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“The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck” Quotes

Subtle Art CoverI recently read “The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach To Living A Good Life” by Mark Manson. Despite the constant cursing, it’s one of the most profound books I’ve read in a while. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like them, please buy the book here.

“Despite the book sales and the fame, Bukowski was a loser. He knew it. And his success stemmed not from some determination to be a winner, but from the fact that he knew he was a loser, accepted it, and then wrote honestly about it. He never tried to be anything other than what he was. The genius in Bukowski’s work was not in overcoming unbelievable odds or developing himself into a shining literary light. It was the opposite. It was his simple ability to be completely, unflinchingly honest with himself – especially the worst parts of himself – and to share his failings without hesitation or doubt.” (3)

“Giving too many fucks is bad for your mental health. It causes you to become overly attached to the superficial and fake, to dedicate your life to chasing a mirage of happiness and satisfaction. The key to a good life is not giving a fuck about more; it’s giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what is true and immediate and important.” (5)

“Our crisis is no longer material; it’s existential, it’s spiritual. We have so much fuckign stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t even know what to give a fuck about anymore.” (8)

“Because there’s an infinite amount of thigns we can now see or know, there are also an infinite number of ways we can discover that we don’t measure up, that we’re not good enough, that things aren’t as great as they could be.” (9)

“The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.” (9)

“The more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place.” (9)

“Most of us struggle throughout our lives by giving too many fucks in situations where fucks do not deserve to be given.” (12)

“Subtlety #1: Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.” (14)

“No matter where you go, there’s a five-hundred-pound load of shit waiting for you. And that’s perfectly fine. The point isn’t to get away from the shit. THe point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with.” (17)

“Subtlety #2: To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity.” (17)

“There is a premise that underlies a lot of our assumptions and beliefs. The premise is that happiness is algorithmic, that it can be worked for and earned and achieved as if it were getting accepted to law school or building a really complicated Lego set. If I achieve X, then I can be happy. If I look like Y, then I can be happy. If I can be with a person like Z, then I can be happy.
This premise, though, is the problem. Happiness is not a solvable equation. Dissatisfaction and unease are inherent parts of human nature and, as we’ll see, necessary components to creating consistent happiness.” (26)

“We suffer for the simple reason that suffering is biologically useful. It is nature’s preferred agent for inspiring change.” (27)

“Life is essentially an endless series of problems, Mark,” the Disappointment Panda told me. He sipped his drink and adjusted the little pink umbrella. “The solution to one problem is merely the creation of the next one… Don’t hope for a life without problems,” the panda said. “There’s no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of good problems.”” (30)

“Problems never stop; they merely get exchanged and/or upgraded. Happiness comes from solving problems.” (31)

“The secret sauce is in the solving of the problems, not in not having problems in the first place.” (31)

“To be happy we need something to solve. Happiness is therefore a form of action; it’s an activity, not something that is passively bestowed upon you.” (31)

“True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.” (32)

“Emotions are simply biological signal designed to nudge you in the direction of beneficial change.” (34)

“An obsession and overinvestment in emotion fails us for the simple reason that emotions never last.” (35)

“A more interesting question, a question that most people never consider, is, “What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?” Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.” (36)

“Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.” (40)

“The true measurement of self-worth is not how a person feels about her positive experiences, but rather how she feels about her negative experiences.” (46)

“Construing everything in life so as to make yourself out to be constantly victimized requires just as much selfishness as the opposite.” (56)

“Technology has solved old economic problems by giving us new psychological problems. The Internet has not just open-sourced information; it has also open-sourced insecurity, self-doubt, and shame.” (60)

“The rare people who do become truly exceptional at something do so not because they believe they’re exceptional. On the contrary, they become amazing because they’re obsessed with improvement. And that obsession with improvement stems from an unerring belief that they are, in fact, not that great at all. It’s anti-entitlement. People who become great at something become great because they understand that they’re not already great – they are mediocre, they are average – and that they could be so much better.” (61)

“The question is not whether we evaluate ourselves against others; rather, the question is by what standard do we measure ourselves?” (78)

“Self-improvement is really about prioritizing better values, choosing better things to give a fuck about. Because when you give better fucks, you get better problems. And when you get better problems, you get a better life.” (89)

“Often the only difference between a problem being painful or being powerful is a sense that we chose it, and that we are responsible for it.” (91)

“If you’re miserable in your current situation, chances are it’s because you feel like some part of it is outside your control – that there’s a problem you have no ability to solve, a problem that was somehow thrust upon you without your choosing.” (91)

“When we feel that we’re choosing our problems, we feel empowered. When we feel that our problems are being forced upon us against our will, we feel victimized and miserable.” (91)

“There is a simple realization form which all personal improvement and growth emerges. This is the realization that we, individually, are responsible for everything in our lives, no matter the external circumstances.
We don’t always control what happens to use. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond.” (94)

“The more we choose to accept responsibility in our lives, the more power we will exercise over our lives.” (96)

“Nobody else is ever responsible for your situation but you. Many people may be to blame for your unhappiness, but nobody is ever responsible for your unhappiness but you.” (99)

