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    “[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)

      “He could have remained with Kamaswami for years, acquiring money, squandering money, fattening his belly and letting his soul go thirsty; he could have gone on living for years in that gentle, well-cushioned hell—if this had not come: the moment of utter hopelessness and helplessness, that extreme moment, when he had hung over the rushing water and had been ready to destroy himself. He had felt that despair, that deepest disgust, and he had no succumbed: the bird, the cheerful source and voice in him were still alive; and that was why he felt this joy, why he laughed, why his face beamed under his graying hair.”

      Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (Page 86)

        “The lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.”

        Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (Page 30)

          “It turns out that a life lived conveniently isn’t always a better one.”

          Seth Godin

            “Though the patient enters therapy insisting that he wants to change, more often than not, what he really wants is to remain the same and to get the therapist to make him feel better. His goal is to become a more effective neurotic, so that he may have what he wants without risking getting into anything new. He prefers the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.”

            Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! (Page 4)

              “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)

                    “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”

                    Andy Grove | Read Matt’s Blog on this Quote ➜

                      “The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in our doing too little; not in our living above our ability, but rather in our living below our capacities.”

                      Benjamin E. Mays

                        “So I waited. Then I got used to waiting. Eventually, waiting was more real than what we had.”

                        André Aciman, Enigma Variations

                        Paul Gillin Quote on ROI and How To Maximize Your Return On Investments in Life

                          “When you say ROI, do you mean return on investment or risk of inaction?”

                          Paul Gillin

                          Beyond the Quote (246/365)

                          Why do we push ourselves physically? Maybe so that we might better appreciate our physical normal. Why do we travel far from home? Maybe so that we can return home with fresh eyes. Why are we encouraged constantly to grow and expand our minds? Maybe so that we might have a better understanding of the world. Why do we ever do anything outside of our comfort zone? Maybe it’s so that we can expand our zone of comfort for the rest of the time we’re not outside of it?

                          Read More »Paul Gillin Quote on ROI and How To Maximize Your Return On Investments in Life

                          Yoda Quote on Facing Your Fears

                            Yoda Quote on Facing Your Fears

                            “Named must your fear be before banish it you can.”

                            Yoda

                            Beyond the Quote (123/365)

                            Many times we don’t even realize that we’re living in fear. When we find our comforts, we get comfortable living with them. It’s instinctual. It’s natural. It’s how we’re wired and what we’re drawn to. We’re living in a sort-of primal state of constant pleasure seeking and pain avoidance. Why wouldn’t that be the case? Who actually would want to seek out fear? Confront fear? Work to overcome fear? It’s scary! It’s uncomfortable! There’s so much resistance! You’d have to have a really good reason to do any of that.

                            Read More »Yoda Quote on Facing Your Fears

                              We’re all on journeys, and sometimes we spend so much time on and invest so much energy in heading in one direction that the idea of any other direction is both foreign and frightening.  Our journeys themselves become comfort zones, and sometimes hopping off one rainbow and onto the next is exactly what we need.  Other times we may realize that the path we were on helped reveal the path we should be on, and that adventure of twists and turns will last our lifetime, and that’s okay.  No one needs to have everything figured out, and honestly, nobody really does, even if their social media posts present a different picture.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 115)

                                “We are all fighting the same battle.  All of us are torn between comfort and performance, between settling for mediocrity or being willing to suffer in order to become our best self, all the damn time.  We make those kinds of decisions a dozen or more times each day.” ~ David Goggins, Can’t Hurt Me