Seth Godin Quote on Facing Failure So That You Can Keep Playing (and Win)
“If I fail more than you do, I win. Built into this notion is the ability to keep playing. If you get to keep playing, sooner or later you’re gonna make it succeed. The people who lose are the ones who don’t fail at all, or the ones who fail so big they don’t get to play again.”
Seth Godin
Beyond the Quote (121/365)
If you try and you fail—and you quit—you lose. If you try and you fail—and you adjust and try again—you win. The ultimate failure in life isn’t the failures we inevitably stumble upon from our trials, it’s the failure to not try (or to stop trying) at all. Without trial in life, you defer to passivity. You choose to watch rather than play. And while it’s fun to watch sometimes, playing is where all of the magic happens. Playing is the active process of interacting with your surroundings in a way that allows you to learn. When you try, your whole being makes an incalculable number of adjustments and improvements so that you can better play moving forward. You just can’t do that from the sideline.
Read More »Seth Godin Quote on Facing Failure So That You Can Keep Playing (and Win)Milk and Honey [Book]
Book Overview: #1 New York Times bestseller Milk and Honey is a collection of poetry and prose about survival. About the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity. The book is divided into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose. Deals with a different pain. Heals a different heartache. Milk and Honey takes readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look.
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Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
Ryan Holiday Quote on Leisure and Recharging Constructively
“[Leisure] is a physical state—a physical action—that somehow replenishes and strengthens the soul. Leisure is not the absence of activity, it is activity. What is absent is any external justification—you can’t do leisure for pay, you can’t do it to impress people. You have to do it for you.“
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 237)
Beyond the Quote (120/365)
Too often we associate “replenishing” and “recharging” with shutting down and binging. We finish a long stretch of work and we immediately resort to plopping down in front of the TV and mindlessly zoning out for a few hours to “recover.” And while it is okay to do that every now and again, what might be worth exploring is the idea of recharging, not by checking out, but by checking in to activities that engage you.
Read More »Ryan Holiday Quote on Leisure and Recharging Constructively“Seneca reminded himself that before we were born we were still and at peace, and so we will be once again after we die. A light loses nothing by being extinguished, he said, it just goes back to how it was before.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 256)
“A person who makes selfish choices or acts contrary to their conscience will never be at peace. A person who sits back while others suffer or struggle will never feel good, or feel that they are enough, no matter how much they accomplish or how impressive their reputation may be. A person who does good regularly will feel good. A person who contributes to their community will feel like they are a part of one. A person who puts their body to good use—volunteering, protecting serving, standing up for—will not need to treat it like an amusement park to get some thrills.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 250)
“Stillness is not an excuse to withdraw from the affairs of the world. Quite the opposite‚ it’s a tool to let you do more good for more people.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 249)
“If true peace and clarity are what you seek in this life—and by the way, they are what you deserve—know that you will find them nearby and not far away. Stick fast, as Emerson said. Turn into yourself. Stand in place. Stand in front of the mirror. Get to know your front porch. You were given one body when you were born—don’t try to be someone else, somewhere else. Get to know yourself. Build a life that you don’t need to escape from.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 246)
“Those who think they will find solutions to all their problems by traveling far from home, perhaps as they stare at the Colosseum or some enormous moss-covered statue of Buddha, Emerson said, are bringing ruins to ruins. Wherever they go, whatever they do, their sad self comes along. A plane ticket or a pill or some plant medicine is a treadmill, not a shortcut. What you seek will come only if you sit and do the work, if you probe yourself with real self-awareness and patience.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 245)
“We must be disciplined about our discipline and moderate in our moderation. Life is about balance, not about swinging from one pole to the other. Too many people alternate between working and bingeing, on television, on food, on video games, on laying around wondering why they are bored. The chaos of life leads into the chaos of planning a vacation. Sitting alone with a canvas? A book club? A whole afternoon for cycling? Chopping down trees? Who has the time? If Churchill had the time, if Gladstone had the time, you have the time.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 240)
“Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death. The higher the interest rate and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.”
Arthur Schopenhauer, via Stillness is the Key (Page 230)
“People say, ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead,’ as they hasten that very death, both literally and figuratively. They trade their health for a few more working hours. They trade the long-term viability of their business or their career before the urgency of some temporal crisis. If we treat sleep as a luxury, it is the first to go when we get busy. If sleep is what happens only when everything is done, work and others will constantly be impinging on your personal space. You will feel frazzled and put upon, like a machine that people don’t take care of and assume will always function.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 230)
“Good decisions are not made by those who are running on empty. What kind of interior life can you have, what kind of thinking can you do, when you’re utterly and completely overworked? It’s a vicious cycle: We end up having to work more to fix the errors we made when we would have been better off resting, having consciously said no instead of reflexively saying yes. We end up pushing good people away (and losing relationships) because we’re wound so tight and have so little patience.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 225)
“Breakthroughs seem to happen with stunning regularity in the shower or on a long hike. Where don’t they happen? Shouting to be heard in a bar. Three hours into a television binge. Nobody realizes just how much they love someone while they’re booking back-to back-to-back meetings. If solitude is the school of genius, as the historian Edward Gibbon put it, then the crowded, busy world is the purgatory of the idiot.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 215)
“It is difficult to think clearly in rooms filled with other people. It’s difficult to understand yourself if you are never by yourself. It’s difficult to have much in the way of clarity and insight if your life is a constant party and your home is a construction site. Sometimes you have to disconnect in order to better connect with yourself and with the people you serve and love.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 215)
“Monks and priests take vows of poverty because it will mean fewer distractions, and more room (literally) for the spiritual pursuit to which they have committed. No one is saying we have to go that far, but the more we own, the more we oversee, the less room we have to move and, ironically, the less still we become. Start by walking around your house and filling up trash bags and boxes with everything you don’t use. Think of it as clearing more room for your mind and your body. Give yourself space. Give your mind a rest. Want to have less to be mad about? Less to covet or be triggered by? Give more away.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 210)
“No one dogged by creditors is free. Living outside your means is not glamorous. Behind the appearances, it’s exhausting. It’s also dangerous. The person who is afraid to lose their stuff, who has their identity wrapped up in their things, gives their enemies an opening. They make themselves extra vulnerable to fate.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 209)
“Mo’ money, mo’ problems, and also mo’ stuff, less freedom.”
Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 209)



