“‘Stop thinking about the damn wall!’ [Daddio] said. ‘There is no wall. There are only bricks. Your job is to lay this brick perfectly. Then move on to the next brick. Then lay that brick perfectly. Then the next one. Don’t be worrying about no wall. Your only concern is one brick.‘ … The days dragged on, and as much as I hated to admit it, I started to see what he was talking about. When I focused on the wall, the job felt impossible. Never-ending. But when I focused on one brick, everything got easy—I knew I could lay one damn brick well…”
Will Smith, Will (Page viii)
“There is much in life we cannot control, with death as the ultimate example of this. We will experience illness and physical pain. We will go through separations with people. We will face failures from our own mistakes and the nasty malevolence of our fellow humans. And our task is to accept these moments and even embrace them, not for the pain but for the opportunities to learn and strengthen ourselves. In doing so, we affirm life itself, accepting all of its possibilities.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 449)
“Who you choose to spend time with likely has a greater long-term impact on your health, wealth, and happiness than almost any other decision you make. Yet, most people will put more conscious thought into the color of their smartphone case.”
Mark Manson, The Breakthrough
“Relationships are the multipliers of life. Good relationships make other good things even better. Bad relationships make other bad things even worse.”
Mark Manson, The Breakthrough
“Talking and reasoning does not even have one thousandth the influence a true example has. All lessons about how to behave are worthless when children see the opposite in real life.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 373)
“You create the rich or arid landscape of your brain. If you constrict your thoughts to the same obsessions, to the tiny realm of your smartphone, that is the world the you create for yourself. What a waste of this magnificent instrument that you have inherited! But if you attempt to move in the opposite direction, you will notice the opposite dynamic—continual expansion, mental doors opening up in every direction, creative connections and new ideas flooding your brain. You will not want to stop exploring, because your exploration becomes a continuous source of pleasure for the restless energy of the human mind.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 448)
“Terrible is the situation of those who cannot perceive spiritual growth in themselves. They can see only physical life, which will disappear in time. When you understand your spiritual being and live with it, then instead of despairing you understand the joy that can never be destroyed, which always grows.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 371)
“What we feel within us functions like an invitation for others to join us and feel the same, whether it is dense and heavy emotions or light and caring ones. It is easy to get angry when someone close to you is angry because the anger of the past that is already deep within your subconscious gets activated and pulled to the surface. This is why one of the biggest signs of maturity is being able to dwell in the mind state of your choice, even if others are putting negativity out into the space you are sharing.”
Yung Pueblo
“Everyone has one. It’s the part of ourselves we won’t look at, acknowledge or risk disturbing. It’s the story or trauma or situation that must be avoided at all costs. People will choose careers, families and opportunities simply to avoid confronting the little tiny voice that is hiding inside. And marketers with low standards will brazenly manipulate us to extract money spent to protect the sore spot. It’s almost impossible to make it go away. But if we’re brave enough to acknowledge it exists, it’s possible to help it take up far less room.”
Seth Godin, Blog
“When drawing boundaries, it may be uncomfortable. You don’t need to protect people from feeling uncomfortable or feel obliged to smooth the tension. It’s okay for people to feel bad and weird when they’ve crossed someone’s boundary.”
Unknown, Talking Points For Life
“Boundaries are the edge territory of what belongs to us and what belongs to someone else. They are the ways we communicate our needs. They are what allow us to feel safe among strangers, in everyday interactions, and in our closest relationships. Boundaries aren’t just the hard nos, they are also the maybes and the yesses-with-limits.”
Dr. Faith G. Harper, Unf*ck Your Boundaries
“The potential of future suffering is not a reason to suffer now. On the contrary, it’s a reason to be present now. To be good now. To love and live, now. That future may come…and you’ll meet it. If there’s something you can do to prevent it, do it. But hopelessness and despair and dread and anger? They do nothing for nobody–least of all you.”
Ryan Holiday, Daily Stoic Blog
“If you raise people to praise only wealth, power, and glory, then naturally they will praise only these things. If you raise people to love the feeling of love, they will start to live in love.”
Mee-Tee, via A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 363)
“Your calendar is a better measure of success than your bank account.”
James Clear, Blog
“No one is perfect. We all have bad days. It’s okay to feel a little discouraged. But to give up? To not even try? That is criminal. ‘Disgraceful,’ Marcus Aurelius would say, ‘for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong.’ All of us have fallen short in the last year…and the years before that. We broke our resolutions. We made the same mistakes again and again. We were ‘jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances,’ as Marcus said. But now it’s time to pick ourselves up and try again. We have to keep going. We can’t give up. Because the alternative is unthinkable.”
Ryan Holiday, Daily Stoic Blog
“Either don’t blame anyone…or blame yourself. For whatever happens. For everything that happens. Those are the options.”
Ryan Holiday, Daily Stoic Blog
“It is not the blaming of evil but the glorifying of goodness that creates harmony in our life.”
Lucy Malory, via A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 359)
“The highest creative expression for a human being is to be able to create something new right in the face of adversity, and the worse the adversity, the greater the opportunity.”
Phil Stutz, Stutz