I came to realize that A) If you’re serious all the time, you’ll wear out before the truly serious stuff gets done; and B) if you don’t regularly appreciate the small wins, you will never appreciate the big wins. They’ll all fall through your fingers like sand as you obsess on the next week, the next to-do, the next thing to fix. This makes “success” a Pyrrhic victory at best.
Be quiet, work hard, and stay healthy. It’s not ambition or skill that is going to set you apart but sanity.
“Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do,” Marcus Aurelius writes. “Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you.”
Real success, real mastery, real sanity? That, he says, comes only by “tying it to your own actions.”
The better you get, the more you are able to tie your identity to the only thing that matters according to the Stoics: your own choices, your own work, your own judgment.
I often think of the below story introduced to me by Tara Brach:
"This is a story about a tiger named Mohini that was in captivity in a zoo, who was rescued from an animal sanctuary. Mohini had been confined to a 10-by-10-foot cage with a concrete floor for 5 or 10 years. They finally released her into this big pasture: With excitement and anticipation, they released Mohini into her new and expensive environment, but it was too late. The tiger immediately sought refuge in a corner of the compound, where she lived for the remainder of her life. She paced and paced in that corner until an area 10-by-10 feet was worn bare of grass. . . . Perhaps the biggest tragedy in our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns."
What past limitations—real or perceived—are you carrying as baggage? Where in your life are you pacing in a 10-by-10-foot patch of grass? Where are you afraid of getting sprayed with water, even though it’s never happened? Oftentimes, everything you want is a mere inch outside of your comfort zone. Test it.
You gotta stop avoiding things because you're scared or it's too hard
All of the most rewarding things in life are challenging and will scare the shit out of you
But pursuing them is what gives you true fulfillment and purpose
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If you wait to act until you feel motivated, you may never start.
Motivation is a natural byproduct of movement—your discipline and consistency actually create it.
When in doubt, just start moving.