353. A MAN BECOMES WHAT HE THINKS ABOUT MOST OF THE TIME –Ralph Waldo Emerson

NEW RESOURCE: YOHO’S APOCALYPSE ALMANAC summarizes my best recent work. It is a little tongue-in-cheek, but it has references and links. HERE are links to download my CV, ebooks, the best recent posts, and instructions on searching my archives.

The highest spiritual value is correct discernment. –paraphrased Buddha

You must have structure to navigate your world. Many benefit from religion, but it never appealed to me. Instead, I collect and memorize aphorisms. They continuously echo through my brain, guide my thoughts and conduct, and require no leap of faith. Of course, none of us is ever complete, my control is imperfect, and I am a work in progress.

Anyone can use this method to reconstruct themselves from their reading, mentors, and experiences. To do this, take what you want where you find it, for as Picasso said, “Good artists copy, but great artists steal.” The central principle is that reviewing universal truths is more valuable than anything else, even learning new material. Those who study the Bible know this. My core is Marcus Aurelius.

I invite you into my thoughts, not to tell you what to think but to introduce you to my system. The more I practice it, the more poise, confidence, and equanimity I acquire. Reviewing it centers me and helps me work on my deficiencies. This method may seem random, but my unconscious mind sorts it out without oversight.

Table of Contents

• To learn the truth, avoid liars

• Three of my mentors explain my method.

• Counterpoint: organizing

• Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations (170 AD)

• Some other sources

• Affirmations and ideas I use

• Communication strategies I try to improve

• Climbing is life itself

• A few authors’ quotes

• Praxis (action) is essential, not theory.

• Attitude

• Patience

• Fear

• Women

• Relationships

• Persistence

• Death

• Synthesis

To learn the truth, avoid liars

They require too much effort and will turn on you. Ghost them forever.

1. Most everything publicly available is adulterated. The media is our enemy, and their modus is a limited hangout—part lies and part truth. They are directed by massively funded globalists aiming to confuse, discourage, and weaken our thoughts. I allow myself some YouTube, but mostly watch sincere amateur productions and immediately cut off anything that hints at duplicity or propaganda.

2. I cannot read many new sources and still be productive, so I unsubscribe from the naive, the weakly reasoned, and those with any hint of dishonesty. I also rarely bother with sloppy or pretentious writing—it is disrespectful, even contemptuous of the reader. Card-carrying geniuses must master their prose or be voted out of the club. I scan the following: Alex Epstein, James Roguski, Sasha Latypova, Christian Elliot, Doomberg (no, I do not pay for it), Unbekoming, Pierre Kory, and a few others.

3. If you can’t change your friends, change your friends. We all have had people in our social circles who are liars or time wasters. I made mine disappear without a trace. They were from a time in my life when I put up with it.

   Was I needy, naive, or insecure? No matter, I flipped the switch on them and they are gone. Our time is short. Why waste the energy when you can have loving, secure relationships?

   “We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye” —Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan. Eisenhower went further: “Never think about people you don’t like.”

Three of my mentors explain my method.

1. Richard Feynman: Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent, and original manner possible.

2. Thomas Carlyle: Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

3. Aurelius:

• Remind yourself that it is not the future or the past which bears down on you, but the present, always the present, which becomes an even smaller thing when isolated in this way.

• If thou workest at that which is before thee, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract thee, but keeping thy divine part pure, as if thou shouldst be bound to give it back immediately; if thou holdest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.

Counterpoint: Organizing helps

Planning and making lists promote action, increase efficiency, and aid memory retention.

1. I have used the Mac and the iPhone versions of a list-making app called Things from Cultured Code all day, every day, for over a decade. It brings whatever I want to my attention whenever I want it, has encrypted cloud backup between the platforms, and has no recurring fees.

   Some people prefer paper “tickler” folders, but I like having my ideas and to-dos on my phone. Writing lists or verbal recitation helps retention more, but is time-consuming. David Allen’s Getting Things Done (2001) was my original inspiration.

2. Some people repeat affirmations to bend their thoughts and behavior, but reviewing quotes is more powerful. Many of the ones I favor have been preserved for centuries or even millennia. I cycle hundreds through a review system and view them weekly to monthly. After I read them, I tuck them back until the next time the system brings them up. Endless repetition is the key to personal growth and productive relationships (George Goldie, my management consultant).

