The question we must ask for ourselves is: Are we going to be miserable just because other people are?
External factors influence the path, but not the direction: forward.
We decide whether we’ll assent or reject. No one can force us to give up or to believe something that is untrue.
To achieve stillness, we’ll need to focus on three domains, the timeless trinity of mind, body, soul – the head, the heart, the flesh.
Plug that hole – that one, right in the middle of your face – that can drain you of your vital life force. Watch what happens. Watch how much better you get.
Because obstacles are not only to be expected but embraced. Embraced? Yes, because these obstacles are actually opportunities to test ourselves, to try new things, and, ultimately, to triumph. The Obstacle Is the Way.
He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. – PROVERBS 16:32.
Vires acquirit eundo.
They start. Anywhere. Anyhow. They don’t care if the conditions are perfect or if they’re being slighted. Because they know that once they get started, if they can just get some momentum, they can make it work.
If we’re not careful, however, we can end up wasting an incredible amount of time trying to keep the world from displeasing or disrespecting us.
Life can be frustrating. Oftentimes we know what our problems are. We may even know what to do about them. But we fear that taking action is too risky, that we don’t have the experience or that it’s not how we pictured it or because it’s too expensive, because it’s too soon, because we think something better might come along, because it might not work. And you know what happens as a result? Nothing. We do nothing.
The bigger the ego the harder the fall.
We begin to love our enemies and love those persons that hate us whether in collective life or individual life by looking at ourselves.” We must strip ourselves of the ego that protects and suffocates us, because, as he said, “Hate at any point is a cancer that gnaws away at the very vital center of your life and your existence. It is like eroding acid that eats away the best and the objective center of your life.
From the ruin came the opportunity for great progress and improvement.
Replace fear with the process. Depend on it. Lean on it. Trust in it.
Finding the universal in the personal, and the personal in the universal, is not only the secret to art and leadership and even entrepreneurship, it is the secret to centering oneself. It both turns down the volume of noise in the world and tunes one in to the quiet wavelength of wisdom that sages and philosophers have long been on.
Only ego thinks embarrassment or failure are more than what they are.
The same drive that made him great is suddenly a great weakness.
Whom the gods wish to destroy,” Cyril Connolly famously said, “they first call promising.
For your work to have truth in it, it must come from truth. If you want to be more than a flash in the pan, you must be prepared to focus on the long term.