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Sherman had a good rule he tried to observe. "Never give reasons for what you think or do until you must. Maybe,"
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Ryan Holiday |
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Do I need this? Or is it really about ego?
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Ryan Holiday |
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A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts, so he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions.
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Ryan Holiday |
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And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice! --EURIPIDES
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Ryan Holiday |
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storytelling in which eventually your talent becomes your identity and your accomplishments become your worth. But a story like this is never honest or helpful. In my retelling to you just now, I left a lot out. Conveniently omitted were the stresses and temptations; the stomach-turning drops and the mistakes--all the mistakes--were left on the cutting-room floor in favor of the highlight reel. They are the times I would rather not discuss:..
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Ryan Holiday |
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The combination of power, fear, and mania can be deadly. The leader, convinced that he might be betrayed, acts first and betrays others first. Afraid that he's not well liked, he works so hard to get others to like him that it has the opposite effect. Convinced of mismanagement, he micromanages and becomes the source of the mismanagement. And on and on - the things we fear or dread, we blindly inflict on ourselves.
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power
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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.
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Ryan Holiday |
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A good person is invincible, for they don't rush into contests in which they aren't the strongest. If you want their property, take it--take also their staff, profession, and body. But you will never compel what they set out for, nor trap them in what they would avoid. For the only contest the good person enters is that of their own reasoned choice. How can such a person not be invincible?" --EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.6.5-7"
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Ryan Holiday |
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Remember, if there is one core teaching at the heart of this philosophy, it's that we're not as smart and as wise as we'd like to think we are. If we ever do want to become wise, it comes from the questioning and from humility--not, as many would like to think, from certainty, mistrust, and arrogance.
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Ryan Holiday |
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What we don't protect ourselves against are people and things that make us feel good--or rather, too good. We must prepare for pride and kill it early--or it will kill what we aspire to. We must be on guard against that wild self-confidence and self-obsession. "The first product of self-knowledge is humility," Flannery O'Connor once said. This is how we fight the ego, by really knowing ourselves. The"
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Ryan Holiday |
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It is said of the Jews, deprived of a stable homeland for so long, their temples destroyed, and their communities in the Diaspora, that they were forced to rebuild not physically but within
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Ryan Holiday |
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People claim to want to do something that matters, yet they measure themselves against things that don't, and track their progress not in years but in microseconds. They want to make something timeless, but they focus instead on immediate payoffs and instant gratification.
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Ryan Holiday |
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When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstance revert at once to yourself and don't lose the rhythm more than you can help. You'll have a better grasp of harmony if you keep going back to it. --MARCUS AURELIUS A
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Ryan Holiday |
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There is always a countermove, always an escape or way through. No one said it would be easy and of course the stakes are high, but the path is there for those ready to take it.
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Ryan Holiday |
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While overpaid CEOs take long vacations and hide behind e-mail autoresponders, some programmer is working eighteen-hour days coding the start-up that will destroy that CEO's business.
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Ryan Holiday |
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The reason the knives are so sharp online is because the pie is so small.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Great entrepreneurs are never out of the game for long. They slip many times, but they don't fall.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Too often we react emotionally, get despondent, and lose our perspective. All that does is turn bad things into really bad things. Unhelpful perceptions can invade our minds -- that sacred place of reason, action and will -- and throw off our compasses.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn't mean you have to agree. Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn't mean it is. We decide what story to tell ourselves. Or whether we will tell one at all. Welcome to the power of perception. Applicable in each and every situation, impossible to obstruct. It can only be relinquished. A..
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Ryan Holiday |
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Whatever we face, we have a choice: Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them?
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Ryan Holiday |
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Does what happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness? Nope. Then get back to work! Subconsciously, we should be constantly asking ourselves this question: Do I need to freak out about this?
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Ryan Holiday |
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The implications of our obstacle are theoretical -- they exist in the past and the future. We live in the moment. And the more we embrace that, the easier the obstacle will be to face and move. You can take the trouble you're dealing with and use it as an opportunity to focus on the present moment. To ignore the totality of your situation and learn to be content with what happens, as it happens. To have no "way" that the future needs to be ..