3. Richard Morgan from Thirteen: [My mentor] gave me a path. A functional substitute for belief.” “And that was?” “He told me to make a list, keep it to myself, and focus on it. Eleven things I wanted to do at some point in what was left of my life. Things it was important for me to do, things that mattered.” “You didn’t go for the round dozen?” “The number’s not important. Eleven, twelve, nine, doesn’t matter. Best not to make too long a list, it defeats the point of the exercise, but otherwise, you just pick a number and make your list. I chose eleven.

4. Executives and corporations use sophisticated planning programs, but my needs are simpler, and my unconscious thoughts organize my priorities. Yours will, too.

The rest of this post contains quotes, ideas, and affirmations I use to inform my life. Although some authors recommend focusing on just a few, I do not limit their number and have many hundreds. This eclectic approach crosses many fields, giving it unruly strength and yielding unexpected insights. I hope you find pearls among my quirky thoughts; take what you like, modify them, add your own, or start over altogether. The principle underlying my effort is a life of service.

I apologize for misquotes, misattributions, or anything left unattributed.

Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations (170 AD)

Stoicism, founded in the 3rd century BC, predates Christianity, which emerged in the 1st century AD. Aurelius is a prominent Stoic because of his book’s quality and influence. The original manuscript was lost for several hundred years, then rediscovered and preserved. It is one of five books in continuous publication since the invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s.

I like George Long’s translation’s poetic quality. Some find Gregory Hays’s newer version easier. Many discover this book during hard times and then hold it close the rest of their lives.

You can’t master reading and writing without study; this applies even more to mastering the art of living.

Bad luck borne nobly is good luck.

Don’t become disgusted with yourself, lose patience, or give up if you sometimes fail to act as your philosophy dictates. But after each setback, return to reason and be content if most of your acts are worthy of a good man.

Jettison your cargo of opinion, and you are saved. Who prevents you from doing this?

Are my guiding principles healthy and robust? On this hangs everything. The rest, whether I can control it or not, is but smoke and the grey ashes of the dead.

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

It is in thy power to live free from all compulsion in the greatest tranquility of mind, even though all the world cry out against you as much as they choose, and wild beasts tear into pieces the members of this kneaded matter that has grown up around you. What hinders the mind in the midst of all this from maintaining itself in tranquility, and in a just judgment of all surrounding things, and a ready use of objects that are presented to it? Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and tend thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew. Do not act as if thou wert going to live 10,000 years. While thou can, while you are able, be good.

Let no man any longer hear you finding fault with the court life or with your own.

A cucumber is bitter. Throw it away. There are briars on the road. Turn aside from them. This is enough. Do not add, and why were such things made in the world?

It all depends on your opinion of it, and that depends on you. Jettison your opinion, and you will find yourself like a sailor rounding the headland on a calm sea in a bay without waves.

How easy it is to push away and block out every rude and unwelcome idea and suddenly recover one’s peace of mind.

Only a fool or a stranger on this planet will be surprised by anything in this life.

How, at this moment, am I using my mind? This is a question worth asking all the time. How do my words and deeds measure up to the ruling reason within me, and who owns this mind anyway? An infant? A boy? A woman? A tyrant? A dumb animal? A wild beast?

He was so surrounded by good things that he had no place to crap.

Just because you find the work too hard to do, don’t leap to the conclusion that it is humanly impossible: but if the work can and should be done by a man, then consider yourself capable of doing it.

How shameful and absurd for the spirit to surrender when the body is able to fight on.

Come round, put yourself together, wake up. Admit that what is troubling you are dreams: the products of a lively imagination. Start to see things for what they are again.

You always have the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to trouble yourself about things beyond your control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.

Don’t fear the future. You will face it, if that is your fate, armed with the same reason that guides you in the present.

Let come what may to those who are affected by outward circumstance. They will always find something to complain about. For myself, if I choose not to view whatever happens as evil, no harm will come to me. And I can so choose.

Happiness is the inner deity, the goodness of pure mind. What are you doing here, Imagination? Get out, by whatever way you got in. I want you to go.

There is nothing that hinders you from doing what must be done.

Feeling the gods’ headwind beating on our backs, we pull harder on the oars and make no complaint.

