What matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them, and whether we keep our composure. - Ryan Holiday

Success breeds softness.

It also breeds fear: We become addicted to our creature comforts. And then we become afraid of losing them.

When success begins to slip from your fingers — for whatever reason — the response isn’t to grip and claw so hard that you shatter it to pieces. It’s to understand that you must work yourself back to the aspirational phase. You must get back to first principles and best practices.

To prevent becoming overwhelmed by the world around us, we must, as the ancients practiced, learn how to limit our passions and their control over our lives. It takes skill and discipline to bat away the pests of bad perceptions, to separate reliable signals from deceptive ones, to filter out prejudice, expectation, and fear. But it’s worth it, for what’s left is truth. While others are excited or afraid, we will remain calm and imperturbable. We will see things simply and straightforwardly, as they truly are — neither good nor bad.