🤔 Morning thoughts (June 9 - June 15)
Every Sunday I share a quote and a reflection on it for each day of the week.
Themes of the week: presence, self-awareness, discipline, intrinsic-motivation, perception, balance, humility
Sunday - June 15, 2025
"You can’t know it, but you can be it, at ease in your own life. Just realize where you come from: this is the essence of wisdom."
Stephen Mitchell, Tao Te Ching
Presence, clarity, flow and peace: you can only experience them. Let your regrets and conscience shape your actions and everything will fall into place.
Saturday - June 14, 2025
"The more one is praised by another person, the more one forms the belief that one has no ability."
Ichiro Kishimi, The Courage to Be Disliked
Never seek praise, let your actions and behaviors speak for you. Intrinsic motivation and self virtue signaling give you control, energy and keep you honest.
Friday - June 13, 2025
"Good habits create good art. The way we do anything is the way we do everything. Treat each choice you make, each action you take, each word you speak with skillful care. The goal is to live your life in the service of art"
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act
Be present in the minutiae of life. Don’t underestimate the power that focused and attentive action and thought have on shaping your reality. It’s not the big swings, but the little moments that matter.
Thursday - June 12, 2025
"Practice the art of testing whether particular things are actually good or not. Learn to wait and assess instead of always reacting from untrained instinct. Spontaneity is not a virtue in and of itself."
Epictetus, The Art of Living
You develop intuition through patient deliberate experience in the present moment. Through trial and error. The more balanced you are, the better your view and interpretation, the better your learning.
Wednesday - June 11, 2025
"What prevents perpetual motion, Leonardo realized, is the inevitable loss of momentum in a system when it rubs against reality. Friction causes energy to be lost and prevents motion from being perpetual."
Walter Isaacson, Leonardo Da Vinci
Reality is entropy and there’s always going to be constant work required to keep things moving. It’s up to you to decide what work you’ll need to do. Or someone will decide it for you. The sooner you embrace this, the more control you’ll feel you have.
Tuesday - June 10, 2025
"“How might the opposite of what I’m thinking or feeling also be true?”"
Jim Loehr, The Power of Full Engagement
Your ability to stop, create space, and move to another mental position is your greatest asset in life. But you have to be aware enough to use it.
Monday - June 9, 2025
"When you’re different, when you’re unique, and nobody has ever dealt with someone like you before, they are going to drastically underestimate what you’re capable of. Do not let your ego win. Don’t correct them."
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful
You win when you have nothing to prove to anybody but you.