatly differ from person to person. As we will see, this recognition of individual motivations is a key part of Maslow’s work, and what he felt differentiated it from the contemporary motivational psychology of his early career.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is made up of “physiological [needs], safety [needs], love [needs], esteem [needs], and self-actualization” in a pyramid from bottom to top. Each level of needs must be taken care of before the next one can be addressed—so ensuring one’s physiological needs (like food and water) is a prerequisite to ensuring their safety needs (like shelter), ensuring one’s safety needs is a prerequisite to ensuring one’s love needs, and so on.

Because self-actualization is the highest level, it is only when one’s physiological, safety, love, and esteem needs are taken care of that one can hope to achieve self-actualization.

Examples of Self-Actualization

This raises the question of what self-actualization actually looks like. When first describing self-actualization, Maslow described the top of his hierarchy of needs by remarking that:

“[a] musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy” (Maslow, 1943).

…
The authors found that “lay perceptions of realizing one’s full potential are linked to the fundamental motive of achieving status and esteem.”

In other words, participants most associated realizing their potential (and the drive to do so) with reaching some level of internally-recognized success (esteem, which is notably on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs itself) and some level of externally-recognized success (status).

This conflicts with Maslow’s (1943) initial separation of status/esteem and self-actualization. The authors, however, point out that “a functional reading” of Maslow’s work, such as the one discussed by Kenrick et al. (2010), indicates that “many of the behaviors involved in pursuing one’s full potential are linked to status, both directly and indirectly” (Krems et al., 2017). This relation between status-seeking and self-actualization also fits in with the fact that the most obvious examples of self-actualization are of public figures who have achieved high levels of status.

…

Self-actualization is actually related to positive psychology in two distinct ways: as a component of well-being and as a way to measure the nurturing of genius.

…

So what relevance does self-actualization hold for the average person? At the end of the day, realizing one’s potential is a personal endeavor that depends on where one’s creative, intellectual, or social potential lies.

In other words, self-actualization is not about making the most money or becoming the most famous person in the world. Instead, self-actualization is about reaching one’s personal potential, whether that means becoming a painter, a politician, a philosopher, a teacher, or anything else.

Self-actualization is truly about achieving your dreams!

What does self-actualization mean to you? When do you feel like you are self-actualizing, and what does it feel like?

- excerpts from Joaquín Selva, Bc.S., Psychologist

Positive Psychology, Self-Actualization

ALBERT EINSTEIN

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us, universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

– Albert Einstein

SET SILLY DREAMS

Now, when I was a kid, a goal was really exciting, it was something that I celebrated, it was a fun thing! It was “A goal!” But somewhere along the line, maybe around Jr High School, or High School, it became “A goal.” Something that was a responsibility, something that I had to do, and it lost all that feeling. Maybe it had something to do with this- a lot of the teachers, they made me think I had to set goals in order to be successful. It was something that you needed to do. They even wrote it on the chalkboard. You can look at the steps here. Teachers made me think that achieving a goal was as easy as this: 1. Set goal. 2. Make plan. 3. Get to work. 4. Stick to it. 5. Reach goal. Following these steps, you’ll be able to be successful. Looks easy, right? But the reality is that achieving a goal is more like an obstacle course. There’s lots of pitfalls, lots of places where you can make mistakes. They don’t really teach this to you. So as a kid I was really frustrated. In fact, a lot of adults feel the same way. So I came up with something called the Silly Goals. Now anybody can do this, you can take goals that are really serious, and you just add a little bit of silliness into it. Makes it kind of fun, just don’t tell your boss about it. Now Silly Goals, let me give you an example:

… all the fantastic people I met along the way, the beautiful sights that I saw, the experiences that’ll last a lifetime, all because of a silly goal to drink a can of coffee at the top of Kilimanjaro. So what I want to leave you here is this: It’s not achieving the goal, but what you learn on the way to that goal that is most important. We put a lot of emphasis on winning the gold metal, on being at the top. But getting to that point, takes a lot of effort. And that really is what you’re going to remember the most. So if you have to set goals, make them silly. You’ll have a lot more fun.

Speech from: Set Silly Dreams: John Daub at TEDxTokyoTeachers

NEUROTIC

Neurosis Characteristics and Types
The different types of neurosis are defined by the different psychological types that characterize human beings. There are four psychological types, but they become eight because we have four introverted types and four extroverted types that use the same psychological functions in different ways. The four psychological functions that define the four basic psychological types are based on:

1- Thoughts

2- Feelings

3- Sensations

4- Intuition

Depending on which of these four psychological functions is the basic one in your psyche, your behavior will adopt a series of pre-determined attitudes in life. This means that what you choose to do or what you do without controlling yourself is already pre-programmed. You may believe that you are unique and your characteristics can be found only within you, but the truth is that besides your undoubted uniqueness (only because your particular combination of characteristics is unique even if the characteristics of your personality are found in all personalities) your behavior is determined by your psychological type. In other words, the details of your life may differ from the details of someone else’s life that belongs to the same psychological type as you, but in the end both of you will do exactly the same things.

Why? Because you follow exactly the same path to find solutions for your problems. This path is pre-established by the psychological function that is the most active in your psyche. So, when you become neurotic, your personality acquires different characteristics, that don’t belong to your psychological type. If you are a rational psychological type, you suddenly become a slave to your feelings when you meet a person that has the characteristics that most attract your psychological type. Your rationalism cannot help you.

