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Bernard Malamud Quote on Writing—There’s No Secret Practice

“There’s no one way [to write] — there’s too much drivel about this subject. You’re who you are, not Fitzgerald or Thomas Wolfe. You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place — you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he’s disciplined, doesn’t matter. If he or she is not disciplined, no sympathetic magic will help. The trick is to make time — not steal it — and produce the fiction. If the stories come, you get them written, you’re on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.”
Bernard Malamud, via Daily Rituals

Beyond the Quote (16/365)

If Dwayne Johnson AND Jocko Willink both wake up at 4am to get their workouts done, given how wildly busy and in shape they both are, then that must be the best time to wake up and workout, right? To answer that from personal experience, no. I have tried to build that idea into my routine several times and have failed awfully each and every time. I experienced so much misery and resistance that I felt like even if I mustered together ALL of my willpower from a day, it wouldn’t be enough to get me through one 4am workout—let alone a lifetime of them. So, what gave?

“You have a career and friends and family members and personal projects and artistic endeavors and athletic pursuits. You might consider judging your success across all the games you play. Imagine that you are very good at some, middling at others, and terrible at the remainder. Perhaps that’s how it should be. You might object: I should be winning at everything! But winning at everything might only mean that you’re not doing anything new or difficult. You might be winning but you’re not growing, and growing might be the most important form of winning. Should victory in the present always take precedence over trajectory across time?”
Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 88)

Beyond the Quote (15/365)

If you’re winning all of the time, every time, at everything, then one of two things has gone wrong: either you’re playing the wrong game(s) or you’re playing the wrong people. Who cares if you win against a two-year-old in chess all of the time, every time? There’s no challenge, which means there’s no growth, which means there’s no value. Either you need a new game to play or you need to find a new person to play the game against. Even if you were playing chess against one of your peers, and you were crushing them every time, it’s the same issue—no challenge, no growth, no value.

“What can be truly loved about a person is inseparable from their limitations.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 341)

“It’s a good idea to tell the person you are confronting exactly what you would like them to do instead of what they have done or currently are doing. You might think, ‘if they loved me, they would know what to do.’ That’s the voice of resentment. Assume ignorance before malevolence. No one has a direct pipeline to your wants and needs—not even you. If you try to determine exactly what you want, you might find that it is more difficult than you think. The person oppressing you is likely no wiser than you, especially about you. Tell them directly what would be preferable, instead, after you have sorted it out. Make your request as small and reasonable as possible—but ensure that its fulfillment would satisfy you. In that manner, you come to the discussion with a solution, instead of just a problem.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 287)

“Any hierarchy creates winners and losers. The winners are, of course, more likely to justify the hierarchy and the losers to criticize it. But (1) the collective pursuit of any valued goal produces a hierarchy (as some will be better and some worse at that pursuit no matter what it is) and (2) it is the pursuit of goals that in large part lends life its sustaining meaning. We experience almost all the emotions that make life deep and engaging as a consequence of moving successfully towards something deeply desired and valued. The price we pay for that involvement is the inevitable creation of hierarchies of success, while the inevitable consequence is difference in outcome. Absolute equality would therefore require the sacrifice of value itself—and then there would be nothing worth living for.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 303)

“Every word we speak is a gift from our ancestors. Every thought we think was thought previously by someone smarter. The highly functional infrastructure that surrounds us, particularly in the West, is a gift from our ancestors: the comparatively uncorrupt political and economic systems, the technology, the wealth, the lifespan, the freedom, the luxury, and the opportunity. Culture takes with one hand, but in some fortunate places it gives more with the other. To think about culture only as oppressive is ignorant and ungrateful, as well as dangerous. This is not to say that culture should not be subject to criticism.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 302)

“People, including children (who are people too, after all), don’t seek to minimize risk. They seek to optimize it. They drive and walk and love and play so that they achieve what they desire, but they push themselves a bit at the same time, too, so they continue to develop. Thus, if things are made too safe, people (including children) start to figure out ways to make them dangerous again.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 287)

