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ego is the enemy of what you want and of what you have: Of mastering a craft. Of real creative insight. Of working well with others. Of building loyalty and support. Of longevity. Of repeating and retaining your success. It repulses advantages and opportunities. It's a magnet for enemies and errors. It is Scylla and Charybdis.
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Ryan Holiday |
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The pretense of knowledge is our most dangerous vice, because it prevents us from getting any better.
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Ryan Holiday |
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It's okay to be discouraged. It's not okay to quit. To know you want to quit but to plant your feet and keep inching closer until you take the impenetrable fortress you've decided to lay siege to in your own life--that's persistence.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Work is finding yourself alone at the track when the weather kept everyone else indoors. Work is pushing through the pain and crappy first drafts and prototypes. It is ignoring whatever plaudits others are getting, and more importantly, ignoring whatever plaudits you may be getting. Because there is work to be done. Work doesn't want to be good. It is made so, despite the headwind.
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Ryan Holiday |
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People learn from their failures. Seldom do they learn anything from success." It's"
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Ryan Holiday |
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Andrew Carnegie famously put it. There's nothing shameful about sweeping. It's just another opportunity to excel--and to learn. But you, you're so busy thinking about the future, you don't take any pride in the tasks you're given right now. You just phone it all in, cash your paycheck, and dream of some higher station in life. Or you think, This is just a job, it isn't who I am, it doesn't matter. Foolishness. Everything we do matters--whet..
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Ryan Holiday |
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In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices. --EPICTETUS
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Ryan Holiday |
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We've all done it. Said: "I am so [overwhelmed, tired, stressed, busy, blocked, outmatched]." And then what do we do about it? Go out and party. Or treat ourselves. Or sleep in. Or wait. It feels better to ignore or pretend. But you know deep down that that isn't going to truly make it any better. You've got to act. And you've got to start now."
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Ryan Holiday |
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We will learn that though we think big, we must act and live small in order to accomplish what we seek. Because we will be action and education focused, and forgo validation and status, our ambition will not be grandiose but iterative--one foot in front of the other, learning and growing and putting in the time.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Find canvases for other people to paint on. Be an anteambulo. Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself.
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Ryan Holiday |
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You know what's better than building things up in your imagination? Building things up in real life.
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Ryan Holiday |
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I was trapped so terribly inside my own head that I was a prisoner to my own thoughts. The
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Ryan Holiday |
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What such a man needs is not courage but nerve control, cool headedness. This he can get only by practice. --THEODORE ROOSEVELT
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Ryan Holiday |
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To argue, to complain, or worse, to just give up, these are choices. Choices that more often than not, do nothing to get us across the finish line.
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Ryan Holiday |
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What matters to an active man is to do the right thing; whether the right thing comes to pass should not bother him. --GOETHE
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Ryan Holiday |
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Epictetus told his students, when they'd quote some great thinker, to picture themselves observing the person having sex. It's funny, you should try it the next time someone intimidates you or makes you feel insecure. See them in your mind, grunting, groaning, and awkward in their private life--just like the rest of us.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Silence. The ability to deliberately keep yourself out of the conversation and subsist without its validation. Silence is the respite of the confident and the strong.
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Ryan Holiday |
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God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
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inspirational
serenity-prayer
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Ryan Holiday |
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It's a temptation that exists for everyone--for talk and hype to replace action.
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Ryan Holiday |
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We have only minimal control over the rewards for our work and effort--other people's validation, recognition, rewards. So what are we going to do? Not be kind, not work hard, not produce, because there is a chance it wouldn't be reciprocated? C'mon. Think of all the activists who will find that they can only advance their cause so far. The leaders who are assassinated before their work is done. The inventors whose ideas languish "ahead of ..
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Ryan Holiday |
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Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant. --VIKTOR FRANKL
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Ryan Holiday |
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In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we neither seek nor want honesty or reality. Reality is complicated. Reality is boring. We are incapable or unwilling to handle its confusion.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Pride blunts the very instrument we need to own in order to succeed: our mind. Our ability to learn, to adapt, to be flexible, to build relationships, all of this is dulled by pride." Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy, pg 74"
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Ryan Holiday |
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Failure really can be an asset if what you're trying to do is improve, learn, or do something new.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Uncertainty and fear are relieved by authority. Training is authority.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Take inventory for a second. What do you dislike? Whose name fills you with revulsion and rage? Now ask: Have these strong feelings really helped you accomplish anything? Take an even wider inventory. Where has hatred and rage ever really gotten anyone? Especially because almost universally, the traits or behaviors that have pissed us off in other people--their dishonesty, their selfishness, their laziness--are hardly going to work out well..
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Ryan Holiday |
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If the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results, then passion is a form of mental retardation- deliberately blunting our most critical cognitive functions.
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Ryan Holiday |
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In its own way, the most harmful dragon we chase is the one that makes us think we can change things that are simply not ours to change. That someone decided not to fund your company, this isn't up to you. But the decision to refine and improve your pitch? That is. That someone stole your idea or got to it first? No. To pivot, improve it, or fight for what's yours? Yes.
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Ryan Holiday |
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In failure or adversity, it's so easy to hate. Hate defers blame. It makes someone else responsible. It's a distraction too; we don't do much else when we're busy getting revenge or investigating the wrongs that have supposedly been done to us.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming." "Ambition,"
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Ryan Holiday |
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When people ask where we are, what we're doing, how that "situation" is coming along, the answer should be clear: We're working on it. We're getting closer. When setbacks come, we respond by working twice as hard."
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Ryan Holiday |
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The question to ask, when you feel pride, then, is this: What am I missing right now that a more humble person might see? What am I avoiding, or running from, with my bluster, franticness, and embellishments? It is far better to ask and answer these questions now, with the stakes still low, than it will be later. It's worth saying: just
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Ryan Holiday |
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Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself. --PUBLIUS SYRUS
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Ryan Holiday |
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What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first steps to something better. --WENDELL PHILLIPS
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Ryan Holiday |
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What matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them, and whether we keep our composure.
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Ryan Holiday |
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It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. --MARCUS AURELIUS
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Ryan Holiday |
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The future bears down upon each one of us with all the hazards of the unknown." The only way out is through."
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Ryan Holiday |
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How we interpret the events in our lives, our perspective, is the framework for our forthcoming response--whether there will even be one or whether we'll just lie there and take it. Where the head goes, the body follows. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Aspiration leads to success (and adversity). Success creates its own adversity (and, hopefully, new ambitions). And adversity leads to aspiration and more success. It's an endless loop.
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Ryan Holiday |
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BE RUTHLESS TO THE THINGS THAT DON'T MATTER "How many have laid waste to your life when you weren't aware of what you were losing, how much was wasted in pointless grief, foolish joy, greedy desire, and social amusements--how little of your own was left to you. You will realize you are dying before your time!" --SENECA, ON THE BREVITY OF LIFE, 3.3b"
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Ryan Holiday |
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There's no one to perform for. There is just work to be done and lessons to be learned, in all that is around us.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Conning the conmen is one of life's most satisfying pleasures.
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Ryan Holiday |
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You'll have far better luck toughening yourself up than you ever will trying to take the teeth out of a world that is--at best--indifferent to your existence.
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Ryan Holiday |
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As a young basketball player, Bill Bradley would remind himself, "When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him he will win."
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Ryan Holiday |