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Ryan Holiday |
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Our actions may be impeded . . . but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.
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Ryan Holiday |
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The majority of my generation decides to move back in with their parents after college. Unemployment, for them, is twice the national average. According to one 2011 study by the University of Michigan, many graduates aren't even bothering to learn how to drive. The road is blocked, they are saying, so why get a license I won't be able to use? We whine and complain and mope when things won't go our way. We're crushed when what we were "promi..
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Ryan Holiday |
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Attach yourself to people and organizations who are already successful and subsume your identity into theirs and move both forward simultaneously.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Most trouble is temporary... unless you make that not so. Recovery is not grand, it's one step in front of the other. Unless your cure is more of the disease. Only
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Ryan Holiday |
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Just one thing keeps ego around--comfort. Pursuing great work--whether it is in sports or art or business--is often terrifying. Ego soothes that fear. It's a salve to that insecurity.
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Ryan Holiday |
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There is something of a civil war going on within all of our lives. There is a recalcitrant South of our soul revolting against the North of our soul. And there is this continual struggle within the very structure of every individual life. --MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Action is commonplace, right action is not. As a discipline, it's not any kind of action that will do, but directed action. Everything must be done in the service of the whole. Step by step, action by action, we'll dismantle the obstacles in front of us. With persistence and flexibility, we'll act in the best interest of our goals. Action requires courage, not brashness--creative application and not brute force. Our movements and decisions ..
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Ryan Holiday |
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And that's what is so insidious about talk. Anyone can talk about himself or herself. Even a child knows how to gossip and chatter. Most people are decent at hype and sales. So what is scarce and rare? Silence.
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Ryan Holiday |
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First, see clearly. Next, act correctly. Finally, endure and accept the world as it is.
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Ryan Holiday |
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A good person dyes events with his own color . . . and turns whatever happens to his own benefit.
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Ryan Holiday |
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All of us waste precious life doing things we don't like, to prove ourselves to people we don't respect, and to get things we don't want.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Ego loves this notion, the idea that something is "fair" or not. Psychologists"
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Ryan Holiday |
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One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. --BERTRAND RUSSELL W
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Ryan Holiday |
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We talk to fill the void and the uncertainty.
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Ryan Holiday |
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With their aggression, intensity, self-absorption, and endless self-promotion, our competitors don't realize how they jeopardize their own efforts (to say nothing of their sanity). We will challenge the myth of the self-assured genius for whom doubt and introspection is foreign, as well as challenge the myth of pained, tortured artist who must sacrifice his health for his work. Where they are both divorced from reality and divorced from oth..
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Ryan Holiday |
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For the rest of his life, the greater the chaos, the calmer Rockefeller would become, particularly when others around him were either panicked or mad with greed. He would make much of his fortune during these market fluctuations--because he could see while others could not. This insight lives on today in Warren Buffet's famous adage to "be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful." Rockefeller, like all great invest..
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Ryan Holiday |
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It's a cliche question to ask, What would I change about my life if the doctor told me I had cancer? After our answer, we inevitably comfort ourselves with the same insidious lie: Well, thank God I don't have cancer.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Knowing that life is a marathon and not a sprint is important. Conserve your energy. Understand that each battle is only one of many and that you can use it to make the next one easier. More important, you must keep them all in real perspective. Passing one obstacle simply says you're worthy of more. The world seems to keep throwing them at you once it knows you can take it. Which is good, because we get better with every attempt. Never rat..
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Ryan Holiday |
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The world can show you the truth, but no one can force you to accept it.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Always prepare ourselves for more difficult times. Always accept what we're unable to change. Always manage our expectations. Always persevere. Always learn to love our fate and what happens to us. Always protect our inner self, retreat into ourselves. Always submit to a greater, larger cause. Always remind ourselves of our own mortality.
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Ryan Holiday |
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it's really just taking action--whether that's approaching someone you're intimidated by or deciding to finally crack a book on a subject you need to learn.
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Ryan Holiday |
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You become the sum of your actions, and as you do, what flows from that--your impulses--reflect the actions you've taken. Choose wisely.
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Ryan Holiday |