My student days are over… nevertheless, you can still learn to check your arrogance, learn to rise above pleasure and pain, learn to ignore flattery, and learn not to be upset with the gauche and ungrateful.

Have before you at all times the icon of an ancient who practiced virtue.

When you are overwrought with anger or impatience, think how fleeting this life is and how soon you and your vexations will be laid out in the grave.

Our rage and lamentations do us more harm than whatever caused our anger and grief in the first place.

Plainly, no situation is better suited for the practice of philosophy than the one you are now in.

Download Meditations—and every other reference here—free from Anna’s Archive. More about that soon.

Some other sources

Epictetus, another Stoic:

• In typical Stoic fashion, Epictetus continually warned his students not to confuse theoretical learning with wisdom, and to avoid petty arguments, hairsplitting, or wasting time on abstract, academic topics.

• This is not a debate over trifles, but over whether we will be sane or not.

• On the occasion of every accident that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and remember to inquire what power you have for turning it to use.

All hidonia indexes are the same three months after any event. Happiness is fantastically enhanced by firm commitments and cutting off options. —Dan Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness. (An irreversible spinal injury or lottery winning results in the same happiness level six months later.)

The pain of working completely goes away when you don’t have to do it. —Scott Adams

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too easily. —Santayana

Sturgeon’s law: 90 percent of everything is crap. The other way to express this is the 80/20 rule about what is essential.

I am neither self-righteous nor too eager to please, nor am I seeking approval. In action, I am swift, competent, and dispassionate. In yielding, I am unabashed and have no concern for the judgment of others. In conquering, I am effective and can be ruthless. In action and nonaction, I am changeless. I adopt whatever manner the situation calls for without regard for what others think of me. —Thick Face Black Heart

3 D’s: discipline, determination, and decisiveness. Don’t look back. —Arnold Schwartzenegger

Lot’s wife turned to stone when she looked back.

Whatever you can put in your head, no one can take from you. —Chinese saying

In his invasion of Mexico, Cortez survived 1000 to one odds by eyeing every negative development with the experienced hand of a battle leader. —from a biography

Napoleon continually revised his plans on the battlefield —from a biography.

Nothing so tranquilizes the mind as a steady purpose. —Mary Shelly

I wish this had never come to pass. So do all who live to see such times. All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us. —Lord of the Rings

Affirmations and ideas I use

Thomas Jefferson was said to be too large for jealousy. In contemplating this, I try to be too large for hatred, revenge, anger, fear, guilt, anxiety, apathy, disappointment, frustration, or looking back. He also said, “I have never repented of eating too little.”

I never make excuses, ever.

“When you are hungry, eat; when you are tired, sleep.” —Zen expression

Act when something comes up three times in your life.

Regular time off every week, month, and year massively improves performance. HERE is my article, “What Max the Iditarod sled dog taught me about living to fight another day.”

Michael Ovitz constantly gave presents to those around him. —Power to Burn biography. Robert Cialdini’s Influence is a textbook on gifting.

“Sow a thought and you reap an act: sow an act and you reap a habit: sow a habit and reap a character: sow a character and reap a destiny.” —John Maxwell.

You learn nothing until you are tested painfully. “Every situation is heaven-sent to confer some benefit or teach some lesson.” —Clement Stone.

“If you’re bored, it’s your fault,” and “If you are stressed, you are at the wrong job.” —Mark McCormick.

“I believe in geographical cures.” —From a book about a woman who spent a winter snowbound in Antarctica when her relationships in America were failing, and found new strength and life.

All problems are engineering issues that can be worked out with careful thought.

Our lives are both Scrabble (thirty percent chance) and three-dimensional chess (all calculation), but with many intangibles and unknowns.

“Only the dead have seen an end to war” (a metaphor for many things), and “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” —Plato

“Men must either be caressed or annihilated; they will revenge themselves for small injuries, but cannot do so for great ones. The injury we do to a man must be such that we need not fear his vengeance.” —Machiavelli, The Prince, also in continuous publication since the invention of the printing press.

“The first thing is to believe there is free will; after that habits follow.” —William James.

“You never get closure, you never forgive or forget, but you can decide to be happy or sad or bitter.” —the victim of one of Ted Kaczynski’s bombs.

“This time, like all times, is a great time if you know what to do with it.” and “What you do speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you say.” —Emerson.

