Churchill’s old acronym: KBO. Keep Buggering On.
Think about this the next time you face that choice: Do I need this? Or is it really about ego? Are you ready to make the right decision? Or do the prizes still glitter off in the distance?
He’s not that different from the rest of us. We’re all full of anxieties, doubts, impotence, pains, and sometimes a little tinge of crazy.
The impediment to action advances action.
Very few go astray who comport themselves with restraint. – CONFUCIUS.
It is not enough only to be a student at the beginning. It is a position that one has to assume for life. Learn from everyone and everything. From the people you beat, and the people who beat you, from the people you dislike, even from your supposed enemies. At every step and every juncture in life, there is the opportunity to learn – and even if the lesson is purely remedial, we must not let ego block us from hearing it again.
We don’t get to choose what happens to us, but we can always choose how we feel about it. And why on earth would you choose to feel anything but good?
What is better than these two extremes – ego and imposter syndrome – but simple confidence? Earned. Rational. Objective. Still.
It is the act of turning what we must do into what we get to do.
We can learn to perceive things differently, to cut through the illusions that others believe or fear. We can stop seeing the “problems” in front of us as problems. We can learn to focus on what things really are.
It doesn’t matter who or how many come at you, you have to be you. Confidently. Authentically. Bravely.
One way to remember who you are,” he said, “is to remember who your heroes are.
To each,” Winston Churchill would say, “there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.
The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life,” Joan Didion observed, “is the source from which self-respect springs.
Courage is honest commitment to noble ideals. The opposite of courage is not, as some argue, being afraid. It’s apathy. It’s disenchantment. It’s despair. It’s throwing up your hands and saying, “What’s the point anyway?
In a world of distraction, focusing is a superpower.
For Hercules, the choice was between vice and virtue, the easy way and the hard way, the well-trod path and the road less traveled. We all face this choice.
Longfellow wrote: Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time.
There is nothing worth doing that is not scary. There is no one who has achieved greatness without wrestling with their own doubts, anxieties, limitations, and demons.
The belief that an individual can make a difference is the first step. The next is understanding that you can be that person.