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It doesn't matter whether this is the worst time to be alive or the best, whether you're in a good job market or a bad one, or that the obstacle you facie is intimidating or burdensome. What matters right now is right now.
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Ryan Holiday |
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A critical test of any product: Does it have a purpose? Does it add value to the world? How will it improve the lives of the people who buy it?
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Ryan Holiday |
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Publicity does not come easily, profits do not come easily, and knowledge does not come easily.
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easily
easy
free
nothing-is-free
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Ryan Holiday |
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When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go--carving you a path. "The Things which hurt," Benjamin Franklin wrote, "instruct." --
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Ryan Holiday |
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Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Marcus Aurelius had a version of this exercise where he'd describe glamorous or expensive things without their euphemisms--roasted meat is a dead animal and vintage wine is old, fermented grapes. The aim was to see these things as they really are, without any of the ornamentation. We can do this for anyone or to anything that stands in our way. That promotion that means so much, what is it really? Our critics and naysayers who make us feel ..
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Ryan Holiday |
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An entrepreneur is someone with faith in their ability to make something where there was nothing before. To them, the idea that no one has ever done this or that is a good thing. When given an unfair task, some rightly see it as a chance to test what they're made of--to give it all they've got, knowing full well how difficult it will be to win. They see it as an opportunity because it is often in that desperate nothing-to-lose state that we..
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Ryan Holiday |
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Like any good school, learning from failure isn't free. The tuition is paid in discomfort or loss and having to start over.
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Ryan Holiday |
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In Silicon Valley, start-ups don't launch with polished, finished businesses. Instead, they release their "Minimum Viable Product" (MVP)--the most basic version of their core idea with only one or two essential features. The point is to immediately see how customers respond. And, if that response is poor, to be able to fail cheaply and quickly."
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Ryan Holiday |
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For instance, in the design stages for a new mouse for an early Apple product, Jobs had high expectations. He wanted it to move fluidly in any direction--a new development for any mouse at that time--but a lead engineer was told by one of his designers that this would be commercially impossible. What Jobs wanted wasn't realistic and wouldn't work. The next day, the lead engineer arrived at work to find that Steve Jobs had fired the employee..
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Ryan Holiday |
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As Gavin de Becker writes in The Gift of Fear, "When you worry, ask yourself, 'What am I choosing to not see right now?' What important things are you missing because you chose worry over introspection, alertness or wisdom?"
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Ryan Holiday |
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There are too many famous Steve Jobs anecdotes to count, but several of them revolve around one theme: his unwillingness to leave well enough alone. His products had to be perfect; they had to do what they promised, and then some. And even though deadlines loomed and people would have to work around the clock, he would regularly demand more from his teams than they thought they could provide. The result? The most successful company in the h..
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Ryan Holiday |
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Just because the conditions aren't exactly to your liking, or you don't feel ready yet, doesn't mean you get a pass. If you want momentum, you'll have to create it yourself, right now, by getting up and getting started.
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Ryan Holiday |
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So today, as RSS buttons disappear from browsers and blogs, just know that this happened on purpose, so that readers could be deceived more easily.
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Ryan Holiday |
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If we're to overcome our obstacles, this is the message to broadcast--internally and externally. We will not be stopped by failure, we will not be rushed or distracted by external noise. We will chisel and peg away at the obstacle until it is gone. Resistance is futile.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Determination, if you think about it, is invincible. Nothing other than death can prevent us from following Churchill's old acronym: KBO. Keep Buggering On.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Doing new things invariably means obstacles. A new path is, by definition, uncleared. Only with persistence and time can we cut away debris and remove impediments. Only in struggling with the impediments that made others quit can we find ourselves on untrodden territory--only by persisting and resisting can we learn what others were too impatient to be taught.
