“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)
“Understand: Most of the people doing important work are people you’ve never heard of—they want it that way. Most happy people don’t need you to know how happy they are—they aren’t thinking about you at all. Everyone is going through something, but some people choose not to vomit their issues on everyone else. The strongest people are self-contained. They keep themselves in check. They keep their business where it belongs… their business.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 207)
“There is a term—energy vampires—meant to describe the kind of people who, because of their lack of boundaries, suck others dry with their neediness, their selfishness, their dysfunction, and their drama. Not only must you not be an energy vampire yourself, but you must be aware that these type of people exist. You must be strong enough to keep them at arm’s distance—even if they’re beautiful, even if they’re talented, even if they’re family or old friends from childhood, even if their helplessness calls to the most empathetic part of yourself. A country without borders, it has been said, is not really a country at all. So it goes with people. Without boundaries, we are overwhelmed. We are stretched too thin. So thin that those features that previously defined us start to disappear until there’s no telling where we start and the energy vampires around us end.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 206)
“Love does not fix everything, and it does not arrive with perfection. Love is simply a sign of how important someone is to you, but what comes after that is learning how to care for them. Care is not immediate; it requires gradual and intentional learning so that you can better understand the shape of your partner’s mind. Trying to understand where your partner is strong and where they are tender sets the groundwork to truly support their happiness. The same emotional skills that you develop as you take a good look at yourself during your inward journey are the same skills that help you with learning how to care for your partner.”
Yung Pueblo
