Nick DiMaggio > Recent Status Updates

When the mystery of the self is unveiled, we can wake up to the understanding that we are not linear beings living a linear life but instead dimensional beings living dimensional lives. The beauty behind the infinite probabilities that await us is that the only way we can change those futures is to change ourselves in the present infinite moment.

“Forbearance is the sum total of our human virtue.”

To remain oneself in a world that pushes for conformity takes courage. It takes courage as well as temperance to be restrained in a world of excess, where we attack and mock those who don’t indulge in the pleasures we have rationalized and the passions we have excused in ourselves.

While time is ultimately the dictator of our presence here on this earth, we do dictate how we spend it.

It’s a beautiful irony: You’re never content with your progress and yet, you’re always content… because you’re making progress.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to respond to intemperance with intemperance. We have to remember: Someone else’s lack of self-control is not a justification for abandoning our own. Nor is it a good look or a recipe for success and achievement.

An obsession with getting it perfect misses the forest for the trees, because ultimately the biggest miss of all is failing to get your shot off. What you don’t ship, what you’re too afraid or strict to release, to try, is, by definition, a failure. It doesn’t matter the cause, whether it was from procrastination or perfectionism, the result is the same. You didn’t do it.

“Anyone who has not groomed his life in general towards some definite end cannot possibly arrange his individual actions properly.”

We have to understand: Greatness is not just what one does, but also what one refuses to do. It’s how one bears the constraints of their world or their profession, it’s what we’re able to do within limitations — creatively, consciously, calmly.

Always and forever, the reward is the work. It is a joy itself. It is torture and also heaven — sweaty, wonderful salvation. And that’s how you manage to do prodigious amounts of it — not grudgingly, but lovingly.

In fact, we might say that progress and practice are synonyms. You can’t have the former without the latter. And the latter is worthless without the former.

The more a man is, the less he wants.

Two words should be taken to heart and obeyed when exerting ourselves for good and restraining ourselves from evil — words that will ensure a blameless and untroubled life: persist and resist.
- Epicetus

Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.
- W.H. Auden

The only thing we can expect (with any great certainty) is the unexpected. Therefore, we can either wait for the moment and react to it or we can prepare. We can create a buffer.

Don’t rob people of their problems. I am not saying we should never help people. We should serve, and love, and make a difference in the lives of others, of course. But when people make their problem our problem, we aren’t helping them; we’re enabling them. Once we take their problem for them, all we’re doing is taking away their ability to solve it.

Anyone can talk about the importance of focusing on the things that matter most — and many people do — but to see people who dare to live it is rare.

In other words, it’s not enough to simply determine which activities and efforts don’t make the best possible contribution; you still have to actively eliminate those that do not.

Our highest priority is to protect our ability to prioritize.

Think of a journal as like a storage device for backing up our brain’s faulty hard drive. As someone once said to me, the faintest pencil is better than the strongest memory.

“My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.”

The pursuit of success can be a catalyst for failure. Put another way, success can distract us from focusing on the essential things that produce success in the first place.

He rests content with these two pursuits: just action in the present moment and affection for what he is currently experiencing. Casting aside all other concerns and pursuits, he focuses wholly on his desire to travel the straight path that runs through the law. By traveling that path, he will be following God.

Everyone who hunts delights and shuns discomforts on the assumption they are respectively good and bad is committing sacrilege.

Focus on what’s in front of you, regardless of whether it’s a situation, an action, doctrine, or the words that make that doctrine up. (And, yes, you do deserve what you are suffering — you are the one who keeps pushing the pursuit of good personhood back from today to tomorrow.)

Just remember that a man is only worth as much as the things he has been pursuing.

When circumstances put pressure on you, and you get all worked up, as they say, return to yourself immediately. Don’t jar with the rhythm of the universe one moment longer than a distraction demands. The way to learn the cosmic music is to come back home to it over and over again.

Our mind obviates every obstacle to our actions by turning it into an opportunity to innovate. What impedes an action of ours just ends up advancing it. Every obstacle in our way just helps us get ahead.

Just as a doctor keeps his scalpels and other gear on hand in case of emergency, you should always have your principles with you so that you can accurately dissect what belongs to the gods and what belongs to man.

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.