July 2024
The price you pay for doing what everyone else does is getting what everyone else gets.
“Competence is how good you are when there is something to gain. Character is how good you are when there is nothing to gain. People will reward you for competence. But people will only love you for your character.” — Mark Manson
A lion is fully capable of capturing, killing, and eating a field mouse. But it turns out that the energy required to do so exceeds the caloric content of the mouse itself. So a lion that spent its day hunting and eating field mice would slowly starve to death. A lion can’t live on field mice. A lion needs antelope. Antelope are big animals. They take more speed and strength to capture and kill, and once killed, they provide a feast for the lion and her pride. A lion can live a long and happy life on a diet of antelope. The distinction is important. Are you spending all your time and exhausting all your energy catching field mice? In the short term it might give you a nice, rewarding feeling. But in the long run you’re going to die. So ask yourself at the end of the day, “Did I spend today chasing mice or hunting antelope?” – Buck Up, Suck Up… and Come Back When You Foul Up: 12 Winning Secrets from the War Room
Greed is wanting the benefits of community without contributing to it.
Your looks are a depreciating assest while your mind is an appreciating assest. So invest your self-worth wisely.
“Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” — Gustave Flaubert
In the long run, a lazy lifestyle creates more work and stress than a disciplined one.
“It’s your outlook on life that counts. If you take yourself lightly and don’t take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humor in our everyday lives. And sometimes it can be a lifesaver. - Betty White
“Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” — Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“Just because results are not visible doesn’t mean they are not accumulating.”
“Those who seek liberation for themselves alone cannot become fully enlightened. Though it may be said that one who is not already liberated cannot liberate others, the very process of forgetting oneself to help others is itself liberating. Therefore, those who seek to benefit themselves alone actually harm themselves by doing so, while those who help others also help themselves by doing so.” — Musō Kokushi
“The narrative we’ve constructed about life—what the world is like, how we must behave, where we fit in the scheme of things—forms a bubble that cuts us off from life as it really is.” — STEPHAN BODIAN
“Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul’s resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.” — William James
There are at least 4 types of wealth:
Financial wealth (money) Social wealth (status) Time wealth (freedom) Physical wealth (health)
Be wary of jobs that lure you in with 1 and 2, but rob you of 3 and 4
“We will only attain freedom if we learn to appreciate what is different, and muster the courage to discover what is fundamentally the same.” - Thurgood Marshall
It’s remarkable how often the real problem is not what happened, but how it was communicated.
“The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.” ― James Baldwin
Attention isn’t free. It’s the most valuable thing you spend.
“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside … Nature brings solace in all troubles.” - Anne Frank
“Are we optimizing our lives for the people who know us best or the people who know us least? That’s a question that haunts me.”
If you want to get your day going, then get your body going. It’s harder for the mind to be sluggish when the body is moving.
Anxiety about problems that haven’t happened yet is useless.
You can’t do anything now anyway.
When problems do happen, you can take care of them then. And you will be a different you when that time comes, with more and better knowledge and experience.
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” - Helen Keller
“Resting in the natural state, without seeking anything, without any specific method concerning how or when to rest—that is meditation” . —LONGCHENPA
You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.
“Take your heart to work and ask the most and best of everybody else, too.” - Meryl Streep
“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.” ― Kurt Vonnegut
“Writing is actually a kind of meditation. You sit there and don’t discount anything. You don’t override anything. You just say: What’s happening right now?” —GEORGE SAUNDERS