Continuing my observation on quotes everywhere, here are some quotes I came across in the last couple of weeks.
- "Better an Oops, than a What if" — I'm not sure who said it first, but this quote instantly resonated with me when I saw it on the internet. It emphasizes the importance of trying (and failing) instead of wondering without taking action. So go ahead and shoot your shot, you won't regret it.
- "Although the world is full of suffering, it’s also full of the overcoming of it" — Helen Keller.
- "You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great." — Zig Ziglar. This one is an absolute mic drop from Ziglar. Look him up.
- "Desire is a contract you make with yourself to he unhappy until you get something." — Naval Ravikant. Having desire sends you chasing something and it puts happiness somewhere you're not. Though it's okay to have desire to pursue certain things, we should remind ourselves of the cost we are paying for it. This urges us to choose our desires wisely.
- "Interest is working on something an hour everyday from Monday to Friday. Commitment is working on something everyday whenever you find time." — Ali Abdaal. Enough said.
- “Embracing a growth mindset means to get pleasure out of changing for the better (which is mostly inwardly rewarding) instead of getting pleasure in being praised (which is outwardly rewarding)." — Excerpt From How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens. The first step towards progress is developing a growth mindset. Such a progress will make us do better just for the sake of it, and not for praises and external validation.
- "When shown an object, or given a food, or shown a face, people’s assessment of it — how much they like it, how valuable it is — is deeply affected by what you tell them about it." — Austin Kleon. In his book Show Your Work, Austin Kleon explains that how you tell your story matters a lot. It's an essential skill in today's world. Being a good storyteller makes you better in expressing yourself in situations like interviews, making connections and is crucial when you are showing your work to the world.
- “The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory”. — Henri Bergson. I had to read this thrice to even begin to understand this. Coming from the french philosopher, my interpretation is that everything we experience now is already in the past (your mind having processed it) which ultimately defines the inevitability of the future. So the present is only that matters. It's too deep and I'm open to understand this better and talk about this in depth, so if you're up for the discussion, hit me up!
- "When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud: If this isn't nice, what is?" — Kurt Vonnegut. Life moves fast and we should try to stop at moments like these and feel grateful for them. I've remembered this quote every day since I saw it a few months back and it was refreshing to see this again. If this isn't nice, what is?
- "Don’t empty the trash right away." — This was by yours truly haha. I did laugh at this when I encountered it in my notes, but in all seriousness, this one was a big mindset shift. Especially in the recent past, most of my thoughts, ideas, content to consume were discarded by myself at first. One of those times, I stopped and asked myself — Why did I just throw that idea away? Is it worth discarding? Or is there something I could take out of it before discarding completely? Am I missing something important by discarding it? This was game changing on multiple instances and some things I discarded initially turned out to be one of the most important things to me. Starting this blog was one such idea that I discarded initially. So nowadays, when I decide to discard something — an idea, a tweet, a podcast episode, a video sent by a friend, I don't discard it altogether. I try to come back to it later and take a second pass at it before emptying my trash.
Alright, that was a short one, but I'd like to ask you the reader, to vote on something. This is the third quote-unquote post, and I would like to gather feedback on how many people find this useful. If you would like to give me your opinion, let me know if you find these quotes posts useful or not. If you see a quote-unquote #4 in the future, the Yays have outnumbered the Nays. If not, we'll wrap up the quotes here. Thanks for reading. Adios!
