My experience is what I agree to attend to.
Interpretation
We shape our experiences by choosing what we focus on.
This quote by William James highlights the idea that our perception of reality is shaped by our attention and focus. Our experiences are not solely determined by external events, but rather by our conscious choices about what to observe and engage with, suggesting that we hold the power to influence our own experiences.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a personal development workshop to emphasize the importance of focus.
Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.
The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
But only he who, himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows.
Scarcely any degree of judgment is sufficient to restrain the imagination from magnifying that on which it is long detained
Iβve never been certain whether the moral of the Icarus story should only be, as is generally accepted, βdonβt try to fly too high,β or whether it might also be thought of as βforget the wax and feathers, and do a better job on the wings.
The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he President of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole Mecanique Celeste and Hegel's Philosophy, and the epitome of all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, in his single head, is but a Pair of Spectacles behind which there is no Eye. Let those who have Eyes look through him, then he may be useful.
Master your breath, let the self be in bliss, contemplate on the sublime within you.
The passions seldom give good advice but to the interested and mercenary. Resentment generally suggests bad measures. Second thoughts and good nature will rarely, very rarely, approve the first hints of anger.
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