Ryan Holiday Quotes

In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices. - EPICTETUS

If we can focus on making clear what parts of our day are within our control and what parts are not, we will not only be happier, we will have a distinct advantage over other people who fail to realize they are fighting an unwinnable battle.

Great times are great softeners

For some reason, these days we tend to downplay the importance of aggression, of taking risks, of barreling forward. It's probably because it's been negatively associated with certain notions of violence or masculinity. But of course Earhart shows that that isn't true. In fact, on the side of her plane she painted the words, "Always think with your stick forward." That is: You can't ever let up your flying speed - if you do, you crash.

Think progress, not perfection.

There is always a countermove, always an escape or way through. No one said it would be easy and of course the stakes are high, but the path is there for those ready to take it.

The reason subscription (and RSS) was abandoned was because in a subscription economy the users are in control. In the on-off model, the competition might be more vicious, but its on the terms of the publisher. Having followers instead of subscribers - where readers have to check back on sites often are barraged with a stream of refreshing content laden with ads - is much better for their bottom line.

Failure shows us the way - by showing us what isn't the way.

Exert only calculated force where it will be effective, rather than straining and struggling with pointless attrition tactics.

When we remove ego, we're left with what is real. What replaces ego is humility, yes - but rock-hard humility and confidence. Whereas ego is artificial, this type of confidence can hold weight. Ego is stolen. Confidence is earned. Ego is self-anointed, its swagger is artifice. One is girding yourself, the other gaslighting. It's the difference between potent and poisonous.

Humiliation should not be suppressed. It should be monetized.

Media was once about protecting a name; on the web it is about building one.

You will come across obstacles in life
fair and unfair. And you will discover, time and time again, that what matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them, and whether we keep our composure. You will learn that this reaction determines how successful we will be in overcoming
or possibly thriving because of
them. Where one person sees a crisis, another can see opportunity. Where one is blinded by success, another sees reality with ruthless objectivity. Where one loses control of emotions, another can remain calm.

False ideas about yourself destroy you. For

Whether what you're going through is your fault or your problem doesn't matter, because it's yours to deal with right now.

You must practice seeing yourself with a little distance, cultivating the ability to get out of your own head. Detachment is a sort of natural ego antidote. It's easy to be emotionally invested and infatuated with your own work. Any and every narcissist can do that. What is rare is not rawtalent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness.

Let others slap each others on the back while you're back in the lab or the gym or pounding the pavement.

The only real failure is abandoning your principles. Killing what you love because you can't bear to part from it is selfish and stupid. If your reputation can't absorb a few blows, it wasn't worth anything in the first place.

When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go - carving you a path. "The Things which hurt," Benjamin Franklin wrote, "instruct.

We will learn that though we think big, we must act and live small in order to accomplish what we seek." Ryan Holliday, Ego is the Enemy, pg 22

Ordinary people shy away from 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. But this crisis in front of you? You're wasting it feeling sorry for yourself, feeling tired or disappointed. You forget: Life speeds on the bold and favors the brave. We

Desperation, despair, fear, powerlessness - these reactions are functions of our perceptions. You must realize: Nothing makes us feel this way; we choose to give in to such feelings.

Sometimes the longest way around is the shortest way home.

Things must be negative but not too negative. Hopelessness, despair - these drive us to do nothing. Pity, empathy - those drive us to do something, like get up from our computers to act. But anger, fear, excitement, or laughter - these drive us to spread. They drive us to do something that makes us feel as if we are doing something, when in reality we are only contributing to what is probably a superficial and utterly meaningless conversation. Online games and apps operate on the same principles and exploit the same impulses: be consuming without frustrating, manipulative without revealing the strings.

Pride blunts the very instrument we need to own in order to succeed: our mind. Our ability to learn, to adapt, to be flexible, to build relationships, all of this is dulled by pride." Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy, pg 74

If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity." Just

It comes in many forms. Idly dreaming about the future. Plotting our revenge. Finding refuge in distraction. Refusing to consider that our choices are a reflection of our character. We'd rather do basically anything else.

