wisepeel

[wisepeel]

"No one is really taught how to date. You just watch movies, or friends talk about it, or you learn about it in novels. Dr. Miles Munroe did a great job in this book. He starts by describing relationships or friendships just like how a baby is conceived in a woman. It takes nine months before their born. There's no skipping stages in life, the same applies to relationships. Your general relationships can be the acquaintance, someone who you talk about the weather and politics about. Then there's the casual friend, someone who you have a bit of something in common with like sports to talk about or to play with. The close friend, the friend you open up to and can share things with. The last type of friendship, the intimate friend. Most people don't ever get there. In today's culture, for relationships, it starts from the physical intimacy skipping the two important stages. Doing the stages in the reverse order usually doesn't work out." - Waiting and Dating by Miles Munroe

[wisepeel]

"No one is really taught how to date. You just watch movies, or friends talk about it, or you learn about it in novels. Dr. Miles Munroe did a great job in this book. He starts by describing relationships or friendships just like how a baby is conceived in a woman. It takes nine months before their born. There's no skipping stages in life, the same applies to relationships. Your general relationships can be the acquaintance, someone who you talk about the weather and politics about. Then there's the casual friend, someone who you have a bit of something in common with like sports to talk about or to play with. The close friend, the friend you open up to and can share things with. The last type of friendship, the intimate friend. Most people don't ever get there. In today's culture, for relationships, it starts from the physical intimacy skipping the two important stages. Doing the stages in the reverse order usually doesn't work out." - Waiting and Dating by Miles Munroe

[wisepeel]

"It talks about how our bodies are storing emotions. Sometimes, we don't know the reason why we have a certain pain or the reason why an illness exists. Many times, it's because of a trapped emotion hidden subconsciously. By doing particular exercises, you can tap into the subconscious mind and kind of release that emotion. We are beings of energy. Emotions are much like negative energy stuck in the body. There's an arm test for example. If you straighten your arm out and someone asks a question, your arm can change in elevation. A symptom of something maybe hidden inside of you. There are also other tests. I'm looking to see what I can discover about myself through these tests. There is a thought in western society that emotions are supposed to be negative. We relate to emotions around pain, around frustration, around depression. Really hard things to experience. I'm learning now that emotions have a wealth of information. In that context, it can be good to experience emotions since they signal something inside. In a way, they're a compass to our own map." - The Emotion Code by Bradley Nelson

[wisepeel]

"We're almost the same age. He's about a half-year to year older. So I always grew up knowing that he was really close to my age. It was a weird experience. Comparing yourself to the most famous person your age. I always felt really bad for him. I remember when his mom died. He was always kind of like the wild one, the one getting in trouble. I always thought that he just had this crazy childhood because of his mom dying and growing up in a difficult family. I bought the book the day it came out. Half the book, you actually do feel bad for him. The press made his life really miserable and he grew up in this really cold, unfeeling family that didn't know how to process emotions. So it's kind of the worst of both worlds. Then, you know, the other half of the book, poor little rich kid. He even talks about it. There was a point when he was smoking marijuana with his friends at Eton and they were laughing that they were wasting this like world-class education. I always thought that if you had those privileges, you could literally do anything with it. I don't think I'll compare myself to him going forward. We were so different. I really did take school seriously. Reading his memoir, to be honest, we don't have a lot in common. If I met him- I mean he's, of course, famous and has lots of friends- I don't think we would be friends. He tells stories about being at Courtney Cox's house having a drinking contest, and I'm like, doesn't he have a sense of propriety? If I was in his position, I think I'd be much more like William." - Spare by Prince Hary, Duke of Sussex

[wisepeel]

