“Being pleasant and having a good attitude is a simple way to become luckier. Opportunities come through people, and people are more likely to bring opportunities to people they like. It’s hard to win if your attitude adds friction to every interpersonal experience.”
James Clear, Blog
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A Short Story About Frida Kahlo And The Unexpected Gifts Pain Can Provide [Excerpt]
Excerpt: Pain is inevitable. How we channel pain, however, is a choice. This short story about Frida Kahlo will show you the gifts pain can provide.
Read More »A Short Story About Frida Kahlo And The Unexpected Gifts Pain Can Provide [Excerpt]
“You don’t have to believe there is a god directing the universe, you just need to stop believing that you’re that director. As soon as you can attune your spirit to that idea, the easier and happier your life will be, because you will have given up the most potent addiction of all: control.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 330)
“How willingly we will put up with unpleasantness if commanded to by the magic words ‘doctor’s orders.’ The doctors says you’ve got to take this nasty medicine, and you’ll do it. The doctor tells you you have to start sleeping hanging upside down like a bat. You’ll feel silly, but soon enough you’ll get to dangling because you think it will make you better. On the other hand, when it comes to external events, we fight like hell if anything happens contrary to our plans. But what if a doctor had prescribed this exact thing as part of our treatment? What if this was as good for us as medicine?”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 328)
“That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.”
Jeanette Winterson, via Between Two Kingdoms (Page 107)
“I’d always imagined myself as the kind of writer who would help other people tell their stories, but increasingly I found myself gravitating toward the first person. Illness had turned my gaze inward.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 107)
“People often respond to the news of tragedy with ‘words fail,’ but words did not fail me that day, or the next, or thereafter—they poured out of me, first cautiously, then exuberantly, my mind awakening as if from a long slumber, thoughts tumbling out faster than my pen could keep up.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 106)
“Something happened that we wish had not. Which of these is easiest to change: our opinion or the event that is past? The answer is obvious. Accept what happened and change your wish that it had not happened. Stoicism calls this the ‘art of acquiescence’—to accept rather than fight every little thing.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 326)