Wisdom Journal

 

Skillful Living

"It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death's final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it ... Life is long if you know how to use it."

- Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

“Every time you go to do something different, every time you deviate from the norm, every time you break a habit or end a pattern, your brain cries, 'Stop, this doesn't feel right! Don't do it!

DO NOT LISTEN.

The number one requirement for financial success (or success in anything for that matter) is simply this: You've got to be willing to be uncomfortable. Or as Eastern wisdom advocates, 'Embrace what does not come naturally. Only then will you stop limiting yourself.'

Discomfort is an automatic response to anything out of the ordinary. The ability to tolerate discomfort is absolutely essential to go to the next level in any area of your life. Anxiety, fear, worry, nervousness, resistance...all these are normal reactions to new situations. It need not mean something's wrong. It just means that something is different."

- Barara Stanny, Overcoming Underearning

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

"The modern Renaissance Man...is curious, interested in different things. You have to be willing to 'waste time' on things that are not directly relevant to your work because you're curious. But then you're able to sometimes unconsciously integrate them back into your work."

- Frans Johansson, The Medici Effect

"I want to live happily in a world I don’t understand."

-Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile

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Arthur Schopenhauer:

"... the two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom ... intellectual dullness is at the bottom of that vacuity of soul which is stamped on so many faces … It is mainly because of this inner vacuity of soul that people go in quest of society, diversion, amusement, luxury of every sort, which lead many to extravagance and misery. Nothing is so good a protection against such misery as inward wealth, the wealth of the mind, because the greater it grows, the less room it leaves for boredom."

"Care should be taken not to build the happiness of life upon a broad foundation, not to require a great many things in order to be happy. For happiness on such a foundation is the most easily undermined; it offers many more opportunities for accidents; and accidents are always happening."

"To be self-sufficient, to be all in all to oneself, to want for nothing, to be able to say omnia mea mecum porto ('all things I carry with me') that is assuredly the chief qualification for happiness. Hence Aristotle's remark, to be happy means to be self-sufficient cannot be too often repeated."

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La Rochefoucauld:

  • “Our promises are made in proportion to our hopes, but kept in proportion to our fears.”

  • “It is easier to be wise for others than for oneself.”

  • “The head is always fooled by the heart.”

  • “The crazy and the stupid can only see their passing emotions.”

  • “Few cowards always know the full extent of their fear.”

  • “It would pay us better to let ourselves be seen as we are than to try to appear what we are not.”

  • “Our envy always lasts longer than the good fortune of those we envy.”

  • “Before strongly desiring anything we should look carefully into the happiness of its present owner.”

  • “Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad, for any other goodness is usually merely inertia or lack of will-power.”

  • “If we had no faults we should not find so much enjoyment in seeing faults in others.”

  • “Weakness, even more than vice, is the enemy of virtue.”

  • “True eloquence consists in saying all that is required and only what is required.”