Nick DiMaggio > Recent Status Updates

It’s hard to see a man who ignores what is happening in other people’s souls as unhappy. Conversely, everyone who ignores what is happening in his own soul can only be unhappy.

“If thy faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.” - Proverbs 24:10

Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing and wherever we’re going, we owe it to ourselves, to our art, to the world to do it well. That’s our primary duty. And our obligation. When action is our priority, vanity falls away.

“What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better.”

The extent of the struggle determines the extent of the growth.

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
- Marcus Aurelius

I do my utmost to attain emptiness; I hold firmly to stillness. Do that which consists in taking no action; pursue that which is not meddlesome; savor that which has no flavor.

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.

To become something else, you have to stop being what you are now; to start doing things a new way, you have to end the way you are doing them now; and to develop a new attitude or outlook, you have to let go of the old one you have now.

Make your time of transition a time of renewal and transformation. Come out of it stronger and better adapted to your world than you were when you went in.

His true adult education, to discover who he is and what life is all about. What is the secret of the “I” with which he has been on such intimate terms all these years, yet which remains a stranger? What lurks behind the world’s façade, animating it, ordering it — to what end?

“Every complex problem has a solution which is simple, direct, plausible — and wrong.” Change is the epitome of the complex problem.

Optimism sounds like a sales pitch. Pessimism sounds like someone trying to help you.

History is the study of change, ironically used as a map of the future.

Controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays.

“It’s not whether you’re right or wrong that’s important, but how much money you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong.”

Planning is important, but the most important part of every plan is to plan on the plan not going according to plan.

Happiness, as it’s said, is just results minus expectations.

“Some lessons have to be experienced before they can be understood.”

If you’re anxious-preoccupied, your insecurities will build in the absence of reassurance, and you’ll do great damage to your social ties by acting clingy, possessive, and jealous. The controlling nature of the neediness shown scares away potential partners who don’t want constant drama in their relationships, and the anxious-preoccupied’s fear of abandonment becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I believe an appreciation for simplicity, the everyday — the ability to dive deeply into the banal and discover life’s hidden richness — is where success, let alone happiness, emerges.

Happiness is not the immediate goal of a successful relationship; the goal is a bond that strengthens both of you and helps you be more the person you want to be.

Those who excel are those who maximize each moment’s creative potential — for these masters of living, presence to the day-to-day learning process is akin to that purity of focus others dream of achieving in rare climatic moments when everything is on the line. The secret is that everything is always on the line.

In most situations, we need to be aware of what is happening around us, and our processor is built to handle this responsibility. On the other hand, armed with an understanding of how intuition operates, we can train ourselves to have remarkably potent perceptual and physical abilities in our disciplines of focus. The key, of course, is practice.

Anxious people’s unmet needs for closeness were expected to cause them to misinterpret a partner’s desire for privacy or autonomy as a sign of rejection, which could tempt them to escalate demands for intimacy to such an extent that, paradoxically, it might cause their partner to withdraw or flee.

If you want to be the best, you have to take risks others would avoid, always optimizing the learning potential of the moment and turning adversity to your advantage. That said, there are times when the body needs to heal, but those are ripe opportunities to deepen the mental, technical, internal sides of your game.

Couples in which an anxious person is paired with an avoidant one tend to produce destructive pursuit-distancing or demand-withdrawal patterns of relating. In such couples, the anxious partner’s needs and demands frustrate the avoidant partner’s preference for distance, and the avoidant partner’s tendency to create distance frustrated the anxious partner’s intense distance for closeness.

One of the most critical factors in the transition to becoming a conscious high performer is the degree to which your relationship to your pursuit stays in harmony with your unique disposition. There will inevitably be times when we need to try new ideas, release our current knowledge to take in new information — but it is critical to integrate this new information in a manner that does not violate who we are.

Avoidant people do not generally approve of expressions of need and vulnerability, whether their own or those of their partners, and they have no desire to get entangled with someone whose weaknesses and needs are all too visible.

The fearful-avoidant can be thought of as the avoidant who hasn’t given up.