“This is the true athlete—the person in rigorous training against false impressions. Remain firm, you who suffer, don’t be kidnapped by your impressions! The struggle is great, the task divine— to gain mastery, freedom, happiness, and tranquility.”
—EPICTETUS
Today’s post is high on metaphor. Here Epictetus has used the word storm as a metaphor for emotions, which can blow away everything that comes in its path. Our emotions are also like that.
When we get passionate about things, we are filled up with this raw energy. I remember at times whenever I get a new idea or project hits my mind, I am barely able to sleep that night. I just keep going over it again and again in my head, too excited to execute it. Sometimes even I have started many projects at midnight because I couldn’t simply sleep among all this noise in my head.
But I don’t think it is a very sustainable way to do things. You can’t complete a project in one night. You need to prepare and you need to plan. Use this raw energy to plan and prepare for the storm ahead.
As told by Ryan Holiday in his book
If we don’t have a plan, if we never learned how to put up the storm windows, we will be at the mercy of these external—and internal—elements. We’re still puny human beings compared with one hundred-mile-per-hour winds, but we have the advantage of being able to prepare—being able to struggle against them in a new way.
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