However, it can bother you, and this is exactly what it does. If you are an introverted psychological type based on thoughts, your rationalism is going to impede your feelings to have the chance to appear on the surface of your conscience. A real war will begin inside you. Your wild feelings that never had the chance to appear in your behaviour, want to invade your human conscience and provoke an explosion. On the other hand, your cruel rationalism wants to kill your feelings and this is why it starts sending you various absurd ideas. It tells you for example, that the person you love is too poor, that you have better plans in life, that you must be proud of yourself and never let the other person understand that you are in love with them and other ideas like these, which can only discourage and mislead you.

If you follow the suggestions of your basic psychological function, you become neurotic because you don’t let your feelings live and give you what you need from them.

If you follow the impulsive desires imposed by your wild feelings, you become neurotic when you realize that you cannot control your behavior, since you start doing things that are totally opposite to what you usually do and you cannot stop doing them. Your thoughts lose their power. If you are an extroverted psychological type based on intuitions, you are going to spend all your energy pursuing new opportunities, instead of developing the ones you have already found. You may end up without money, simply because when you find the best opportunities, you never make them grow. If you are an introverted psychological type based on sensations, your world will be comprehensible only to you. You are always distant from the objective reality, creating your own world over the existing one, which you never examine for what it actually is.

What happens when you become neurotic? The psychological function that is opposite to the basic psychological function of your psyche invades your human conscience, even though it is wild, because it never had the chance to be examined by the human conscience and tamed by its consciousness. This is why the different types and characteristics of neurosis depend on the different psychological types and the characteristics of the psychological functions that don’t belong to the known conscience. If you want to stay far away from neurosis and worse mental illnesses, you must prevent craziness while you still can, because once the process of destruction of your human conscience by the wild side of your conscience is too advanced, it cannot be interrupted.

-Christina Sponia
Original source link unfound
image from Youtube Woody Allen The Neurotic

FAN TAGS: #psychology #sparkingsynapse
IDEAS: Neurosis

AIR SIGN

What are the general characteristics of the Air signs?:

Those with planets in air signs use their minds to make sense of their lives. With Air, there’s more space between the life lived and the observing mind. This can lead air signs to appear detached, aloof, remote, cool. Sometimes they’ll try to talk their way through feelings or analyze a situation instead of encountering it’s full emotional weight.

The gift of Air is flexibility, and their ability to experience life through many prisms. They’re often excellent communicators, storytellers, interpreters and journalists. They link people together socially, and often have a curiosity that keeps them out and about.

Air and Earth:

It can be a relief for the weighted down Earth to be lifted up by Air’s ideas and free-thinking. Air may offer a different spin on how to prioritize things, which can be liberating for duty-bound Earth. Earth helps the remote Air discover the mind-body connection. Earth can also advise Air so that some of their dreams can be made real.

Air and Fire:

This is a dynamic combo, with Air being able to create an outline of meaning through thought for the Fire to be inspired by. Air helps Fire take a more logical path toward success, some direction for their leaps of faith. Fire gives Air a sense of mission, purpose, and shines a light of focus through the jumble of collected data, thoughts, information.

Air and Water:

These two benefit from each other by bringing balance to feeling and thought. Water shows Air a path to the feelings, and can help them grow toward being more nurturing, emotional expressive, etc. Water helps Air make the heart connection. Air lifts Water out of the murky swamp into the realm of thought. Like talk-therapy, Air encourages Water to find distance, to become intellectually curious about their experiences.

Air and Air:

Here is a meeting of the minds, and when balanced by other elements, it can mean a lifetime of shared interests. The way of connecting is through the exchange of ideas. The deeper emotional truth of the situation at hand can be discussed coolly. This bond thrives when there is also emotional authenticity, action and physical touch.

The Air Element in Astrology:

Those with planets in Air signs lead with the head, and those wheels are always turning to analyze and interpret their world. These are the “idea people,” who breeze in and offer a fresh perspective on the situation at hand. As observers, they’re often seeing from a loftier position, and able to offer clarity that others don’t have.

The air signs are social creatures, since their currency is ideas, and they’ll find more stimulation when out mingling. Some are drawn to words and become professional communicators, while others — especially Aquarius — have a more conceptual way of thinking. Air signs are masters at navigating through the collective waters, and therefore are astute commentators of the cultural trends, attitudes, consciousness of the times.

When Air is out of balance, you can encounter a talking head, someone cut off from his own physical self. Air signs are more vulnerable to the excesses of our mind-body split, and could benefit from yoga and other somatic practices. A meditation practice helps Air signs calm the static.

In relationships, the distance of Air to their emotions can be refreshing. They’re great conversationalists because they’re the keepers of so much knowledge, gossip, strange factoids, etc. Talking with an inspired Air sign can be like skipping through a kind of virtual reality full of detail, specificity and local color.

Description from: http://astrology.about.com/od/foundations/p/AirElement.htm

*The only element Chuck Norris recognizes is the element of surprise.
Airplant image from: Amazon.com
Zodiac Sign images from: https://labyrinthos.co/

FANTAGS: #zodiac #elementsigns #astrology #airsign #
IDEAS: Elements, Zodiac, Astrology