Kathzoofus

"I've learned one thing: you only really get to know a person after a fight. Only then can you judge their true character!" Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

"Optimism is usually defined as a belief that things will go well. But that's incomplete. Sensible optimism is a belief that the odds are in your favor, and over time things will balance out to a good outcome even if what happens in between is filled with misery. And in fact you   know   it will be filled with misery. You can be optimistic that the long-term growth trajectory is up and to the right, but equally sure that the road between now and then is filled with landmines, and always will be. Those two things are not mutually exclusive." He also writes: "Optimism and pessimism can coexist. If you look hard enough you’ll see them next to each other in virtually every successful company and successful career. They seem like opposites, but they work together to keep everything in balance." Morgan Housel in The Psychology of Money

"I'd always thought negative emotions were a sign of weakness and linked them to failure and self-judgment. Coach's comment, though, showed me negative feelings could have a positive reasoning: My disappointment was rooted in a desire to be better.  My place wasn't what mattered to Coach. What mattered was my commitment." From the book "Let Your Mind Run: A Memoir of Thinking My Way to Victory", by Deena Kastor & Michelle Hamilton

"A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push." ~Ludwig Wittgenstein

"We are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away." Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.1

I found via James Clear, author of Atomic Habits. It is from author  Michael Lewis  on the stories we tell ourselves: "As I’ve gotten older—I would say starting in my mid-to-late 20s—I could not help but notice the effect on people of the stories they told about themselves. If you listen to people, if you just sit and listen, you’ll find that there are patterns in the way they talk about themselves. There’s the kind of person who is always the victim in any story that they tell. Always on the receiving end of some injustice. There's the person who’s always kind of the hero of every story they tell. There's the smart person; they delivered the clever put down there. There are lots of versions of this, and you’ve got to be very careful about how you tell these stories because it starts to become you. You are—in the way you craft your narrative—kind of crafting your character. And so I did at some point decide, “I am going to adopt self-consciously as my narrative, th

"Remember it's not striving to be the best that produces change but self-knowledge and awareness. Don't try to change your reactions today. It is enough to see them more clearly." My daily EnneaThought from The Enneagram Institute . If you are interested in learning more, check out their website and buy the book, Wisdom of the Enneagram .

“Hoard food and it rots. Hoard money and you rot. Hoard power and the nation rots.” ―  Chuck Palahniuk ,  Adjustment Day

"Physical exertion is mostly an act of mental strength." ~Ed Latimore

"Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder." ~Rumi

"Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone." ~Alan Watts

"[Love] is a verb. It’s an active engagement with all kinds of feelings—positive ones and primitive ones and loathsome ones. But it’s a very active verb. And it’s often surprising how it can kind of ebb and flow. It’s like the moon. We think it’s disappeared, and suddenly it shows up again. It’s not a permanent state of enthusiasm." ~Esther Perel

"Needless commitments are more wasteful than needless possessions. Possessions can be ignored, but commitments are a recurring debt that must be paid for with your time and attention." ~James Clear

"Our brains are wired for connection, but trauma rewires them for protection. That's why healthy relationships are difficult for wounded people." ~Ryan North

"Optimism is not about providing a recipe for self-deception. The world can be a horrible, cruel place, and at the same time it can be wonderful and abundant. These are both truths. There is not a halfway point; there is only choosing which truth to put in your personal foreground." -- Lee Ross, as quoted by Sonja Lyubormirsky in "The How of Happiness".

"At the higher levels of competitive swimming, something like an inversion of attitude takes place. The very features of the sport that the 'C' swimmer finds unpleasant, the top level swimmer enjoys. What others see as boring—swimming back and forth over a black line for two hours, say—they find peaceful, even meditative, often challenging, or therapeutic. They enjoy hard practices, look forward to difficult competitions, try to set difficult goals. Coming into the 5:30 A.M. practices at Mission Viejo, many of the swimmers were lively, laughing, talking, enjoying themselves, perhaps appreciating the fact that most people would positively hate doing it. It is incorrect to believe that top athletes suffer great sacrifices to achieve their goals. Often, they don’t see what they do as sacrificial at all. They like it.” ~Daniel Chambliss

"Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials." ~Lin Yutang

"We do not have to improve ourselves; we just have to let go of what blocks our heart." ~Jack Kornfield

"If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?" ~Rumi

"All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why." ~James Thurber

"It is only when we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts." ~ K.T. Jong

“How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to mind the events of the whole day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then, without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time." ~Anne Frank

"Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right." ~Haruki Murakami

"Hope and fear are both phantoms" Tao Te Ching, by Stephen Mitchell

"Confront the difficult while it is still easy." Tao Te Ching, by Stephen Mitchell

"...nothing delights the mind so much as fond and loyal friendship. What a blessing it is to have hearts that are ready and willing to receive all your secrets in safety, with whom you are less afraid to share knowledge of something than keep it to yourself, whose conversation soothes your distress, whose advice helps you make up your mind, whose cheerfulness dissolves your sorrow, whose very appearance cheers you up!" Source: On the Shortness of Life by Seneca