The Standards: You wake up each morning perfectly at peace. Your life is exactly as you desire it to be. It is what you might call dynamically balanced—there are moving pieces, things you are heading towards and things you are leaving, but you have the feeling that everything is right where it should be. Your mind can become quiet at a moment’s notice. The instant you desire it, it becomes a reality. There is no ‘gap’. In fact much of your time is spent not thinking, but not because you actively seek this out. It is just where you happen to find yourself. You are completely free from desire. You have your preferences, yet you feel entirely unmoved by them. Your mind no longer fixates on objects with the intent of satisfying itself. You do not react emotionally to things. Emotions come as they always have, they are felt as they have always been, but they lack the overwhelming nature that once threw you off balance. You find your experience entirely absent of certain emotions like anger, anxiety, fear, or jealousy. The present moment is your closest companion. It is your natural resting place. So much so that you no longer see any significance in it, just as a fish sees no significance in water. It just is. You no longer have any compulsion to run from it. You move freely through life because you are not attached to anything. You take things as they come, and enjoy them for what they are rather than hating them for what they are not. You dive headfirst into your relationships without fear because you know that you could never be hurt. Life feels impersonal. There is no longer a ‘you’ at the center of it. There is no sense of self, no owner of ‘your’ experience. It is almost as if you are hollow, that beneath your skin there exists only a vast expanse of space, but it is a fullness rather than an emptiness. It is the feeling of being complete. If anything here does not feel perfectly true to you, is not reflected in your experience, you still have further left to go.

You barely know what you want for yourself, but you think you know what’s best for others.

It’s amazing how good of a life you can build when you take it seriously.

What a blessing it is to learn from another’s mistakes rather than your own.

I can’t think of a single time where I wish I’d compromised more.

The more I understand about life, the higher my standards get.

Choosing hobbies with more longevity early in life is probably the easiest way to avoid boredom in old age.

What the sage finds in pursuit of truth, the poet finds in appreciation of beauty.

Fear of facing unpleasant emotions only makes them more unpleasant.

The best philosophers aren’t trying to do philosophy, they’re just trying to understand.

Don’t associate with people who consider excellence a sin.

Every great city is a museum of the problems solved by humanity.

Nothing aids contemplation quite like a cigar and a coffee.

“Don’t romanticize your life” they say, as though life wasn’t incurably romantic to begin with.

You become a slave to anything you aren’t willing to feel.

RT @JamesClear: At any moment, you are one good choice away from a meaningfully better life.

Something very meditative about playing golf alone. Just you and the course.

If you do good enough work for a long enough time, the results have no choice but to come.

Once you have your mind sorted out, pressure only makes you perform better.

When you realize how simple it was, you can’t help but laugh.

At some point you have to stop asking how to do the thing and just do the thing.