#419: Ryan Holiday — How to Use Stoicism to Choose Alive Time Over Dead Time

It's okay to feel afraid [amid COVID-19]—that doesn't make you flawed. That means that your evolutionary machinery is intact ... You're not alone. You're not flawed ... Hundreds of millions are feeling the same thing right now.

There's a Hebrew saying that I love from the 1800s. It goes: 'The world is a narrow bridge, and the important thing is to not be afraid.' The point is: When you're walking on a narrow balance beam or a narrow bridge, the one thing you can't do is be scared, because it'll mess you up, and you'll fall.

The hero and the coward feel the same thing: they feel the fear; it's what the hero does that makes him different.

It doesn't matter how many opportunities you miss; it matters how many opportunities you take advantage of.

If you are really waiting for the fat pitches as Warren Buffett would say... If you understand where your core competencies are and can focus on the most appealing opportunities, you can miss a lot of opportunities and net-net still do very, very well.

I almost never make good rushed decisions. So, if I feel rushed to make a decision ... the likelihood of me making a bad decision is very high.

It's not so much a question of suppressing anger; it's more of a question of taking notice of what angers you so that over time, fewer things do.

I think that 'unfair' is, as true as it may be subjectively or even objectively, it is a disabling word that... puts you into the passenger seat of life where you feel like you don't have options nor can you take actions.

You always have options; you may just not like those options.

The capacity of the United States when it is forced into a corner—or feels as though it's been forced into a corner through extreme states of duress and crisis—[is] truly staggering.