Out of reach

Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.

-Michelangelo

Keep in mind

The Stoic: 9 Principles to Help You Keep Calm in Chaos

 

“Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you’re alive and able — be good.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Truth

For the individual, there is no such thing as theoretic truth; a great truth that is not absorbed by our whole mind and life, and has not become an inseparable part of our living, is not a real truth to us. If we know the truth and do not live it, our life is—a lie.

“The Power of Truth”
From The Power of Truth: Individual Problems and Possibilities, 1902
By William George Jordan

Derived

"No, we don't put theories into practice. We create theories out of practice. That was our story, and it is easy to infer from it - and from similar stories - that the confusion is generalised. The theory is the child of the cure, not the opposite - ex cura theoria nascitur."

-Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile, pg 221

Answering the Dreaded “So, What Do You Do?” Question

...he can begin to write a mental story of this life change by visualizing each of the pieces of the move: the new apartment, the transit ride, the crowds of people, the winter conditions. By visualizing each area of uncertainty and how he can positively deal with the components, he will make the idea less scary and more possible. The key distinction, however, is that you’re not only visualizing an outcome: you’re also visualizing each step of the process.

Your present narrative, the one you used at the after-work party, the rambling that might have included, “We’re thinking about having kids, and I might work on an essay, but I don’t feel like a writer just yet,” can begin to shift. As you identify ways you can pull from your future narratives, you can use them in the present. This subtle change shifts your language to “We’re going to have kids in the next few years,” and “I am a writer; I’m working on several pieces and my dream is to write a book in the next couple of years.” This becomes a better story, and it also helps push you in the direction of your goals.

Would have

As the poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote: “Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are ‘It might have been.’” “I should have” and “I wish I had” are two more of history’s saddest sentences.

Extremes

"More barbells. Do crazy things (break furniture once in a while), like the Greeks during the later stages of a drinking symposium, and stay “rational” in larger decisions. Trashy gossip magazines and classics or sophisticated works; never middlebrow stuff. Talk to either undergraduate students, cab drivers, and gardeners or the highest caliber scholars; never to middling-but-career-conscious academics. If you dislike someone, leave him alone or eliminate him; don’t attack him verbally."

"...anything that removes the risk of ruin will get us to such a barbell."

-Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile, p166

Stoicism

"Success brings an asymmetry: you now have a lot more to lose than to gain. You are hence fragile...

An intelligent life is all about such emotional positioning to eliminate the sting of harm, which as we saw is done by mentally writing off belongings so one does not feel any pain from losses. The volatility of the world no longer affects you negatively.

The modern stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistake into initiation, and desire into undertaking.

...invest in good actions. Things can be taken away from us - not good deeds and acts of virtue."

-Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile, p154-156