Guilt and shame are not part of my lexicon. The corollary is that I must never second-guess myself after the fact if I did what I believed in at the time.

“The problems of the elderly are frequently serious but seldom interesting.” (unknown)

I believe that parenthood, a voluntary commitment, does not incur a reciprocal obligation in the young—either to conform their lives to our parental preferences, or to listen endlessly to our protests about the ravages of time. In fact, I am of the opinion that the old have a duty to suffer the losses of age with as much grace and determination as they can muster and to avoid inflicting their discomforts on those who love them. It is a primary task of parents throughout their lives to convey to the young a sense of optimism. Whatever other obligations we have to our children, a conviction that we can achieve happiness amid the losses and uncertainties that life contains is the greatest gift that can pass from one generation to the next. Like all the values we wish to teach our children—honesty, commitment, empathy, respect, hard work. (unknown source)

Burn the bridge. Nuke the foundation. Back yourself up against a wall. Have an opinion one way or the other, get off the fence and rip it up. Cut yourself off so there is no going back. Once you’re committed, the truth will come out. You ask about security? What you need is uncertainty. What you need is confusion; something that forces you to reinvent yourself, a whip to drive you harder. —Mark Twight, climber and writer

“Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness,” Sun Tzu wrote. “Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.” He taught that a battle could be won through careful preparation and superior knowledge of the enemy, even before the enemy knew a battle had begun.

My sphere of influence has only been limited by interpersonal skills.

“Do not walk through time without leaving worthy evidence of your passage.” —Pope John XXIII.

“A career is like a shark, it is either going forward or sinking to the ocean floor and dying.” —Joan Rivers

“The track record of doomsday forecasts is poor. No one can really know the future. The smug certainty of doomers that they have all the answers finally shook me out of their midst.” (unknown source)

“A good physician is phlegmatic.” —William Osler.

Richard Nixon knew the only way he could be beaten was to give up, and he fought until he died. He was fond of quoting Sophocles, “One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.”

“The future, always so clear to me, had become like a black highway in the night.” —Black swan idea as related by Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2. (The black swan concept, popularized by Nassim Taleb, says that rare, unpredictable events impact our lives most. Black swans were unheard of until the discovery in the 1600s that they were common in Australia.)

Nothing predisposes to clear thinking so much as language acquisition.

“The secret of knowing the most fertile experiences and the greatest joys in life is to live dangerously.” —Nietzsche.

Marines’ motto: leadership, justice, judgement, dependability, initiative, decisiveness, courage, knowledge, endurance. JJDIDTIEBUCKLE (USMC Leadership Traits, Nick Glassett)

Communication strategies I try to improve

• “Success is work plus play plus keeping your mouth shut.” —attributed to Einstein

• “Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.” —unk

• Neither Michael Ovitz nor Eisenhower revealed their intentions to anyone.

• Bite your tongue until it bleeds. —Several sources: Mark McCormick, Harvey McKay, and my lost mentor, Stephen, who fruitlessly tried to help me by telling me this.

• “I keep people on a need-to-know basis.” —My ex-military friend Steve

• “I always think. I know what my thoughts are, and if I’m sharing my thoughts, I’m not gaining anything.” —JB

• “Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.” —Cicero

• Keep secrets and maintain discretion. —Mark McCormick.

• “If my hat knew what I was thinking, I’d throw it in the fire.” —Henry VIII.

• “The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency.” —Walter Bagehot

• “I have noticed that nothing I never said did me any harm.” —Calvin Coolidge.

• “Nothing enhances authority more than silence. Great deeds have never yet been accomplished by garrulity.” —Charles DeGaulle

• “Catharsis was a total flop in terms of making people feel better. The people who were allowed to express their anger… felt far greater animosity… than those who were not given that opportunity.” —Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me.

• “Never pass up an opportunity to shut the fuck up.” —Climber friend

Climbing is life itself

• In my 51st year, I found this climbing analogy for my life: I am on the 51st pitch of an 80-pitch climb and will die at the top (I am 71 as I review this).

• Complaining when on a long climb (or a marriage) leads to retreat due solely to psychological factors.

• “Every once in a while, I get overwhelmed with happiness to be out climbing with friends… I have days like that a fair amount. It just reminds me how much I love the whole climbing lifestyle.” —Alex Honnold.

• “There’s still time, but it ain’t forever.” Rick Sylvester, Yovonne Chouinard’s climbing buddy.

