Following up on my post last week about Ryan Holiday’s wise little book, The Obstacle is the Way, here’s Holiday’s recent TEDx talk on Stoic Optimism:

There are some good stories in this talk. I loved the anecdote about Edison’s factory burning down and the inventor summoning the family to come because they would never likely see such a spectacle of a fire ever again. Find the good even in the really, really bad.

Some quotations from the talk:

Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. –Shakespeare

 

There is good in everything if only we look for it. –Laura Ingalls Wilder

 

Objective judgment, now at this very moment. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willing acceptance – now at this very moment – of all external events. That’s all you need. –Marcus Aurelius