We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit – Will Durant via Aristotle I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the power of compounding interest. Most people are familiar with the phenomenon...
Thoughts
See Through It
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see“ – Thoreau Every death makes room for a new beginning. Every loss makes room for something to be found. Though we can’t control input, we can absolutely...
Leave the Past Behind…Live Forward
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. – Kierkegaard They say hindsight is 20/20, and that may be true…but regardless of how well we may or may not understand the things in life that...
The Little Things Will Set You Free
“Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it“ – Kierkegaard The pursuit of happiness, pleasure, enjoyment, etc. seems to consume us. We weigh our actions against whether they make us content or discontent. We...
Knowing Is Not Enough, Seek Understanding
Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach. – Aristotle The Best Gifts are Often Deeply Hidden Commonly bastardized into the sardonic ‘those that can, do; those that can’t, teach’ for reasons that are beyond me, this maxim should...
Beliefs Trick You Into Thinking You’re Right
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong. – Bertrand Russell Too often we become very sure of ourselves. So sure in fact, that we’re willing to do crazy things as a result of our...
You Are Who You Choose to Be
Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one. – Heidegger Though Heidegger would argue that we do indeed have a “destiny” from which we can’t uncoil ourselves, he also believes that the frontiers of...
You Control Your Reactions to the World, Nothing Else
It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. – Epictetus Yes, this one is a tried and true Stoic standard. It has been re-purposed in many ways, by many different philosophers…and definitely isn’t...
Happiness is Not the Goal
Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination. -Kant We term happiness as an objective ends unto itself. We strive for it as if there’s a choice at the fork in the road that leads to it....
Find the ‘Why’ and the ‘How’ Becomes Irrelevant
Everything has been figured out, except how to live. -Sartre We, as humans, spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to figure things out. We’ve developed the sciences to help us describe the natural world, we’ve developed religion to...