“If the people in your relationships are selfish and doing hurtful things, it’s likely you are too, you just don’t realize it.” (101)

“You are already choosing, in every moment of every day, what to give a fuck about, so change is as simple as choosing to give a fuck about something else.” (113)

“Evil people never believe that they are evil; rather, they believe that everyone else is evil.” (133)

“My recommendation: don’t be special; don’t be unique. Redefine your metrics in mundane and broad ways. Choose to measure yourself not as a rising star or an undiscovered genius. Choose to measure yourself not as some horrible victim or dismal failure. Instead, measure yourself by more mundane identities: a student, a partner, a friend, a creator. The narrower and rarer the identity you choose for yourself, the more everything will seem to threaten you.” (140)

“If it feels like it’s you versus the world, chances are it’s really just you versus yourself.” (146)

“Improvement at anything is based on thousands of tiny failures, and the magnitude of your success is based on how many times you’ve failed at something. If someone is better than you at something, then it’s likely because she has failed at it more than you have. If someone is worse than you, it’s likely because he hasn’t been through all of the painful learning experiences you have.” (150)

“It’s growth that generates happiness, not a long list of arbitrary achievements.” (152)

“Just as one must suffer physical pain to build stronger bone and muscle, one must suffer emotional pain to develop greater emotional resilience, a stronger sence of self, increased compassion, and a generally happier life.” (154)

“Life is about not knowing and then doing something anyway. All of life is like this. It never changes. Even when you’re happy.” (158)

“Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it.” (160)

“Someone asked the novelist how he was able to write so consistently and remain inspired and motivated. He replied, “Two hundred crappy words per day, that’s it.” The idea was that if he forced himself to write two hundred crappy words, more often than not the act of writing would inspire him; and before he knew it, he’d have thousands of words down on the page.” (162)

“There’s a bluntness to Russian culture that generally rubs Westerners the wrong way. Gone are the fake niceties and verbal webs of politeness. You don’t smile at strangers or pretend to like anything you don’t. In Russia, if something is stupid, you say it’s stupid. If someone is being an asshole, you tell him he’s being an asshole. If you really like someone and are having a great time, you tell her that you like her and are having a great time. It doesn’t matter if this person is your friend, a stranger, or someone you met five minutes ago on the street.” (167)

“There is such pressure in the West to be likable that people often reconfigure their entire personality depending on the person they’re dealing with.” (170)

“Unhealthy love is based on two people trying to escape their problems through their emotions for each other – in other words, they’re using each other as an escape. Healthy love is based on two people acknowledging and addressing their own problems with each other’s support.” (175)

“The mark of an unhealthy relationship is two people who try to solve each other’s problems in order to feel good about themselves. Rather, a healthy relationship is when two people solve their own problems in order to feel good about each other.” (177)

“It’s not about giving a fuck about everything your partner gives a fuck about; it’s about giving a fuck about your partner regardless of the fucks he or she gives. That’s unconditional love, baby.” (181)

“When our highest priority is to always make ourselves feel good, or to always make our partner feel good, then nobody ends up feeling good. And our relationship falls apart without our even knowing it.” (182)

“Commitment makes decision-making easier and removes any fear of missing out; knowing that what you already have is good enough, why would you ever stress about chasing more, more, more again? Commitment allows you to focus intently on a few highly important goals and achieve a greater degree of success than you otherwise would.” (189)

“If there really is no reason to do anything, then there is also no reason to not do anything.” (194)

“Whether you’re listening to Aristotle or the psychologists at Harvard or Jesus Christ or the goddamn Beatles, they all say that happiness comes from the same thing: caring about something greater than yourself, believing that you are a contributing component in some much larger entity, that your life is but a mere side process of some great unintelligible production. This feeling is what people go to church for; it’s what they fight in wars for; it’s what they raise families and save pensions and build bridges and invent cell phones for: this fleeting sense of being part of something greater and more unknowable than themselves.” (206)

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“Shoe Dog” Quotes

I recently read Shoe Dog: A Memoir By The Creator of Nike by Phil Knight. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like the quotes, click here to buy the book.

Shoe Dog Cover“History is one long processional of crazy ideas. The things I loved most – books, sports, democracy, free enterprise – started as crazy ideas. For that matter, few ideas are as crazy as my favorite thing, running. It’s hard. It’s painful. It’s risky. The rewards are few and far from guaranteed. When you run around an oval track, or down an empty road, you have no real destination. At least, none that can fully justify the effort. The act itself becomes the destination. It’s not just that there’s no finish line; it’s that you define the finish line. Whatever pleasures or gains you derive from the act of running, you must find them within. It’s all in how you frame it, how you sell it to yourself.” (5)

“I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy… just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.” (5)

“Of course, General MacArthur was deeply flawed. But he knew that. You are remember, he said, prophetically, for the rules you break.” (32)

“Driving back to Portland I’d puzzle over my sudden success at selling. I’d been unable to sell encyclopedias, and I’d despised it to boot. I’d been slightly better at selling mutual funds, but I’d felt dead inside. So why was selling shoes so different? Because, I realized, it wasn’t selling. I believed in running. I believed that if people got out and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place, and I believed these shoes were better to run in. people, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible.” (56)

