On Our "Virtual Route 66" As a New Quarter Dawns

 We present the following #RandomThoughts as a new Quarter Dawns:

May God grant you always... A sunbeam to warm you, a moonbeam to charm you, a sheltering Angel so nothing can harm you. Laughter to you. Faithful friends near you. And whenever you pray, Heaven to hear you. - Irish Blessing May flowers always line your path and sunshine light your day. May songbirds serenade you every step along the way. May a rainbow run beside you in a sky that's always blue. And may happiness fill your heart each day your whole life through. - Traditional Irish Blessing May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall softly on your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the hollow of his hand. - Irish Blessing May love and laughter light your days, and warm your heart and home. May good and faithful friends be yours, wherever you may roam. May peace and plenty bless your world with joy that long endures. May all life's passing seasons bring the best to you and yours. - Irish Blessing Further reading: Celebrate the Small Miracles of Life Learn to be Happier in Life PASSAGE OF THE WEEK: We will stagger under the weight of all this. We will struggle and break. All we can do, the Stoics tell us, as Hemingway wrote, is try to be strong in the broken places. To focus on how we respond, what we do about it, to who we can become for having gone through it. Read: Everything, Everywhere, All At Once​ YOUTUBE TAKEAWAY OF THE WEEK: ​ In a recent video on the Daily Stoic YouTube Channel, Ryan Holiday urges us to remind ourselves of our mortality and to take action, just as the Stoics told us to: “You are mortal. So go play with your kids, go apologize to your brother, tell that person you love them. Speak out about the things you think are important. Stop sweating the things that don’t matter. Stop deferring what you know you were meant to do, what you know is right to do. Don’t be arrogant, be humble — realize that you cannot assume that you will get 6 months from now, let alone 6 years. While you are blessed with this life, use it. Watch Do What You Were Meant To Do (With Stoicism)​ Subscribe to Daily Stoic YouTube ​ PODCAST TAKEAWAY OF THE WEEK: ​ In a popular episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan Holiday speaks with professor and writer Cal Newport on his new book Slow Productivity, the difference between writing for academic and general audiences, and how taking things slow improves quality: “As you obsess more about quality, slowness, or lack of busyness, becomes really natural. Once you get more obsessed with doing something, the more all the other stuff begins to feel morally bankrupt — you just instinctually want to have less busyness.” Listen To This Episode PASSAGE OF THE WEEK: It’s a reminder that for everything outside of our control, we retain—at the core of our being—an incredible power: The power to choose what we do with what happens to us. The power to decide what role an event will play in our lives. The power to write the end of our own story. Read: You Can’t Change What Happened, But…​ YOUTUBE TAKEAWAY OF THE WEEK: ​ In a recent video on the Daily Stoic YouTube Channel, Ryan Holiday shares timeless Stoic strategies to become motivated such as structuring your routine, trusting the process, and making the time for what really fuels us: “Marcus Aurelius made time to read. Epictetus was a slave and he managed to read. You have time to read, you just have to make time to read. …It’s not that we have a little bit of time, Seneca says, it’s that we waste a lot of it — and you’re wasting it right now. Put the phone down and go read. If you want to read, then do it — make the time for it.” Watch How To Get and Stay Motivated (with Stoicism)​ Subscribe to Daily Stoic YouTube ​ ​ In a recent video on the Daily Stoic YouTube Channel, Ryan Holiday shares some practices to get started with Stoicism, such as taking the view from above, noticing the ephemeral nature of things, and choosing to view events in a positive light: “There’s no such thing as a bear market or a bull market, good weather or bad weather — there’s just weather, just the market. Our job as humans, is to respond, and of we course we put names on them so we have a helpful way of seeing them. But we have to understand the way we see them and the story we tell ourselves about them determines what we’re going to be able to do about them. So if you focus on the fact that something is unfair, that something is not your fault, that something sucks, that something is impossible, these words have a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy to them.” Watch What is Stoicism? 10 Stoic Exercises to Get You Started​ Subscribe to Daily Stoic YouTube ​ PODCAST TAKEAWAY OF THE WEEK: ​ In a popular episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan Holiday sits down with Guy Raz in San Francisco to speak on applying Stoic principles to your life, the best way to structure your day, and how to become a better teacher: “The best teachers never cease to be students. It sounds like a cliche, but it’s true. I teach younger people about the craft of what I do, but I’m also learning from them all the time and learning from other sources, trying to get better at what I do, and that subsequently makes me a better transmitter of information. Listen To This Episode PODCAST TAKEAWAY OF THE WEEK: ​ In a popular episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan Holiday speaks with author Mark Manson on how being highly successful can ruin one’s life, what he is striving to disrupt in the self-help industry, and the importance of practicing philosophy daily: “The thing about these concepts, both the Stoic and other philosophical concepts, is that you’re never done with them. You never stop and say ‘I’ve got the gratitude thing figured out, don’t have to worry about that.’ It’s a daily practice — you have to do it repeatedly, and like a muscle, you will lose it if you don’t keep it up.” Listen To This Episode