"I like to read biographies and autobiographies a lot, real lives of people. It's more reality, yet there's still a story. The people I'd read about always lead noble lives, not necessarily leaders of business or organizations. I love good stories about people who really lived and what their childhood was, how they got formed the way they were. But my favorite genre is fantasy fiction. All the King Arthur stories. All the things about Camelot. I've been going to the library since I was really little and it was always kind of magical. I like the things that are primarily in the real world but still have a magic element. I think we're going there in our own world. We all have gifts and abilities that are beyond what we're showing. At this point, it can be called magic. But I think we should learn to focus on these things that are beyond us that you can pull yourself into. My dad's generation used it to be successful in business. To make a lot of money. Me and especially people younger than me, have a different kind of thrust. Just financial gain probably isn't your main priority. There are deeper things that you want. I mean you want to be good at what you do. For me, there's still a lot of books to read." - Eleanor and Franklin by Joseph P. Lash

[wisepeel]

"I don't play, I just study the game. It's a way of accelerating the mental alertness, as opposed to, let's say drinking a glass of wine which does the reverse. Sort of like reading a science book, it's a way to understand mental muscles. Historically, it was used as a way to practice military operations, but in chess, there's a such thing as a draw. That's an exceptional part of the game. You don't have that in tennis. In golf, you play against the physical course, but in chess, drawing exists. When Magnus Carlsen was defending his championship in 2018 against Caruana, there was a draw for all 12 games. They broke the draw by playing rapid chess, not the classical game.

But that's one of the nice things about chess. Competitions can accelerate a kind of adrenaline for conquering and winning. And life isn't about winning. Definitely not about winning. And that's important to understand." - Secrets of Pawn Endings by Frank Lamprecht and Karsten Müller

[wisepeel]

"How to pick successful stocks, how to beat the stock market. The question, is it possible to predict the price of stocks? In the short term, I'd say no, but, in the long term, it has its perks and you can make money in the stock market. Invest in things that will be around for the long run. Don't invest in trends. Nike might be around forever, everyone needs running shoes right? Everyone's gonig to need housing, food, clothing... So if you could put your money into you know Target, I'd bet my life Target is going to be around 30 years from now. The stock market isn't a gamble if you're picking stocks that you believe in. I think everything is gambling in one way or another. The people that are afraid to put their money out there, try new things, learn new things, that's probably the biggest risk you're going to take. The stock market can definitely be a gamble and risk also. If you educate yourself, you can almost beat the odds by just knowing more.

Short-term fluctuations can be noise. If you wanted a shirt for the whole year and you found it for 50% off, would you not buy it? Same with stocks. If you have faith in the company, the trajectory of the company, eventually the stock is going to go back up. Trading stocks taught me to really manage my risk for sure. You have to take some type of risk right? If you don't take any type of risk, you're going to live a pretty mundane life." - Beating the Street by Peter Lynch

[wisepeel]

"It's at the turn of the century from 1905 to about 1915. It's sort of her own story but also about the Owens River Valley and the eventual stealing of the water of the Owens River to hydrate a giant Metropolitan city named Los Angeles. LA had already outgrown the LA river quite quickly and started looking for other sources. I just started reading this in the past few years especially with the droughts we've been facing. I learned how William Mullholand built an aqueduct from LA all the way up to the Owens River Valley, over 230 miles. Took all their water. When the city outgrew that, LA started building to the Colorado River and tapping into that. That's the only way this place exists. The water they capture from outside sources. It's a fools mission to decide to build in a place that is missing one of the three ingredients for living, especially water. Most city centers are next to a sustaining river except for this place." - The Ford by Mary Austin

[wisepeel]

