“The opposite of self-awareness is unconscious reactions and impulsiveness, which leads to simply repeating the past endlessly. Self-awareness opens the door to new opportunities, where you can see more than just your impulsiveness. Being able to see yourself and the way you move through your emotional range helps you be mindful of what you are saying and why you are saying it. Through self-awareness comes better decisions because you know when your intentions are genuine, when you would benefit from pausing and slowing down, and when you need to take accountability.”
Yung Pueblo
“There are two modes of travel; retreat or engage. People often travel to escape the routines of work, to recharge, relax, reinvigorate, and replenish themselves— R&R. In this mode you travel to remove yourself from your routines, or to get the pampering and attention you don’t ordinarily get, and ideally to do fun things instead of work things. So you travel to where it is easy. This is called a vacation, or R&R. The other mode is engagement and experience, or E&E. In this mode you travel to discover new things, to have new experiences, to lean into an adventure whose outcome is not certain, to meet otherness. You move to find yourself by encountering pleasures and challenges you don’t encounter at home. “
Kevin Kelly
“Be reliable. You can get pretty damn far in life by just being someone that people can count on to show up and do the work. Reliability is one of the most underrated traits. In the short run, it is much harder to be exceptional than it is to be reliable, and in the long run, being consistently reliable makes you exceptional.”
Sahil Bloom
“It was said that the true majesty of Marcus Aurelius was that his exactingness was directed only at himself. He did not ‘go around expecting Plato’s republic.’ People were people, he understood they were not perfect. He found a way to work with flawed people, putting them to service for the good of the empire, searching them for virtues that he celebrated and accepting their vices, which he knew were not in his control.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 232)
“Next time you’re struggling with something, try saying to yourself, I choose to live in easy world where everything is easy. How might that change your approach? Would it help you to let go of some of the stress and pressure? It’s worth caveating, of course, that your problems are unlikely to magically disappear by just asking yourself this question. But like me, I wonder if you might find that it helps you let go, just a little bit, of the unnecessary extra angst, stress and suffering, we add on top of whatever ‘problem’ we need to solve.”
Ali Abdaal
“You don’t have to end up number one in your class. Or win everything, every time. In fact, not winning is not particularly important. What does matter is that you gave everything, because anything less is to cheat the gift. The gift of your potential. The gift of the opportunity. The gift of the craft you’ve been introduced to. The gift of the responsibility entrusted to you. The gift of the instruction and time of others. The gift of life itself.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 212)
“This is the wonderful thing about doing your best. It insulates you, ever so sightly, from outcomes as well as ego. It’s not that you don’t care about results. It’s that you have a kind of trump card. Your success doesn’t go to your head because you know you’re capable of more. Your failures don’t destroy you because you are sure there wasn’t anything more you could have done.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 212)