Quotes that hit home

[ergophobe]

"As the world improves, our threshold for complaining drops."

Morgan Housel
https://collabfund.com/blog/minimum-levels-of-stress/

[buckworks]

The most important thing in life is to stop saying 'I wish' and start saying 'I will.' -- Charles Dickens

[littleman]

Will vs. wish is huge.

I think in practice most people use try instead of wish when it comes to personal achievement, which in a way is setting themselves up for failure even more.  Making your mind up that you will do something is so much different psychology than saying you are going to try.  Try means you'll accept personal failure.

[ergophobe]

Reminds me of my conversations last summer with our 16yo guess cross-country runner while out on a long run together - we did some up to 22 miles with 5000 feet of gain... lots of time to get philosophical. I asked her, "Do you want to be the best runner you can be?"

She says, "Yes," with a sort of "Of course!" tone.

I say, "If you asked me if I want to be the best runner I can be, what do you think I would say?"

She says, "Yes," but now with a, "I think this might be a trick question" tone.

Then I explained that though I *wish* I were a strong runner and if I could wave a wand and make it so, I would love that, but I don't *want* to be the best runner I could be, because I want to be a good husband, son, brother, friend, neighbor, climber, skier and sometimes I just want to be a procrastinator and watch a movie or post to a forum I like. If I truly wanted to be the *best* I can be, all of those things would have to take lower priority than they do now and that's not worth it to me.

I'm not sure what she thought of that. She was mostly quiet for a while after.

[ergophobe]

Think where man's glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was I had such friends.

  -- W.B. Yeats, "The Municipal Gallery Revisited"
https://thepoetryhour.com/poems/the-municipal-gallery-re-visited/

[rcjordan]

"The only secure document in Washington, DC seems to be the Epstein client list." ^{-the intertubes}

[buckworks]

"You don't always win when you fight, but you always lose when you don't." -- Rachel Maddow