Ellen Langer Quotes
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What we have learned to look for in a situation determines mostly what we see.
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In the perspective of every person lies a lens through which we may better understand ourselves.
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Once you've seen there is another perspective, you can never not see that there's another point of view.
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People are at their most mindful when they are at play. If we find ways of enjoying our work blurring the lines between work and play the gains will be greater.
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There is always a step small enough from where we are to get us to where we want to be. If we take that small step, there's always another we can take, and eventually a goal thought to be too far to reach becomes achievable.
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Knowing what is and knowing what can be are not the same thing.
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If we respect students abilities to define their own experiences, to generate their own hypotheses, and to discover new ways of categorizing the world, we might not be so quick to evaluate the adequacy of their answers. We might, instead, begin listening to their questions. Out of the questions of students come some of the most creative ideas and discoveries.
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No worry before its time.
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Mindfulness is the cure for everything; the essence of being alive.
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The rules you were given were the rules that worked for the person who created them.
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Out of an intuitive experience of the world comes a continuous flow of novel distinctions. Purely rational understanding, on the other hand, serves to confirm old mindsets, rigid categories. Artists, who live in the same world as the rest of us, steer clear of these mindsets to make us see things anew.
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We should open ourselves to the impossible and embrace a psychology of possibility.
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Not only do we as individuals get locked into single-minded views, but we also reinforce these views for each other until the culture itself suffers the same mindlessness.
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Certainty is a cruel mindset. It hardens our minds against possibility.
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To be mindfully engaged is the most natural, creative state we can be in.
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Virtually all of life's ills boil down to mindlessness. If you can understand someone else's perspective, then there's no reason to be angry at them, envy them, steal from them.
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All it takes to become an Artist is to start doing Art. By living a life full of Art, we may achieve an Artful life.
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Life consists only of moments, nothing more than that. So if you make the moment matter, it all matters.
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Wherever you put the mind, the body will follow.
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Stress is a function not of events, but of our view of those events.
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Out of the questions of students come most of the creative ideas and discoveries.
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My ideas sometimes get the better of me. Before I clearly explain one, another comes to mind and seizes my attention.
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Certainty is a cruel mindset.
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When people are not in the moment, they're not there to know that they're not there.