Daily Wisdom #10

#QuoteoftheDay

THE DAILY STOIC

By Ryan Holiday

TODAY IS THE DAY

“You get what you deserve. Instead of being a good person today, you choose instead to become one tomorrow.” —MARCUS AURELIUS

“I don’t complain about the lack of time . . . What little I have will go far enough. Today—this day—will achieve what no tomorrow will fail to speak about. I will lay siege to the gods and shake up the world.” —SENECA

We almost always know what the right thing is. We know we should not get upset, that we shouldn’t take this personally, that we should walk to the health food store instead of swinging by the drive-through, that we need to sit down and focus for an hour. The tougher part is deciding to do it in a given moment.

What stops us? The author Steven Pressfield calls this force The Resistance. As he put it in The War of Art, “We don’t tell ourselves, ‘I’m never going to write my symphony.’ Instead we say, ‘I’m going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.’”

Today, not tomorrow, is the day that we can start to be good.

THE DAILY LAWS

By Robert Greene

Determine the Strength of People’s Character

Remember this: weak character will neutralize all of the other possible good qualities a person might possess. For instance, people of high intelligence but weak character may come up with good ideas and even do a job well, but they will crumble under pressure, or they will not take too kindly to criticism, or they will think first and foremost of their own agenda, or their arrogance and annoying qualities will cause others around them to quit, harming the general environment.

There are hidden costs to working with them or hiring them. Someone less charming and intelligent but of strong character will prove more reliable and productive over the long run. People of real strength are as rare as gold, and if you find them, you should respond as if you had a discovered a treasure.

Daily Law: In gauging strength or weakness, look at how people handle stressful moments and responsibility. Look at their patterns: what have they actually completed or accomplished?

A CALENDAR OF WISDOM

By Leo Tolstoy

The greatest changes in the world are made slowly and gradually, not with eruptions and revolutions.

The same things happen in one’s spiritual life.

All great thoughts are living thoughts, and they can grow and be changed. And they change and grow as a tree, and not as a cloud. —JOHN RUSKIN

All really great things are happening in slow and inconspicuous ways. The process of life should be the birth of a soul. This is the highest alchemy, and this justifies our presence on earth. This is our calling and our virtue. —HENRI AMIEL

Our life is unceasing wonder, growth, and development. —LUCY MALORY

There is nothing more harmful for your inner perfection than the understanding that you are doing well. The way to happiness, the way to real moral improvement, moves so invisibly, so inconspicuously, that a person can see his successes only after great, lengthy periods of time.

If you think that you are moving toward perfection, and you notice this, then you should know that you are mistaken, that you have stopped and are moving backward.

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