You are not your body and hair-style, but your capacity for choosing well. If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be.” – EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES.
The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged chance, conquered the chance, and made chance the servitor. – E. H. CHAPIN.
As Diogenes, the famous Cynic, once said, “It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.” To want nothing makes one invincible – because nothing lies outside your control.
What things do you think have been holding you back that, in fact, can be a hidden source of strength?
Remember: you’re a free agent. When someone points out a legitimate flaw in your belief or in your actions, they’re not criticizing you. They’re presenting a better alternative. Accept it!
We have to do the kind of thinking that 99 percent of the population is just not doing, and we have to stop doing the destructive thinking that they spend 99 percent of their time doing.
John D. Rockefeller, who was as rich as they come, believed that “a man’s wealth must be determined by the relation of his desires and expenditures to his income. If he feels rich on $10 and has everything he desires, he really is rich.” Today, you could try to increase your wealth, or you could take a shortcut and just want less.
Have you taken the time to get clarity about who you are and what you stand for?
We are one big collective organism engaged in one endless project together. We are one.
See much, study much, suffer much, that is the path to wisdom.
From sacrifice comes meaning. From struggle comes purpose. If you’re to create something powerful and important, you must at the very least be driven by an equally powerful inner force. If.
To have an impulse and to resist it, to sit with it and examine it, to let it pass by like a bad smell – this is how we develop spiritual strength. This is how we become who we want to be in this world.
We want divine intervention so that our lives will magically be easier. But what about asking for fortitude and strength so you can do what you need to do.
Listen and connect with people, don’t perform for them.
Stoicism teaches that we can’t control or rely on anything outside what Epictetus called our “reasoned choice” – our ability to use our reason to choose how we categorize, respond, and reorient ourselves to external events.
The end goal of every growth hacker is to build a self-perpetuating marketing machine that reaches millions by itself.
Here’s the other part: once you win, everyone is gunning for you. It’s during your moment at the top that you can afford ego the least – because the stakes are so much higher, the margins for error are so much smaller. If anything, your ability to listen, to hear feedback, to improve and grow matter more now than ever before.
Our ambition should not be to win, then, but to play with our full effort.
No one said life was easy. No one said it would be fair.
As James Basford remarked, “It requires a strong constitution to withstand repeated attacks of prosperity.” Well, that’s where we are now.