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Don’t Wish For Things To Go Your Way, Expect Resistance Instead
Frustration is something we’ve all experienced. According to the Stoics, it can be eliminated. How?
“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will. ”
― Epictetus
Expect resistance. This is by far one of the best quotes you’ll find in the God Of War games. If you haven’t played it before, I’ll tell you a little bit about it. In the game, Kratos, the god of war, lives in the far north, in exile apparently, after he flees Greece. He has a happy life there, with his wife, and a son. The wife dies and leaves Kratos and his son alone. That’s when the adventure begins, but the son needs to learn and learn from a harsh, brutal master, the god of war himself. As they fight their way through the cold forests and magic places, they need to fight and solve puzzles and the like. The son, frustrated, yells at some point, why can nothing be just easy! Expect resistance, murmurs Kratos. Such a valuable lesson, because for us as well, it’s just the same, we need to expect resistance.
Life doesn’t always go, or better said, almost never goes according to plan, something always happens. At the same time, we have goals we want to achieve. We have financial goals, relationship goals, personal goals, you name it. And we work hard towards…
