‘Our actions may be impeded but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way.’ – Marcus Aurelius
‘Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’ Shakespere
First men in space were trained in 1 skill more than any other – keeping a cool head and not panicking.
Uncertainty and fear are relieved by authority and training in itself can be a form of authority.
Adversarial or post traumatic growth – that which does not kill me makes me stronger
Demosthenes the greatest orator in Athens, weak sick, disinherited by rapacious relatives his parents dead and with a speech impediment. All his disadvantages were channelled into an absolute will to become a great orator
Certain things in life will cut you open like a knife. When that happens at that exposing moment the world gets a glimpse of what’s truly inside of you. So what will be revealed when your sliced open by tension or pressure?
Stoics talked about the Inner Citadel – the fortress inside us that no exertnal adversary can break down. Not born with it has to be built and reinforced.
The way to strengthen an arch is to put weight on it
‘Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, to strive to seek, to find and not to yield.’ Tennyson
Passing one obstacle simply means your worthy of more
Nicholas Taleb defined a stoic as someone who ‘transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation and desire into undertaking.’