9 Quotes For A Better Life
The Amplified Impact Podcast
August 26th, 2023
I’ve got something special for you today…nine quotes that have had a profound impact on my life, and I’m sure they’ll resonate with you too.
Let’s dive in and explore these gems of wisdom that might be the inspiration you need to reach your goals.
These are quotes that have transformed my perspective and might just do the same for you.
We’ll be discussing wise words from people like philosopher Socrates all the way to Kobe Bryant.
From the role of habits, criticism, inspiration and discipline, the power of focus…I encourage you to reflect on these ideas and see how they might resonate with your own experiences and aspirations
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“And so the super secret playbook for creating a life of satisfaction is just to remove expectations, eliminate that gap, and just be where you are in this moment.”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino:
I want to share with you today nine quotes that had a very transformative impact on my life, and hopefully they have the same on yours. Hopefully one of these resonates with you. So, number one, the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self mastery, while those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them. This is from Socrates. Now, one of the most painful lessons I ever had to learn in my life or relearn multiple times, was when I was 27 years old. I was sitting in the dentist chair and they look me in the eye and they’re like, you have a dead tooth. We’re going to need to pull that thing. And it was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life because for years, I’d just been neglecting my oral hygiene.
Anthony Vicino:
I wasn’t brushing, I wasn’t flossing, and this was not despite knowing that I should be doing it. When you’re young, you just kind of assume, like, nothing bad can ever happen to you. You can always take care of it later. And I just didn’t do what was necessary. As a result, I lost that tooth. And I was reminded of the lesson that if you cannot discipline yourself, then the world will have to do it for you. And that was the world disciplining me in that moment. And I’ll never forget that.
Anthony Vicino:
Lesson number two. This also comes from Seneca. I’m sorry, not Seneca. This does come from Seneca. Our first one came from Socrates. Both guys start with an S and very, very old fellas. He said, we suffer more often in imagination than in reality. I believe that the entirety of man’s discontent exists in the gap between his expectations and his reality.
Anthony Vicino:
And so the super secret playbook for creating a life of satisfaction is just to remove expectations, eliminate that gap, and just be where you are in this moment. And I know that’s really easy to say, very hard in action, because, again, we are just humans and we are expectation machines. It’s one of the things that makes us unique in the world of the animals. We can formulate an opinion of what’s going to happen in the world. We can make a prediction and then test that hypothesis. And this allows us to plan for things that have not yet occurred. Right? That’s one of our strengths as a human species. And yet that’s also where so much of our comparison, so much of our joy is lost in life, is between expecting something to happen and then the reality of what is happening.
Anthony Vicino:
And if we had no expectations about what we wanted or needed from a moment, then we would find pretty much all of the contentment we need in that moment. It’s a very philosophical thought, but I find it to be very true. And it’s something to strive for, is to reduce expectations when you feel upset and angry to ask yourself or to reflect on the fact that this is merely due to unrealized expectations or unmet expectations and you have the power to control your expectations and to reduce them. I think there’s a lot of power in that. Number three, the third quote is civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them. Let me say that again. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them. This is from Alfred north Whitehead.
Anthony Vicino:
I think that habits are the source code of your destiny. The fact that you can rewrite them at will is nothing short of miraculous. But you have to be very, very careful about which habits you imprint onto your operating system because what is that quote? I think it was Will Durant who said something like excellence is a habit, or something like that. Well, on the flip side of that, so is mediocrity. A very, very easy habit, actually, is that of mediocrity. And so just got to be really careful about what habits we acquire, choose them, select them with intention. And I think if we just approach the world of habit building with more intention, I think that would change the lives of so many people. I think we just go through our lives often without any kind of reflection.
Anthony Vicino:
I think. Who was it? Buffett? Maybe it was Warren Buffett who said that the chains of habit are too light to be felt until they’re too strong to be broken. The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they’re too strong to be broken. I think there’s a lot of truth in that. That’s another really good quote. I’m just like a quote machine here today. All right. Number four.
Anthony Vicino:
That which we can be, we must be. This is from Abraham Maslow. This is one of the most impactful quote this is maybe the most impactful quote I ever had because in a very real way, we are, each of us, the center of our own universe. Like, the totality of your human existence is occurring within your skull at this moment. And so as a result of you being like this locus of perspective of the universe, we tend to overestimate our importance in the world. Like, we all believe, as a result of the fact that you are observing the universe from this centralized location that we are somehow special, that we’re unique, we’re above average in some way, and this is why most of us think that we’re above average drivers. And on the one hand, yes, that makes us delusional to think that. But on the other hand, you are right.
