“A man who is willing to undertake the discipline and the difficulty of mending his own ways is worth more to the conservation movement than a hundred who are insisting merely that the government and industries mend their ways.”
Wendell Berry, via Sunbeams (Page 51)
24 Russell Brand Quotes from Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions
Excerpt: This collection of Russell Brand Quotes from Recovery isn’t just for ‘addicts’—it’s for anyone with addictive tendencies… it’s for us all.
Read More »24 Russell Brand Quotes from Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions
“None of us can adequately control the meteorology of other people: they’re nice, they’re nasty, they come, they go. We have no choice but to address, alter and amend the inner coordinate if we want to have a different model of reality, if we want to have more choices.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 122) | Read Matt’s Blog on this quote ➜
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
Seneca | Read Matt’s Blog on this quote ➜
Gerhard Richter Quote on Ideas and How They Won’t Come to You—You Have To Find Them
“It is a danger to wait around for an idea to occur to you. You have to find the idea.”
Gerhard Richter, via Daily Rituals
Beyond the Quote (Day 413)
Ideas are the treasure of your mind. They represent pockets of overlapping information that have the potential to yield a valuable return. And like treasure, they’re revealed only through motion, activity, disruption—never the opposite. Treasure is buried. It’s hidden away. It’s off the beaten path. It doesn’t just lay itself on the front door of your mind. It’s only discovered in the depths of your consciousness. It doesn’t come to you; you go to it.
Read More »Gerhard Richter Quote on Ideas and How They Won’t Come to You—You Have To Find Them“Here’s a funny exercise: think about all the upsetting things you don’t know about—stuff people might have said about you behind your back, mistakes you might have made that never came to your attention, things you dropped or lost without even realizing it. What’s your reaction? You don’t have one because you don’t know about it. In other words, it is possible to hold no opinion about a negative thing. You just need to cultivate that power instead of wielding it accidentally.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 49)
“Oddly, counterintuitively, in our culture of individualism and self-centered valour, it is by surrendering that we can begin to succeed. It is by ‘admitting that we have no power’ that we can begin the process of accessing all the power we will ever need.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 27)
“Who then is invincible? The one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice.”
Epictetus, via The Daily Stoic (Page 44)
Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions [Book]
Book Overview: With a rare mix of honesty, humor, and compassion, comedian and movie star Russell Brand mines his own wild story and shares the advice and wisdom he has gained through his fourteen years of recovery. Brand speaks to those suffering along the full spectrum of addiction―from drugs, alcohol, caffeine, and sugar addictions to addictions to work, stress, bad relationships, digital media, and fame. Brand understands that addiction can take many shapes and sizes and how the process of staying clean, sane, and unhooked is a daily activity. He believes that the question is not “Why are you addicted?” but “What pain is your addiction masking? Why are you running―into the wrong job, the wrong life, the wrong person’s arms?”
Buy from Amazon! Listen on Audible!
Great on Kindle. Great Experience. Great Value. The Kindle edition of this book comes highly recommended on Amazon.
Post(s) Inspired By This Book:
“We would never let another person jerk us around the way we let our impulses do. It’s time we start seeing it that way—that we’re not puppets that can be made to dance this way or that way just because we feel like it. We should be the ones in control, not our emotions, because we are independent, self-sufficient people.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 42)
13 Poignant Tara Westover Quotes from Educated
Excerpt: From one of the most acclaimed books of our time, these 13 Tara Westover quotes from Educated are poignant, powerful, and well worth the read.
Read More »13 Poignant Tara Westover Quotes from Educated
“It’s strange how you give the people you love so much power over you.”
Tara Westover, Educated
Marcus Aurelius Quote on Remembering Our Natural Born Power To Choose Between Good and Evil
“Erase the false impressions from your mind by constantly saying to yourself, I have it in my soul to keep out any evil, desire or any kind of disturbance—instead, seeing the true nature of things, I will give them only their due. Always remember this power that nature gave you.”
Marcus Aurelius, The Daily Stoic (Page 34)
Beyond the Quote (Day 391)
Your current ability to utilize the power nature gave you to keep out evil, desire, and disturbance is largely dependent on your track record. Your track record contains within it all of the successes and failures you’ve accumulated throughout your lifetime. And confidence—the confidence you have in your ability to act—is a result of nothing more than your remembered successes (or lack thereof).
Read More »Marcus Aurelius Quote on Remembering Our Natural Born Power To Choose Between Good and Evil“The accident would always make me think of the Apache women, and of all the decisions that go into making a life—the choices people make, together and on their own, that combine to produce any single event. Grains of sand, incalculable, pressing into sediment, then rock.”
Tara Westover, Educated (Page 40)
Alan Watts Quote on The Present and How It’s Not A Result Of The Past
“Everyone automatically assumes that the present is the result of the past. Turn it around, and consider whether the past may not be a result of the present. The past may be streaming back from the now, like the country as seen from an airplane.”
Alan Watts, Sunbeams (Page 14)
Beyond the Quote (Day 388)
Seeing the past as being the cause of your present steals from you the accountability that’s needed to take ownership of your future. For, you can’t change the outcome of your future if you’re busy blaming what happened in the past. You have to realize, as Watts outlines above, that it’s the present that caused the past, not the past that caused the present.
Read More »Alan Watts Quote on The Present and How It’s Not A Result Of The Past“In all circumstances—adversity or advantage—we really have just one thing we need to do: focus on what is in our control as opposed to what is not. Right now we might be laid low with struggles, whereas just a few years ago we might have lived high on the hog, and in just a few days we might be doing so well that success is actually a burden. One thing will stay constant: our freedom of choice—both in the big picture and the small picture. Ultimately, this is clarity.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 27)
“I looked for someone outside of myself to dream up and create what only I could. I eventually realized that no one else can see your big picture. Only you know the journey you’re on. Others can contribute, and you should definitely surround yourself with smart people who lift you higher and share in your vision. But the truth is, even with wise counsel, only you know what your next step should be. All my best decisions in life have come when I’ve tuned in to what felt like the best move for me.”
Oprah Winfrey, via More Myself (Page 193)
Ram Dass Quote on Moving Forward and How Your Next Message Is Always Right Where You Are
“The next message you need is always right where you are.”
Ram Dass, Sunbeams (Page 7)
Beyond the Quote (Day 379)
Did you read that right? The next message you need—not the next message you want. Most of us are pretty good at ignoring the messages we don’t want to hear. So much so that many of us, I suspect, become blind and deaf to their presence entirely. The problem, of course, is that those messages tends to be the very messages that we most need to hear. And how do we hear something that we’ve become deaf to? How can we see again the messages that we’ve become blind to? It’s actually quite simple really.
Read More »Ram Dass Quote on Moving Forward and How Your Next Message Is Always Right Where You Are“A wise person knows what’s inside their circle of control and what is outside of it. The good news is that it’s pretty easy to remember what is inside our control. According to the Stoics, the circle of control contains just one thing: YOUR MIND. That’s right, even your physical body isn’t completely within the circle. After all, you could be struck with a physical illness or impairment at any moment. You could be traveling in a foreign country and be thrown in jail. But this is all good news because it drastically reduces the amount of things that you need to think about. There is clarity in simplicity.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 21)