2023: Embrace, learn, and grow stronger.

I’m doing Ryan Holiday’s New Year New You challenge—I enjoy a good challenge or two, or five, to start the year—and the first day has us coming up with a Stoic mantra. I spent too much time on this, especially considering I had a fairly good thought right away. Both on wordsmithing and also thinking about all the little sayings I’ve collected over the years.

Here are a few existing candidates I thought about and used for inspiration. All of these are good, but I challenged myself to find something new.

Acknowledge and move on. When I was very young, I saw this on a t-shirt or something, and I think it was a Powell Peralta Bones Brigade shirt. But, as memory tends to be a bit fuzzy, I can’t say for sure. This has always meant taking a beat, slowing down, and knowing that whatever is happening will pass.

Amor Fati. Love one’s fate. I like this reasonably famous stoic mantra better than some other, more well-known stoicisms. Take everything that happens to you as an opportunity to learn and grow.

Ryan Holiday talks about mantras.

Damned if you do, bored if you don’t. One of my devising and something I have lived by for many years. It’s an oldie but a goodie that I think about often. It’s a bit less practical as I’ve grown older, though. Heh.

Fall in love with the problem. A designer’s mantra, for sure. Not sure where I first heard this, but it’s come up a few times in my life.

The obstacle is the way. This comes from Ryan Holiday and a bit of a spin on Amor Fati. Every obstacle is an opportunity and can be leveraged for learning and growth.

Action begets action. I think of this as a “Just Do It” mantra. The first, best step to doing anything worth doing is to start.

Memento Mori. It’s a nice, if a bit maudlin, mantra, but the message there—to know you’re mortal, that life is short, and every moment could be one of your last—is beautiful.

I think there is a bit of a pattern here. All of the above sort of fit what I was thinking about. I want something positive and proactive, a mantra that works as an active principle in my life and inspires some agency and action. I also want something not limited to the challenging things in life.

Embrace, learn, and grow stronger.

I’m not all that excited about the phrasing here, but I couldn’t find a better way to say it without being too wordy. The gist is: welcome whatever comes each day, good or bad, embrace it as an opportunity, learn from it, and get better.