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59c89b5 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. Ryan Holiday
906c54d 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.. Ryan Holiday
603bd49 Whatever we face, we have a choice: Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them? Ryan Holiday
5ce09cf 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? Ryan Holiday
a3f7116 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 .. Ryan Holiday
698de55 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. Ryan Holiday
e762ad3 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.. Ryan Holiday
7e6e0f8 Attach yourself to people and organizations who are already successful and subsume your identity into theirs and move both forward simultaneously. Ryan Holiday
7318fe8 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 Ryan Holiday
82d5dc8 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. Ryan Holiday
ab1ab2d 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. Ryan Holiday
1ea3289 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 .. Ryan Holiday
63d2628 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. Ryan Holiday
34744c8 First, see clearly. Next, act correctly. Finally, endure and accept the world as it is. Ryan Holiday
f27ee61 A good person dyes events with his own color . . . and turns whatever happens to his own benefit. Ryan Holiday
d084756 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. Ryan Holiday
0e583f0 Ego loves this notion, the idea that something is "fair" or not. Psychologists" Ryan Holiday
6a33159 One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. --BERTRAND RUSSELL W Ryan Holiday
e5ce91a We talk to fill the void and the uncertainty. Ryan Holiday
04835e1 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.. Ryan Holiday
bfca560 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.. Ryan Holiday
99bb14d 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. Ryan Holiday
40d84e7 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.. Ryan Holiday
60088d8 The world can show you the truth, but no one can force you to accept it. Ryan Holiday
942a4e6 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. Ryan Holiday
27ec4dd 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. Ryan Holiday
14e7f2f 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. Ryan Holiday
e19b02d Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so," as Shakespeare put it." Ryan Holiday
c027021 It may take some hard work.But the more you say no to the things that don't matter, the more you can say yes to the things that do. Ryan Holiday
53ae1bd With accomplishment comes a growing pressure to pretend that we know more than we do. To pretend we already know everything. Ryan Holiday
c32b7bc If we can focus on making clear what parts of our day are within our control and what parts are not, we will not only be happier, we will have a distinct advantage over other people who fail to realize they are fighting an unwinnable battle. Ryan Holiday
a7ba14a The power of being a student is not just that it is an extended period of instruction, it also places the ego and ambition in someone else's hands. There is a sort of ego ceiling imposed-one knows that is not better than the "master" he apprentices under. Not even close. You defer to them, you subsume yourself. You cannot fake or bullshit them. An education can't be hacked; there are no shortcuts besides hacking it every single day. If you .. Ryan Holiday
8e0967d Every negative has a positive. Push a negative hard enough and deep enough that it will break through into its counterside. Ryan Holiday
d0778d9 In the novel Fight Club, the character Jack's apartment is blown up. All of his possessions--"every stick of furniture," which he pathetically loved--were lost. Later it turns out that Jack blew it up himself. He had multiple personalities, and "Tyler Durden" orchestrated the explosion to shock Jack from the sad stupor he was afraid to do anything about. The result was a journey into an entirely different and rather dark part of his life. I.. Ryan Holiday
9e2eb08 Philosophy's true use - "An operating system for life's difficulties and hardships"." Ryan Holiday
32be58a Were you to live three thousand years, or even a countless multiple of that, keep in mind that no one ever loses a life other than the one they are living, and no one ever lives a life other than the one they are losing. The longest and the shortest life, then, amount to the same, for the present moment lasts the same for all and is all anyone possesses. No one can lose either the past or the future, for how can someone be deprived of what'.. Ryan Holiday
8596703 A degree on a wall means you're educated as much as shoes on your feet mean you're walking. It's a start, but hardly sufficient. Ryan Holiday
232ef69 The best way to avenge yourself is to not be like that." --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 6.6 "How much better to heal than seek revenge from injury. Vengeance wastes a lot of time and exposes you to many more injuries than the first that sparked it. Anger always outlasts hurt. Best to take the opposite course. Would anyone think it normal to return a kick to a mule or a bite to a dog?" --SENECA, ON ANGER, 3.27.2" Ryan Holiday
c49f4cd This prolonging of a man's life doesn't interest me when he's done his work and has done it pretty well. Erik Larson
84ba55a As the light began to fade, the architects lit the library's gas jets, which hissed like mildly perturbed cats. Erik Larson
5261953 Holmes was charming and gracious, but something about him made Belknap uneasy. He could not have defined it. Indeed, for the next several decades alienists and their successors would find themselves hard-pressed to describe with any precision what it was about men like Holmes that could cause them to seem warm and ingratiating but also telegraph the vague sense that some important element of humanness was missing. At first alienists describ.. Erik Larson
001244d They saw even more ungodly things--the first zipper; the first-ever all-electric kitchen, which included an automatic dishwasher; and a box purporting to contain everything a cook would need to make pancakes, under the brand name Aunt Jemima's. They sampled a new, oddly flavored gum called Juicy Fruit, and caramel-coated popcorn called Cracker Jack. A new cereal, Shredded Wheat, seemed unlikely to succeed--"shredded doormat," some called it.. Erik Larson
ba0ca6d People seemed to believe that technology had stripped hurricanes of their power to kill. No hurricane expert endorsed this view. Erik Larson
06bd030 Dodd listened intently as Hitler portrayed Germany as a well-meaning, peace-seeking nation whose modest desire for equality of armaments was being opposed by other nations. 'It was not the address of a thinker,' Dodd wrote in his diary, 'but of an emotionalist claiming that Germany had in no way been responsible for the World War and that she was the victim of wicked enemies. Erik Larson