“Don’t try to be efficient with your grief. Just like healing, moving through grief can be a messy process. An important thing to understand is that you can grieve for years while still living a full and enjoyable life. Letting go is not a quick process, feeling sadness is totally normal, the heaviness of loss can sit in your heart for a long time. The sadness may come up over and over again, sometimes triggered by something small, let it arise and pass away. Let yourself experience grief in an organic manner. Losing someone essential to your life is not an easy thing to overcome.”
Yung Pueblo
“Queen Elizabeth inherited the monarchy. Marcus Aurelius was selected for the purple as a boy. But it wasn’t the throne that made either of them kingly, it was their behavior. They were what the ancients called first citizens, for their character as much as their rank. As Marcus said, his aim was never to be the most powerful king, never to conquer the most territory, or build the most beautiful buildings. Instead, he was after ‘perfection of character: to live your last day, every day, without frenzy or sloth or pretense.’ It just happens that wonderful external accomplishments, like those achieved by Elizabeth and Marcus, can come out of internal endeavor. They are not the goal, they are the byproduct.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 283)
“In the end, it’s not about what we do, it’s about how we do it and, by extension, who we are. Too often, we find people choosing to be great at their profession over being a great human being, believing that success or art or fame or power must be pursued to the exclusion of all else. Does it have to be that way? Does being loved have to be at odds with being lovely?”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 282)
“Spend a handful of hours a day going fast. Crush a gym session. Do deep work on a project you care about. Spend the rest of the day going slow. Take walks. Read books. Get a long dinner with friends. Either way, avoid the anxious middle where you never truly relax or truly move forward.”
Charles Miller
“We keep on dumbly doing the same things we’ve always done… under the illusion it will someday bring about different results. We think it’s a sign of character that we won’t give in, when it may well be stupidity or weakness. Or we think that we can continue going forward forever, when in fact it is exactly this insatiability that often leads us right into the trap that the enemy laid for us. Hope is important but it is not a strategy. Denial is not the same thing as determination. Delusion is destruction. Greed will get you in the end.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 273)
“The person who can only go forward… who never backs up, who has no escape plan, who is not brave but reckless. They are not self-controlled, they are stuck in one gear. You don’t win everything, every time—not in war, in life, or in business. A person who doesn’t know how to disengage, to cut their losses, or to extricate themselves is a vulnerable person. A person who does not know how to lose will still lose… only more painfully so.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 272)