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“The first step to building resilience is to take responsibility for who you are and for your life. If you’re not willing to do that, stop wasting your time reading this letter. The essence of responsibility is the acceptance of the consequences—good and bad—of your actions.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“One of the reasons you are suffering right now is precisely because the purpose of your struggle is unclear. What are you working toward? What are you fighting for? Who are you going to be?”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“I begin with humility, I act with humility, I end with humility. Humility leads to clarity. Humility leads to an open mind and a forgiving heart. With an open mind and a forgiving heart, I see every person as superior to me in some way; with every person as my teacher, I grow in wisdom. As I grow in wisdom, humility becomes ever more my guide. I begin with humility, I act with humility, I end with humility.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Practice builds habits. Our habits are our character. When it comes to virtue, practice “makes a very great difference—or rather, all the difference.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Start with this: not all pain matters. There are people whose attention is consistently drawn away from their purpose and toward their pain, like a moth to a light. Such people, who pay attention to every annoyance and obstacle in their way, are usually unsuccessful in their endeavors. In extreme cases they are mentally ill. A healthy person, a flourishing person, learns to move past a lot of annoyance and a good deal of pain.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“When we’re struggling, we don’t need a book in our hands. We need the right words in our minds. When things are tough, a mantra does more good than a manifesto.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“If you take responsibility for anything in your life, know that you’ll feel fear. That fear will manifest itself in many ways: fear of embarrassment, fear of failure, fear of hurt. Such fears are entirely natural and healthy, and you should recognize them as proof that you’ve chosen work worth doing. Every worthy challenge will inspire some fear. A”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Smiling and breathing. These are simple things. Exercising and serving. These are simple things. Being grateful and gracious. These are simple things. Acting with humility. Acting with courage. These are simple things. Some people try to make this business of living too complicated,”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Courage overcomes, but does not replace, fear. Joy overcomes, but does not replace, pain.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“A veteran who comes home from war is returning from one of the most intense experiences a human being can have. Even if he was not under fire every day, he woke up every morning as part of a team. He started every day with a purpose, and a mission that mattered to those around him.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“What happens to us becomes part of us. Resilient people do not bounce back from hard experiences; they find healthy ways to integrate them into their lives. In time, people find that great calamity met with great spirit can create great strength.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“But the longer you hesitate, the hairier and scarier the fear becomes. The longer you hesitate, the more likely you are to turn around and crawl back under the covers. Screw that, Walker. It’s time to begin.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“We all need something to struggle against and to struggle for. The aim in life is not to avoid struggles, but to have the right ones; not to avoid worry, but to care about the right things; not to live without fear, but to confront worthy fears with force and”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“When real transformation does occur in someone’s life, it usually happens through evolution, not revolution. Every time we make a choice to confront our fear, our character evolves and we become more courageous. Every time we make a choice to move through pain to pursue a purpose larger than ourselves, our character evolves and we become wiser. Every time we make a choice to move through suffering, our character evolves and we become stronger.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“First, you can develop resilience. Anyone can do it. No one can do it for you. You and you alone have to do the work. Second, you can develop resilience. It’s possible to build virtues. It’s possible to change your character. It’s possible, therefore, to change the direction of your life. Third, you can develop resilience. Resilience cannot be purchased or given to you; you have to do the hard work of building excellence in your life.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Beware the person who seeks to lead and has not suffered, who claims responsibility on the grounds of a spotless record.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Never cease chiseling your own statue. —PLOTINUS (205–270) You”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Resilience is the virtue that enables people to move through hardship and become better. No one escapes pain, fear, and suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, from suffering can come strength—if we have the virtue of resilience.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“We all need resilience to live a fulfilling life. With resilience, you’ll be more prepared to take on challenges, to develop your talents, skills, and abilities so that you can live with more purpose and more joy. I hope something here can help you to become stronger. I look forward to walking with you on this path.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Millions of people, in all walks of life and in every endeavor, create distractions and excuses for themselves by focusing on tools rather than on character. They’d rather, as Socrates warned, focus on what they have than on what they are.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses . . . in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights. —MUHAMMAD ALI”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“What you will become is a result of what you are willing to endure. Are you willing to work hard? To think hard? I know that you are. You always have been.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“When we rob people of their pain—when we don’t allow them the possibility of failure—we also rob them of their happiness.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Those who are excellent at their work have learned to comfortably coexist with failure. The excellent fail more often than the mediocre. They begin more. They attempt more. They attack more. Mastery lives quietly atop a mountain of mistakes.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Eric Hoffer, studied the reasons why people voluntarily give away responsibility and join mass movements and mobs. One quote he collected came from a young German who explained that he joined the Nazi party to be “free from freedom.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Virtues that are not practiced die. Resilience that is not practiced weakens.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Accept that you are imperfect and always will be. Your quest is not to perfect yourself, but to better your imperfect self.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“And it’s often in those battles that we are most alive: it’s on the frontlines of our lives that we earn wisdom, create joy, forge friendships, discover happiness, find love, and do purposeful work. If you want to win any meaningful kind of victory, you’ll have to fight for it.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Fortune will play her hand. And when she stands between us and flourishing, all we can do is live our best life. One”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“At the root of resilience is the willingness to take responsibility for results.”
― quote from Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“You don't know. When I'm out there at night I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and fingernails, everything, it's like I'm full of electricity and I'm glowing in the dark - I'm on fire almost - I'm burning away into nothing - but it doesn't matter because I know exactly who I am.”
― Tim O'Brien, quote from The Things They Carried
“some good I mean to do, Despite of mine own nature.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from The Complete Works
“O how beautiful, look at the crimson snow! And up there on the rocks there are ever so many roses!”
― Johanna Spyri, quote from Heidi
“Are you there God? It's me, Margaret.”
― Judy Blume, quote from Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”
― Henry David Thoreau, quote from Walden
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