Tag: quotes

Vices over time

It starts out innocent enough, a few drinks with your friends and later on it escalates into full blown addiction. Have you seen this whether it is alcohol, smoking, drugs, or over eating? These vices become a habit and habits are hard to break. Seneca seems to be saying it is easier to slow it down than to stop it. This is the power of our vices, in some ways they make us feel better, and we pattern our existence around them, making them so very potent. Rather than put yourself through the painful process of trying to stop, it is a wise person that never starts. Next time you tell yourself it won’t hurt to have that drink, try that drug, smoke that one cigarette, or eat that crap you know is clogging your arteries; think how easily these little missteps turn into a powerful self destructive habit.

Namaste

Have you no shame?

How can this happen? Why am I so disturbed by what is said to me or what goes on around me? Why do I give away my peace of mind so easily?

One of the big reasons we so easily become disturbed is that we care about what other people think. You make a mistake and are called out on it, and you begin questioning yourself. How could I be so stupid? I’m always fucking up. Epictetus is telling us that it is so easy for us to allow our circumstances to rule our thinking. If you are letting some perceived failure disturb your piece of mind consider this quote:

“Remember that failure is an event not a person.” Zig Ziglar

Listen, I mess shit up all the time, in fact it’s almost comical. With the intense frequency of screwing things up that I experience by now I would have been insane.

Another good example is someone institutes a new process that you think is extremely ill conceived. Most likely this process is out of your control, but instead of just forgetting about it, you spend countless hours being resentful, or feeling that you know better. Now because you are so much smarter than whoever came up with this process, you make yourself miserable. You begin to disengage at work, because they are just so stupid; what a bunch of morons.

Stop it! I mean you need to stop it right now. Your expectations of everyone acting or doing things that you want is completely messing you up. Stop reacting and start protecting your mind from all these outside influences. Seriously this shit that you let bug you will not even be on your radar a year from now, but you let it bug the hell out of you anyway. It’s not the problem that is disturbing you, it’s your reaction to the problem.

Namaste

 

Your life is right now!

Your life is right now!

I have this app on my phone that you get inspirational quotes from, and the other day I was checking it out in the morning like I normally do and the following came up:

“Your life is right now! It’s not later! It’s not in that time of retirement. It’s not when the lover gets here. It’s not when you’ve moved into the new house. It’s not when you get the better job. Your life is right now. It will always be right now. You might as well decide to start enjoying your life right now, because it’s not ever going to get better than right now-until it gets better right now!” Esther Hicks

I don’t normally make the focus of a post on a quote alone, but in this case I had to make an exception. For some reason reading this a couple days ago just seemed to resonate with me, as I have been struggling to stay focused in the present, often drifting into future mode. Future mode is a slippery slope and tends to lead to nothing but cycles of envision, want, plan and acquire, followed by another cycle of envision, want, plan and acquire. Oddly enough this reminds me of my job as a Project Manager, anyways it is no way to live your life.

Hope you enjoy this quote and take it to heart. Stay in the present my friend.

Namaste

What Lou Holtz said

Lou Holtz

A couple of days ago I posted the following quote on Twitter and here on my quotes page “Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.”  Lou Holtz

I remember earlier in the week when my wife called me and said that she thinks we have problems with our home’s foundation. There were tiles cracking in the kitchen, grout coming up, some cracks in the walls, and it appeared that some of the floors were not level. When I heard this I immediately overreacted whining about how much this would cost me, and what a piece of crap this old house of ours was. We had invested lots of money in air conditioning, pest control, and insulation; all things you cannot see but needed to be done. So clearly I had reacted very poorly, and to  prove this out a day later when the house was inspected we found that nothing was wrong. We live in Texas and it is common for some of these things to happen, and we were told to keep the ground around the foundation wet with a soak-er hose three days a week for 40-60 minutes during the summer months. I guess it is a Texas thing where the moisture seems to help maintain the integrity of the foundation preventing the ground from cracking and shifting here from the severe heat.

Not only had I reacted like a dumb ass, but my reaction was premature occurring before the inspection even took place. This is probably why I liked this quote from Lout Holtz so much. A persons true character is not something you exhibit when everything is going your way, but instead it is revealed when things are not going your way. I learned a lesson this week that it is how you respond to life that is most important. None of us can escape pain, misfortune, disappointments, and many of the other unpleasant things life has in store, but we can all control how we respond to these challenges.

It is extremely important that you have a cautious response when it comes to perceived bad news. Moving into a negative mind state where you imagine the worst only damages your peace of mind and sends a message to others that you are not a real leader. So the choice is always clear you can respond in a negative fashion or you can respond as a leader and make the best of the situation. Now my example pales in significance to the challenges some people face, but it does illustrate a point.

Don’t imagine the worst and think about the example you set for those around you. In addition to how your response affects others is the fact that a negative response only causes personal psychological damage tainting all your thoughts. Lou was right, it is about how you respond that matters.