Monday Morning Motivation – Handle
By: Curt Stowers
Sharing Resources to Help You Grow Personally, Professionally & Financially
Sometimes it helps to get a little dose of encouragement—along with a good cup of coffee!—to start the day.
Hopefully the message below will help you get off to a good start for the week. Please feel free to forward the newsletter on to others that you think would benefit from the content.
Handle
I’m going to start today with a quote from Epictetus:
- Every event has two handles—one by which it can be carried, and one by which it can’t. If your brother does you wrong, don’t grab it by his wronging, because this is the handle incapable of lifting it. Instead, use the other—that he is your brother, that you were raised together, and then you will have hold of the handle that carries. – Epictetus, “Enchiridion, 43”
At the beginning of this year I picked up a wonderful book called The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday. Each day, the book shares a small quote from the ancient texts on Stoicism and shares some commentary on how to apply the principle. Each day is only a single page, but I have learned so much!
Today’s quote comes from the reading from June 14th. To me it was one of the most powerful of the year.
We are going to continually face situations that are unpleasant, and situations where things are not as we would like them to be. Sometimes it will involve people who have disappointed us. Epictetus provides us some wonderful council through the imagery of a “handle.”
When we face tough situations, we can grab a hold of the “handle” of negativity and all that is wrong. Or we can grab hold of the “handle” of positivity and all that is right. EVERY situation provides us with the opportunity to learn and grow. It all comes down to which handle you grab hold of.
That brings us to this week’s question:
- Which handle are you going to grab hold of when you face your next challenge or crisis?
Thanks for sharing a bit of your time with me this Monday morning.
Have a great week!
Curt
About MMM: Each week I publish “Monday Morning Motivation” in the hopes that at least one person will find a bit of inspiration and that this inspiration will have a positive impact on their life. My motivation comes from experiences, reading, sermons, and discussions.
Photo credit: Hung Nguyen Viet on unsplash.com
Blog post from this past week:
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