Persist and resist". Persist in your efforts. Resist giving into distraction, discouragement, and disorder. - Epictetus

we cannot be humble except by enduring humiliations." How

We have only minimal control over the rewards for our work and effort - other people's validation, recognition, rewards. It's far better when doing the work itself is sufficient. When fulfilling our own internal standards is what fills us with pride and self-respect. The less attached we are to the outcomes, the better. Our ego wants recognition & compensation. We have expectations. Let the effort, not the results be enough. Maybe your parents/kids/partner/etc won't be impressed. We can't let THAT be what motivates us. We can change the definition of success to: 'peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.' With this definition we decide not to let externals determine if something is worth doing. It's on us.

Freedom? That's easy. It's in your choices. Happiness? That's easy. It's in your choices. Respect of your peers? That too is in the choices you make.

As Chris Hedges, the philosopher and journalist, wrote, In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we neither seek nor want honesty or reality. Reality is complicated. Reality is boring. We are incapable or unwilling to handle its confusion.

Snark functions as a device to punish human spontaneity, eccentricity, nonconformity, and simple error. Everyone is being snarked into line,

Snark encourages the fakeness and stupidity it is supposedly trying to rail against.

When attempting to turn things around for a particularly disliked or controversial client, Sitrick was fond of saying, "We need to find a lead steer!" The media, like any group of animals, gallops in a herd. It takes just one steer to start a stampede.

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.

No slavery is more disgraceful," he quipped, "than one which is self-imposed.

understand the range of potential outcomes and know that they are not all good

We blame our bosses, the economy, our politicians, other people, or we write ourselves off as failures or our goals as impossible. When really only one thing is at fault: our attitude and approach.

The most powerful predictor of what spreads online is anger.

you must reclaim the ability to abstain because within it is your clarity and self-control.

What matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them, and whether we keep our composure.

Epictetus told his students, when they'd quote some great thinker, to picture themselves observing the person having sex. It's funny, you should try it the next time someone intimidates you or makes you feel insecure. See them in your mind, grunting, groaning, and awkward in their private life - just like the rest of us.

Okay, you've got to do something very difficult. Don't focus on that. Instead break it down into pieces. Simply do what you need to do right now. And do it well. And then move on to the next thing. Follow the process and not the prize. The

Attempting to destroy something out of hate or ego often ensures that it will be preserved and disseminated forever.

Almost universally, the kind of performance we give on social media is positive. It's more "Let me tell you how well things are going. Look how great I am." It's rarely the truth: "I'm scared. I'm struggling. I don't know.

There are far more failures in the world due to a collapse of will than there will ever be from objectively conclusive external events.

Your potential, the absolute best you're capable of - that's the metric to measure yourself against. Your standards are. Winning is not enough. People can get lucky and win. People can be assholes and win. Anyone can win. But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.

An employee in your company makes a careless mistake that costs you business. This can be exactly what you spend so much time and effort trying to avoid. Or, with a shift in perception, it can be exactly what you were looking for - the chance to pierce through defenses and teach a lesson that can be learned only by experience. A mistake becomes training.

The movie marketing paradigm says throw an expensive premiere and hope that translates into ticket sales come opening weekend. A growth hacker says, "Hey, it's the twenty-first century, and we can be a lot more technical about how we acquire and capture new customers." The start-up world is full of companies taking clever hacks to drive their first set of customers into their sales funnel. The necessity of that jolt - needing to get it any way they can - has made start-ups very creative.

Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of "How do I get customers for my product?" and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. . . .

In every situation, life is asking us a question, and our actions are the answer.

We choose how we'll look at things. We retain the ability to inject perspective into a situation. We can't change the obstacles themselves - that part of the equation is set - but the power of perspective can change how the obstacles appear.

Outward appearances are deceptive. What's within them, beneath them, is what matters.

No marketer is ever going to push something with the stink of reasonableness, complexity, or mixed emotions.