• “Focus solely on the next pitch.” —Lowe said this to Roskelli during an intimidating alpine multi-pitch climb. It is a metaphor for approaching massive, complex projects. —Last Days

• “Never accept a bad jam.” —Top climber Peter Croft (this means that once you try to hold on to a section of a crack that does not securely grip your hands, falling is inevitable. It is also a metaphor.)

• The truth is I like an unforgiving climate where if you make mistakes you suffer for it. That’s what turns me on…. but every year you need to flush out your system and do a bit of suffering. It does you a power of good. I think it’s because there is always a question mark about how you would perform. You have an idea of yourself and… if you just toodle along you can think you’re a pretty slick bloke until things go wrong… that’s why I like feeding the rat. It’s a sort of annual check-up… the rat is you really. It’s the other you, and it’s being fed by the you that you think you are. And they are often very different people. But when they come close to each other, that’s smashing, that is. Then the rat’s had a good meal, and you come away feeling terrific. It’s fairly rare, but you must keep feeding the brute just for your own peace of mind. And even if you blow it, at least there wouldn’t be that great unknown. But to snuff it without knowing who you are and what you are would be a shame. —Al Alvarez, Feeding the Rat

• This is no big deal; I’ve climbed El Cap.

A few authors’ quotes

Robert Ringer. Looking Out for Number One

• Problems are reality.

• Every negative is offset by a positive. The law of averages guarantees success at nearly anything if you keep making attempts. Positive mental attitude is everything.

• The key is the simplicity habit. Avoid employees, government-regulated industries, uncommitted partners, and leverage. Should I be working on this project at all? Eliminate drain people; lawyers are the worst of all. Do not agree to any deal without overnight thought.

• Every exception a person makes brings him to the point where life becomes one big exception.

Norman Mailer

• “Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor.”

• “There are four stages in a marriage. First, there’s the affair, then the marriage, then the children, and finally, the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, is the divorce.”

• Mailer was married six times, and famously said his least marriage was far more significant than his greatest affair.

Brian Tracy, Maximum Achievement

• “Your greatest need is to be patient, calm, and trusting. Your mind is so powerful that you must control it with great firmness or it will move you away from your desires. Your subconscious can’t tell the difference between real and affirmation. Your superconscious mind is shut down by anxiety and fear.”

• Your emotions determine 100 percent of your actions. You need to purge fear and anger the most.

• For inner peace and decreased arousal, eliminate stressors one by one. Eliminate negative people. (paraphrased)

• The world belongs to the askers.

Richard Morgan

• “Elena Aguirre told me to stop believing all that shit and face up to what you can see out the window.”

• The wall beside the map offered the deadpan grafittoed legend: “You are here, I’m afraid—deal with it.” He grinned despite himself and prowled back the way he’d come.

• “I didn’t know where the realization came from, but it came with the solid settling sensation in the bedrock of my mind that I had long ago learned to trust more than rational thought.”

• Envoy wisdom: Go with the flow and see where it takes you.

• “Face the facts. Then act on them. It’s the only mantra I know, the only doctrine I have to offer you, and it’s harder than you’d think, because I swear humans seem hardwired to do anything but. Face the facts… Then act.” —Quellcrist Falconer

Edmund Burke

• Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

• Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

• Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.

Geoff Thompson Watch my Back

• Another restless night of tossing and turning lay before me, but I could handle it. I knew stress well. We’d eaten together, slept together, worked together, and trained together. It was an absolute and utter bastard at times, but you learned to live with it. Either that or the fucker swallows you. It never goes away, it always hurts, you just learn not to mind that it hurts. At times like this, you earn a year’s money all at once.

• The real fight isn’t in the pubs and clubs, it’s with yourself, every minute of the day, a continual battle in your own head.

Mark Helprin believes in “immolating the flesh” with strenuous exercise. (from his novels)

“And always, [Paul Atreides] fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning ‘That path leads ever down into stagnation.’” —Dune

“We are inside a cage, and we never realize that the door is never locked.” —George Lucas

“Most men cannot accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.” —Leo Tolstoy

“Play for more than you can afford to lose, and you will learn the game.” —Churchill.

“It’s good to have an end to a journey, but it’s the journey that matters in the end.” —Ursula K. Le Guin.