“The art of competing, I’d learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past. You must forget that internal voice screaming, begging, “Not one more step!” And when it’s not possible to forget, you must negotiate with it.” (61)

“There were many ways down Mount Fuji, according to my guidebook, but only one way up. Life lesson in that.” (66)

“Starting my own business was the only thing that made life’s other risks – marriage, Vegas, alligator wrestling – seem like sure things.” (94)

“I told myself: Life is growth. You grow or you die.” (145)

“Each of us found pleasure, whenever possible, in focusing on one small task. One task, we often said, clears the mind.” (147)

“Yes, I thought. Confidence. More than equity, more than liquidity, that’s what a man needs. I wished I had more. I wished I could borrow some. But confidence was cash. You had to have some to get some. And people were loath to give it to you.” (164)

“Prefontaine pushed himself to the brink and beyond. This was often a counterproductive strategy, and sometimes it was plainly stupid, and occasionally it was suicidal. But it was always uplifting for the crowd. No matter the sport – no matter the human endeavor, really – total effort will win people’s hearts.” (210)

“The cowards never started and the weak died along the way – that leaves us.” (214)

“I opened by telling Strasser that it was all a foregone conclusion, really. “You’re one of us,” I said. One of us. He knew what those words meant. We were the kind of people who simply couldn’t put up with corporate nonsense. We were the kind of people who wanted our work to be play. But meaningful play. We were trying to slay Goliath, and though Strasser was bigger than two Goliaths, at heart he was an utter David. We were trying to create a brand, I said, but also a culture. We were fighting against conformity, against boringness, against drudgery. More than a product, we were trying to sell an idea – a spirit. I don’t know if I ever fully understood who we were and what we were doing until I heard myself saying it all that day to Strasser.” (250)

“It was us against the world, and we felt damned sorry for the world. That is, when we weren’t righteously pissed off at it. Each of us had been misunderstood, misjudged, dismissed. Shunned by bosses, spurned by luck, rejected by society, shortchanged by fate when looks and other natural graces were handed out. We’d each been forged by early failure. We’d each given ourselves to some quest, some attempt at validation or meaning, and fallen short.” (301)

“Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.” (302)

“I still didn’t believe in the power of advertising. At all. A product, I thought, speaks for itself, or it doesn’t. In the end, it’s only quality that counts.” (313)

“Penny and I decided to buy a bigger house. It was a strange thing to do, in the midst of an apocalyptic fight with the government. But I liked the idea of acting as if things were going to work out. Fortune favors the brave, that sort of thing. I also liked the idea of a change of scenery. May, I thought, it will initiate a change of luck.” (320)

“When you see only problems, you’re not seeing clearly.” (327)

“There’s no shoe school, no University of Footwear from which we could recruit. We needed to hire people with sharp minds, that was our priority, and accountants and lawyers had at least proved that they could master a difficult subject. And pass a big test. Most had also demonstrated basic competence. When you hired an accountant, you knew he or she could count. When you hired a lawyer, you knew he or she could talk. When you hired a marketing expert, or product developer, what did you know? Nothing. You couldn’t predict what he or she could do, or if he or she could do anything. And the typical business school graduate? He or she didn’t want to start out with a bag selling shoes. Plus, they all had zero experience, so you were simply rolling the dice based on how well they did in an interview. We didn’t have enough margin for error to roll the dice on anyone.” (328)

“For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for us business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day business of the human body isn’t our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living – and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough ot sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is – you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman. Maybe it will grown on me.” (353)

“I walked out of the room, barely hearing the beeping machines, the laughing nurses, the patient groaning down the hall. I thought of that phrase, It’s just business.” It’s never just business. It never will be. If it ever does become just business, that will mean that business is very bad.” (370)

“I keep thinking of one line in The Bucket List. “You measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you.”” (370)

“I said simply: “How did you do it?”
I thought I saw the corners of his mouth flicker. A smile? Maybe?
General Giap thought. And thought. “I was,” he said, “a professor of the jungle.”” (376)

“I tell them about the untapped resources, natural and human, that the world has at its disposal, the abundant ways and means to solve its many crises. All we have to do, I tell the students, is work and study, study and work, hard as we can. Put another way: We must all be professors of the jungle.” (377)

“When it came rolling in, the money affected us all. Not much, and not for long, because none of us was ever driven by money. But that’s the nature of money. Whether you have it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you like it or not, it will try to define your days. Our task as human being is not to let it.” (379)

“It’s all the same drive. The same dream. It would be nice to help them avoid the typical discouragements. I’d tell them to hit pause, think long and hard about how they want to spend their time, and with whom they want to spend it for the next forty years. I’d tell men and women in their mid-twenties not to settle for a job or profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don’t know what that means, seek it. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the high will be like nothing you’ve ever felt.” (382)

“I’d like to remind them that America isn’t the entrepreneurial Shangri-La people think. Free enterprise always irritates the kinds of trolls who live to block, to thwart, to say no, sorry, no. And it’s always been this way. Entrepreneurs have always been outgunned, outnumbered. They’ve always fought uphill, and the hill has never been steeper. America is becoming less entrepreneurial, not more.” (382)

“Luck plays a big role. Yes, I’d like to publicly acknowledge the power of luck. Athletes get lucky, poets get lucky, businesses get lucky, Hard work is critical, a good team is essential, brains and determination are invaluable, but luck may decide the outcome.” (382)

“Put it this way. The harder you work, the better your luck.” (382)

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“The Power of Positive Thinking” Quotes

I recently read The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like the quotes, buy the book here.