If someone we knew took traffic signals personally, we would judge them insane. Yet

From Rusticus . . . I learned to read carefully and not be satisfied with a rough understanding of the whole, and not to agree too quickly with those who have a lot to say about something." - MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 1.7.3

down, traditional marketers have always considered themselves artists. That's fine - it's an image I aspired to myself. It's a sentiment responsible for spectacular and moving work. But this sentiment is also responsible for some appalling ignorance and waste. One

he was willing to risk great personal harm and expend massive amounts of energy to develop that hardiness. You'll have far better luck toughening yourself up than you ever will trying to take the teeth out of a world that is - at best - indifferent to your existence. Whether we were born weak like Roosevelt

Too many people think that great victories like Grant's and Edison's came from a flash of insight. That they cracked the problem with pure genius. In fact, it was the slow pressure, repeated from many different angles, the elimination of so many other more promising options, that slowly and surely churned the solution to the top of the pile. Their genius was unity of purpose, deafness to doubt, and the desire to stay at it.

On the path to successful action, we will fail - possibly many times. And that's okay. It can be a good thing, even. Action and failure are two sides of the same coin. One doesn't come without the other. What breaks this critical connection down is when people stop acting - because they've taken failure the wrong way.

Amazon, for its part, has a couple of other easy suggestions for you if the advice "write a hypothetical press release" doesn't quite work for your situation. Their CTO, Werner Vogels, suggests trying to write an FAQ for this product you're developing. (That way you can address, in advance, potential user issues and questions.)9 Or try to define the crucial parts of the user experience by making mockups of pages, writing hypothetical case studies so you can actually start to see what it would look like and who it would work for and how. Finally, try writing the user manual, which as Werner explains usually has three parts: concepts, how-to, and reference. (Defining these means you understand your idea in and out from the customers perspective. Also, he says, if you have more than one type of user then write multiple manuals.)

Richard Branson likes to say, is that "business opportunities are like buses; there's always another coming around.

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.

Snark is not the response of "the masses" to the inane doublespeak of politicians. It's a defense mechanism for writers who, having nothing to say, are absolutely terrified of being criticized or derided. Snarky writing reflects a primal fear - the fear of being laughed at. Snarky writers don't want to be mocked, so they strike first by mocking everyone in sight.

In the pay-per-pageview model, every post is a conflict of interest.

In Workaholics Anonymous, one the exercises involves a simple reminder. We must, they say, "catch ourselves before we relapse into ego and self-will." That is: Rest before you get tired. Check your impulses before they take over. Avoid the idiot lights - stop before there is a problem.

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.

We tell ourselves that we'll get started once the conditions are right, or once we're sure we can trust this or that. When, really, it'd be better to focus on making due with what we've got. On focusing on results instead of pretty methods.

Some companies like Airbnb and Instragram spend a long time trying new iterations until they achieve what growth hackers call Product Market Fit (PMF);

We are one big collective organism engaged in one endless project together. We are one.

Coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer. Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder ...

And Johnson, genuinely hated by his opponent and the crowd, still enjoying every minute of it. Smiling, joking, playing the whole fight. Why not? There's no value in any other reaction. Should he hate them for hating him? Bitterness was their burden and Johnson refused to pick it up.

Take your situation and pretend it is not happening to you. Pretend it is not important, that it doesn't matter. How much easier would it be for you to know what to do? How much more quickly and dispassionately could you size up the scenario and its options? You could write it off, greet it calmly.

Passion typically masks a weakness. Its breathlessness and impetuousness and franticness are poor substitutes for discipline, for mastery, for strength and purpose and perseverance. You need to be able to spot this in others and in yourself, because while the origins of passion may be earnest and good, its effects are comical and then monstruous.

A poet's function . . . is not to experience the poetic state: that is a private affair. His function is to create it in others.

Wherever we are, whatever we're doing and herever we are going, we owe it to ourselves, to our art, to the world to do it well.

Where one person sees a crisis, another can see opportunity. Where one is blinded by success, another sees reality with ruthless objectivity. Where one loses control of emotions, another can remain calm. Desperation, despair, fear, powerlessness - these reactions are functions of our perceptions. You must realize: Nothing makes us feel this way; we choose to give in to such feelings. Or, like Rockefeller, choose not to. And it is precisely at this divergence - between how Rockefeller perceived his environment and how the rest of the world typically does - that his nearly incomprehensible success was born.

