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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Ryan Holiday
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December 21, 2018 - April 16, 2019
Today, or anytime, when you catch yourself wanting to condescendingly drop some knowledge that you have, grab it and ask: Would I be better saying words or letting my actions and choices illustrate that knowledge for me?
what makes a beautiful human being? Isn’t it the presence of human excellence? Young friend, if you wish to be beautiful, then work diligently at human excellence.
(“Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind,” Marcus Aurelius put it).
That’s the problem with letting your happiness be determined by things you can’t control. It’s an insane risk.
Like them, we should take pleasure from our actions—in taking the right actions—rather than the results that come from them.
Our ambition should not be to win, then, but to play with our full effort.
“Don’t set your mind on things you don’t possess as if they were yours, but count the blessings you actually possess and think how much you would desire them if they weren’t already yours. But watch yourself, that you don’t value these things to the point of being troubled if you should lose them.”
It’s important for us to remember in our own journey to self-improvement: one never arrives. The sage—the perfect Stoic who behaves perfectly in every situation—is an ideal, not an end.
“I don’t complain about the lack of time . . . what little I have will go far enough. Today—this day—will achieve what no tomorrow will fail to speak about. I will lay siege to the gods and shake up the world.” —SENECA,
The best way to get there is by focusing on what is here right now, on the task you have at hand—big or small. As he says, by pouring ourselves fully and intentionally into the present, it “gentle[s] the passing of time’s precipitous flight.”
we don’t control what other people think—about us least of all. For this reason, putting ourselves at the mercy of those opinions and trying to gain the approval of others are a dangerous endeavor.
It’s a matter of getting up at the right time, making your bed, resisting shortcuts, investing in yourself, doing your work. And make no mistake: while the individual action is small, its cumulative impact is not.
Don’t get upset. Do the right thing.
Our progress can be impeded or disrupted, but the mind can always be changed—it retains the power to redirect the path.
Edgar Mitchell, an astronaut, was one of the first people to see the earth from outer space. As he later recounted: “In outer space you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’”
If we can’t do this, then perhaps we can try that. And if we can’t do that, then perhaps we can try some other thing. And if that thing is impossible, there is always another.
It takes courage to decide to do things differently and to make a change, as well as discipline and awareness to know that the notion of “Oh, but this looks even better” is a temptation that cannot be endlessly indulged either.
If you follow The Process in your life—assembling the right actions in the right order, one right after another—you too will do well.
“If you find something very difficult to achieve yourself, don’t imagine it impossible—for anything possible and proper for another person can be achieved as easily by you.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 6.19
Stoics do not seek to have the answer for every question or a plan for every contingency. Yet they’re also not worried. Why? Because they have confidence that they’ll be able to adapt and change with the circumstances. Instead of looking for instruction, they cultivate skills like creativity, independence, self-confidence, ingenuity, and the ability to problem solve. In this way, they are resilient instead of rigid. We can practice the same.
LISTENING ACCOMPLISHES MORE THAN SPEAKING
“Let Fate find us prepared and active. Here is the great soul—the one who surrenders to Fate. The opposite is the weak and degenerate one, who struggles with and has a poor regard for the order of the world, and seeks to correct the faults of the gods rather than their own.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 107.12
No need to be too hard on yourself. Hold yourself to a higher standard but not an impossible one. And forgive yourself if and when you slip up.
Hold yourself to a higher standard but not an impossible one.
You have the power to use the Stoic exercise of turning obstacles upside down, which takes one negative circumstance and uses it as an opportunity to practice an unintended virtue or form of excellence.
Workaholics always make excuses for their selfishness.
But you are a human being, not a human doing.
Our pursuits should be aimed at progress, however little that it’s possible for us to make.
You become the sum of your actions, and as you do, what flows from that—your impulses—reflect the actions you’ve taken. Choose wisely.
What vanity obligates us to do, what greed signs us up for, what ill discipline adds to our plate, what a lack of courage prevents us from saying no to. All of this we must cut, cut, cut.
The Stoics saw little purpose in getting angry or sad about things that are indifferent to our feelings. Especially when those feelings end up making us feel worse.
Let us use this gift of nature and count it among the greatest things.”
Today, you could try to increase your wealth, or you could take a shortcut and just want less.
There’s another benefit of so-called misfortune. Having experienced and survived it, we walk away with a better understanding of our own capacity and inner strength.
The things we fear pale in comparison to the damage we do to ourselves and others when we unthinkingly scramble to avoid them.
On the other hand, the person who perseveres through difficulties, who keeps going when others quit, who makes it to their destination through hard work and honesty? That’s admirable, because their survival was the result of fortitude and resilience, not birthright or circumstance.
Is this thing I’m about to do consistent with what I believe? Or, better: Is this the kind of thing the person I would like to be should do?
“Leave the past behind, let the grand design take care of the future, and instead only rightly guide the present to reverence and justice.
the best revenge—is to exact no revenge at all.
As Viktor Frankl points out in Man’s Search for Meaning, it is not our question to ask. Instead, it is we who are being asked the question. It’s our lives that are the answer.
You can choose to be free. You can persist under difficult odds.
You have two essential tasks in life: to be a good person and to pursue the occupation that you love.
What is it that only I can do? What is the best use of my limited time on this planet?
No amount of prosperity, no amount of difficulty, is certain or forever. A triumph becomes a trial, a trial becomes a triumph. Life can change in an instant. Remember, today, how often it does.
“Don’t trust in your reputation, money, or position, but in the strength that is yours—namely, your judgments about the things that you control and don’t control. For this alone is what makes us free and unfettered, that picks us up by the neck from the depths and lifts us eye to eye with the rich and powerful.”
“This man has conquered the world!” one of Alexander’s men shouts. “What have you done?” The philosopher responds, with complete confidence, “I have conquered the need to conquer the world.”
The Stoics remind us that whatever happens to us today or over the course of our lives, wherever we fall on the intellectual, social, or physical spectra, our job is not to complain or bemoan our plight but to do the best we can to accept it and fulfill it.
But even this begins with acceptance and understanding—and a desire to excel at what we have been assigned.
Our understanding of what something is is just a snapshot—an ephemeral opinion. The universe is in a constant state of change.
“When you are distressed by an external thing, it’s not the thing itself that troubles you, but only your judgment of it. And you can wipe this out at a moment’s notice.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 8.47
