“I believe that we are here—on this star is space—to help one another. And first, we have to survive. And then we have to thrive. And to thrive—to express ourselves—we have to know ourselves. What do you love? If you get close to what you love, who you are will be revealed to you—and it expands.”
Ethan Hawke, TED
“Do you need to give yourself permission to do something big for your special year? Just imagine, as an alternative, spending the rest of your life being dragged behind the Great Dane of your overcommitments to others. For five minutes it’s cute. Over a lifetime, it destroys what’s best in you and what’s unique about you. If you don’t care about that, it’s too bad. Maybe they got you, all those voices working away from the time you were a little [child], trying to convince you that your only needs were to meet other people’s needs. But I think you do care. A lot.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 151)
“All kinds of strange things happened to shape you as you were growing up. Your parents pushed you. Or they ignored you. Your mother was overinvolved. Or your father was underinvolved. Your older sister was bossy. Or your younger brother was bratty. Your family had too much money. Or not enough money. But none of these things that happened to you are you. Otherwise you and I would be nothing more than the pretzels fate twisted us into when the dough of the self was still soft.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 149)
“Every couple of years a farmer lets his fields go fallow so the soil can replenish itself. Why should we be any different?”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 127)
“We can’t play out the stories of our lives according to the script other people have for us. That script may say we can’t get anything we need unless we’re sick. But you and I know that a life can be sick even when the mind and body are healthy. And sometimes the only way to heal a life is to give yourself the gift of a year in which you have an adventure where you make a dream come true. So what if you have to fight to win the freedom to give yourself that? Suppose you don’t do it. You’ll regret it forever.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 117)
“If you let fear be a reason not to explore what life has to offer, you will never explore what life has to offer. A little shiver of fear is a necessary price you must pay to give yourself the gift of a year that involves trying something new. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. If you’re not trembling just a little bit, you’re not really venturing anything either. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to remember to not be afraid of fear.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 117)
“You cannot explore the world and the possibilities life has to offer without moving outside the safe neighborhood of your life as it is, without wandering into some new and dangerous neighborhoods where anything can happen. Let’s tell it like it is. If it’s a real adventure, if it’s something really new, there’s got to be an element of danger somewhere. Otherwise you’re not really trying anything new at all. You’re just playing around with the edges of your old life.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 116)
“We never lose the good parts of ourselves we really care about. All the parts of yourself you’re wanting to put back in your life are there waiting for you. The pain you feel comes from the way these missing parts of yourself slowly choke from lack of oxygen when they’re buried. All you have to do is identify what’s really missing. Then make sure you find room for it in your life.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 111)
“We all need a time and place for ourselves where the walls of our usual lives disappear. Sometimes taking yourself out of the hypnotic context of your everyday life is the only way to begin to be able to listen to the still voice within. When you do, listen carefully. Listen for the ways you whisper to yourself, ‘This is who I really am. This is what I need. This is what I want to do.’ When you hear new whisperings about these things, your gift of a year has rescued some lost piece of yourself and made it possible for you to put more of the you back in your life.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 110)
“We all need balance in our lives. That’s a given. Work and play, friends and family, romance and finance all must be given their due. So far, so good. The problem comes when we put too much on our plate and then insist that everything still has to balance out. It’s simple arithmetic. When you’re overcommitted and insist on balance, everything gets short shrift. When one thing needs special attention, you can’t pay attention to it if you’re insisting on balance.”
Mira Kirshenbaum, The Gift of a Year (Page 96)
“Each second we live in a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and will never be again. And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all of the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another child like you… You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is like you, a marvel? You must cherish one another. You must work—we must all work—to make this world worthy of its children.”
Pablo Casals, Joys and Sorrows
“Success is largely the failures you avoid. Health is the injuries you don’t sustain. Wealth is the purchases you don’t make. Happiness is the objects you don’t desire. Peace of mind is the arguments you don’t engage. Avoid the bad to protect the good.”
James Clear, Blog
“You could be good today. But instead, you choose tomorrow.”
Marcus Aurelius, Medium
“The less expensive stuff you have, the less there is to worry about.”
Ryan Holiday, Medium
“Heraclitus said, ‘No man steps in the same river twice.’ The second time around, both man and river are different than they were before. This is why I’m a fan of rereading books (and watching movies, walking on my old college campus, and so many of the things we do once and assume we’ve ‘got’). The books are the same, but we change between reads. The world changes, too.”
Ryan Holiday, Medium
“You have to put your precepts up for display. You have to make them inescapable or else the idea will escape you when it counts.”
Ryan Holiday, Medium
“Go to what will teach you the most, not what will pay the most. It’s about choosing opportunities that you’ll learn the most from. That’s the rubric. That’s how you get better. People sometimes try to sweeten speaking offers by mentioning how glamorous the location is or how much fun it will be. I’d be more impressed if they told me I was going to have a conversation that was going to blow my mind.”
Ryan Holiday, Medium
“Competition is for losers.”
Peter Thiel, Medium
“When someone tells you something is wrong, they’re almost always right. When someone tells you how to fix it, they’re almost always wrong.”
Ryan Holiday, Medium
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby