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Quote by Bret Easton Ellis

“And then I realized there was no other option except to approach this scene with an optimism that I might have lacked but knew I could fake.”

Quote by Bret Easton Ellis

Book:The Shards
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The Shards

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Author

Bret Easton Ellis
Bret Easton Ellis

American novelist known for his profound insights into modern urban life and sharp criticism. His works, including 'Less Than Zero' and 'The Rules of Attraction', are renowned for their unique narrative style and sharp social observations. more

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“Every time I fail the Prima exam... it feels like my life as an Undine is being negated. It's painful, stressing, and makes me sad. I get more and more scared. Before I know it, it feels like I've shriveled up. But that's not right. If I allow myself to shrivel and harden, I won't be able to changed who I am now. I won't be able to learn from and absorb the world around me. You can't change other people, but you can change yourself. If I'm too unexperienced and unskilled to pass... then I just need to gain more experience and skills. That's why I want to become flexible. If I'm flexible, I can take on any form and absorb anything. Then, I feel like I'd be able to do anything. I think I'd be able to become the full-fledged Undine I've always wanted to be!”

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Book:Aria: The Masterpiece, Volume 6
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“A Navy study revealed a number of things that people with grit do—often unknowingly—that keep them going when things get hard. One of them comes up in the psychological research again and again: “positive self-talk.” Yes, Navy SEALs need to be badass, but one of the keys to that is thinking like The Little Engine That Could. In your head, you say between three hundred and a thousand words every minute to yourself. Those words can be positive (I can do it) or negative (Oh god, I can’t take this anymore). It turns out that when these words are positive, they have a huge effect on your mental toughness, your ability to keep going. Subsequent studies of military personnel back this up. When the Navy started teaching BUD/S applicants to speak to themselves positively, combined with other mental tools, BUD/S passing rates increased nearly ten percent. Getting through BUD/S is a lot of physical hardship, but quitting is mental. What does this have to do with insurance salesmen, you ask? Think about how people usually respond when asked to think about insurance salesmen: “Ugh.” It’s not just SEALs who take a battering; insurance salesmen face constant rejection. While you may think that the key to being a good salesperson is people skills or being extroverted, research shows that salespeople can be hired based on optimism alone. Researchers found that “agents who scored in the top 10 percent [of optimism] sold 88 percent more than the most pessimistic tenth.” It makes sense that optimism keeps us going, but it’s hard to believe that it has such powerful effects.”

PositiveOptimismSelf Talk
Book:Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong
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“Ô, Wanderess, Wanderess When did you feel your most euphoric kiss? Was I the source of your greatest bliss?”

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Author:Roman Payne
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“The difference between love and will, although only formal, is fatal regarding the worldview or outlook of the philosopher in question. Everything must be joyous for the one coming from the principle of love, but for the one coming from the principle of will, as a blind force and strife, the world is less rosy and cheerful. This pessimism comes less from two inherently different models that would imply two different sets of rules (happiness, among other things) but more from the inability of the world to get rid of its will, which is to say, to commit suicide, to get rid of itself. In the case of love, this proposition is impossible because that is a joyous and lovely world. Still, in the case of blind will, the main characteristic of the world is existence at any cost, regardless of hardship, misery, and pain.”

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“Longevity can be a source of corrective optimism. I recall an occasion early in the George W. Bush presidency when my friend and former physician, Quentin Young, was confronted at a talk by a medical student who lamented that she couldn't imagine being able to win any progressive objectives because the right had been in power all her conscious life. Quentin, who was then about eighty years old, responded that a virtue of having lived as long as he had was that he knew that almost no one, no matter how far left or how optimistic, standing in 1950 would have predicted that the back of the Jim Crow system would be broken within fifteen years. He was correct, and that's a good lesson for us all to keep in mind in this most perilous time in this country and the world.”

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Author:Adolph L. Reed Jr.
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