Anthony Vicino:
You are special. You are the center of the universe, at least from your perspective, and you have the ability to change the world. Like there is potential greatness inside of you. And I don’t think that anybody thinks that they were put on this earth to be average. And so the problem that we run into, as Maslow points out here, is that when we’re not moving towards our greatness or moving in alignment with what we know we’re capable of, we feel that in the form of discontentment, frustration, all sorts of negative emotions. When we’re moving towards that greatness, though, that’s when we find the highest levels of life, satisfaction of purpose and meaning and fulfillment and all that. And so that which we can be, we must be, is the recognition that inside of you. Whatever that greatness is, you must move towards it.
Anthony Vicino:
You must. It is your moral obligation. It is, if nothing else, your personal obligation if you want to live the best life that you possibly can give yourself. Number five I don’t have a muse. I have a mortgage. This is from Jim Butcher. And they say necessity is the mother of all invention, not inspiration. And I have to remind myself of this every single day when I don’t feel like doing the work, which is like, most days.
Anthony Vicino:
It’s that you have to show up and do the work anyway. This is what allowed me to write 1213 books over the course of the last decade, was just showing up and doing the work, even when I wasn’t inspired and feel like doing it. Because as Jim points out here, he doesn’t have a muse. He doesn’t wait for the inspiration. He has a mortgage. He has to show up and do the work. And when you treat creativity and your work as this thing that you do, regardless of circumstances, motivation, and how you feel in that moment, you can move mountains. You can do anything.
Anthony Vicino:
That’s discipline beating motivation every single time. All right, number six is Booze Don’t Block Dunks by Kobe Bryant. Listen, you can’t let the people in the stands or your fear of their judgment hold you back if they’re not on the court, they do not matter. Focus on what you can control. Focus on your game, and ignore everybody else, because it does not matter what they think. The only opinion, the only voice that matters, is the one inside of your head. Okay, number seven happiness is love. Full stop.
Anthony Vicino:
This is from George Valent. The Gantt study was a 70 year longitudinal study that they did of Harvard undergrads. They followed these men for 70 years to look at all sorts of different factors of, like, health, relationships, earning potential. What they’re really trying to find was what are the factors that lead to a happy life, like maximum levels of happiness. And what they found was very, very simple. Happiness is love. It’s ultimately the relationships you have with your family, your friends, your community that will dictate how happy you ultimately are. It’s not money.
Anthony Vicino:
It’s not achievements, accolades, any of that stuff. It’s just relationships. It’s people. And so don’t look past the fact that happiness is literally, the people right in front of you right this moment, stop looking past them, and you’ll find happiness. It’s almost guaranteed. Number eight responsibility is the price of freedom. This comes from Albert Hubbard, and this one had a really profound impact on my life, because when I was young, I was on ridland from when I was six until I was 16 years old, and it made me feel trapped inside my body. As a result, I’ve always put a very high value on freedom, like not wanting anybody to tell me what to do or how to do it.
Anthony Vicino:
I didn’t want to ever feel confined or trapped or anything like that. So I went off of ridland at 16, which led to this new problem, which is that I had all this freedom but no capacity to harness it. And on the one hand, not enough freedom is captivity, but on the other hand, too much freedom is chaos. And what I discovered was that discipline is what brings order to that chaos, and so that you can realize that freedom in a way that’s not just horrifying, because there’s so many different things, so many infinite options that you could pursue at any given moment, and you’re overwhelmed by that potentiality. So responsibility being the price of freedom, is the reflection that you will never be truly free in this life until you can claim full responsibility for the results of your life. Anything less than you will forever be at the mercy of some external circumstance. And thus, by definition, not free. Responsibility is the price of freedom that is just.
Anthony Vicino:
Man, if I could get that tattooed, maybe not on my body, but somebody else’s body, I would tattoo it on their body. I don’t know why they would let me do that anyway. Number nine if you seek tranquility, do less, or more accurately, do what’s essential, which brings a double satisfaction to do less better. This is by Marcus aurelius and is one of my favorite quotes. Man, these are all my favorite quotes. They’re all so damn good. This one is something that I’ve wrestled with for a long time, being a guy who chases a lot of shiny objects in my life. But truly, the four words that maybe had the most profound impact on my ability to move forward, meaningfully and with a sense of fulfillment is just these four words do less, but better.
Anthony Vicino:
Do less but better. If I could just focus on doing less things in life, but doing the things that I do to the best of my ability, that’s where I find not only the most growth, not the most progress, but the most satisfaction, like, the most pride in who I am and what I’ve done. So those are nine quotes. I hope maybe one of those resonated with you. Let me know. Shoot me a DM shoot me a comment. Shoot a review of the podcast. Let me know, which was your favorite quote, or if you got a different one, let me know that.
Anthony Vicino:
I’d love to hear from you guys. I’ll catch you back around these parts tomorrow. But until then, stay hyper focused, my friend.
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