The tyranny million8/16/2023 ![]() ![]() But he leaves the measure of that achievement to his critics. The strong man welcomes the triumph of achievement to nurture his great enthusiasms and devotions. He will thrive in the arena, marred by dust and sweat and blood, daring greatly. As long as he strives valiantly, with his first step he has already won. The strong man lives with the peace of conviction and the humility of awareness. The strong man knows all of these things, and his knowledge is fear’s antidote. We discover vistas of great beauty when we are lost, and somehow we find our way, as long as we keep moving. Today’s mistake is tomorrow’s innovation. “Just keep moving.” Failure is a fertile soil for knowledge. Confronting the cliff to be scaled he sees toeholds, paths of ascent, the leverage of his tools and gear. He studies the proximate terrain with care, glancing at the distance casually and infrequently. His reality is the moment, his focus crisp. He yearns for better, always better, but knows no best. But he will never achieve his personal best. He might achieve his personal best thus far. For the strong man, achieving some theoretical maximum on that gauge would be like suffering the sterile death of perfection. They are the feelings the strong man lives for and the gauge by which he holds himself internally accountable. Those are feelings, inherently personal, of no comparative value. You cannot quantify the heart you put into the fight or the meaning you ascribe to it. Language is insufficient to classify with any precision our struggles, let alone to compare them. There is no unit of measure for grit or determination. He understands that external comparison is meaningless in this context. He assesses the quality of the effort expended, not the results obtained. There is no progress in the void of perfection, no motion, no life.įor the strong man, the “best” is a fallacy. To the strong man, perfection is a vacuum, like death. He finds none of these things in perfection and thus has no use for it, in concept or otherwise. The strong man worships effort, struggle, momentum, growth. The critic’s is a fraudulent faith of failure foreordained. The odds never justify the critic’s wager because you are guaranteed to fall short of perfection, as every human endeavor would. Your inaction is a proxy for his own, his commendation a rationalization of past cowardice. For this and this alone the critic will commend you. You have risked nothing in pursuit of your plans. You have made no investment in your aspirations. This is when he can do his greatest damage. The voice of the critic is often loudest before you’ve even begun. Fear of the uncertainty that is as abundant as your challenge is difficult, as pervasive as your struggle is worthwhile. Often fear lurks behind the critic, filling the empty spaces of the unknown with the most awful possibilities. But the critic knows you will never be perfect in reality. He tells you perfection can always be attained in theory, and there is a warmth in the idea. His dogma draws you in with a superficial optimism, a hint at the divine in man, a promise of inspiration. He proselytizes faith in the potential to achieve perfection. The critic in your head intimidates and overwhelms you with the ideal. We’re very lucky to share with you an excerpt from Isaac’s book - on how to fight your internal critic and embolden your inner “strong man”. He’s also one of the nicest and most humble people you might meet. He was born with a degenerative eye disease that caused him to gradually go blind…and he also went on to study math at Harvard, to graduate from Harvard Law and serve as a clerk to two Supreme Court justices, to take a business from $15 million to $150 million, and to form a nonprofit aimed at curing blindness. Isaac Lidsky is one of the most inspiring people you’ll ever meet.
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