Power of Positive Thinking“If you feel that you are defeated and have lost confidence in your ability to win, sit down, take a piece of paper and make a list, not of the factors that are against you, but of those that are for you.”

“People who were carrying worries in their minds might go to the stern of the vessel and imaginatively take each anxious thought out of the mind, drop it overboard, and watch it disappear in the wake of the ship.” (18)

“How we think we feel has a definite effect on how we actually feel physically. If your mind tells you that you are tired, the body mechanism, the nerves, and the muscles accept the fact. If your mind is intensely interested, you can keep on at an activity indefinitely.” (29)

“It is not hard work that drains off energy but emotional upheaval.” (31)

“Relax physically. Then conceive of your mind as likewise relaxing.” (34)

“He was pouring himself out, and you never lose energy and vitality in so doing. You only lose energy when life becomes dull in your mind. Your mind gets bored and therefore tired doing nothing. You don’t have to be tired. Get interested in something. Get absolutely enthralled in something. Throw yourself into it with abandon. Get out of yourself. Be somebody. Do something. Don’t sit around moaning about things, reading the papers, and saying, “Why don’t they do something?” The man who is out doing something isn’t tired. If you’re not getting into good causes, no wonder you’re tired. You’re disintegrating. You’re deteriorating. You’re dying on the vine. The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have. You won’t have time to think about yourself and get bogged down in your emotional difficulties.” (35)

“Energy drainage occasioned by fear and guilt is of such an amount as to leave little power to be applied to a person’s job. The result is that he tires quickly.” (37)

“The basic factor in psychology is the realizable wish. The man who assumes success tends already to have success. People who assume failure tend to have failure. When either failure or success is picturized it strongly tends to actualize in terms equivalent to the mental image pictured.” (46)

“Following are ten rules for getting effective results from prayer:
Set aside a few minutes every day. Do not say anything. Simply practice thinking about God. This will make your mind spiritually receptive.
Then pray orally, using simple, natural words. Tell God anything that is on your mind. Do not think you must use stereotyped pious phrases. Talk to God in your own language. He understands it.
Pray as you go about the business of the day, on the subway or bus or at your desk. Utilize minute prayers by closing your eyes to shut out the world and concentrating briefly on God’s presence. The more you do this every day the nearer you will feel God’s presence.
Do not always ask when you pray, but instead affirm that God’s blessings are being vien, and spend most of your prayers giving thanks.
Pray with the belief that sincere prayers can reach out and surround your loved ones with God’s love and protection.
Never use a negative thought in prayer. Only positive thoughts get results.
Always express willingness to accept God’s will. Ask for what you want, but be willing to take what God gives you. It may be better than what you ask for.
Practice the attitude of putting everything in God’s hands. Ask for the ability to do your best and to leave the results confidently to God.
Pray for people you do not like or who have mistreated you. Resentment is blockade number one of spiritual power.
Make a list of people for whom to pray. The more you pray for other people, especially those not connected with you, the more prayer results will come back to you.” (56)

“You can be unhappy if you want to be. It is the easiest thing in the world to accomplish. Just choose unhappiness. Go around telling yourself that things aren’t going well, that nothing is satisfactory, and you can be quite sure of being unhappy. But say to yourself, “Things are going nicely. Life is good. I choose happiness,” and you can be quite certain of having your choice.” (58)

“Children are more expert in happiness than adults. The adult who can carry the spirit of a child into middle and old age is a genius, for he will preserve the truly happy spirit for which God endowed the young.” (58)

“We manufacture our own unhappiness by thinking unhappy thoughts, by the attitudes which we habitually take, such as the negative feeling that everything is going to turn out badly, or that other people are getting what they do not deserve and we are failing to get what we do deserve.
Our unhappiness is further distilled by saturating the consciousness with feelings of resentment, ill will, and hate. The unhappiness-producing process always makes important use of the ingredients of fear and worry.” (60)

“Make a mental list of happy thoughts and pass them through your mind several times every day. If an unhappiness thought should enter your mind, immediately stop, consciously eject it, and substitute a happiness thought. Every morning before arising, lie relaxed in bed and deliberately drop happy thoughts into your conscious mind.” (61)

“While dressing or shaving or getting breakfast, say aloud a few such remarks as the following, “I believe this is going to be a wonderful day. I believe I can successfully handle all the problems that will arise today. I feel good physically, mentally, emotionally. It is wonderful to be alive. I am grateful for all that I have had, for all that I now have, and for all that I shall have. Things aren’t going to fall apart. God is here and He is with me and He will see me through. I thank God for every good thing.”” (62)

