I have a love-hate relationship with quotes. I hate the cliche ones that are all over the internet but love the rare diamonds that I occasionally stumble upon.
These quotes don’t offer empty consolatory words but rather better perspectives and deep insights to deal with lows.
The One Thing that Is Always in Our Control
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” — Viktor Frankl
We might not have control over our circumstances in life, but there’s one thing that is always in our control — how we perceive and react to them.
In any undesirable situation, there are only two choices — either complain, lament, and wallow in self-pity OR accept the situation and think about how to change it.
The former achieves nothing. The latter achieves everything.
And this quote reminds us that we are always free to choose the latter.
What Suffering Really Is
“Choose not to be harmed — and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.” — Marcus Aurelius
Since external factors control more than 90% of our lives, adversity can strike when we least expect it to. But whether or not we suffer is up to us.
In other words — adversity is inevitable but suffering is a choice.
In the face of pain, you can always find solace in this quote. The key thing to understand is that — you aren’t trying to endure suffering but choosing not to suffer at all in the first place.
Instead of being a soldier in the heat of battle, you take on the role of a distant observer. Initially, it takes fervent reaffirmation but over time, as it gets programmed into your subconscious brain, it gets easier.
The Key to Contentment
“No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.” — Seneca
The biggest thing that we had absolutely no choice in was our birth — how, to whom, and in what conditions we are born.
As a result, there’s always someone better looking, smarter, taller, or richer. But what we often overlook is that we ourselves have some quality that others long for.
Being called gifted all my life and effortlessly topping throughout school had made me arrogant. But when I started working out, I was humbled — I was average at best while there were “gifted” guys that could touch a dumbbell and sprout muscle or train for half the time I did but lift twice what I could.
That is what made me realize — everyone’s gifted albeit in different manners. And that is the key to contentment — appreciating our own gifts and making the most out of them.
Most of us get so caught up in lamenting the limitedness of our gifts that we never bother trying to achieve those limits.
