'Disdain Things You Cannot Have, Ignoring them is the best revenge'
Throwback on one of the powerful laws from 'The 48 Power of laws."
Letter 25
One of the best books to have the power to understand the actions behind people's motives is easily this 25-year-old outstanding book The 48 Laws of Power’ by the author Sir Robert Greene.
Controlling your own emotions was the #1 power to gain perspective on your own life was what he wrote before starting the 48 laws.
All the laws are powerful and timeless though, due to circumstances and the environment around forces me to think of laws in the meantime.
One such occasion triggered this law in my mind, which I cannot dare to forget about, as I am an ardent fan of Robert Greene.
Law 36 : Disdain things you cannot have, Ignoring them is the best revenge.
Giving up on things we cannot control or which will produce no benefits regarding wasting your two precious resources on them.
Focusing on the things, or occasions that we can have no control over might lead us to overthink and over-talk, which we know aren’t of any use.
The more attention you pay to distraction, the stronger it becomes. The stronger the distracting things become, more hard will it be to fix. Leave them alone, and you will be free to do your own work, which matters most in daily life
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Ignoring most distractions leads us to make amendments to our desires, goals, and current progress and frees up the two most essential resources required for daily hustle.
1. Willpower (energy) and time.
Cal Newport in his book ‘Deep Work’, said about willpower -
Your will, in other words, is not a manifestation of your character that you can deploy without limit; it’s instead like a muscle that tires.
By overthinking and overtalking about facts and things that are out of our control, that have no direct justification to our life, we destroy the ability to think ahead in terms to move the needle of our life toward positive directions.
2. Time is the most important factor in anything that we want.
No doubt that overthinking and overtalking about the uncontrollable makes us waste the most precious commodity of our life.
"Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful, lest you let other people spend it for you."~ Carl Sandburg
It is often best to leave the uncontrollable and ignore them so that they don’t rent a home at your brain.
It is always advisable to focus on our own life’s task, our relevant progress task that helps us elevate our goals and career development.
The original hardcover is 500 pages long, even though I skipped many pages that were examples from ancient history. Instead, one can get grasp all the laws in the recent summary video on the author’s youtube channel.