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Quote by Madeline Levine

“Three psychosocial achievements - a sense of self, the belief that we can have an impact on our circumstances, and the ability to regulate our emotions - allow us to handle challenges, setbacks, and disappointments. These attributes are the scaffolding upon which intimacy, meaning, and mental health are built. Ultimately, autonomy - being capable of both healthy separation and healthy connection - signals the successful completion of adolescent tasks. In almost all cultures, adolescence begins with a bold psychological move away from parents and ends with a mature return to the family relationship and an expanded repertoire of friendships and intimate relationships.”

Quote by Madeline Levine

Book:Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World
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Ready or Not: Preparing Our Kids to Thrive in an Uncertain and Rapidly Changing World

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Madeline Levine

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“To achieve authentic, sustained happiness, above all else you need to be in charge of your life, to be in control of who you want to be, and be able to make the appropriate changes if you are not. This cannot merely be a perception, a slogan like the American Dream (the United States came way down on the LSE's social mobility scale, incidentally). In Scandinavia it is a reality. These are the real lands of opportunity. There is far greater social mobility in the Nordic countries than in the United States or Britain and, for all the collectivism and state interference in the lives of the people who live here, there is far greater freedom to be the person you want to be, and do the things you want to do, up here in the north. In a recent poll by Gallup, only 5 percent of Danes said they could not change their lives if they wanted to. In contrast, I can think of many American states in which it would probably be quite an uncomfortable experience to declare yourself an atheist, for example or gay, or to be married yet choose not to have children, or to be unmarried and have children, or to have an abortion, or to raise your children as Muslims. Less significantly, but still limiting, I don't imagine it would be easy being vegetarian in Texas, for instance, or a wine buff in Salt Lake City, come to that. And don't even think of coming out as a socialist anywhere! In Scandinavia you can be all of these things and no one will bat an eye (as long as you wait and cross on green). Crucial to this social mobility are the schools. The autonomy enabled by a high-quality, free education system is just as important as the region's economic equality and extensive welfare safety nets, if not more so. In Scandinavia the standard of education is not only the best in the world, but the opportunities it presents are available to all, free of charge. This is the bedrock of Nordic exceptionalism.”

FreedomEducationLibertyEqualityAmerican DreamAutonomySocial DemocracyScandinaviaSocial Mobility
Book:The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia
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“If you let people shit all over your doorstep, you’re the one who looks like shit, not them. Go and shit on their doorstep. Or are you too liberal, prissy and up yourself for that? There’s nothing worse than dilettantes, posers and Ignavi. If you’ve got no fire in your belly, fuck off! Go and let someone shit on you. We’re not interested in coprophiliacs.”

ActionToleranceIntoleranceAutonomyRetaliationShitRadicalism
Book:The Mathmos
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“I have come to believe that the very modes of life and thinking that strike most people in the West as antiquated or 'limiting' can liberate us, while the Western dream of autonomy and choice without limits is, in fact, a prison; that the quest to define ourselves on our own is a kind of El Dorado, driving to madness the many who seek after it; that for our best, highest selves to soar, other parts of us must be tied down, enclosed, limited, bound.”

CultureIdentityAutonomyWesternization
Book:The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos
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“Listening to my tutor tell me the story (of Khalid ibn al-Walid at the Battle of Mu'tah), I was overwhelmed with such pride in my history that I decided in that moment that I wanted to wear a headscarf, as a public marker that I belonged to this people. I wanted it to be so that before people even knew my name, the first thing that they would know about me is that I am a Muslim. I told myself that upon my return to the States, I would wear the headscarf with pride as my outward rebellion against the Islamophobia that had seized me and suffocated me for most of my life. With that decision, I inherited the entire history to which the hijab had been tied, and carried it on my head like an issue for public debate.”

IslamAutonomyMuslimFemale EmpowermentHijabHeadscarf
Book:Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age Story
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“... Nix et al. (1999) showed in experimental studies that whereas task success can produce happiness, only success at autonomously motivated tasks maintained or enhanced vitality. Finally, in new research, Bernstein and Ryan (2001) argued that subjective vitality can be affected by contact with nature.”

MotivationNatureAutonomyVitality
Book:Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification
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“Putting flow-prone kids into high-flow environments means a lot of flow. Arming them with advanced flow-hacking techniques means even more. All this flow makes the activity deeply rewarding, both fulfilling a child’s innate need for autonomy, mastery, and purpose and further increasing their sense of intrinsic motivation. When Tom Schaar says, “I love being with my friends at the skate park — that’s the greatest feeling,” what he’s saying is no one has to force him to practice, the autotelic nature of the activity — the fact that it drives him into flow — is the source code of his motivation.”

LovePurposeFlowMasteryAutonomyRewardFulfillIntrinsicMotiviation
Book:Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work
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