“Know thyself,” the English translation for the Greek “gnothi seauton,” is the famous inscription in the pronaos of the Delhi temple. An inscription that stands to remind generations of the importance of self-awareness and understanding of the human behavior, morals and thought.

We probably all know how important that is, but do we actually do something about it? There are some of us who are working on it, but the vast majority of people simply hold the thought in the back of their minds, without taking any action to put it into practice. Not good.

One other important piece of wisdom is the one saying that history has a way of repeating itself. Those who don’t learn from the mistakes of the past are destined to repeat them; which is what humankind constantly does. History is not a straight line going from a beginning to an end, it loops and swirls, eventually finding its way back to places its been before. The funny thing is that most of us tend to make the same mistake in our personal history as well. We repeat past mistakes and errors, we arrive at the “wrong” destination and then we wonder what went wrong along the way; but we rarely bother to make a “map” to remember us of our past mistakes and their results.

All of the above means that we (the humankind as a whole) don’t really know ourselves or the results of our habits and actions, which leads to lives lived in repeat mode. A life in repeat mode is a life in which one individual constantly repeats a certain period of one’s past, until the end comes and breaks the cycle.

Kind of sad, but that’s what most of us do. Not something to be proud of.

However, there are solutions to that problem. And in this article I’m going to share one such solution with you. It’s something that you’re not going to find anyplace else, as it is an “invention” of mine. I hope it will prove useful, or at least interesting.

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Yet another year has come to an end and here we are, ready to step on the other side, into the unknown. Don’t worry, I won’t mention New Year resolutions; I don’t have any, I never had. Instead, I’ll present you a recipe that teaches you how to prepare a delicious New year! Sounds good, doesn’t it? I know, I know!

It is a classical recipe, kind of difficult to find, created by Katharina Elisabeth Goethe (1731-1808), mother of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The ingredients are pretty common, you won’t encounter any trouble finding them.

Here is the recipe, bon apetit!
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As I promised in the two articles on the myths of pessimism (I and II), I’ll now tell you which one is better to be; an optimist or a pessimist.

And even though the above phrase might send out the impression that one of them is better than the other, the ’sweet spot’ is a mix of the two; in equal proportions.

Kathy Lette, Australian best-seller novelist, believes that the most successful people are neither extremely optimistic nor extremely pessimistic, but a healthy combination of the two. And I completely agree with her!

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In the first post on the myths of pessimism, I have busted three major myths about it. To summarize:

1. The #1 myth: negative thinking is not more realistic than positive thinking
2. The #2 myth: pessimism is less agreeable than optimism
3. The #3 myth: pessimism creates worry, trouble and health issues, so we’re better off without it

Time has now come for two more myths.

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This time we’ll bathe in one truly important insight of Galileo Galilei, the father of modern science.

Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 - 8 January 1642) was a Tuscan (Italian) physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher who played a major role in the scientific revolution.

The quoted idea is of great importance, as it sheds a much needed ray of light on the works of many writers, bloggers and educators. We’d all like to be considered as ‘influential’ and eye-opening individuals for the society, but truth be told, we’re very limited in that regard.

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