Today, you won’t control the external events that happen. Is that scary? A little, but it’s balanced when we see that we can control our opinion about those events. You decide whether they’re good or bad, whether they’re fair or unfair. You don’t control the situation, but you control what you think about it.
The mind tends toward stillness,” Lao Tzu said, “but is opposed by craving.
In this phase, you must practice seeing yourself with a little distance, cultivating the ability to get out of your own head. Detachment is a sort of natural ego antidote.
Only in struggling with the impediments that made others quit can we find ourselves on untrodden territory – only by persisting and resisting can we learn what others were too impatient to be taught.
Saban’s process is exclusively this – existing in the present, taking it one step at a time, not getting distracted by anything else. Not the other team, not the scoreboard or the crowd. The process is about finishing. Finishing games. Finishing workouts. Finishing film sessions. Finishing drives. Finishing reps. Finishing plays. Finishing blocks. Finishing the smallest task you have right in front of you and finishing it well. Whether.
You might look beautiful today, but if that was the result of vain obsession in the mirror this morning, the Stoics would ask, are you actually beautiful?
The premise of this book is that our three domains – the mind, the heart, and the body – must be in harmony.
Bil Keane, the cartoonist – worth remembering: “Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.
The best car is not the one that turns the most heads, but the one you have to worry about the least. The best clothes are the ones that are the most comfortable, that require you to spend the least amount of time shopping – regardless of what the magazines say. The best house for you is the one that feels the most like home. Don’t use your money to purchase loneliness, or headaches, or status anxiety.
Don’t let the negativity in, don’t let those emotions even get started. Just say: No, thank you. I can’t afford to panic.
Never give reasons for what you think or do until you must. Maybe, after a while, a better reason will pop into your head.
What we can do is limit and expand our perspective to whatever will keep us calmest and most ready for the task at hand. Think of it as selective editing – not to deceive others, but to properly orient ourselves.
Be slow in deliberation, but be prompt to carry out your resolves.
We’re simply talking about a lot of hours – that to get where we want to go isn’t about brilliance, but continual effort.
Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing, for the known way is an impasse. – HERACLITUS.
To be or to do – life is a constant roll call.
The philosopher and writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb defined a Stoic as someone who “transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation and desire into undertaking.” It’s a loop that becomes easier over time.
But as the poet Timon was only the first to illustrate, the fate of any exemplary figure is mockery by parasites, just as the great bull is beset by flies.
This is the main question, with what activity one’s leisure is filled. – ARISTOTLE.
It’s our preconceptions that are the problem. They tell us that things should or need to be a certain way, so when they’re not, we naturally assume that we are at a disadvantage or that we’d be wasting our time to pursue an alternate course. When really, it’s all fair game, and every situation is an opportunity for us to act.