“The way to happiness: keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Fill your life with love. Scatter sunshine. Forget self, think of others. Do as you would be done by. Try this for a week and you will be surprised.” (64)

“If happiness is determined by our thoughts it is necessary to drive off the thoughts which make for depression and discouragement.” (67)

“Accumulated problems had swamped his mind which was seeking release in retreat from a world which was too much for his depleted energy. His principal trouble was in his depressed thought pattern.” (67)

“Life is so daily.” (72)

“To go fast, row slowly.” (77)

“Slow down, for whatever you really want will be there when you get there if you work toward it without stress, without pressing.” (77)

“1. Sit relaxed in a chair. Completely yield yourself to the chair. Starting with your toes and proceeding ot the top of your head, conceive of every portion of the body as relaxing. Affirm relaxation by saying, “my toes are relaxed-my fingers-my facial muscles.”
2. Think of your mind as the surface of a lake in a storm, tossed by waves and in tumult. But now the waves subside, and the surface of the lake is placid and unruffled.
3. Spend two or three minutes thinking of the most beautiful and peaceful scenes you have ever beheld, as for example, a mountain at sunset, or a deep valley filled with the hush of early morning, or a woods at noonday, or moonlight upon rippling waters. In memory relive these scenes.
4. Repeat slowly, quietly, bringing out the melody in each, a series of words which express quietness and peace, as for example, (a) tranquility (say it very deliberately and in a tranquil manner); (b) serenity; © quietness. Think of other such words and repeat them.
5. Make a mental list of times in your life when you have been conscious of God’s watchful care and recall how, when you were worried and anxious, He brought things out right and took care of you.” (82-83)

“When you expect the best, you release a magnetic force in your mind which by a law of attraction tends to bring the best to you. But if you expect the worst, you release from your mind the power of repulsion which tends to force the best from you. It is amazing how a sustained expectation of the best sets in motion forces which cause the best to materialize.” (86)

“A famous Canadian athletic coach, Ace Percival, says that most people, athletes as well as nonathletes, are “holdouts,” that is to say, they are always keeping something in reserve. They do not invest themselves 100 percent in competition. Because of that fact they never achieve the highest of which they are capable.” (88)

“Throw your heart over the bar and your body will follow.” (89)

“Whenever you have a bar, that is to say a barrier, in front of you, stop, close your eyes, visualize everything that is above the bar and nothing that is below it, then imaginatively throw “your heart” over that bar and see yourself as being given lifting power to rise above it. Believe that you are experiencing this upthrust of force. You will be amazed at the lifting force you will receive. If in the depth of your mind you visualize the best and employ the powers of faith and energy, you will get the best.” (93)

“A man who is self-reliant, positive, optimistic, and undertakes his work with the assurance of success magnetizes his condition. He draws to himself the creative powers of the universe.” (94)

“What the mind profoundly expects it tends to receive. Perhaps this is true because what you really expect is what you actually want. Unless you really want something sufficiently to create an atmosphere of positive factors by your dynamic desire, it is likely to elude you.” (96)

““He was never defeated by the discouraging vicissitudes of the game.” It means, does it not, that when the game seemed to go against him he did not let discouragement creep in nor negative thoughts dominate and thus lose the power needed to win. This mental and spiritual quality made that man a champion. He was able to face obstacles, to stand up to them and overcome them.” (104)

“If you are far down as you can get there is no further down you can go. There is only one direction you can take from this position, and that is up. So your situation is quite encouraging.” (104)

“Most of our obstacles, as a matter of fact, are mental in character.
“Ah,” you may object, “mine are not mental, mine are real.”
Perhaps so, but your attitude toward them is mental. The only possible way you can have an attitude is by the mental process, and what you think about your obstacles largely determines what you do about them.” (107)

“I believe I am always divinely guided. I believe I will always take the right turn of the road. I believe God will always make a way where there is no way.” (113)

“What is worry? It is simply an unhealthy and destructive mental habit. You were not born with the worry habit. You acquired it. And because you can change any habit and any acquired attitude, you can cast worry from your mind.” (114)

“Conceive of yourself as actually emptying your mind of all anxiety and fear. Picture all worry thoughts as flowing out as you would let water flow from a basin by removing the stopper. Repeat the following affirmation during this visualization: “With God’s help I am now emptying my mind of all anxiety, all fear, all sense of insecurity.” Repeat this slowly five times, then add, “I believe that my mind is now emptied of all anxiety, all fear, all sense of insecurity.” (116)

“The world in which you live is not primarily determined by outward conditions and circumstances but by thoughts that habitually occupy your mind.” (164)

“If you think in negative terms you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms you will achieve positive results.” (165)

