This, too, is part of the will – to think of others, to make the best of a terrible situation that we tried to prevent but could not, to deal with fate with cheerfulness and compassion.
Unhelpful perceptions can invade our minds – that sacred place of reason, action and will – and throw off our compass.
Next, we must examine our impulses to act – that is, our motivations. Are we doing things for the right reasons? Or do we act because we haven’t stopped to think? Or do we believe that we have to do something?
The Greeks understood that we often choose the ominous explanation over the simple one, to our detriment. That we are scared of obstacles because our perspective is wrong – that a simple shift in perspective can change our reaction entirely. The task, as Pericles showed, is not to ignore fear but to explain it away. Take what you’re afraid of – when fear strikes you – and break it apart. Remember: We choose how we’ll look at things.
The Fates guide the person who accepts them and hinder the person who resists them. – CLEANTHES.
A teenage Charlie Parker thinks he is tearing it up on stage, right in the pocket with the rest of the crew, until Jo Jones throws a cymbal at him and chases him away in humiliation.
But what if we said: This is an opportunity for me. I am using it for my purposes. I will not let this be dead time for me.
Christians believe that pride is a sin because it is a lie – it convinces people that they are better than they are, that they are better than God made them.
We can be blindly led by these primal feelings or we can understand them and learn to filter them.
Every impediment only served to make the inferno within them burn with greater ferocity.
It’s not about having more than the others. It’s about being what you are, and being as good as possible at it, without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from it. It’s about going where you set out to go. About accomplishing the most that you’re capable of in what you choose. That’s it. No more and no less.
Sometimes in your life you need to have patience – wait for temporary obstacles to fizzle out.
Sometimes a problem needs less of you – fewer people period – and not more.
Napoleon had the words “To Destiny!” engraved on the wedding ring he gave his wife. Destiny was what he’d always believed in, it was how he justified his boldest, most ambitious ideas.
Epictetus is saying that one becomes a philosopher when they begin to exercise their guiding reason and start to question the emotions and beliefs and even language that others take for granted.
When we want things too badly we can be our own worst enemy. In our eagerness, we strip the very screw we want to turn and make it impossible to ever get what we want. We spin our tires in the snow or mud and dig a deeper rut – one that we’ll never get out of.
Where one person sees a crisis, another can see opportunity.
Pride takes a minor accomplishment and makes it feel like a major one. From the start, it drives a wedge between the possessor and reality, subtly and not so subtly changing her perceptions of what something is and what it isn’t. It is these steering opinions, only loosely secured by fact or accomplishment, that send us careering toward delusion or worse.
It is impossible for a person to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows.” Today, we will be unable to improve, unable to learn, unable to earn the respect of others if we think we’re already perfect, a genius admired far and wide. In this sense, ego and self-deception are the enemies of the things we wish to have because we delude ourselves into believing that we already possess them.
Where one is blinded by success, another sees reality with ruthless objectivity.