You are not your thoughts. You are the thing that observes your thoughts. And until you understand that, you will continue to be dragged through life by your thoughts like a wild horse dragging someone with their foot caught in the stirrup. Your job isn’t to change or fix your thoughts. Your job is to see them for what they are, just thoughts—and then act in spite of the little fuckers.

The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the non-essentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage. In other words, Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. In short, deep work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep, spending their days instead in a frantic blur of email and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way

Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.