“1. For the next twenty-four hours, deliberately speak hopefully about everything, about your job, about your health, about your future. Go out of your way to talk optimistically about everything. This will be difficult, for possibly it is your habit to talk pessimistically. From this negative habit you must restrain yourself even if it requires an act of will.
2. After speaking hopefully for twenty-four hours, continue the practice for one week, then you can be permitted to be “realistic” for a day or two. You will discover that what you meant by “realistic” a week ago was actually pessimistic, but what you now mean by “realistic’ is something entirely different; it is the dawning of the positive outlook. When most people say they are being “realistic” they delude themselves: they are simply being negative.
3. You must feed your mind even as you feed your body, and to make your mind healthy you must feed it nourishing, wholesome thoughts…
5. Make a list of your friends to determine who is the most positive thinker among them and deliberately cultivate his society. Do not abandon your negative friends, but get closer to those with a positive point of view for a while, until you have absorbed their spirit, then you can go back among your negative friends and give them your newly acquired thought pattern without taking on their negativism.
6. Avoid argument, but whenever a negative attitude is expressed, counter with a positive and optimistic opinion.” (173-174)

“First, collapse physically. Practice this several times a day. Let go every muscle in the body. Conceive of yourself as a jellyfish, getting your body into complete looseness. Form a mental picutre of a huge burlpa bag of potatoes. Then mentally cut the bag, allowing the potatoes to roll out. Think of yourself as the bag.
What is more relaxed than an empty burlap bag?
The second element in the formula is to “drain the mind.” Several times each day drain the mind of all irritation, all resentment, disappointment, frustration, and annoyance. Unless you drain the mind of all irritation, all resentment, disappointment, frustration, and annoyance. Unless you drain the mind frequently and regularly, these unhappy thoughts will accumulate until a major blasting-out process will be necessary. Keep the mind drained of all factors which would impede the flow of relaxed power.” (182)

“Dale Carnegie spends a quarter-hour in meditation. He says he leaves his office for this purpose when busiest. This demonstrates control of time rather than being controlled by it.” (183)

“1. Don’t get the idea that you are Atlas carrying the world on your shoulders. Don’t strain so hard. Don’t take yourself so seriously.
2. Determine to like your work. Then it will become a pleasure, not drudgery. Perhaps you do not need to change your job. Change yourself and your work will seem different.
3. Plan your work-work your plan. Lack of system produces that “I’m swamped” feeling.
4. Don’t try to do everything at once. That is why time is spread out. Heed that wise advice from the Bible, “This one thing I do.”
5. Get a correct mental attitude, remembering that ease or difficulty in your work depends upon how you think about it. Think it’s hard and you make it hard. Think it’s easy and it tends to become easy.
6. Become efficient in your work. “Knowledge is power” (over your job). It is always easier to do a thing right.
7. Practice being relaxed. Easy always does it. Don’t press or tug. Take it in your stride.
8. Discipline yourself not to put off until tomorrow what you can do today. Accumulation of undone jobs makes your work harder. Keep your work up to schedule.” (184-185)

“He liked himself too well, and to build up his self-esteem he disliked others. He was suffering from self-love, a chief cure for which is the practice of love for others.” (192)

“Getting people to like you is merely the other side of liking them.” (193)

“Don’t deflate people. Build them up and they will love you for it.” (195)

“1. Learn to remember names. Inefficiency at this point may indicate that your interest is not sufficiently outgoing. A man’s name is very important to him.
2. Be a comfortable person so there is no strain in being with you-be and old-shoe, old-hat kind of individual. Be homey.
3. Acquire the quality fo relaxed easy-goingness so that things do not ruffle you.
4. Don’t be egotistical. Guard against giving the impression that you know it all. Be natural and normally humble.
5. Cultivate the quality of being interesting so that people will want to be with you and get something of stimulating value from their association with you.
6. Study to get the “scratchy” elements out of your personality, even those of which you may be unconscious.
7. Sincerely attempt to heal, on an honest Christian basis, every misunderstanding you have had or now have. Drain off your grievances.
8. Practice liking people until you learn to do so genuinely. Remember what Will Rogers said, “I never met a man I didn’t like.” Try to be that way.
9. Never miss an opportunity to say a word of congratulation upon anyone’s achievement, or express sympathy in sorrow or disappointment.
10. Get a deep spiritual experience so that you have something to give people that will help them to be stronger and meet life more effectively. Give strength to people and they will give affection to you.” (197)

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“Ego Is The Enemy” Quotes

Ego Is The EnemyI recently read “Ego Is The Enemy” by Ryan Holiday. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like the quotes, buy the book here.

