Excerpts from “Will” by Will Smith with Mark Manson
Thanks to a book stalls in airports 🙂 Was browsing through books, was looking for something else, did not find it, but stumbled on the book Will, thanks to the colourful cover I guess!
[Page 42] I trust God. And I am so thankful for his grace in my life. I know that every single breath I take is a gift. And it’s impossible to be unhappy when you’re grateful.
[43] Some combination of hard work, education, and God would topple any and all obstacles and enemies. The only variable was the level of my commitment to the fight.
[64] Truly intelligent people do not have to use language like this to express themselves. God has blessed you with the gift of words. Be sure you are using your gifts to uplift others. Please show the world that you are as intelligent as we think you are.
[69] One of Lee’s students once asked him, “Master, you constantly speak to us of peace, yet every day you train us to fight. How do you reconcile these conflicting ideas? And Bruce Lee responded. “It is better to be a Warrior in a garden, than Gardener in a war.”
[100] “Don’t ever let somebody tell you you can’t do something, not even me… You got a dream… you gotta protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they want to tell you you can’t do it. If you want something, go get it. Period.”
[111] “Jus’ remember, Lover Boy” she said “be nice to everybody you pass on your way up, coz you just might have to pass them again on your way down.”
[114] Living is the journey from not k knowing to knowing. From not understanding to understanding. From confusion to clarity. By universal design you are born into a perplexing situation, bewildered, and you have one job as a human: figure this shit out.
[114] I heard a great saying once: Life is like school, with one difference – in school you get the lesson and then you take the test. But in life, you get the test, and it’s your job to take the lesson.
[149] Choosing the city you live is an important as choosing your life partner.
[193] Change can be scary, but it’s utterly unavoidable. In fact, impermanence is the only thing you can truly rely on. If you are unwilling or unable to pivot and adapt to the incessant, fluctuating tides of life, you will not enjoy being here. Sometimes, people try to play the cards that they wish they had, instead of playing the had they’ve been dealt. The capacity to adjust and improvise is a arguably the single most critical human ability.
[207] There’s a difference between talent and skill. Talent comes from God-you’re born with it. Skill comes from sweat and practice and commitment. Don’t just skate through this opportunity. Hone your craft.
[302] You fight how you train was one of Darerell’s central axioms. “You do everything how you do one thing.”
[308] “Never underestimate the power of what you do.”
[317] I am a dreamer, and builder. I picture grand visions, and then I build the systems to make them real in the world. That is my love language.
[333] I was trying to fill an internal emotional hole with external, material achievements. Ultimately, this kind of obsession is insatiable. The more you get, the more you want, all the time never quite scratchin the itch. You end up with a mind consumed by what it doesn’t have and what it didn’t get, and in spiralling in ability to enjoy what it has.
[344] The truth hit me like a 90 mph fastball: Nobody gives a shit about anything except how they feel. Feeling good is the most important thing to everyone, everywhere, at all times. We are choosing our words, actions, and behaviours in order to achieve a feeling that we deem positive. There’s nothing more important than the feeling how we want to feel. And people determine whether or not you love them by how well they feel you honor their feeling.
[381] Essentially, a Freestanding Man is self-aware, self-reliant, self-motivated, self-confident, and utterly unswayed by people’s approval or disapproval. He knows who he is, he knows what he wants. And because of this, he surrenders his considerable gifts into the service of others.
[386] “Surrender” had always been a negative word for me– it meant losing or failing or giving up. By my burgeoning relationship with the ocean was exposing that my sense of control was actually an illusion. Surrender transformed from a weakness word to an infinite power concept. I had had a bias toward action-thrusting, pushing, striving, struggling, doing-and I began to realise that their opposites were equally as powerful-inaction, receptiveness, acceptance, non-resistance, being. Stopping was equally as powerful as going; resting was equally as powerful as training; silence was equally as powerful as talking. Letting go was equally as powerful as grasping.
[394] I had always seen the world as my battlefield; I no understood that the true combat zone was my mind.