"She's an incredible writer and illustrator. All the pictures are of women holding things, physical things. But her narrative is that women hold half the living world. She writes things down that you may think about all the time but never share. "Okay, I'm not crazy. Other people think about the same things." She doesn't try to make things prettier than they are, but her colors are bright. There's a drawing of her family who like to hold things before they were sent to Auschwitz during the Holocaust. My grandparents and many of their siblings didn't make it either. I know it's a utopian idea, but why do we have borders? We are all humans on this planet. It's incredible we are here to live this life. But year after year, all these wars. All the killing that goes on. This is my territory. This is your territory. I get that it's from tribal times, you know, you have to protect your family. You have to protect the food in this piece of land. I grew up in Argentina but spent 10 years in Israel. While there, I was in the army as it's mandatory for women also. Israel is such a small territory. It's 18 times smaller than California. And yet, there's non-stop fighting. I came here to California after. Came to another war between Democrats and Republicans. It's so silly, the whole thing. Live and let live, we say right? Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Maybe we can't do much, but you can keep the peace 5 feet around you. If everybody does that, there are no problems. Those are the types of ideas that should scale. Just keep the peace 5 feet around you." - Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman

[wisepeel]

"'Post Office' is the first one I read and I loved that one. 'Women' I think is good also. Much of his poems have an autobiographical element. He was a notorious alcoholic living on the fringes of society for the bulk of his life pretty much till he died. There's a poem I just read about him drinking a bottle of wine and listening to Bach. And 'Post Office' was written because he worked at one for a number of years.

When I write poetry, it has to be based in some sort of reality. A lot of it has to do with me or people I know. I'm not the best at inventing characters. I have to have a reality basis for whatever comes out that day. Buying these books help." - Storm for the Living and the Dead by Charles Bukowski

[wisepeel]

"I remember when anxiety didn't play a role in my life. When I was like a kid. Maybe when I was a teenager. But now that I'm in my 20s and am paying bills, I'm feeling it a lot more and I know that I'm going to still have these feelings when I get old, so I'm trying to practice on how to maneuver it now. There's definitely some stress that can be helpful in getting you to do certain things, but for me, I think I face a lot of stress I'm better off letting go. There was a time where I was so stressed I sought out therapy. They asked me questions like what's been happening, how I've been doing. But, they also balanced that with advice on what might help me. They told me to write it down, to observe what I could do with the problem, to see what triggers it. If someone you're with is going through strong anxiety or a panic attack, it might help to just talk to them. Tell them they'll be okay. They probably think they won't be so it's good to be the counterbalance to that belief." - The Anxiety Workbook by Anna Barnes

[wisepeel]

"I'm a Ronald Reagan girl because I lived it. I wasn't here at the time, but I followed American politics. He was an actor. Became a governor. And when he became president, a lot of people didn't like him, but then of course ended up loving him. Typical. I think like a European, but I have three passports. I am here in Los Angeles mainly for the sunshine to be honest with you. I'm from Istanbul, which has the same latitude on a world map as southern California. See I'm teaching you. From Istanbul, I moved to Berlin when I was still young. The Germans at the time were split between East and West. I came from the West, modern, upbeat. The East was communist. When the wall came down, I was in the US only for a few months. The day I heard the wall came down, I called back to my friends in Germany and told them "I have freed you"." - Killing the Legends by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard

[wisepeel]

"The story starts out with two kids who grew up in different parts of town. They were friends on the same baseball team. One grew up to be an attorney. The other grew up to be a mobster. I grew up in a small town in the eastern United States. The friends I went to high school with ended up okay. Noone turned out to be a mobster, to my knowledge. I have one brother remaining. He's 7 years my senior. I idolized him. We had some of the same teachers in high school. For a while, I was known as 'someone's brother'. But, it was advantageous. Finding some of his old homework, his old biology diagrams that he traced seven years prior. Saved me a lot of time." - The Boys from Biloxi by John Grisham

[wisepeel]

"My father was a Renaissance man. He was someone who loved knowledge. We didn't have much, but we had books. You read enough books, you start having thoughts that you can write something yourself. I had been writing before I came to America as a political exile. America is a beautiful country. It's not perfect. It has its own problems. But compared to Cameroon, it's night and day. Here, I was finally able to make a living as an artist and an author.

