Dream big, start small, but most of all, start now
Daily Wisdom — Day 3
First in The Morning: 365 Uplifting Moments to Start the Day Consciously
Modern man is the first man in history to have no idea of sacredness, to be living a very mundane life. He is interested in money, power, prestige, and he thinks that is all there is. It is such a stupid notion.
His life is surrounded by small things, very small. He has no idea of anything bigger than himself. He has denied God, he has said that God is dead. He has denied life after death, he has denied life within. He believes only in denying the center. He believes only in the superficial; he believes in the circumference, but goes on denying the center, hence we see such boredom all around. It is natural because without something bigger than you to relate to, your life is going to be tedious, boring. A life becomes a dance only when it is an adventure. And it can become an adventure only when there is something higher than you to achieve, to reach.
The sacred simply means that we are not the end, that we are only a passage; that everything has not already happened, that much has yet to happen. The seed has yet to sprout and the sprout to become a tree. That tree has to wait for spring and to explode into thousands of flowers, releasing its soul into the cosmos. Only then will there be fulfillment. And the sacred is not far away; we just have to start asking about it. In the beginning, of course, we are groping in the dark, but soon things start falling in tune. Soon we start having glimpses of the beyond, an unheard music starts to reach our hearts: it stirs our being, it gives us new color, new joy, a new life.
The Pivot Year: 365 Days to Become the Person You Truly Want to Be
One day you will realize that happiness is not what your house looks like, but how you love the people within its walls. Happiness is not finding success by a certain time, but finding something you love so much time itself seems to disappear. Happiness is not thinking you have earned the world’s approval, but waking up each day and feeling so at peace within your own skin, quietly anticipating the day ahead, unconcerned with how you are perceived. Happiness is not having the best of everything, but the ability to make the best of anything. Happiness is knowing you are doing what you can with what you were given. Happiness is not something that comes to you when every problem is solved and all things are perfectly in place, but in the shining silver linings that remind us the light of day is always there, if you slow down enough to notice.
The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
BE RUTHLESS TO THE THINGS THAT DON’T MATTER
“How many have laid waste to your life when you weren’t aware of what you were losing, how much was wasted in pointless grief, foolish joy, greedy desire, and social amusements — how little of your own was left to you. You will realize you are dying before your time!” — SENECA
One of the hardest things to do in life is to say “No.” To invitations, to requests, to obligations, to the stuff that everyone else is doing. Even harder is saying no to certain time-consuming emotions: anger, excitement, distraction, obsession, lust. None of these impulses feels like a big deal by itself, but run amok, they become a commitment like anything else.
If you’re not careful, these are precisely the impositions that will overwhelm and consume your life. Do you ever wonder how you can get some of your time back, how you can feel less busy? Start by learning the power of “No!” — as in “No, thank you,” and “No, I’m not going to get caught up in that,” and “No, I just can’t right now.” It may hurt some feelings. It may turn people off. It may take some hard work.But the more you say no to the things that don’t matter, the more you can say yes to the things that do. This will let you live and enjoy your life — the life that you want.
The Daily Laws: 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy and Human Nature
The Voice
The way to recover the meaning of life and the worthwhileness of life is to recover the power of experience, to have impulse voices from within, and to be able to hear these impulse voices from within. — Abraham Maslow
From the time I was young, I was entranced with words. I can remember in the fourth grade the teacher did this activity where she put up the word carpenter, and she asked us to come up with as many words as we could with just those letters. “Ant,” “pet,” “car,” et cetera. And I just thought, “Wow! You mean you can take letters like this and recombine them into words?” I was entranced. These childhood attractions are hard to put into words. Abraham Maslow called it “impulse voices.” He noticed that children know exactly what they like and dislike from a very early age. It is extremely human and powerful. You had those impulse voices too. You hated this kind of activity and you loved that other one. You didn’t like math but you were drawn to words. You were exhilarated by certain kinds of books and fell promptly asleep with other kinds. The importance of recognizing these early inclinations is that they are clear indications of an attraction that is not infected by the desires of other people. They are not something embedded in you by your parents, which come with a more superficial connection, something more verbal and conscious. Coming instead from somewhere deeper, these inclinations can only be your own, reflections of your unique chemistry.
Daily Law: Do something today that you used to love doing as a kid. Try to reconnect with your impulse voices.
A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul
Those who know the rules of true wisdom are baser than those who love them. Those who love them are baser than those who follow them. — CHINESE PROVERB
The most important question to keep before ourselves at all times is this: Do we do the right thing?
During this short period of time which we call our life, do our acts conform to the will of the force that sent us into the world? Do we do the right thing? When I am in difficult circumstances, I ask God to help me. But it is my duty to serve the Lord, and not His to serve me. As soon as I remember this, my burden becomes lighter.
We have to fulfill honestly and irreproachably the work destined for us. It does not matter whether we hope that we will become angels some day, or believe that we have originated from slugs. — JOHN RUSKIN
Just imagine that the purpose of your life is your happiness only — then life becomes a cruel and senseless thing. You have to embrace what the wisdom of humanity, your intellect, and your heart tell you: that the meaning of life is to serve the force that sent you into the world. Then life becomes a constant joy.
Devotion
Make the crooked straight,
Make the straight to flow.
Gather water, fire, and light.
Bring the world to a single point.
If we have devotion — total faith and commitment to our spiritual path — our determination will naturally build momentum. Fewer and fewer obstructions will come before us. Our path becomes like a crooked one made straight. No matter what tries to keep us from our purpose, we will not be deterred.
Proper devotion lies not simply in a headlong course. It also requires fortitude. Our bodies, our hearts, and our spirits must be totally concentrated upon what we want. Only by uniting all our inner elements can we have full devotion.
If we see our path clearly and our personalities are completely unified, then there is no distinction between the outer world and the inner one. Nothing is faraway anymore, nothing is not open to us. That is why it is said that the world is like a single point: So strong is devotion that there is nothing that is not a part of it.
365 Tao: Daily Meditations
The Daily Dad
Their Faults Are Your Faults
Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you. — Robert Fulghum
Your kids can drive you nuts. The way they can push your buttons. The way they can ask an interminable number of questions. The way they can mimic you.
“I love him very dearly I guess because of his faults which are my faults,” the novelist John Steinbeck writes of his son. “I know where his pains and his panics come from.”
Our kids have our virtues and our vices. That’s what makes this whole crazy parenting thing such a wonderful opportunity. Because we are here to help them become the best possible versions of themselves. One of the ways we do that is to help them become like us in all the good ways. But one of the other ways is to prevent them from becoming too much like us in all the bad ways.
It can be an incredibly difficult balancing act if we aren’t honest or self-possessed, if we let our egos get in the way. We can’t let that happen. This is our chance, our time! To help them. To bolster them. To help them overcome flaws that maybe we never quite got over ourselves. To seize this second chance — to give what we didn’t get.
More than that, it’s a chance to understand.