“Marina Abramovic says: If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.” (4)

“Talk depletes us. Talking and doing fight for the same resources. Research shows that while goal visualization is important, after a certain point our mind begins to confuse it with actual progress. The same goes for verbalization. Even talking aloud to ourselves while we work through difficult problems has been shown to significantly decrease insight and breakthroughs. After spending so much time thinking, explaining, and talking about a task, we start to feel that we’ve gotten closer to achieving it.” (27)

“Doing great work is a struggle. It’s draining, it’s demoralizing, it’s frightening – not always, but it can feel that way when we’re deep in the middle of it. We talk to fill the void and the uncertainty.” (27)

“The greatest work and art comes from wrestling with the void, facing it instead of scrambling to make it go away.” (28)

“The only relationship between work and chatter is that one kills the other.” (28)

“Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.” (32)

“There’s a quip from the historian Will Durant, that a nation is born stoic and dies epicurean.” (32)

“The power of being a student is not just that it is an extended period of instruction, it also places the ego and ambition in someone else’s hands. There is a sort of ego ceiling imposed – one knows that he is not better than the “master” he apprentices under. Not even close. You defer to them, you subsume yourself. You cannot fake or bullshit them.” (38)

“The pretense of knowledge is our most dangerous vice, because it prevents us from getting any better. Studious self-assessment is the antidote.” (39)

“Because we only seem to hear about the passion of successful people,w e forget that failures shared the same trait.” (47)

“Be an anteambulo. Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself.” (53)

“When you are just starting out, we can be sure of a few fundamental realities: 1) You’re not nearly as good or as important as you think you are; 2) You have an attitude that needs to be readjusted; 3) Most of what you think you know or most of what you learned in books or in school is out of date or wrong.” (53)

“Greatness comes from humble beginnings; it comes from grunt work. It means you’re the least important person in the room – until you change that with results.” (56)

“Be lesser, do more. Imagine if for every person you met, you thought of some way to help them, something you could do fro them? And you looked at it in a way that entirely benefited them and not you.” (46)

“Most people’s egos prevent them from appreciating: the person who clears the path ultimately controls its direction.” (58)

“It is a timeless fact of life that the up-and-coming must endure the abuses of the entrenched.” (64)

“It’s a sad fact of life that new talents are regularly missed, and even when recognized, often unappreciated. The reasons always vary, but it’s a part of the journey.” (64)

“You’re not able to change the system until after you’ve made it. In the meantime, you’ll have to find some way to make it suit your purposes – even if those purposes are just extra time to develop properly, to learn from others on their dime, to build your base and establish yourself.” (64)

“Genghis Khan warned, “If you can’t swallow your pride, you can’t lead.” (77)

“The question to ask, when you feel pride, then, is this: What am I missing right now that a more humble person might see? What am I avoiding, or running from, with my bluster, franticness, and embellishments?” (77)

“Fac, si facis. (Do it if you’re going to do it.)” (82)

“We want so desperately to believe that those who have great empires set out to build one. Why? So we can indulge in the pleasurable planning of ours.” (109)

“Once you win, everyone is gunning for you. It’s during your moment at the top that you can afford ego the least – because the stakes are so much higher, the margins for error are so much smaller. If anything, your ability to listen, to hear feedback, to improve and grow matter more now than ever before.” (110)

“Instead of pretending that we are living some great story, we must remain focused on the execution – and on executing with excellence. We must shun the false crown and continue working on what got us here. Because that’s the only thing that will keep us here.” (113)

“Ego needs honors in order to be validated. Confidence, on the other hand, is able to wait and focus on the task at hand regardless of external recognition.” (134)

“We never earn the right to be greedy or to pursue our interests at the expense of everyone else. To think otherwise is not only egotistical, it’s counterproductive.” (135)

“The only way out is through.” (168)

“This is what we’re aspiring to – much more than mere success. What matters is that we can respond to what life throws at us. And how we make it through.” (169)

“”Ambition,” Marcus Aurelius reminded himself, “means tying your well-being to what other people say or do… Sanity means tying it to your own actions.” Do your work. Do it well. Then “let go and let God.” That’s all there needs to be.” (180)

“The world is, after all, indifferent to what we humans “want.” If we persist in wanting, in needing, we are simply setting ourselves up for resentment or worse. Doing the work is enough.” (181)

“The problem is that when we get our identity tied up in our work, we worry that any kind of failure will then say something bad about us as a person.” (189)

“Your potential, the absolute best you’re capable of – that’s the metric to measure yourself against. Your standards are. Winning is not enough. People can get lucky and win. People can be assholes and win. Anyone can win. But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.” (197)

“A person who judges himself based on his own standard doesn’t crave the spotlight the same way as someone who lets applause dictate success.” (199)

“A person who can think long term doesn’t pity herself during short-term setbacks.” (199)

“This obsession with the past, with something that someone did or how things should have been, as mucha s it hurts, is ego embodied.” (206)

“Perfecting the personal regularly leads to success as a professional, but rarely the other way around.” (216)

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“Give and Take” Quotes

Give and Take coverI recently read “Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach To Success” by Adam Grant. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like the quotes, buy the book here.