“Now it’s the time for me to show my quality.” —LOTR (Faramir saved the Quest when he released Sam and Frodo from his custody, and this later cost him his life.)

Wholly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still, we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve as before. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning—for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie. —Carl Jung

Praxis (action) is essential, not theory.

• Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of inanition (and action) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise have never occurred. A whole stream of events issue from the decision raising in one’s favor all manner of unforseen incidents and meetings which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. —WN Murray, Scottish Himalayan expedition, 1951

• Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it… Action leads to genius, magic, power, motivation, and more action. —Goethe

• Force yourself to take action, and motivation will follow. —Robert Ringer

• Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows that it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning, a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle when the sun comes up, you’d better start running.

• “A warrior lives by acting, not thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he finishes acting.” —Carlos Castaneda.

• Kaizen (continuous improvement) is more important than your specific direction.

• Assume the way is clear. —Meriwether Lewis (of the Lewis and Clark expedition)

• Everyone overestimates the downside risk. —Musk

• Fortune cannot aid those who do nothing. —Sophocles

• “To know and not do, is not to know” —Goethe

• Develop your pieces. —Chess maxim and metaphor for the rest of life

• Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. —Disraeli

• Would’ve, could’ve, and should’ve are for losers; the question is what to do now.

• All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between an average man and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of this, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately waiting, so that when his cubic centimeter pops out, he has the necessary speed and prowess to pick it up. —Carlos Castaneda

Attitude

• And the heart in my bosom laughed. —from the Odyssey

• In the midst of winter, I found within myself an invincible summer. —Camus

• It was a situation for despair, but there was no alternative but to keep one’s nerve. —German panzer officer facing the D-day invasion

• “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” —Shakespeare.

• Though in chronic pain, John F. Kennedy acted as if he were living his life at a fair. (from a biography)

• “I never complain.” —A former dear friend. It is a good sentiment, but she later sued me because I patted her butt.

• “Focus not on what can go wrong but on what can go right.” —Jack Nicklaus. This is like watching on the trail, not the drop off, when steering a mountain bike.

• “Gratitude is the most important emotion. On a day when the wind is perfect, the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty. Today is such a day.” —Rumi

• “Gratitude is not only the greatest of the virtues, but the parent of the others.” —Cicero

Patience

• “Something always happens.” —Churchill said this in the year before the US entered World War II.

• “If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.” —Sun Tzu.

• Many successful people found their greatest success one step after their greatest failure. —Napoleon Hill

Fear

• “You work at it, you can reach a balance,” he said. “The fear tips over into exhilaration. The weakness turns into strength, fuels you up to face whatever it is your survival anxiety thinks it’s warning you about. Starts to feel good instead of bad.” He looked down at the backs of his hands where they rested on the rail. “Kind of addictive after a while.” —Richard Morgan

• “People don’t realize that when controlled properly, fear can take you to a level of euphoria where you believe you’re invincible. Very few people can get to that level. But when you do, a weird aberration of nature takes place and you’re sent to a level of invincible proportion.” —Tyson

• My errors have been primarily of omission rather than commission. I was sometimes paralyzed with fear, and inaction became my choice.

Women

• “No matter our success or how much money we make, life would not be worth living without women.” —Aristotle Onassis.

• Women need words of affirmation (“I love you”), quality time, gifts, acts of service, and frequent touch.

• “It is natural for a feeling of mere indifference to exist between men, but between women it is actual enmity” —Arthur Schopenhauer, On Women. He has something to offend almost everyone.

• “Hard to find a woman these days with a sense of humor.” —My lost friend Jeff. (Maybe we are deaf to their sense of humor.)

• “Do I look like I have a sense of humor?” —Woman in the Mission Impossible movie

• “It is hard to find a woman who can take a punch these days.” —Nick Nolte’s character from a movie. For those without a sense of humor, this is a joke.

• “Four things greater than all things are, Women and Horses and Power and War.” —Rudyard Kipling, “The Ballad of the King’s Jest”

Relationships

• Closer film lesson: Avoid irritation in all relationships, or eventually your friends will give up on you. Confessions are almost always destructive.

• “Count not him your friend who will retail your privacy to the world.” —Publius Syrus.

• “Treat your friend as if he may become an enemy.” —Last words of my great friend Wesley Harline, MD, before he allowed himself to bleed out from an intestinal hemorrhage at 87.