And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice! - EURIPIDES

Doing great work is a struggle. It's draining, it's demoralizing, it's frightening - not always, but it can feel that way when we're deep in the middle of it.

Growth hacking really is a mindset rather than a tool kit.

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.

Our job is not to 'go with our gut' or fixate on the first impression we form about an issue. No, we need to be strong enough to resist thinking that is too neat, too plausible, and therefore almost always wrong.

Appearances are deceiving. *Having* authority is not the same as *being* an authority. *Having* the right and *being* the right are not the same either. Being promoted doesn't necessarily mean you're doing good work and it doesn't mean you are worthy of promotion (they call it failing upward in such bureaucracies). *Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.*

To be or to do - life is a constant roll call.

Growth hackers resist this temptation (or, more appropriate, this delusion). They opt, deliberately, to attract only the early adopters who make or break new tech services and seek to do it as cheaply as possible. In fact, part of the reason the scrappy start-ups, services, and apps in this book might not always be well-known or topics of daily conversation is because their founders have focused their energies on product development with an eye toward growth - they're now millions of members strong without any superfluous "buzz." They got to mass market by ignoring the urge to appeal to the mass market, at least to start with.

What such a man needs is not courage but nerve control, cool headedness. This he can get only by practice. - THEODORE ROOSEVELT

The world can show you the truth, but no one can force you to accept it.

Each would collapse beneath the process. We've just wrongly assumed that it has to happen all at once, and we give up at the thought of it. We are A-to-Z thinkers, fretting about A, obsessing over Z, yet forgetting all about B through Y. We

There are a few things to keep in mind when faced with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. We must try:
To be objective
To control emotions and keep an even keel
To choose to see the good in a situation
To steady our nerves
To ignore what disturbs or limits others
To place things in perspective
To revert to the present moment
To focus on what can be controlled

Whatever we face, we have a choice: Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them?

The power of being a student is not just that it is an extended period of instruction, it also places the ego and ambition in someone else's hands. There is a sort of ego ceiling imposed-one knows that is not better than the "master" he apprentices under. Not even close. You defer to them, you subsume yourself. You cannot fake or bullshit them. An education can't be hacked; there are no shortcuts besides hacking it every single day. If you don't , they drop you.

Pageview journalism treats people by what they appear to want - from data that is unrepresentative to say the least - and gives them this and only this until they have forgotten that there could be anything else. It takes the audience at their worst and makes them worse.

The path of least resistance is a terrible teacher. We can't afford to shy away from the things that intimidate us. We don't need to take our weaknesses for granted. Are

All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the present moment; action for the common good in the present moment; and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way." - MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 9.6

Let's be honest, a traditional marketer would not even be close to imagining the integration above - there's too many technical details needed for it to happen. As a result, it could only have come out of the mind of an engineer tasked with the problem of acquiring more users from Craigslist.13

We can't take or receive feedback if we are incapable of or uninterested in hearing from outside sources. We can't recognize opportunities - or create them - if instead of seeing what is in front of us, we live inside our own fantasy.

Placed in some situation that seems unchangeable and undeniably negative, we can turn it into a learning experience, a humbling experience, a chance to provide comfort to others.

The implications of our obstacle are theoretical
they exist in the past and the future. We live in the moment. And the more we embrace that, the easier the obstacle will be to face and move. You can take the trouble you're dealing with and use it as an opportunity to focus on the present moment. To ignore the totality of your situation and learn to be content with what happens, as it happens. To have no "way" that the future needs to be to confirm your predictions, because you didn't make any. To let each new moment be a refresh wiping clear what came before and what others were hoping would come next.

If action is what we do when we still have some agency over our situation, the will is what we depend on when agency has all but disappeared.

It's three interdependent, interconnected, and fluidly contingent disciplines: Perception, Action, and the Will.