“…having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another. Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them. To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.” ~ Bill Watterson, Speech
“Before you ask for readers, write the article you wish you could read. Before you ask for the sale, create the product you wish you had. Before you need support, be the supportive friend. Before you need love, be the loving partner. Always give value before you ask for value.” ~ James Clear, Blog
“A life lived thoroughly justifies its own limitations.” ~ Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life (Page 365)
“Perhaps our environmental problems are not best construed technically. Maybe they’re best considered psychologically. The more people sort themselves out, the more responsibility they will take for the world around them and the more problems they will solve. It is better, proverbially, to rule your own spirit than to rule a city. It’s easier to subdue an enemy without than one within. Maybe the environmental problem is ultimately spiritual. If we put ourselves in order, perhaps we will do the same for the world. Of course, what else would a psychologist think?” ~ Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life (Page 364)
“There is no enlightened one. There is only the one who is seeking further enlightenment. Proper Being is process, not a state; a journey, not a destination. It’s the continual transformation of what you know, through encounter with what you don’t know, rather than the desperate clinging to the certainty that is eternally insufficient in any case. Always place your becoming above your current being. That means it is necessary to recognize and accept your insufficiency, so that it can be continually rectified. That’s painful, certainly—but, it’s a good deal.” ~ Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life (Page 362)
“With any loss comes gain. If things don’t work out my way, the consolation prize is a lesson I can keep close to me for the rest of my life. Those lessons encourage more self-awareness, which in turn strengthens my most important relationship—the one with myself.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 273)
“Our progress is paved with mistakes, failures, and defeats, and it’s our resilience that keeps us keeping on. Every misstep is a teacher, and not all the things and people we lose in life end up being losses. Our obsession with winning can cost us much more than losing a healthy outlook when life doesn’t go our way. There’s always a lesson, a nugget of wisdom or a jewel waiting when things look like they won’t be going in our favor; we just have to be willing to pay attention and do some digging if need be. Once we remind ourselves to find opportunity in any situation, there is no loss, just learning. Failure isn’t the opposite of success, it’s a path to it.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 268)
“Life is trial and error, and culture is a collection of some of our best practices handed down from generation to generation, but even they aren’t one-size-fits-all. We have to make our own mistakes to figure everything out. When we were kids, we had to bump into something before we stopped running in the house; we had to burn our hands before we stopped playing with the stove. And now, we gotta get our assess kicked a few dozen times before we get the hang of whatever the rest of this life is.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 267)
“We aren’t victims of life—we are life. We have power over our efforts, which gives us power to adjust our sails depending on which way things are blowing. Self-pity serves as a barrier to those sails and sets us on a one-way path downward. Our problems may not be our fault, but they are definitely our responsibility, so ask yourself how well excessive self-pity and seeking pity help with that responsibility. The more we exercise our power to turn our days around, the more the tools to help us will find us.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 261)
“Look into yourself and try to figure out the big stress that is magnetically attracting all the tiny stresses to feed your volcano. When we address the big ones, the small ones can slide off our shoulders instead of building up into something they don’t need to be. If something minor is setting you off more than normal, it may be a sign that the big one is not far behind. Find a quiet place, get comfortable, and ask the uncomfortable question: “What’s really bugging me?” Whatever it is, it’s important to be the archaeologist and start digging inward to discover what’s down there. You’ll quickly realize that problems have layers, and many of them don’t have other people’s names attached to them. This practice of digging deeper and peeling away layers is important as it’ll help us find the root of many of our problems—which is usually about fear.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 252)
“Sometimes we’ll say small things to someone and they’ll lose their sh*t. It’s not because they’re crazy—it’s because whatever we said was the last straw. People walk around collecting moments of stress, and if left unaddressed, stress will pile up until they hit their limit, and then Kaboom! We’ve all had our own stories of hitting our breaking point and letting the wrong person have it. Those experiences, as unfortunate as they are, also allow us to find compassion when it happens to others.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 225)
“Our problems aren’t always our fault, but they’re still our responsibility.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 247)
“Your ultimate leverage is your craft. Stop taking meetings, stop networking, stop trying to cut corners, and get better at what you do. As you get better, your craft will be your leverage, and opportunities will find you. Devote more time to your craft and become irreplaceable.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 241)
“Self-pity is a tricky thing—an addiction like any other, often birthed from our need to connect and bond with something or somebody. When we feel sorry for ourselves, we decide that no one understands us, and that lets us create a temporary connection to… drumroll… ourselves. It’s one of the most convenient ways to feel a connection—by find a reason to feel sorry for ourselves.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 230)
“Social media is a playground for our insecurities and self-pity. It not only makes us feel like we’re not enough, but it chips away at our confidence, encouraging us to lash out in uninspiring ways. I don’t want to feel insignificant in comparison to others, and I don’t want to belittle others to make myself feel better, so I took responsibility to reduce how often I expose myself to those triggers, which are highly addictive.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 225)
“Power and blame go hand in hand, so if we want to find the power to improve our situation, we’re going to have to take responsibility, no matter how much others did us dirty. Taking the time to see how we contribute to our unfortunate circumstances is the first step to turning things around. Comparing ourselves to others and spending excessive time on social media only fuels our self-pity, and the more aware we are of those triggers, the better off we’ll be. Pointing fingers and taking offense are also the language of self-victimization, and we need to recognize when theirs becomes a habit we can’t kick. The secret to dealing with much of the bullshit life throws us is self-sufficiency, which means finding ways to own the bullshit, even when there are plenty of other people who should be sharing the blame.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 220)
“When things got difficult for me, I naturally painted myself as the victim, hoping to receive some attention and compassion from others, and it worked. What I didn’t realize is that other people could take only so much before my energy became draining. We all have friends who act like Eeyore, constantly moping and complaining about how the universe has conspired against them, and over time, we find ourselves not wanting to be around them as much. This only reinforces their belief that they’re on their own, making them double down on their self-victimization.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 219)
“We’re all going to make horrible choices, but that doesn’t make us horrible people. When we zoom in and look at a horrible choice in isolation, it may simply be an outlier, a lapse of judgment, because of many things. We weren’t born out of the box with the right tools to handle life’s challenges; we need to learn them, and we can’t demonize those who were never taught better ways of handling things.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 210)
“We don’t need to be so dramatic and hyperbolic about everything. Worrying rarely helps anything, and freaking out usually does more damage than good. We need to acknowledge that trauma is an individual experience for everyone, but let’s also be mindful of how often we oversimplify the degree of our traumas while underestimating our resilience. Nothing is the end of the world until it’s the end of the world, and then nothing will matter anyway.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 204)
“Overreacting isn’t going to solve the problem—overreacting usually becomes the problem.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 203)