“Toni Morrison came home one day complaining about her job cleaning someone’s house to her father. She expected him to get angry on her behalf or to pity her. Instead, he said, ‘Listen. You don’t live there. You live here. With your people. Go to work. Get your money. And come on home.’ What he was teaching her, Morrison later wrote, became a set of principles she based her life around. (1) Whatever the work is, do it well—not for the boss but for yourself. (2) You make the job; it doesn’t make you. (3) Your real life is with us, your family. (4) You are not the work you do; you are the person you are.”
Ryan Holiday
“Trying to get those near you to behave more like you is the opposite of love and it reflects your lack of inner peace. If you truly love someone, you have to accept them as they are, you can certainly give them suggestions from time to time but in no way can you control them. You can also create boundaries when necessary but you can never force them to change. Control is a manifestation of your own insecurity”
Yung Pueblo
“A Stoic is not a scold. Nor are they a tyrant. We are strict with ourselves, tolerant with others. Our discipline is our discipline, as it should be. Our own struggles should keep us busy enough that we shouldn’t even consider getting up in other people’s business to fix theirs. Instead let’s meet others where they are, accept and love them as they are. Because anything else is outside our control.”
Ryan Holiday, Daily Stoic Blog
“‘Surrender’ had always been a negative word for me—it meant losing or failing or giving up. But my burgeoning relationship with the ocean was exposing that my sense of control was actually an illusion. Surrender transformed from a weakness word to an infinite power concept. I had had a bias toward action—thrusting, pushing, striving, struggling, doing—and I began to realize that their opposites were equally as powerful—inaction, receptiveness, acceptance, non-resistance, being.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 387)
