7 Thoughts I Can't Escape: Part II

Reserved for when I don't want to write a whole post.

1. There’s a difference between giving up and letting go. 

“Quitting” has a negative connotation. But it’s not admirable to keep doing the same thing over and over if you’re not seeing progress or results — it’s just stubbornness.

Slamming your head into a brick wall long enough and hard enough will kill you.

I’d rather quit than die.

2. “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” – Steve Jobs

I’m not a tattoo guy, but if I was, I’d have “Memento Mori” on the inside of my eyelids.

Everything you think matters pales in the face of death. 

3. Everyone knows the present was shaped by tiny actions in the past. But few people consider how the future will be shaped by tiny actions today.

We only consider the Butterfly Effect in hindsight. After all, you can only connect the dots looking backward.

But why do we discount the potential of the Butterfly Effect in the present? Major changes in our lives are the result of repeated minor actions more than they are the result of seismic, dramatic events.

4. “I swear to you that to think too much is a disease, a real, actual disease.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Russian lit is generally a mix of confusion and depression, but it also delivers the most pound-for-pound insight for any non-religious writing in the world.

Intuition is a better compass than analysis. You’re the product of countless generations of survival and reproduction. For, like, 97% of those generations, action was more important than thought.

Trust your biology. 

5. Worry is arrogance.

If you’re religious, worry is an affront to God.

If you’re not, worry is an affront to fate.

“The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one’s self to destiny.” – Napoleon 

6. Once-in-a-lifetime opportunities come around dozens of times in your life. 

This is an idea adapted from author and economist Morgan Housel.

“Once-in-a-century events happen all the time because lots of unrelated things could go wrong. If, in any given year, there’s a 1% chance of a new disastrous pandemic, a 1% chance of a crippling depression, a 1% chance of a catastrophic flood, a 1% chance of political collapse, and on and on, then the odds that something bad will happen next year – or any year – are … pretty good.” 

Housel is illustrating negative events. So many of us think we’re living in these crazy, unprecedented times, but that’s not really true. The law of averages is just doing its thing.

But if this is true for negative events…

Shouldn’t it be true for positive events, too? 

7. “The trouble is, you think you have time.” – Jack Kornfield

Never mind.

There’s the eyelid tattoo.