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by
Ryan Holiday
Started reading
January 10, 2025
Silicon Valley engineers are designing applications as addictive as gambling.
to strive to be more than a pawn.
It’s because nothing is clear and they rely on the most uncertain guide—common opinion.”
“believing in yourself and trusting that you are on the right path, and not being in doubt by following the myriad footpaths of those wandering in every direction.”
As we get older, failure is not so inconsequential anymore. What’s at stake is not some arbitrary grade or intramural sports trophy, but the quality of your life and your ability to deal with the world around you.
There is clarity (and joy) in seeing what others can’t see, in finding grace and harmony in places others overlook.
Some had it easy, and others had it unimaginably hard.
External things can’t fix internal issues.
It’s not because these men are cheap. It’s because the things that matter to them are cheap.
have a mantra and use it to find the clarity you crave.
“Do your job.” Like a Roman, like a good soldier, like a master of our craft. We don’t need to get lost in a thousand other distractions or in other people’s business.
Find clarity in the simplicity of doing your job today.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO STAY ON TOP OF EVERYTHING
Most of society seems to have taken it as a commandment that one must know about every single current event, watch every episode of every critically acclaimed television series, follow the news religiously, and present themselves to others as an informed and worldly individual.
How much more time, energy, and pure brainpower would you have available if you drastically cut your media consumption? How much more rested and present would you feel if you were no longer excited and outraged by every scandal, breaking story, and potential crisis (many of which never come to pass anyway)?
it’s important that we tap the brakes—put aside all the momentum and the moment. Return to the regimen and practices that we know are rooted in clarity, good judgment, good principles, and good health.
Try to remember that when you find yourself getting mad. Anger is not impressive or tough—it’s a mistake. It’s weakness.
Strength is the ability to maintain a hold of oneself. It’s being the person who never gets mad, who cannot be rattled, because they are in control of their passions—rather than controlled by their passions.
We should be the ones in control, not our emotions, because we are independent, self-sufficient people.
it’s as if we all belong to a religious cult that believes the gods of fate will only give us what we want if we sacrifice our peace of mind.
We’re afraid of being still, so we seek out strife and action as a distraction. We choose to be at war—in some cases, literally—when peace is in fact the more honorable and fitting choice.
The next time you are afraid of some supposedly disastrous outcome, remember that if you don’t control your impulses, if you lose your self-control, you may be the very source of the disaster you so fear.
it is possible to hold no opinion about a negative thing.
“Hate is too great a burden to bear,” Martin Luther King Jr.
Self-control is a difficult thing, no question.
It’s making sure that your mind is in charge, not your emotions, not your immediate physical sensations, not your surging hormones.
Fix your attention on your intelligence. Let it do its thing.
Many of the things that upset us, the Stoics believed, are a product of the imagination, not reality.
Getting upset is like continuing the dream while you’re awake.
Which is why you need to wake up right now instead of creating a nightmare.
Life (and our job) is difficult enough. Let’s not make it harder by getting emotional about insignificant matters or digging in for battles we don’t actually care about.
“It is quite impossible to unite happiness with a yearning for what we don’t have.
Conditional happiness is what psychologists call this kind of thinking. Like the horizon, you can walk for miles and miles and never reach it. You won’t even get any closer.
Today, we’re defenseless against a hurricane only if we refuse to prepare or heed the warnings.
Don’t burn in desire for it, but wait until it arrives in front of you.
one day it will make you worthy of a banquet with the gods.”
Then wait patiently for your turn.
“Ever wonder what God thinks of money? Just look at the people he gives it to.”
What we desire makes us vulnerable.
when we pine for something, when we hope against hope, we set ourselves up for disappointment. Because fate can always intervene and then we’ll likely lose our self-control in response.
“It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.”
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?
I begin to speak only when I’m certain what I’ll say isn’t better left unsaid.’”
Why bother getting mad at causes and forces far bigger than us? Why do we take these things personally? After all, external events are not sentient beings—they cannot respond to our shouts and cries—and neither can the mostly indifferent gods.
circumstances are incapable of considering or caring for your feelings, your anxiety, or your excitement.
When a billionaire loses $1 million in market fluctuation, it’s not the same as when you or I lose a million dollars.
If someone sends you an angry email but you never see it, did it actually happen?
Why not choose not to react?
To him, this was a reminder that no matter how much he conquered, no matter how much he inflicted his will on the world, it would be like building a castle in the sand—soon to be erased by the winds of time.
Eventually, all of us will pass away and slowly be forgotten. We should enjoy this brief time we have on earth—not be enslaved to emotions that make us miserable and dissatisfied.
