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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Ryan Holiday
Read between
July 13 - July 16, 2020
Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been. —MARCUS AURELIUS
It’s time to realize that this is a luxury, an indulgence of our lesser self. In space, the difference between life and death lies in emotional regulation.
Don’t let the force of an impression when it first hit you knock you off your feet; just say to it: Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test. — EPICTETUS
Having learned early in life that reality was falsely hemmed in by rules and compromises that people had been taught as children, Jobs had a much more aggressive idea of what was or wasn’t possible. To him, when you factored in vision and work ethic, much of life was malleable.
Jobs replied. “You can do it. Get your mind around it. You can do it.”
A good person dyes events with his own color… and turns whatever happens to his own benefit. — SENECA
We’ve all done it. Said: “I am so [overwhelmed, tired, stressed, busy, blocked, outmatched].” And then what do we do about it? Go out and party. Or treat ourselves. Or sleep in. Or wait.
It matters what you do with what happens and what you’ve been given. And the only way you’ll do something spectacular is by using it all to your advantage.
If you haven’t even tried yet, then of course you will still be in the exact same place. You haven’t actually pursued anything.
If you want momentum, you’ll have to create it yourself, right now, by getting up and getting started.
We will not be stopped by failure, we will not be rushed or distracted by external noise. We will chisel and peg away at the obstacle until it is gone. Resistance is futile.
Their genius was unity of purpose, deafness to doubt, and the desire to stay at it.
Working at it works. It’s that simple. (But again, not easy.)
Consider this mind-set. never in a hurry never worried never desperate never stopping short
Epictetus: “persist and resist.” Persist in your efforts. Resist giving in to distraction, discouragement, or disorder.
No need to get upset or despair. You’re not going anywhere—you’re not going to be counted out. You’re in this for the long haul.
Only with persistence and time can we cut away debris and remove impediments.
Stop looking for an epiphany, and start looking for weak points. Stop looking for angels, and start looking for angles.
“Minimum Viable Product” (MVP)—the most basic version of their core idea with only one or two essential features.
Great entrepreneurs are: never wedded to a position never afraid to lose a little of their investment never bitter or embarrassed never out of the game for long
Like any good school, learning from failure isn’t free. The tuition is paid in discomfort or loss and having to start over.
Under the comb the tangle and the straight path are the same. — HERACLITUS
Being trapped is just a position, not a fate.
All these issues are solvable. Each would collapse beneath the process.
We are A-to-Z thinkers, fretting about A, obsessing over Z, yet forgetting all about B through Y.
But you, you’re so busy thinking about the future, you don’t take any pride in the tasks you’re given right now. You just phone it all in, cash your paycheck, and dream of some higher station in life. Or you think, This is just a job, it isn’t who I am, it doesn’t matter. Foolishness.
Everything is a chance to do and be your best. Only self-absorbed assholes think they are too good for whatever their current station requires.
When action is our priority, vanity falls away.
To whatever we face, our job is to respond with: hard work honesty helping others as best we can
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.
We spend a lot of time thinking about how things are supposed to be, or what the rules say we should do. Trying to get it all perfect. We tell ourselves that we’ll get started once the conditions are right, or once we’re sure we can trust this or that. When, really, it’d be better to focus on making due with what we’ve got. On focusing on results instead of pretty methods.
You’ve got your mission, whatever it is. To accomplish it, like the rest of us you’re in the pinch between the way you wish things were and the way they actually are (which always seem to be a disaster). How far are you willing to go? What are you willing to do about it?
What’s your first instinct when faced with a challenge? Is it to outspend the competition? Argue with people in an attempt to change long-held opinions? Are you trying to barge through the front door? Because the back door, side doors, and windows may have been left wide open.
Instead, you must find some way to use the adversity, its energy, to help yourself.
Sometimes a problem needs less of you
When we want things too badly we can be our own worst enemy.
Remember, a castle can be an intimidating, impenetrable fortress, or it can be turned into a prison when surrounded. The difference is simply a shift in action and approach.
Rename it and claim it,
We all have our own constraints to deal with—rules and social norms we’re required to observe that we’d rather not.
“This too shall pass” was Lincoln’s favorite saying, one he once said was applicable in any and every situation one could encounter.
Schooled in suffering, to quote Virgil, Lincoln learned “to comfort those who suffer too.”
Stoics called the Inner Citadel, that fortress inside of us that no external adversity can ever break down.
Are you okay being alone? Are you strong enough to go a few more rounds if it comes to that? Are you comfortable with challenges? Does uncertainty bother you? How does pressure feel?
Mike Tyson, who, reflecting on the collapse of his fortune and fame, told a reporter, “If you’re not humble, life will visit humbleness upon you.”
And that means people are going to make mistakes and screw up your plans—not always, but a lot of the time. If this comes as a constant surprise each and every time it occurs, you’re not only going to be miserable, you’re going to have a much harder time accepting it and moving on to attempts number two, three, and four.
The Fates guide the person who accepts them and hinder the person who resists them. —CLEANTHES
If someone we knew took traffic signals personally, we would judge them insane.
Yet this is exactly what life is doing to us. It tells us to come to a stop here. Or that some intersection is blocked or that a particular road has been rerouted through an inconvenient detour. We can’t argue or yell this problem away. We simply accept it.
