"The biggest regrets of adults in their 70's and 80's are the actions they did not take - never learning to swing dance or not switching careers when they had a chance. When young, people are prone to avoid risks and potential failures in the belief that they will rue any bad outcomes. As a result, they miss out on opportunities that, as an older adult, they will regret not having pursued. It is helpful for younger adults to deploy the mental capacity to travel in time. Imagine yourself at an advanced age and think back on your life. Consider the experiences that the older you will likely regret not having had. Then, work toward having those experiences while you are still young enough to do so."
- Art Markman, October 2016 Issue of Psychology Today
"What [Johnny] Carson [once] said was that he couldn't tell the graduating class how to be happy, but he could tell them from personal experience how to guarantee misery. Carson's prescriptions for sure misery included: 1) Ingesting chemicals in an effort to alter mood or perception; 2) Envy; and 3) Resentment.
I can still recall Carson's absolute conviction as he told how he had tried these things on occasion after occasion and had become miserable every time. It is easy to understand Carson's first prescription for misery - ingesting chemicals. I add my voice. The four closest of my youth were highly intelligent, ethical, humorous types, favored in person and background. Two are long dead, with alcohol a contributing factor, and a third is a living alcoholic - if you call that living.
While susceptibility varies, addiction can happen to any of us, through a subtle process where the bonds of degradation are too light to be felt until they are too strong to be broken. And I have yet to meet anyone, in over six decades of life, whose life was worsened by over fear and over avoidance of such a deceptive pathway to destruction ."
- Charlie Munger, Poor Charlie's Almanack