“I try to remind myself that having to stay late at the office to write, trying to push through on no sleep, is disrespectful to the craft. When I spend that extra time on my phone instead of going to bed, when I plan a trip or a week poorly, I am cheating my work, cheating my family. I’m doing something unfair to the stranger I happen to bump into. Mostly, I am cheating and harming myself. A 2017 study actually found that lack of sleep increases negative repetitive thinking. Abusing the body trains the mind to abuse itself.”
Ryan Holiday
“When I finish the day’s work, I turn my mind off. The office is closed. The work has been handed off to the Unconscious, to the Muse. I respect her. I give her her time. If I see family or friends, I never talk about what I’m working on. I politely deflect any queries. But beyond not talking with others, I refuse to talk to myself. I don’t obsess. I don’t worry. I don’t second-guess. I let it rest. The office is closed.”
Steven Pressfield, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be (Page 79)
“The toxicity of self-discipline occurs when it is shame-driven, when you buy into a narrative that you are worthless or a failure for not being disciplined. I try to view both self-discipline and self-care as tools/skills. It’s important to be able to do hard things when necessary. But that doesn’t mean doing hard things is always necessary. Similarly, it’s important to be able to slow down and enjoy yourself when necessary. But that doesn’t mean slowing down and enjoying yourself is always necessary.”
Mark Manson
“Learn to be alone, but never get too attached to your aloneness. Remain capable of relating with others. Learn to meditate, but don’t move so far to an extreme that you become incapable of love. Be silent, peaceful, still, but don’t get obsessed by this stillness, or you will not be able to face the marketplace. It is easy to be silent when you are alone. It is difficult to be silent when you are with people, but that difficulty has to be faced. Once you are able to be silent with people, you have attained; now nothing can destroy it.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 163)
“The faster and busier things get, the more we need to build thinking time into our schedule. And the noisier things get, the more we need to build quiet reflection spaces in which we can truly focus.”
Greg McKeown, Essentialism (Page 68)
“With meditation there is a deep necessity for love. They are both like wings, and you cannot fly with one wing. If meditation is going well, suddenly you will see that love is missing. If love is going very well, suddenly you will see that meditation is missing. If nothing is going well, then it is okay. One settles with one’s sadness, one’s closedness. But when one wing has started moving, the other wing is needed.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 95)
“Your profession should only be one part of life. It should not overlap into every dimension of your life, as ordinarily it does. A doctor becomes almost a twenty-four-hour doctor. He thinks about it, he talks about it. Even when he is eating, he is a doctor. While he is making love, he is a doctor. Then it is madness; it is insane. My suggestion is that you work for five or six hours. Use the remaining hours for other things: for sleep, for music, for poetry, for meditation, for love, or for just fooling around. That too is needed. If a person becomes too wise and cannot fool around, he becomes heavy, somber, serious. He misses life.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 87)
“Stop fighting with existence. Stop all conflict and the idea of conquering—surrender. And when you surrender, what can you do? If the mind goes astray, you go; if it doesn’t go, that too is okay. Sometimes you will be centered, and sometimes you will not. But deep down you will always remain centered because there is no worry. Otherwise everything can become a worry. Then going astray becomes just like a sin one is not to commit—and the problem is created again.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 35)
A Short Story About A Centipede and A Frog—and How To Better Balance Thinking and Being
Excerpt: The following is an excerpt from Everyday Osho. In it, we meet a centipede and a frog and see the crippling effect overthinking can have in life.
Read More »A Short Story About A Centipede and A Frog—and How To Better Balance Thinking and Being
