Quotes About Resilience

Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.

Stoic test strategy: when faced with a setback, we should treat it as a test of our resilience and resourcefulness, devised and administered, as I have said, by imaginary Stoic gods.

her predicament. In his autobiography, Theodore Roosevelt offered this bit of Stoic-inspired advice: "Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.

we must take care to be "the user, but not the slave, of the gifts of Fortune.

Many, on hearing Ebert's story, would use the word unlucky to describe him, but a much more fitting word would be unvanquished. During the last decade of his life, he experienced enough setbacks for several lifetimes and yet was not embittered by his fate. It was a triumph of the human spirit.

Theodore Roosevelt offered this bit of Stoic-inspired advice: "Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.

Always to seek to conquer myself rather than fortune, to change my desires rather than the established order, and generally to believe that nothing except our thoughts is wholly under our control, so that after we have done our best in external matters, what remains to be done is absolutely impossible, at least as far as we are concerned.

Although it might not be possible to eliminate grief from our life, it is possible, Seneca thinks, to take steps to minimize the amount of grief we experience over the course of a lifetime

A practicing Stoic will keep the trichotomy of control firmly in mind as he goes about his daily affairs. He will perform a kind of triage in which he sorts the elements of his life into three categories: those over which he has complete control, those over which he has no control at all, and those over which he has some but not complete control.

It is not how the wrong is done that matters, but how it is taken"4—as did Marcus Aurelius: "If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Marcus: "Yes, they say that life is more like wrestling than like dancing.

What ailment of yours have you cured today? What failing have you resisted? Where can you show improvement?"1

The person who, in contrast, is a stranger to discomfort, who has never been cold or hungry, might dread the possibility of someday being cold and hungry. Even though he is now physically comfortable, he will likely experience mental discomfort—namely, anxiety with respect to what the future holds in store for him.

If you refuse to enter contests that you are capable of losing, you will never lose a contest.

the goal of the Stoics was not to banish emotion from life but to banish negative emotions.

the art of living is more like wrestling than dancing."46

What Stoics discover, though, is that willpower is like muscle power: The more they exercise their muscles, the stronger they get, and the more they exercise their will, the stronger it gets. Indeed, by practicing Stoic self-denial techniques over a long period, Stoics can transform themselves into individuals remarkable for their courage and self-control.

you will be willing to think about the past and present in order to learn things that can help you better deal with the obstacles to tranquility thrown your way in the future, you will refuse to spend time engaging in "if only" thoughts about the past and present.

OTHER PEOPLE, as we have seen, are the enemy in our battle for tranquility. It was for this reason that the Stoics spent time developing strategies for dealing with this enemy

a good man will welcome "every experience the looms of fate may weave for him."3

And when asked what he had learned from philosophy, Diogenes replied, "To be prepared for every fortune.

Marcus Aurelius approvingly quotes this advice.

take a fatalistic attitude toward their life and refuse to spend their final years wishing, pointlessly, that it could have been different than it was.

You will realize that inasmuch as the past and present cannot be changed, it is pointless to wish they could be different. You will do your best to accept the past, whatever it might have been, and to embrace the present, whatever it might be.