Tag: life
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The disease of ambition
“The ease of having an ambition is that it can be explained to others; the very disease of ambition is that it can be so easily explained to others.” David Whyte I have been pondering David Whyte’s thought-provoking chapter on ‘Ambition’ in his book Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. It…
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It can all be taken away, but we still have one choice
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Viktor Frankl Life can suddenly change in the space of a day. Yesterday things seemed to be smooth sailing, and everything was fine.…
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When missing becomes the habit
“The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.” James Clear It can be hard to strike a balance between work and play while maintaining our sanity. Take, for instance, this…
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Create a safe space for magic to happen
“It’s not necessarily down to me to save, rescue and support, but if I can find a safe space to bring in and host, and allow the wisdom in the room to connect and share, and come with a similar spirit of generosity and helping each other, magic happens.” Michael Bungay Stanier It’s amazing what…
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Suffering for the weekend
“It’s actually a problem to really look forward to holidays and to weekends. It indicates two things: 1) It takes the joy out of the everyday. Because now you’re living in the future and suffering the rest of the time. 2) You have accepted a way of life in which most of your time is…
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Prepare mentally for the day’s encounters
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly.” Marcus Aurelius The great stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius prepared his mind daily for what he was about to face. This is so that it became no shock to him when he…
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The ancestor of your future happiness
“All of us can think of moments in our life where we picked up that phone, we had the courageous conversation, we went out the door against all logic, and we transformed our life. And you look back, and you say if I hadn’t done that in that moment, my life would be irredeemably impoverished. So the…
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Feeling like a fool? Who cares.
“One of the biggest things that holds us back is in life is that we are unwilling to look like an idiot in the short term to be successful in the long term” Shane Parrish What are you unwilling to feel? And how is it getting in the way? We feel embarrassed or ashamed about…
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Getting out of the shadow career
“Sometimes, when we’re terrified of embracing our true calling, we’ll pursue a shadow calling instead. The shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalisingly the same. But a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to…
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Who is it you’re trying to be?
“Specify your damn goals. Because how are you going to hit something if you don’t know what it is?” Jordan Peterson I came across an article that Jordan Peterson has a new book coming out, Beyond Order. It got me thinking about the balance of order and chaos in our lives and the goals we set…