020 Rough Days Make Us Stronger
Hello!
Hope you're having an amazing weekend! Here's your weekly Amazing Things & Ideas Newsletter. Find one original idea from my side followed by the List.
Rough Days Make Us Stronger
Today is just one of those rough days when you feel unmotivated to follow routine.
You don't want to go to the gym.
Or you don't want to show up at work.
Or you don't want to run the last mile.
Or you don't want to write anything for that book you've been writing.
Or you don't want to follow your 30-day diet or other experiment.
Or you don't want to make progress on that project you've been working on.
Or you don't want to send your weekly newsletter to your subscribers (this never happens with me. Never.)
Or you don't want to do what you promised yourself you'd do.
You don't want to do or rather you can't do because you're having a rough day today.
Sound familiar?
What do you do on these extremely important days of your life?
How does "a rough day in your life" look like?
How fair do you score on these periodic tests that life creates for you?
Do you listen to that illogical inner voice of yours telling you not to get to work?
Or do you force yourself to get a little uncomfortable and do the thing that you made a contract with yourself you'd do?
Do you allow lowness to creep in or do you work on the path of mastery?
You see, the choice we make that day—the day when everything seems tough and we feel like calling it off—the choice we make on that day is one of the great determiners of the long term success in our quest.
Stepping up when you're not motivated, when it's rough or inconvenient or painful or draining to do so, that narrow path, that's what makes the difference between one who makes a mark triumphantly and one who fails to get anywhere near so.
It never is how you perform on your good days that counts. But in the long run, it's rather the complete opposite of that.
"What doesn't kill me makes me stronger.", Friedrich Nietzsche said.
I really think he was right.
The Amazing Things & Ideas List
Contemplating the meaninglessness of fear of death:
“Therefore the most dread-inspiring of all evils, death, is nothing to us; for when we exist; death is not present in us, and when death is present, then we do not exist. Therefore it does not concern either the living or the dead; for to the living it has no existence, and the dead do not themselves exist.”— Epicurus
(Read that again, let it sink in real deep, if you please)
Quote of the week:
"How much more damage anger and grief do than the things that cause them." — Marcus Aurelius
Classic book I'm rereading this week:
How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
One of the most influential books ever. Probably one of the greatest, if not the greatest self-help / business book ever to be written.
Revisiting the always-so-important principles contained in the book this week. And finding ways to get better with understanding and blocking my impulses while talking and reacting more logically (according to the principles of this book).
How to Win Friends & Influence People is at the apex of great books. One of the very few that gives incredible, just incredible value.
If you haven't, I highly advocate reading it. And if you have, now may as well be a good time to return to those principles and keep them at the front of the mind anew.
This Weeks Articles on arjunkhemani.com:
Aligning Words With Actions (#112)
- My Experience & Why I Don’t Plan to Fall Back to Hot Showers
30 Days of Cold Showers (#111)
- "People of integrity and honesty not only practice what they preach, they are what they preach." — David A. Bednar
Thank you for reading. I hope you found that helpful.
Onward,
Arjun
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