A dose of inspiration
"Be useful: Seven Tools for Life” quotes
Пишу пост про мій персональний топ книжок, прочитаних в 2024, але пост вже занадто великий, тож прийняла рішення деякі його частини, якщо можливо, виносити в окремі пости.
Сьогодні тут цитати з книги Арнольда Шварценегера "Be useful: Seven Tools for Life”. Приходьте їх почитати, коли потрібно трохи чесної правди і легкого підсрачника щось робити в житті :)
The only difference between them and us, between me and you, between any two people, is the clarity of the picture we have for our future, the strength of our plan to get there, and whether or not we have accepted that the choice to make that vision a reality is ours and ours alone.
If you can choose joy over jealousy, happiness over hate, love over resentment, positivity over negativity, then you have the tools to make the best of any situation, even one that feels like failure.
I owe a lot to my upbringing. I was made for it and made by it. I wouldn’t be who I am today without each one of those experiences. The Stoics have a term for this: amor fati. Love of fate. “Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to,” the great Stoic philosopher and former slave Epictetus said. “Rather, wish that what happens happen the way it happens. Then you will be happy.
Use it or lose it is the rule with ripe fruit, political goodwill, media attention, coupons, economic opportunity, space to pass on the highway, all sorts of things. But most importantly, it’s true of the knowledge you soak up over your lifetime. If you don’t regularly flex your mind like a muscle and put your knowledge to work, it will eventually lose its power.
Going for a walk, going to the gym, reading, riding your bike, taking a Jacuzzi, I don’t care what you do. If you are stuck, if you are struggling to figure out a clear vision for the life you want, then all I care about is that you make little goals for yourself to start building momentum and that you create time and space every day to think, to daydream, to look around, to be present in the world, to let inspiration and ideas in. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, at least give it a chance to find you.
I’m sure your story is complicated too. I bet growing up was more difficult than the people around you think it was. We can’t change those stories, but we can choose where we go from there.
Plan B is to succeed at plan A.
Curiosity. Hunger for information. Being open-minded. Putting your knowledge to good use. This, it turns out, is a formula for anyone to create real, meaningful change in the world, whether it’s personal, professional, or political.
Take someone like the chemist who invented the lubricant spray WD-40. The full name of WD-40 is “Water Displacement, 40th Formula.” It was called that in the chemist’s lab book because his previous thirty-nine versions of the formula failed. He learned from each one of those failures and nailed it on the fortieth try.
As you think about this thing you want to do, or the mark you want to make in this world, remember that your job is neither to avoid failure nor to seek it out. Your job is to bust your ass in pursuit of your vision—yours and nobody else’s—and to embrace the failure that is bound to come.
Many of our best people are lost. So many of the good ones don’t know what they’re doing with their lives. They’re unhealthy. They’re unhappy. Seventy percent of them hate their jobs. Their relationships are unrewarding. They don’t smile. They don’t laugh. They have no energy. They feel useless. They feel helpless, as if life were pushing them down a road to nowhere. If you know what to look for, you will see these people everywhere. Maybe even when you look in the mirror. It’s OK. You’re not broken. Neither are they. This is just what happens when you don’t have a clear vision for your life, and you’ve taken either whatever you can get or whatever you thought you deserved.
Life isn't just the high points or the big moments... it's also those stretches of time in between. Life happens as much in the transitions as it does in the pauses.