Marcus reminded himself: “Don’t await the perfection of Plato’s Republic.” He wasn’t expecting the world to be exactly the way he wanted it to be, but Marcus knew instinctively, as the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper would later write, that “he alone can do good who knows what things are like and what their situation is.
All external events can be equally beneficial to us because we can turn them all upside down and make use of them. They can teach us a lesson we were reluctant to otherwise learn.
As Ben Franklin’s proverb put it: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Paper,” she said, “has more patience than people.
Although we share with many others a vision for greatness, we understand that our path toward it is very different from theirs. Following Sherman and Isocrates, we understand that ego is our enemy on that journey, so that when we do achieve our success, it will not sink us but make us stronger.
An education can’t be “hacked”; there are no shortcuts besides hacking it every single day. If you don’t, they drop you.
But he learned early that the tight-rope he walked would tolerate only restraint and had no forgiveness for ego. Honestly, not many paths do.
Napoleon described war in simple terms: Two armies are two bodies that clash and attempt to frighten each other. At impact, there is a moment of panic and it is that moment that the superior commander turns to his advantage.
There is a balance. Soccer coach Tony Adams expresses it well. Play for the name on the front of the jersey, he says, and they’ll remember the name on the back. When.
It was Eisenhower who defined freedom as the opportunity for self-discipline. In fact, freedom and power and success require self-discipline. Because without it, chaos and complacency move in. Discipline, then, is how we maintain that freedom.
Seen properly, everything that happens – be it an economic crash or a personal tragedy – is a chance to move forward.
We instinctively think about how much better we’d like any given situation to be. We start thinking about what we’d rather have. Rarely do we consider how much worse things could have been.
Rise above our physical limitations. Find hobbies that rest and replenish us. Develop a reliable, disciplined routine. Spend time getting active outdoors. Seek out solitude and perspective. Learn to sit – to do nothing when called for. Get enough sleep and rein in our workaholism. Commit to causes bigger than ourselves.
Ego is stolen. Confidence is earned.
I don’t care if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.
History relates no instance in which a conqueror has been surfeited with conquests. – STEFAN ZWEIG.
He was constantly probing other people’s views. Why do you think that? How do you know? What evidence do you have? But what about this or that? This open-minded search for truth, for wisdom, was what made Socrates the most brilliant and challenging man in Athens – so much so that they later killed him for it.
You could say that failure always arrives uninvited, but through our ego, far too many of us allow it to stick around.
Bill Walsh says, “Almost always, your road to victory goes through a place called ’failure.
One day is as all days, as the Stoics liked to say.