Our ambition should not be to win, then, but to play with our full effort.
Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so, as Shakespeare put it.
Not me, you think.
Many of the things that upset us, the Stoics believed, are a product of the imagination, not reality. Like dreams, they are vivid and realistic at the time but preposterous once we come out of it. In...
Man is pushed by drives, but he is pulled by values — Viktor Frankl
Just because the conditions aren’t exactly to your liking, or you don’t feel ready yet, doesn’t mean you get a pass. If you want momentum, you’ll have to create it yourself, right now, by getting up a...
It is not enough to have great qualities; we should also have the management of them. —LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
It is not enough to have great qualities; we should also have the management of them. —LA ROCHEFOUCAULD I
Imagine if for every person you met, you thought of some way to help them, something you could do for them? And you looked at it in a way that entirely benefited them and not you. The cumulative effec...
If you need help, comrade, just ask.
Doing great work is a struggle. It's draining, it's demoralizing, it's frightening. We talk to fill the void and the uncertainty. The greatest work and art comes from wrestling with the void, facing i...
We all thought that money would be the answer, that success was the highest prize, that the undying love of a beautiful person would finally make us feel warm inside.
Him. You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. [A] crisis provides the opportunity for u...
Who knows—maybe a downturn is exactly what’s coming next. Worse, maybe you caused it. Just because you did something once, doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do it successfully forever. Reversals and regr...
We have the power to hold no opinion about a thing and to not let it upset our state of mind—for things have no natural power to shape our judgments. —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 6.52
The novelist Anne Lamott describes that ego story well. If you are not careful, she warns young writers, station KFKD (K-Fucked) will play in your head twenty-four hours a day, nonstop, in stereo. Out
The imperative is clear: stop sitting on your hands and start getting them dirty.
The good things in life cost what they cost. The unnecessary things are not worth it at any price. The key is being aware of the difference.
Strength is the ability to maintain a hold of oneself. It’s being the person who never gets mad, who cannot be rattled, because they are in control of their passions—rather than controlled by their pa...
Remember: even what we get for free has a cost, if only in what we pay to store it—in our garages and in our minds.