• The act of management is sitting at a table with your people and applying gentle, constant pressure to move the salt shaker—your ideas—back to the center of the table. —paraphrased from Danny Meyers, restaurant maven, and Sam Walton.

Persistence

• “I am hurt but not slain. I will lie down and bleed for a while, then arise and fight again.” —St. Barton’s ode as quoted by Richard Nixon

• “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” —Judo proverb

• “Failure is not durable” —Francis Ford Coppola.

• My great friend Charles Mok: “I know I’ve worked harder in the past and can work harder if I need to.”

• There are no standards for what will happen. I will be forced ultimately to lose everything I love to survive. I have no other expectations, and even this is sacrificed in some situations. All that can be maintained with certainty is integrity. —Elie Wiesel’s Night

• “Persistence is a form of vitality.” —Dawn Steele

Death

• I won’t tell you that there was no fear in me, but I had learnt to bury it, to layer it over with thick sheets of indifference. Ever since that bullet had hurled into me, I knew how real death was. I had no illusions. I had seen that a woman can be alive one day, eating mutton and sneering and joking and thrusting out her chest, her eyes humming with laughter and hunger, and then the next day can find her unconscious in a hospital bed, her mouth open and gasping. I knew I was going to die, I was going to be killed. There was no escape for me. I had no future, no life, no retirement, no easy old age. To imagine any of that was cowardice. A bullet would find me first. But I would live like a king. I would fight this life, this bitch that sentences us to death, and I would eat her up, consume her every minute of every day. So I walked my streets like a lord of mankind, flanked by my boys. —Sacred Games, the great Indian novel

• Chuck Curtis, MD: “I’m so much better.” (My great friend said this many times during the last years of his life and on his deathbed. When I speak to his widow, we tell this to each other.)

• One man, after burying another, has been laid out dead, and another buries him; and all this in a short time. Hippocrates after curing many diseases himself fell sick and died.. and lice killed Socrates… What means all this? …All human things are smoke, and nothing at all; and it is not for us, but for the gods, to settle whether we play the play out, or only a part of it. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and tend thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew. … Do not act as if thou wert going to live 10,000 years. While thou can, while you are able, be good. —Aurelius

• Do your duty, and never mind shivering or warm, sleeping on your feet or in your bed, hearing yourself slandered or praised, dying or doing something else. Yes, even dying is an act of life and should be done, like everything else, to the best of your abilities —Aurelius.

• Ulysses S. Grant wrote his autobiography while he was dying of throat cancer.

• Valar morghulis – all men must die. Mortality is the inescapable truth of all life . . . and of all stories, too. —Game of Thrones

• Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you’re about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you’re wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, ‘I haven’t touched you yet. —Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan

• When all of this is over, I look forward to spending some time with my family and my daughter and parking it on the couch because I have been going at Mach speed for quite a while now. I think it’s maybe just a matter of time before things start catching up to me, and I have this hardcore group of guardian angels that need a free paid vacation. —Climber Dan Osman, a few months before he fell to his death in Yosemite

• “Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.” —All the Light That We Cannot See

• I will die. I don’t know when. What do I do next?

Synthesis

• “Character is fate” (Heraclitus). Learning to build yours is a superpower few develop and the hardest thing you will ever do. You have no more important priority, for “without a practical philosophy, you are at the mercy of others’ philosophies” (Dan Kennedy).

• Repetition is the only way to grow, learn, and modify your own and others’ behavior.

• Studying first principles will have more profound impacts on your life than knowing current events, recreational reading, or even your job. I am not suggesting you ignore these, however.

• Your adversities are a chance for personal development, so revel in them.

• What you think matters not at all; what you say vanishes as soon as you say it; what you write has influence only as it alters someone’s behavior, but what you do becomes your legacy.

• Behind all this is your master purpose, your raison d’être. All priorities become clear after discovering that living to contribute is life’s sole meaning. “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how” (Nietzsche).

Frodo: I cannot do this alone.

Galadriel: You are a Ringbearer, Frodo. To bear a Ring of Power is to be alone… This task was appointed to you, and if you do not find a way, no one will.

Frodo: I know what I must do, it’s just that… I’m afraid to do it.

Galadriel: Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.

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Editor credit: Jim Arnold of Liar’s World Substack and Elizabeth Cronin.