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Ryan Holiday |
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We spend a lot of time thinking about how things are supposed to be, or what the rules say we should do. Trying to get it all perfect. We tell ourselves that we'll get started once the conditions are right, or once we're sure we can trust this or that. When, really, it'd be better to focus on making due with what we've got. On focusing on results instead of pretty methods.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Bad luck is actually a chance for us to make up some time. We're like runners who train on hills, or at an altitude so they can beat the runners who expected the course would be flat.
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Ryan Holiday |
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If something is in our control, its worth every ounce of our efforts and energy. Death is not one of those things. It is not in our control how long we'll live or what will come and take us from life. But thinking about mortality creates real perspective, and urgency. It doesn't need to be depressing. Because its invigorating.
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Ryan Holiday |
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If an emotion can't change the condition or the situation you're dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion. Or, quite possibly, a destructive one.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Focusing exclusively on what is in our power magnifies and enhances our power. But every ounce of energy directed at things we can't actually influence is wasted--self-indulgent and self-destructive. So much power--ours, and other people's--is frittered away in this manner. To see an obstacle as a challenge, to make the best of it anyway, that is also a choice--a choice that is up to us.
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Ryan Holiday |
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it turns out that the more unbelievable headlines and articles readers are exposed to, the more it warps their compass--making the real seem fake and the fake seem real. The more extreme a headline, the longer participants spend processing it, and the more likely they are to believe it. The more times an unbelievable claim is seen, the more likely they are to believe it.4
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Ryan Holiday |
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never in a hurry never worried never desperate never stopping short
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Ryan Holiday |
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A man's job is to make the world a better place to live in, so far as he is able--always remembering the results will be infinitesimal--and to attend to his own soul.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Welcome to the power of perception. Applicable in each and every situation, impossible to obstruct. It can only be relinquished.
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Ryan Holiday |
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take the trouble you're dealing with and use it as an opportunity to focus on the present moment.
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Ryan Holiday |
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I know you had nothing to do with the injustice that brought me to this jail, so I'm willing to stay here until I get out. But I will not, under any circumstances, be treated like a prisoner--because I am not and never will be powerless.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Each new work competes for customers with everything that came before it and everything that will come after.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Life speeds on the bold and favors the brave.
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Ryan Holiday |
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You don't convince people by challenging their longest and most firmly held opinions. You find common ground and work from there. Or you look for leverage to make them listen. Or you create an alterative with so much support from other people that the opposition voluntarily abandons its views and joins your camp.
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Ryan Holiday |
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cc1d4b7
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What is known can't jerk us around unwittingly. Before anything can be resolved, the implicit must be made into the explicit.
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explicit
implicit
resolution
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Ryan Holiday |
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In outer space you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch.' " Many"
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Ryan Holiday |
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There are far more failures in the world due to a collapse of will than there will ever be from objectively conclusive external events.
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Ryan Holiday |
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We blame our bosses, the economy, our politicians, other people, or we write ourselves off as failures or our goals as impossible. When really only one thing is at fault: our attitude and approach.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Great times are great softeners
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Ryan Holiday |
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Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them.
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Ryan Holiday |
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Placed in some situation that seems unchangeable and undeniably negative, we can turn it into a learning experience, a humbling experience, a chance to provide comfort to others.
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Ryan Holiday |
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most people start from disadvantage (often with no idea they are doing so) and do just fine. It's not unfair, it's universal.
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Ryan Holiday |
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He says the best way out is always through And I agree to that, or in so far As I can see no way out but through. --ROBERT FROST
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Ryan Holiday |
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Let others slap each others on the back while you're back in the lab or the gym or pounding the pavement.
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work
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Ryan Holiday |
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db23f2d
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From sacrifice comes meaning. From struggle comes purpose. If you're to create something powerful and important, you must at the very least be driven by an equally powerful inner force. If
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Ryan Holiday |
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66844fa
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You must be able to explicitly say who you are building your thing for. You must know what you are aiming for--you'll miss otherwise. You need to know this so you can make the decisions that go into properly positioning the project for them. You
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Ryan Holiday |
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If you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next.
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Ryan Holiday |