It takes place 4000 years ago in an ancient African kingdom at a time when the world was full of superstition. Back then, the chief high priest of a kingdom was a very powerful person. He had a direct connection to God. When he came back from the top of the mountain, he would tell the King this is what God has said. This becomes law. This is not uncommon in other cultures. You had great power as a shaman or priest. Not too long ago, the Pope had the power to decide who becomes King and the power to take that away. This high priest also has two troubling traits. The first, he has an extreme fear of death stemming from witnessing his father die in traumatic circumstances. And secondly, he has an intense love of power. When you combine them together, and you give him that much power, you realize that the decisions he makes can affect policy but also the lives of a vast number of people not just in his kingdom but in those surrounding it. He one day decides he does not want to die and embarks on a journey to find immortality, and the rest of the book documents that journey.

Human beings evolve over time. There are all these different things we have within our DNA to help us survive. And so every human has the ability to take human life. If you put them under specific circumstances, with specific pressures. Even a dove will become a lion." - The Vision of the Blind King by Ako A. Eyong

[wisepeel]

(2/2) "He's one of my very best friends. There's always been that very innocent flirtation. Whether it's just a comment here I will make if someone says something. Or maybe just a look if we're out and about. It was kind of like a scene out of a movie. We were walking out of a showing one day and we always hug goodbye, right? On this one particular night, I didn't get out of my car, I had driven him to his. And he goes "Well you're not going to give me a hug?". Oh okay, so we got out, and we hugged. And then he was all like "I just gotta" then preceded to grab my face and kiss me. I was so stunned because I didn't see it coming. Every time we talked about feelings for each other or anything, it was playful. We never had a serious conversation about it so I never thought it to be more than that. We pulled away and I was wearing my glasses and my glasses were fogged. And so, the first words that came out of my mouth were "my glasses are fogged". I didn't feel weird or anything, I was just caught off guard. That just happened. This is real life.

Later that night, we ended up talking about it and just basically came to the conclusion that we're scared dare I say to just try and see. When you cross that line from friends to a romantic relationship, a lot of things change, the physical intimacy for example. We don't have any of that right now. We haven't ever tried to see if that connection is there. It would be new territory we're stepping into. He and I agreed that our friendship and our bond is so unique and connected, we would not want to lose that in itself because of a romantic relationship. My grandparents and my parents are my favorite romances. My grandparents have been together for 64 years and my parents have been together for 33. All I've known is the unconditional, unwavering, one-person love kind of thing. That's what I want, that's what I love. It's also what I'm used to. I love the family aspect, I love the closeness. Not to say you can't have that level of family or closeness in other types of relationships, it's just what I know from my experience. I love Beyonce's relationship also. They met when she was 18 and have basically been together ever since. It's that solid, best friend, I want to do life with you type of love right? They say your person is a best friend you can't keep your hands off of."

[wisepeel]

(1/2) "The first book I read was 'November 9'. I'm a hopeless romantic and it was a hopeless romantic everything. Drama, love, conflict. All the good stuff, right? Her characters aren't your everyday characters. They each have their specific qualities about them in each one of her books.

Years ago, I would have said give me the fairytale. I'm walking, minding my own business, and I'm so into myself that I trip and someone catches me, this beautiful stranger. But now, I'm definitely more of a realist. I understand that life happens in mysterious ways. They say that life is about the moment right? But to add on, I feel like part of that is, it's about the people who we share the moments with. And regardless of whether it's through online dating, or if it's in-person, you can end up meeting someone to have that connection with.

I'm definitely more for the traditional in-person kind of meeting, however that may be. I don't have to be sitting at a bar and a stranger approaches me. I would like a fairytale ending or start or whatever, but I also think that each love story is special, so it's kind of its own fairytale in itself, depending on who you're talking to and to the people in that relationship.

Sometimes crossing that line from friendship to romance. With your best friend or, you know, that individual, it's like, oh, this can go one of two ways, right? Because if it works, then it blossoms into something beautiful with your person. If not, you're losing your lover and your friend. I've experienced that recently with one of my close friends."

[wisepeel]

Think on These Things by Jiddu Krishnamurti