Ryan Holiday

These books should be at the top of your list. Here’s the problem with reading the books that everyone else has read. It makes you more like everyone else.

Why does one day matter? Why does what you do today matter in the scheme of your whole life? Because our life is made up of days. Days like today.

There is this idea that if you just make great stuff—if you’re authentic and cool—it will just happen.

Compulsion to do is the opposite of being. It’s the opposite of being present.

“Why am I telling myself that I’ve been harmed?”

The worries and anxieties of daily life seem to fall away when we stand next to the ocean or walk through a beautiful park.

We tell ourselves we don’t have time to prepare too much because we have other things going on, or we tell ourselves we’re not going to prepare because we haven’t been paid yet.

Most people with a public persona tell you that the downsides outweigh the upsides.

So fight it. A lot depends on whether you win the battle. Hopefully these books will help.

No Pressure. Just Write.

Gratitude for that nagging pain in my leg, gratitude for that troublesome client, gratitude for that delayed flight, gratitude for that damage from the storm. Because it’s making me take things slow, because it’s helping me develop better boundaries, because some flights are going to be delayed and I’m glad it wasn’t a more important flight, because the damage could have been worse, because the damage exposed a more serious problem that now we’re solving. And on and on.

Move to find stillness. And if not stillness, then at least insight.

You can always recognize a leader by their generosity towards others, particularly the people who work for and with them.

If you want to be a person who people respect, you have to stand for something.

The right question at the right time can change the course of a life, can still a turbulent mind, or heal an angry heart.

There is one quiet place left on this earth. One quiet place where there are no phones, no news tickers, no instant messages or even music.

“Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet.”

We can forget so easily, in life, the randomness and absurd yet somehow functional, coordination of this world we call home, this thing we know as existence.