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What if someone despises me? Let them see to it. But I will see to it that I won't be found doing or saying anything contemptible. What if someone hates me? Let them see to that. But I will see to it that I'm kind and good-natured to all, and prepared to show even the hater where they went wrong. Not in a critical way, or to show off my patience, but genuinely and usefully." --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 11.13"
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Ryan Holiday |
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207e259
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There is another apt Latin expression: Materiam superabat opus. (The workmanship is better than the material.) The material we've been given genetically, emotionally, financially, that's where we begin. We don't control that. We do control what we make of that material, and whether we squander it.
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Ryan Holiday |
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5d78768
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Watch the stars in their courses and imagine yourself running alongside them. Think constantly on the changes of the elements into each other, for such thoughts wash away the dust of earthly life." --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 7.47"
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Ryan Holiday |
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84ae8ed
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Here's the other part: once you win, everyone is gunning for you. It's during your moment at the top that you can afford ego the least--because the stakes are so much higher, the margins for error are so much smaller. If anything, your ability to listen, to hear feedback, to improve and grow matter more now than ever before.
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Ryan Holiday |
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15852ad
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today, though, if someone were to hand you a hundred-dollar bill, you might rub it between your fingers or hold it up to the light, just to confirm it wasn't a fake. All this for an imaginary currency, an invention of society. The point of this metaphor is to highlight how much effort we put into making sure money is real, whereas we accept potentially life-changing thoughts or assumptions without so much as a question. One
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Ryan Holiday |
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9c2a041
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The most critical part of this system was the belief that you, the student who has sought out Stoicism, have the most important job: to be good! To be wise. "To remain the person that philosophy wished to make us." Do your job today. Whatever happens, whatever other people's jobs happen to be, do yours. Be good."
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Ryan Holiday |
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852852a
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If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters--don't wish to seem knowledgeable. And if some regard you as important, distrust yourself." --EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION, 13a"
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Ryan Holiday |
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d104d64
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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.
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humility
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Ryan Holiday |
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a1e95ec
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Of all people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only they truly live. Not satisfied to merely keep good watch over their own days, they annex every age to their own. All the harvest of the past is added to their store. Only an ingrate would fail to see that these great architects of venerable thoughts were born for us and have designed a way of life for us." --SENECA"
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Ryan Holiday |
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3b0f32f
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If someone asks you how to write your name, would you bark out each letter? And if they get angry, would you then return the anger? Wouldn't you rather gently spell out each letter for them? So then, remember in life that your duties are the sum of individual acts. Pay attention to each of these as you do your duty ... just methodically complete your task." --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 6.26"
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Ryan Holiday |
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ef29827
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Up ahead there will be: Slights. Dismissals. Little fuck yous. One-sided compromises. You'll get yelled at. You'll have to work behind the scenes to salvage what should have been easy. All this will make you angry. This will make you want to fight back. This will make you want to say: I am better than this. I deserve more.
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Ryan Holiday |
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2a57346
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When someone doesn't reckon you with the seriousness that you'd like, the impulse is to correct them. (As we all wish to say: Do you know who I am?!) You want to remind them of what they've forgotten; your ego screams for you to indulge it. Instead, you must do nothing. Take it. Eat it until you're sick. Endure it. Quietly brush it off and work harder. Play the game. Ignore the noise; for the love of God, do not let it distract you.
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Ryan Holiday |
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b6edf28
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Because sadly, this trait, the inability to get out of one's head, is not restricted to fiction.
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Ryan Holiday |
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7bfc130
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Are you okay being alone? Are you strong enough to go a few more rounds if it comes to that? Are you comfortable with challenges? Does uncertainty bother you? How does pressure feel? Because these things will happen to you. No one knows when or how, but their appearance is certain. And life will demand an answer. You chose this for yourself, a life of doing things. Now you better be prepared for what it entails.
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Ryan Holiday |
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518b90c
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No matter what you've done up to this point, you better still be a student. If you're not still learning, you're already dying.
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Ryan Holiday |
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ebe40f3
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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.
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Ryan Holiday |
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6c5ef59
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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." --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 4.48.2"
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Ryan Holiday |
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fa0c262
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It is always revealing to see how a person responds to those situations where he's told: "There's nothing you can do about it. This is the way of the world." Peter Thiel's friend, the mathematician and economist Eric Weinstein, has a category of individual he defines as a "high-agency person." How do you respond when told something is impossible? Is that the end of the conversation or the start of one? What's the reaction to being told you ..
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Ryan Holiday |
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4eca415
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When you first rise in the morning tell yourself: I will encounter busybodies, ingrates, egomaniacs, liars, the jealous and cranks. They are all stricken with these afflictions because they don't know the difference between good and evil. Because I have understood the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, I know that these wrong-doers are still akin to me ... and that none can do me harm, or implicate me in ugliness--nor can I be angry a..
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Ryan Holiday |
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95ee9c7
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She had purpose. She had direction. She wasn't driven by passion, but by reason.
