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Life is really no different. Obstacles make us emotional, but the only way we'll survive or overcome them is by keeping those emotions in check--if we can keep steady no matter what happens, no matter how much external events may fluctuate. The Greeks had a word for this: apatheia. It's the kind of calm equanimity that comes with the absence of irrational or extreme emotions. Not the loss of feeling altogether, just the loss of the harmful,..
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Ryan Holiday |
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This is the skill that must be cultivated--freedom from disturbance and perturbation--so you can focus your energy exclusively on solving problems, rather than reacting to them.
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Ryan Holiday |
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The only real failure is abandoning your principles.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Blessings and burdens are not mutually exclusive. It's a lot more complicated. Socrates had a mean, nagging wife; he always said that being married to her was good practice for philosophy.
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Ryan Holiday |
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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 without putting it on display and rest easy in its care." --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS,"
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Ryan Holiday |
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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, stress--you will never be successful. Your problems will follow you wherever you run and hide. But if you seek to avoid the harmful and disruptive judgments that cause those problems, then you will be stable and steady wherever you happen to..
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Ryan Holiday |
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We must give up many things to which we are addicted, considering them to be good. Otherwise, courage will vanish, which should continually test itself. Greatness of soul will be lost, which can't stand out unless it disdains as petty what the mob regards as most desirable. --SENECA, MORAL LETTERS,
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Ryan Holiday |
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It's a disgrace in this life when the soul surrenders first while the body refuses to." --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 6.29"
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Ryan Holiday |
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One of the most powerful things you can do as a human being in our hyperconnected, 24/7 media world is say: "I don't know." Or, more provocatively: "I don't care." Most of society seems to have taken it as a commandment that one must know about every single current event, watch every episode of every critically acclaimed television series, follow the news religiously, and present themselves to others as an informed and worldly individual. B..
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Ryan Holiday |
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Understand at last that you have something in you more powerful and divine than what causes the bodily passions and pulls you like a mere puppet. What thoughts now occupy my mind? Is it not fear, suspicion, desire, or something like that?" --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS,"
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Ryan Holiday |
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The philosophy asserts that virtue (meaning, chiefly, the four cardinal virtues of self-control, courage, justice, and wisdom) is happiness, and it is our perceptions of things--rather than the things themselves--that cause most of our trouble.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Best of all, an honest understanding of what is within our control provides real clarity about the world: all we have is our own mind. Remember that today when you try to extend your reach outward--that it's much better and more appropriately directed inward.
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Ryan Holiday |
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You are not your body and hair-style, but your capacity for choosing well. If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be." --EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES"
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Ryan Holiday |
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Philosophy is simply asking us to pay careful attention and to strive to be more than a pawn. As Viktor Frankl puts it in The Will to Meaning, "Man is pushed by drives but pulled by values."
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Ryan Holiday |
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Find clarity in the simplicity of doing your job today.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Today, let's focus just on what's in front of us.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Each day presents the chance to overthink things.
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Ryan Holiday |
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is the sense of our own path and how to stay on it without getting distracted by all the others that intersect it. In other words, it's not about beating the other guy. It's not about having more than the others. It's about being what you are, and being as good as possible at it, without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from it.
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Ryan Holiday |
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accomplishing the most that you're capable of in what you choose.
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Ryan Holiday |
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We underestimate our capabilities just as much and just as dangerously as we overestimate other abilities.
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Ryan Holiday |
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There is clarity (and joy) in seeing what others can't see, in finding grace and harmony in places others overlook.
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Ryan Holiday |
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the world can control our bodies--we can be thrown in jail or be tossed about by the weather. But the mind? That's ours. We must protect it. Maintain control over your mind and perceptions, they'd say. It's your most prized possession.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Fix your attention on your intelligence. Let it do its thing.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Pass through this brief patch of time in harmony with nature, and come to your final resting place gracefully, just as a ripened olive might drop, praising the earth that nourished it and grateful to the tree that gave it growth.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Of all the things that are, some are good, others bad, and yet others indifferent. The good are virtues and all that share in them; the bad are the vices and all that indulge them; the indifferent lie in between virtue and vice and include wealth, health, life, death, pleasure, and pain." --EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.19.12b-13"
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Ryan Holiday |
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Keep a list before your mind of those who burned with anger and resentment about something, of even the most renowned for success, misfortune, evil deeds, or any special distinction. Then ask yourself, how did that work out? Smoke and dust, the stuff of simple myth trying to be legend ...
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Ryan Holiday |
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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 a dream, we never stop to think and say: "Does this make any sense?" No, we go along with it. The same goes with our flights of anger or fear or other extreme emotions. Getting upset is like continuing the dream while you're awake. The thing th..
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Ryan Holiday |
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You shouldn't give circumstances the power to rouse anger, for they don't care at all." --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 7.38"
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Ryan Holiday |
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We underestimate our capabilities just as much and just as dangerously as we overestimate other abilities. Cultivate the ability to judge yourself accurately and honestly. Look inward to discern what you're capable of and what it will take to unlock that potential.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Self-awareness is the ability to objectively evaluate the self. It's the ability to question our own instincts, patterns, and assumptions.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Be slow in deliberation, but be prompt to carry out your resolves - Demonicus
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Ryan Holiday |
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Seneca put it best when he said, "Life is long if you know how to use it." Sadly, most people don't--they waste the life they've been given. Only when it is too late do they try to compensate for that waste by vainly hoping to put more time on the clock. Use today. Use every day. Make yourself satisfied with what you have been given."
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Ryan Holiday |
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Leave passion for the amateurs. Make it about what you feel you do and say, not what you care about and with to be.
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Ryan Holiday |
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It means accepting that others might be more qualified or specialized in areas in which you considered yourself competent--or at least their time is better spent on them than yours.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Every project and goal deserves an approach fitted perfectly to what needs to be done.
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Ryan Holiday |
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circumstances are incapable of considering or caring for your feelings, your anxiety, or your excitement.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Some things are in our control, while others are not. We control our opinion, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything of our own doing. We don't control our body, property, reputation, position, and, in a word, everything not of our own doing. Even more, the things in our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unobstructed, while those not in our control are weak, slavish, can be hindered, and are not our own." --EPICTETUS..
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Ryan Holiday |
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Many times an old man has no other evidence besides his age to prove he has lived a long time." S"
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Ryan Holiday |
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That uncomfortable feeling, that defensiveness that you feel when your most deeply held assumptions are challenged--what about subjecting yourself to it deliberately? Change your mind. Change your surroundings.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Man is pushed by drives but pulled by values
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Ryan Holiday |
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If we're going to succeed in achieving our goals despite the obstacles that may come, this strength in will must be built.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Keep in mind that it isn't the one who has it in for you and takes a swipe that harms you, but rather the harm comes from your own belief about the abuse. So when someone arouses your anger, know that it's really your own opinion fueling it. Instead, make it your first response not to be carried away by such impressions, for with time and distance self-mastery is more easily achieved." --EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION, 20"
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Ryan Holiday |
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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"
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Ryan Holiday |
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Pride takes a minor accomplishment and makes it feel like a major one. From the start, it drives a wedge between the possessor and reality, subtly and not so subtly changing her perceptions of what something is and what it isn't. It is these steering opinions, only loosely secured by fact or accomplishment, that send us careering toward delusion or worse.
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pride
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Ryan Holiday |