Arrogance and self-absorption inhibit growth. So does fantasy and “vision.
Focusing on smaller, progressive parts of the work also eliminates the tendency to sit on your ass and dream indefinitely. There.
Remember that today when you try to extend your reach outward – that it’s much better and more appropriately directed inward.
When it comes to your goals and the things you strive for, ask yourself: Am I in control of them or they in control of me?
Don’t feed insecurity. Don’t feed delusions of grandeur. Both are obstacles to stillness. Be confident. You’ve earned it.
While everyone else is running around with a list of responsibilities a mile long – things they’re not actually responsible for – you’ve got just that one-item list. You’ve got just one thing to manage: your choices, your will, your mind. So mind it.
Anyone who is threatened and is forced by necessity either to act or to suffer,” writes Machiavelli, “becomes a very dangerous man to the prince.
So much of the distress we feel comes from reacting instinctually instead of acting with conscientious deliberation. So much of what we get wrong comes from the same place. We’re reacting to shadows. We’re taking as certainties impressions we have yet to test. We’re not stopping to put on our glasses and really look.
Find clarity in the simplicity of doing your job today.
Get your day scheduled. Limit the interruptions. Limit the number of choices you need to make.
Today, let’s focus just on what’s in front of us.
Each day presents the chance to overthink things.
A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. – HERBERT SIMON.
Success becomes a matter of momentum. Once you get a little, it’s easier to keep it going.
Dorothy Day, the Catholic nun and social activist, admonished herself much the same. “Turn off your radio,” she wrote, “put away your daily paper. Read one review of events and spend time reading.” Books, spend time reading books – that’s what she meant. Books full of wisdom.
Man is a thinking reed,” D. T. Suzuki, one of the early popularizers of Buddhism in the West, once said, “but his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking. ‘Childlikeness’ has to be restored with long years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness. When this is attained, man thinks yet he does not think.
We choose how we’ll look at things. We retain the ability to inject perspective into a situation. We can’t change the obstacles themselves – that part of the equation is set – but the power of perspective can change how the obstacles appear.
In your actions, don’t procrastinate. In your conversations, don’t confuse. In your thoughts, don’t wander. In your soul, don’t be passive or aggressive. In your life, don’t be all about business.
Not “be positive” but learn to be ceaselessly creative and opportunistic. Not: This is not so bad. But: I can make this good.
This obsession with the past, with something that someone did or how things should have been, as much as it hurts, is ego embodied. Everyone else has moved on, but you can’t, because you can’t see anything but your own way. You can’t conceive of accepting that someone could hurt you, deliberately or otherwise. So you hate.