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Ryan Holiday |
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dccf828
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Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one's specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn't do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that ever..
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Ryan Holiday |
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be8df8a
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You can only see this if you want to see it.
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Ryan Holiday |
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b08a21f
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God laid down this law, saying: if you want some good, get it from yourself" (1.29.4). "Protect your own good in all that you do" (4.3.11)."
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Ryan Holiday |
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315c5f7
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This is what you should teach me, how to be like Odysseus--how to love my country, wife and father, and how, even after suffering shipwreck, I might keep sailing on course to those honorable ends." --SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 88.7b M"
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Ryan Holiday |
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80fc170
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Sometimes ego is suppressed on the ascent. Sometimes an idea is so powerful or timing is so perfect (or one is born into wealth or power) that it can temporarily support or even compensate for a massive ego. As success arrives, like it does for a team that has just won a championship, ego begins to toy with our minds and weaken the will that made us win in the first place. We know that empires always fall, so we must think about why--and wh..
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Ryan Holiday |
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c36e9e1
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Opportunities are not usually deep, virgin pools that require courage and boldness to dive into, but instead are obscured, dusted over, blocked by various forms of resistance. What is really called for in these circumstances is clarity, deliberateness, and methodological determination.
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Ryan Holiday |
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257d7a7
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It comes in many forms. Idly dreaming about the future. Plotting our revenge. Finding refuge in distraction. Refusing to consider that our choices are a reflection of our character. We'd rather do basically anything else.
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Ryan Holiday |
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874c512
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But too often, we proceed like this . . . A flash of inspiration: I want to do the best and biggest ______ ever. Be the youngest ______. The only one to ______. The "firstest with the mostest." The advice: Okay, well, here's what you'll need to do step-by-step to accomplish it. The reality: We hear what we want to hear. We do what we feel like doing, and despite being incredibly busy and working very hard, we accomplish very little. Or wors..
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Ryan Holiday |
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7c9a87b
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What matters is that you learn how to manage yourself and others, before your industry eats you alive. Micromanagers are egotists who can't manage others and they quickly get overloaded.
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Ryan Holiday |
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0091fcd
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that it seems wrong to take it slow. This is just our impatience. This is our inability to see that burning ourselves out or blowing ourselves up isn't going to hurry the journey along.
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Ryan Holiday |
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f8fa5b8
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Stoicism as the ideal "personal operating system"
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Ryan Holiday |
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102861e
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Every culture has its own way of teaching the same lesson: Memento mori, the Romans would remind themselves. Remember you are mortal. It
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Ryan Holiday |
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adc90dd
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Accept only what is true. 2. Work for the common good. 3. Match our needs and wants with what is in our control. 4. Embrace what nature has in store for us.
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Ryan Holiday |
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b281682
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Those obsessed with glory attach their well-being to the regard of others, those who love pleasure tie it to feelings, but the one with true understanding seeks it only in their own actions.... Think on the character of the people one wishes to please, the possessions one means to gain, and the tactics one employs to such ends. How quickly time erases such things, and how many will yet be wiped away." --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 6:51, 5..
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Ryan Holiday |
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2cd8ea5
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The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, because an artful life requires being prepared to meet and withstand sudden and unexpected attacks." --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 7.61"
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Ryan Holiday |
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113d7f8
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It is sad to consider how much time many people spend in the course of a day doing things they "have" to do--not necessary obligations like work or family, but the obligations we needlessly accept out of vanity or ignorance. Consider the actions we take in order to impress other people or the lengths we'll go to fulfill urges or sate desires we don't even question."
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Ryan Holiday |
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a9c3024
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If your purpose is something larger than you--to accomplish something, to prove something to yourself--then suddenly everything becomes both easier and more difficult.
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Ryan Holiday |
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95f51df
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Most of us would be seized with fear if our bodies went numb, and would do everything possible to avoid it, yet we take no interest at all in the numbing of our souls. --EPICTETUS
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Ryan Holiday |
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1178ee5
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As Plato said, every soul is deprived of truth against its will. The same holds true for justice, self-control, goodwill to others, and every similar virtue. It's essential to constantly keep this in your mind, for it will make you more gentle to all.
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marcus-aurelius
meditations
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Ryan Holiday |
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837f125
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Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what's left as a bonus and live it according to Nature. Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?" --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 7.56-57"
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Ryan Holiday |
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8a8e93d
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Stillness is what aims the archer's arrow. It inspires new ideas. It sharpens perspective and illuminates connections.
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Ryan Holiday |
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2cb6756
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As Goethe once observed, the great failing is "to see yourself as more than you are and to value yourself at less than your true worth."
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Ryan Holiday |
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679498c
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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. And, of course, prepare to start the cycle once more.
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Ryan Holiday |
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68fc59a
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When you can break apart something, or look at it from some new angle, it loses its power over you.
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break
power
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Ryan Holiday |