“[Lou Gehrig] knew that getting comfortable was the enemy, and that success is an endless series of invitations to get comfortable. It’s easy to be disciplined when you have nothing. What about when you have everything? What about when you’re so talented that you can get away with not giving everything? The thing about Lou Gehrig is that he chose to be in control. This wasn’t discipline enforced from above or by the team. His temperance was an interior force, emanating from deep within his soul. He chose it, despite the sacrifices, despite the fact that others allowed themselves to forgo such penance and got away with it. Despite the face that it usually wasn’t recognized—not until long after he was gone anyway.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 9)
Don’t Let The Tame Ones Tell You How To Live [Poster]
Why We ♥ It: Some of the best advice I (Matt here) ever got was: don’t take life advice from people who aren’t living a life you want to live and don’t take criticism from people you wouldn’t go to for advice. I created this poster to act as a reminder to listen more closely to our role models and less closely to our critics, trolls, and tamed-comfort-zone-hugger acquaintances. It’s also a perfect gift for the outdoor adventurer, travel enthusiast, or solo explorer (or soon to be) who lives the anti-tame lifestyle and wants to beautifully illustrate it on the walls of their home (that they’ll rarely be there to see ;) Available in print or digital download.
“The lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.”
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (Page 30)
“There will never be a perfect time to do something that stretches you. That’s true whether you are starting a business, having a child, changing careers, or wrestling with any number of challenges. That’s not a license to be reckless and never think things through, but at some point you have to embrace the uncertainty because it is the only path forward. If you were ready for it, it wouldn’t be growth.”
James Clear
“When we feel anxious about something, the most natural human response is to avoid it. We know that if we stay away, we’ll feel safe, for now. But avoidance not only maintains anxiety, it makes it worse over time… The things you do most of the time become your comfort zone. So, if you want to feel less anxious about something, do it as often as you can.”
Julie Smith, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?
“The greatest gift that life will hand you is discomfort. Discomfort is not trying to punish you! It is just trying to show you where you are capable of more, deserving of better, able to change, or meant for greater than you have right now. In almost every case, it is simply informing you that there is more out there for you, and it is pushing you to go pursue it.”
Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You (Page 229)
“Making big, sweeping changes is not difficult because we are flawed, incompetent beings. It’s difficult because we are not meant to live outside of our comfort zones. If you want to change your life, you need to make tiny, nearly undetectable decisions every hour of every day until those choices are habituated. Then you’ll just continue to do them.”
Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You (Page 112)
“It isn’t that you wake up one day and decide that’s it: I am going to be weak. No. It is a slow incremental process. It chips away at our will—it chips away at our discipline. We sleep in a little later. We miss a workout, then another. We start to eat what we shouldn’t eat and drink what we shouldn’t drink. And, without realizing it—one day, you wake up and you have become something that you never would have allowed. Instead of strong—you are weak. Instead of disciplined—you are disorganized and lost. Instead of moving forward and progressing—you are moving backward and decaying.”
Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom (Page 72)
“It wasn’t in a war. It wasn’t in a battle. It isn’t in a melee of fire and destruction that most of us succumb to weakness. We are taken apart, slowly. Convinced to take an easier path. Enticed by comfort. Most of us aren’t defeated in one decisive battle. We are defeated one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time that chips away at who we should really be.”
Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom (Page 72)
“I want you to be horrified—terrified—of sitting on the sidelines and doing nothing. That is what I want you to be afraid of: waking up in six days or six weeks or six year or sixty years and being no closer to your goal… you have made no progress. That is the horror. That is the nightmare. That is what you really need to be afraid of: being stagnant.”
Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom (Page 41)
“If you never fail, you’re only trying things that are too easy and playing far below your level… If you can’t remember any time in the last six months when you failed, you aren’t trying to do difficult enough things.”
Eliezer Yudkowsky (Read Matt’s Blog On This Quote)
“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”
Andy Grove | Read Matt’s Blog on this Quote ➜