All of us regularly say yes unthinkingly, or out of vague attraction, or out of greed or vanity. Because we can’t say no – because we might miss out on something if we did. We think “yes” will let us accomplish more, when in reality it prevents exactly what we seek. All of us waste precious life doing things we don’t like, to prove ourselves to people we don’t respect, and to get things we don’t want.
Marcus Aurelius pointed out that we don’t need to “get away from it all.” We just need to look within. “Nowhere you can go is more peaceful – more free of interruptions,” he said, “than your own soul.
The best insights on enough come to us from the East. “When you realize there is nothing lacking,” Lao Tzu says, “the whole world belongs to you.” The verse in The Daodejing: The greatest misfortune is to not know contentment. The word calamity is the desire to acquire. And so those who know the contentment of contentment are always content.
Our soul is where we secure our happiness and unhappiness, contentment or emptiness – and ultimately, determine the extent of our greatness. We must maintain a good one.
I’m looking,” Rickey told him, “for a ball player with the guts not to fight back.
Joe,” he said, “how does it feel that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel has earned in its entire history?” “I’ve got something he can never have,” Heller replied. “And what on earth could that be?” Vonnegut asked. “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.
You can’t make something great flitting around. You have to stick fast, like an axis of the earth. Those who think they will find solutions to all their problems by traveling far from home, perhaps as they stare at the Colosseum or some enormous moss-covered statue of Buddha, Emerson said, are bringing ruins to ruins. Wherever they go, whatever they do, their sad self comes along.
Seneca observes how often powerful people are slaves to their money, to their positions, to their mistresses, even – as was legal in Rome – to their slaves. “No.
It’s supposed to be hard. Your first attempts aren’t going to work. It’s going to take a lot out of you – but energy is an asset we can always find more of. It’s a renewable resource. Stop looking for an epiphany, and start looking for weak points. Stop looking for angels, and start looking for angles. There are options. Settle in for the long haul and then try each and every possibility, and you’ll get there.
The more forgiving and tolerant you can be of others – the more you can be aware of your various privileges and advantages – the more helpful and patient you will be.
It’s time you understand that the world is telling you something with each and every failure and action. It’s feedback – giving you precise instructions on how to improve, it’s trying to wake you up from your cluelessness. It’s trying to teach you something. Listen. Lessons come hard only if you’re deaf to them. Don’t be. Being able to see and understand the world this way is part and parcel of overturning obstacles.
When you worry, ask yourself, ‘What am I choosing to not see right now?’ What important things are you missing because you chose worry over introspection, alertness or wisdom?” Another way of putting it: Does getting upset provide you with more options?
Or, like Rockefeller, choose not to.
Every positive has its negative. Every negative has its positive. The action is in the pushing through – all the way through to the other side. Making a negative into a positive.
Because all we need to do is those three little duties – to try hard, to be honest, and to help others and ourselves. That’s all that’s been asked of us. No more and no less.
It’s at the seemingly bad moments, when people least expect it, that we can act swiftly and unexpectedly to pull off a big victory.
She did what a lot of us do when we’re scared or overwhelmed by a project: she did everything but focus on it.
Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn’t mean it is.
We don’t get to choose what happens to us, but we can always choose how we feel about it.
Yes, there are legitimate stresses and anguish that come with the responsibilities of your new life. All the things you’re managing, the frustrating mistakes of people who should know better, the endless creep of obligations – no one prepares us for that, which makes the feelings all the harder to deal with.