Excerpt: Illuminate the hidden power of your true self! These quotes from The Shadow Effect will shine a light on your dark side—in a powerful way.
Except: A short story about a mom who had enough. She was tired, irritable, and sick. And her family kept using her as a crutch. Here’s what she did.
“Stoics do not seek to have the answer for every question or a plan for every contingency. Yet they’re also not worried. Why? Because they have confidence that they’ll be able to adapt and change with the circumstances. Instead of looking for instruction, they cultivate skills like creativity, independence, self-confidence, ingenuity, and the ability to problem solve. In this way, they are resilient instead of rigid. We can practice the same.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 178)
“The first rule of holes, goes the adage, is that ‘if you find yourself in a hold, stop digging.’ This might be the most violated piece of commonsense wisdom in the world. Because what most of us do when something happens, goes wrong, or is inflicted on us is make it worse—first, by getting angry or feeling aggrieved, and next, by flailing around before we have much in the way of a plan. Today, give yourself the most simple and doable of tasks: just don’t make stuff worse.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 177)
“Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.”
Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey
“We’re in a freefall into future. We don’t know where we’re going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you’re going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It’s a very interesting shift of perspective and that’s all it is… joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes.”
Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey
“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.”
Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”
Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey
“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey
“When you find a writer who really is saying something to you, read everything that writer has written and you will get more education and depth of understanding out of that than reading a scrap here and a scrap there and elsewhere. Then go to people who influenced that writer, or those who were related to him, and your world builds together in an organic way that is really marvelous.”
Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey
“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”
Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey
“Instead of feeling that you’ve blown the day and thinking, “I’ll get back on track tomorrow,” try thinking of each day as a set of four quarters: morning, midday, afternoon, evening. If you blow one quarter, you get back on track for the next quarter. Fail small, not big.”
Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before
“Patience is a competitive advantage. In a surprising number of fields, you can find success if you are simply willing to do the reasonable thing longer than most people.”
James Clear, Blog
“To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe.”
Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah, via Sunbeams (Page 115)
“It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”
St. Francis of Assisi, via Sunbeams (Page 115)
“Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war.”
Thomas Merton, via Sunbeams (Page 115)
“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, via Sunbeams (Page 115)
“If you find something very difficult to achieve yourself, don’t imagine it impossible—for anything possible and proper for another person can be achieved as easily by you.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, via The Daily Stoic (Page 176)
“The answer to helplessness is not so very complicated. A man can do something for peace without having to jump into politics. Each man has inside him a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a man to listen to his own goodness and act on it. Do we dare to be ourselves? This is the question that counts.”
Pablo Casals, via Sunbeams (Page 114)