Ryan Holiday
Dr. Drew Pinsky changed my life.
Like pretty much every other ambitious person, I always figured I'd eventually move to New York. It is, at this point, half-dream and half-obligation for people trying to do big things. It's the American Dream inside the American Dream.
My advice to young people would be this: Don't move to New York. It is not where you will find yourself.
Don't move to New York. Find your own city and your way.
In Los Angeles and other cities, being around immigrants is inspiring. They are touching the American Dream and reminding you how much you take it for granted.
It's your job to find a release and an outlet for the stress and the feelings. Never forget: the crazy stays at home.
When work impedes on sleep, poor planning is to blame - not superior will power.
We only have so much energy for our work, for our relationships, for ourselves. A smart person understands this and guards it carefully. Meanwhile, idiots focus on marginal productivity hacks and gains while they leak out energy each passing day.
The greats - they protect their sleep because it's where the best work comes from. They say no to things. They turn in when they hit their limits. They don't let the creep of sleep deprivation undermine their judgment.
My parents disagreed sharply with me over the decision to leave school.
Here's the thing I've learned about ideas: It's your job to have them.
The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.Collection: Opportunity
No one will argue that writing is an easy profession. Getting someone to pay you for your words isn’t easy. But there are strategies you can use to simplify the process and transform what you can produce.Collection: Writing
Where the head goes, the body follows. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective.Collection: Perspective
Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.Collection: Focus
It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s not okay to quit. To know you want to quit but to plant your feet and keep inching closer until you take the impenetrable fortress you’ve decided to lay siege to in your own life—that’s persistence.Collection: Persistence
You know what’s better than building things up in your imagination? Building things up in real life.Collection: Real
Failure shows us the way - by showing us what isn't the way.Collection: Way
To do great things, we need to be able to endure tragedy and setbacks. We've got to love what we do and all that it entails, good and bad. We have to learn to find joy in every single thing that happens.Collection: Joy
The Germans have a word for it: Sitzfleisch. Staying power. Winning by sticking your ass to the seat and not leaving until after it's over.Collection: Winning
When intelligent people read, they ask themselves a simple question: What do I plan to do with this information?Collection: Intelligent
Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great individuals, like great companies, find a way to transform weakness into strength.Collection: Weakness
Dollar for dollar there is no better investment in the world than a bookCollection: Book
There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.Collection: Mean
True will is quiet humility, resilience, and flexibility; the other kind of will is weakness disguised by bluster and ambition.Collection: Ambition
Problems are rarely as bad as we think-or rather, they are precisely as bad as we think.Collection: Thinking
We decide what we will make of each and every situation. We decide whether we’ll break or whether we’ll resist.Collection: Break
I run 5 miles every night. It’s where I go to digest my day, hash out the multitude of information that’s been poured into me in the last wild six months or so, and to try and condense it down to some sort of cohesive strategy to live my life by.Collection: Running
Conning the conmen is one of life’s most satisfying pleasures.Collection: Pleasure
Discipline in perception lets you clearly see the advantage and the proper course of action in every situation—without the pestilence of panic or fear.Collection: Discipline
Am I saying this because I want to prove how smart I am or am I saying this because it needs to be said?Collection: Smart
An entrepreneur is someone with faith in their ability to make something where there was nothing before.Collection: Entrepreneur
Ordinary people shy away form negative situations, just as they do with failure. They do their best to avoid trouble. What great people do is the opposite. They are their best in these situations. They turn personal tragedy or misfortune - really anything, everything - to their advantage.Collection: Opposites
What is known can't jerk us around unwittingly. Before anything can be resolved, the implicit must be made into the explicit.Collection: Jerk
The most powerful predictor of what spreads online is anger.Collection: Powerful
You cannot have your news instantly and have it done well. You cannot have your news reduced to 140 characters or less without losing large parts of it. You cannot manipulate the news but not expect it to be manipulated against you. You cannot have your news for free; you can only obscure the costs. If as a culture we can learn this lesson, and if we can learn to love the hard work, we will save ourselves much trouble and collateral damage. We must remember: There is no easy way.Collection: Hard Work
ADVERSITY CAN HARDEN YOU. OR IT CAN LOOSEN YOU UP AND MAKE YOU BETTER —IF YOU LET IT.Collection: Adversity
Great times are great softenersCollection: Great Times
What I’ve learned most clearly from blogs is that the majority of them write about the problems from the outside for a reason—because they are missing the abilities that allow people to move to the inside.Collection: Moving
Our first idea is a grand opening, a big launch, a press release, or major media coverage. We default to thinking we need an advertising budget. Our delusion is that we should be Transformers and not The Blair Witch Project.Collection: Thinking