Down, Not Out
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
– Thomas Edison
Right Here
“Make yourself the master of every situation and wherever you stand is the true place.”
– Rinzai
Still Here
“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
– Mark Twain
Living
“I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”
– Joan Didion
Buy a Journal
Helpful tip for new CrossFit (or other fitness regime) devotees, learned the hard way over a slew of years:
Do: keep track of your WOD, and of what you eat.
Don’t: do it on Facebook.
In the immortal words of Bill Murray, “unless you fell off the treadmill and smacked your face, no one wants to hear about your workout.”
No Time for Wallowing
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
– Viktor E. Frankl
New Week, New Start
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
– Thomas A. Edison
Make Time
“Sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day. Except when too busy. Then, sit for two hours.”
– Zen proverb
[Helpful tip for people who think they suck at meditation: download the Headspace app. I tried to pick up a meditation practice countless times in the past, and could never make myself sit for more than three or four minutes at a stretch, and then only intermittently. Headspace got me up to twenty minute chunks, and to a daily practice (at least a good chunk of the time).]
Next Level Time
“We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”
― Albert Einstein
[ed. note: Though I still echo the sentiment, it appears this commonly repeated quote isn’t Einstein at all, but rather a game of telephone from a different quote in a 1946 NY Times interview: “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.” I suppose a good reminder that solving our own problems is a good first step, though our real goal should be to improve mankind as a whole. Heavy lift.]
Keep Going
“You will never stub your toe standing still. The faster you go, the more chances there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere.”
— Charles F. Kettering