“If you insist on quid pro quo every time you help others, you will have a much narrower network.” (45)

“Rifkin is governed by a simple rule: the five-minute favor. “You should be willing to do something that will take you five minutes or less for anybody.” (55)

“Overall, the surgeons didn’t get better with practice. They only got better at the specific hospital where they practiced.” (70)

“A defining feature of how givers collaborate: they take on the tasks that are in the group’s best interest, not necessarily their own personal interests.” (74)

“Eugene Kim and Theresa Glomb found that highly talented people tend to make others jealous, placing themselves at risk of being disliked, resented, ostracized, and undermined. But if these talents people are also givers, they no longer have a target on their backs. Instead, givers are appreciated for their contributions to the group.” (75)

“Carolyn Omine adds, ‘Compared to other writers’ room I’ve been in, I would say The Simpsons tends to look longer for jokes. I think it’s because we have writers, like George, who will say, ‘No, that’s not quite right,’ even if it’s late, even if we’re all tired. I think that’s an important quality. We need those people, like George, who aren’t afraid to say, “no, this isn’t good enough. We can do better.’” (76)

“‘One of the best things about developing that credibility was if I wanted to try something that was fairly strange, people would be willing to at least give it a shot at the table read,’ Meyer reflects. ‘They ended up not rewriting my stuff as much as they had early on, because they know I had a decent track record. I think people saw that my heart was in the right place – my intentions were good. That goes a long way.’” (76)

“This is a perspective gap: when we’re not experiencing a psychologically or physically intense state, we dramatically underestimate how much it will affect us.” (87)

“The same patterns emerged with friends giving and receiving wedding gifts and birthday gifts. The senders preferred to give unique gifts, but the recipients actually preferred the gifts they solicited on their registries and wish lists.” (89)

“‘There are only a few hundred people at any one time writing television comedy for a living,’ Meyer says. ‘It’s a good idea not to alienate these guys, and most of the jobs you get are more or less through word of mouth, or a recommendation. It’s really important to have a good reputation. I quickly learned to see other comedy writers as allies.’” (91)

“Success doesn’t measure a human being, effort does.” (102)

“Of course, natural talent also matters, but once you have a pool of candidates above the threshold of necessary potential, grit is a major factor that predicts how close they get to achieving their potential.” (106)

“When Dave stammered and tripped over a couple of arguments, something strange happened. The jurors liked him.” (129)

“Research suggests that there are two fundamental paths to influence: dominance and prestige.” (130)

“But there’s a twist: expressing vulnerability is only effective if the audience receives other signals establishing the speaker’s competence.” (133)

“Psychologists call this the pratfall effect. Spilling a cup of coffee hurt the image of the average candidate: it was just another reason for the audience to dislike him. But the same blunder helped the expert appear human and approachable – instead of superior and distant.” (134)

“By asking people questions about their plans and intentions, we increase the likelihood that they actually act on these plans and intentions.” (142)

“New research shows that advice seeking is a surprisingly effective strategy for exercising influence when we lack authority.” (150)

“Seeking advice is among the most effective ways to influence peers, superiors, and subordinates.” (150)

“Research shows that people who regularly seek advice and help from knowledgeable colleagues are actually rated more favorably by supervisors than those who never seek advice and help.” (151)

“When we ask for advice, in order to give us a recommendation, advisers have to look at the problem or dilemma from our point of view.” (151)

“Benjamin Franklin ‘had a fundamental rule for winning friends,’ Isaacson writers: appeal to ‘their pride and vanity by constantly seeking their opinion and advice, and they will admire you for your judgment and wisdom.’” (153)

“The change of context brought renewed energy.” (169)

“Research shows that if people start volunteering two hours a week, their happiness, satisfaction, and self-esteem go up a year later.” (174)

“Giving has an energizing effect only if it’s an enjoyable, meaningful choice rather than undertake out of duty and obligation.” (175)

“Three decades of research show that receiving support from colleagues is a robust antidote to burnout.” (177)

“If you spend the money on yourself, your happiness doesn’t change. But if you spend the money on others, you actually report becoming significantly happier.” (183)

“It’s wise to start out as a giver, since research shows that trust is hard to build but easy to destroy. But once a counterpart is clearly acting like a taker, it makes sense for givers to flex their reciprocity styles and shift to a matching strategy.” (198)

“Givers, particularly agreeable ones, often overestimate the degree to which assertiveness might be off-putting to others.” (208)

“When we look at a rivas as a fellow soccer fan, rather than as an enemy, we can identify with him. Oftentimes, we fail to identify with people because we’re thinking about ourselves – or them – in terms that are too specific and narrow. If we look more broadly at commonalities between us, it becomes much easier to see giving as otherish.” (226)

“Psychologists have found that on average, people whose names start with A and B get better grades and are accepted to higher-ranked law schools than people whose names start with C and D – and that professional baseball players whose names start with K, the symbol for strikeouts, strikeout 9 percent more often than their peers.” (231)

“It was not just any commonality that drove people to act like givers. IT was an uncommon commonality.” (232)

“A popular way to achieve optimal distinctiveness is to join a unique group. Being part of a group with shared interests, identities, goals, values, skills, characteristics, or experiences gives us a sense of connection and belonging. At the same time, being part of a group that is clearly distinct from other groups gives us a sense of uniqueness. Studies show that people identify more strongly with individuals and groups that share unique similarities. The more rare a group, value, interest, skill, or experience is, the more likely it is to facilitate a bond. And research indicates that people are happier in groups that provide optimal distinctiveness, giving a sense of both inclusion and uniqueness. These are the groups in which we take the most pride, and feel the most cohesive and valued.” (233)

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