James Patterson Quote on Keeping Priorities Straight In Life

“Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls…are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.”
James Patterson

Beyond the Quote (14/365)

When you’re young, you only have one ball to play with (no juggling required): the family ball. Your family is your lifeline and they do all of the juggling for you (those were the days, eh?). As you grow older, you slowly start to gain more and more responsibility and you begin to accumulate more and more balls that you eventually need to start juggling. Next might be the friends ball, then the school ball, then the integrity ball, then the health ball, then the work ball, then a family ball of your own, etc., and this continues until you reach your juggling limits and can no longer properly keep all of the balls suspended in the air. Either something has got to give and one (or more) of them drops, or you stop adding more balls and you get better at juggling the ones you already have.

“Many people seem to think that success in one area can compensate for failure in other areas. But can it really?… True effectiveness requires balance.”
Stephen Covey

Beyond the Quote (13/365)

The example that comes up immediately is the widely popular cultural pursuit of work success at the expense of just about any other area of life. But can workplace success compensate for failed friendships? Failed marriages? Failed family life? Failed integrity? Failed health? …I would say confidently, that it cannot. Real success in life requires balance. And if we are to become effective at living a life of balance we have to be mindful of, take action on, and make constant adjustments to our priorities.

“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.”
Leonardo da Vinci

Beyond the Quote (12/365)

At the end of every day, when you lay your head down on your pillow, there are usually a few moments of reflection. Sometimes the movie of your mind plays memories from the day, or replays situations that you might have acted on differently, or even anticipates the things that are to come. Sometimes these thoughts and reflections leave you feeling dissatisfied and sometimes they leave you feeling accomplished. When you pay attention to, and are mindful of, the average feeling of how you spent the time of your days, then you can start to navigate, and get in tune with, the direction and path of your life.

A good indicator of love:

Be wholly alive with all of your might!

Maybe right now your journey isn’t about love.

Sweet efforts are the difference maker.

“Kindness is not a currency, and if you treat it like one, then that is not kindness.” ~ Iain Thomas, Every Word You Cannot Say (Page 131)

“It’s only the idea that everyone else KNOWS who they are that’s causing you pain. But no one knows who they really are. You are an overflowing river that shifts its banks when the rains come. That’s why you cannot hold on to who you are.” ~ Iain Thomas, Every Word You Cannot Say (Page 120)

23 Quotes on Aging, Living, and Dying from Happiness Is a Choice You Make

Excerpt: John Leland spent years with some of the oldest old in America and wrote a book on his findings. Read our quotes on aging from his book here!

“Self-acceptance comes from meeting life’s challenges vigorously. Don’t numb yourself to your trials and difficulties, nor build mental walls to exclude pain from your life. You will find peace not by trying to escape your problems, but by confronting them courageously. You will find peace not in denial, but in victory.”
Swami Sivananda

Beyond the Quote (11/365)

In fact, the more you hide from your life challenges and fears, the more they will grow and the more you will shrink. It’s not a single negative, it’s a double negative. If you’ve ever felt your mind take something fearful or challenging from a level 1 intensity to a level 1000 intensity, just from letting it linger in your mind, then you know what I’m talking about. And if you’ve ever let the muscles of your body go without the challenge and difficulty of exercise, then you know what it feels like to shrink. The muscles of the mind—the mental capacity to show courage and face fear—are muscles that none-the-less need to be exercised to grow.

“It is your actions that most accurately reflect your deepest beliefs—those that are implicit, embedded in your being, underneath your conscious apprehensions and articulable attitudes and surface-level self-knowledge. You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act. You simply don’t know what you believe, before that. You are too complex to understand yourself.”
Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 103)

Beyond the Quote (10/365)

I read an expression the other day that really took me aback: We judge ourselves based on our thoughts but we judge others based on their actions. I knew it was true the second I read it, but I never would have realized it if I hadn’t read it. This was, in fact, the way in which I judged myself versus how I judged others (for the most part) and it was a clear double-standard that I felt guilty about.