Is it ten thousand hours or twenty thousand hours to mastery? The answer is that it doesn't matter. There is no end zone. To think of a number is to live in a conditional future. We're simply talking...
Hecato says, ‘I can teach you a love potion made without any drugs, herbs, or special spell—if you would be loved, love.’ —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 9.6
If it comes as a constant surprise each and every time something unexpected occurs, you're not only going to be miserable whenever you attempt something big, you're going to have a much harder time ac...
The more your users stick, the more it will spread
Take a step back, then go around the problem. Find some leverage. Approach from what is called the line of least expectation. What’s your first instinct when faced with a challenge? Is it to outspend...
Richard Branson likes to say, is that business opportunities are like buses; there’s always another coming around.
Our own path, whatever we aspire to, will in some ways be defined by the amount of nonsense we are willing to deal with. It doesn’t matter how talented you are, how great your connections are, how muc...
Here, we are setting out to do something. We have a goal, a calling, a new beginning. Every great journey begins here—yet far too many of us never reach our intended destination. Ego more often than n...
Epictetus is reminding you that serenity and stability are results of your choices and judgment, not your environment. If you seek to avoid all disruptions to tranquility—other people, external events...
At some time during the process, [of writing] I came up with a therapeutic device. After each draft I would tear up the pages and feed the paper to a worm compost I keep in my garage. A few months lat...
What does not kill me makes me stronger, Nietzsche said.
There are two ways to be wealthy—to get everything you want or to want everything you have.
The only real failure is abandoning your principles. Killing what you love because you can't bear to part from it is selfish and stupid. If your reputation can't absorb a few blows, it wasn't worth an...
That’s how it seems to go: we’re never happy with what we have, we want what others have too. We want to have more than everyone else. We start out knowing what is important to us, but once we’ve achi...
Or, like Rockefeller, choose not to.
Nothing can ever prevent us from trying. Ever.
It is impossible to learn that which one thinks one already knows, Epictetus says.
If you’re not humble, life will visit humbleness upon you.
Find canvases for other people to paint on. Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself. Greatness comes from humble beginnings; it comes from grunt work...
Don’t return to philosophy as a task-master, but as patients seek out relief in a treatment of sore eyes, or a dressing for a burn, or from an ointment. Regarding it this way, you’ll obey reason witho...