Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn’t mean you have to agree.
We all demand reparation for our early wounds to our narcissism,” thinking we are owed because we were wronged or deprived.
You love it because it’s all fuel.
The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around. That’s all you need to know. – MARCUS AURELIUS.
There are two things that must be rooted out in human beings – arrogant opinion and mistrust. Arrogant opinion expects that there is nothing further needed, and mistrust assumes that under the torrent of circumstance there can be no happiness.” – EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.14.8.
To become empty is to become one with the divine – this is the Way. – AWA KENZO.
You’re young, you didn’t cause this, it isn’t your fault. We all got screwed. This only makes it easier to lose our sense of self, to say nothing of our sense of others.
Ego is stolen. Confidence is earned. Ego is self-anointed, its swagger is artifice. One is girding yourself, the other gaslighting. It’s the difference between potent and poisonous.
He was inclined to see the opportunity in every disaster. To that.
The great psychologist Viktor Frankl, survivor of three concentration camps, found presumptuousness in the age-old question: “What is the meaning of life?” As though it is someone else’s responsibility to tell you. Instead, he said, the world is asking you that question. And it’s your job to answer with your actions.
Every day for the rest of your life you will find yourself at one of three phases: aspiration, success, failure. You will battle the ego in each of them. You will make mistakes in each of them. You must sweep the floor every minute of every day. And then sweep again.
Just like the overactive voice in a slump, the voice in a streak is an equally deleterious racing mental loop. Both get in the way. Both make a hard thing harder.
People are getting a little desperate. People might not show their best elements to you. You must never lower yourself to being a person you don’t like. There is no better time than now to have a moral and civic backbone. To have a moral and civic true north. This is a tremendous opportunity for you, a young person, to be heroic.
He had the strength to resist temptation or excitement, no matter how seductive, no matter the situation.
Imagine that – an ambitious person turning down a chance to advance in responsibilities because he actually wanted to be ready for them.
Okay, you’ve got to do something very difficult. Don’t focus on that. Instead break it down into pieces. Simply do what you need to do right now. And do it well. And then move on to the next thing. Follow the process and not the prize.
A monk is a man who is separated from all and who is in harmony with all. – EVAGRIUS PONTICUS.
Everyone tries to shoot naturally,” Kenzo wrote, “but nearly all practitioners have some kind of strategy, some kind of shallow, artificial, calculating technical trick that they rely on when they shoot. Technical tricks ultimately lead nowhere.
On several occasions, Sherman freely strategized and planned with the president, but at the end of his trip, he made one strange request; he’d accept his new promotion only with the assurance that he’d not have to assume superior command. Would Lincoln give him his word on that? With every other general asking for as much rank and power as possible, Lincoln happily agreed.
There’s a saying about how the Irish ship captain located all the rocks in the harbor – using the bottom of his boat. Whatever works, right? Remember.