Ryan Holiday (b.1987) is an American author, marketer, and entrepreneur.
Born in Sacramento, California, Holiday dropped out of college at the age of 19 and became the Director of Marketing at American Apparel at the age of 21.
A popular media columnist, Holiday has written in Forbes, Fast Company, The Huffington Post, The Columbia Journalism Review, The Guardian, Thought Catalog, Medium.com, and the New York Observer. He wrote Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator (2012.)
Since 2014, Holiday has led a widespread revival of stoicism in the United States—his acclaimed bestsellers include The Obstacle is the Way (2014,) Ego is the Enemy (2016,) and The Daily Stoic (2016.) His latest book is Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts (2017.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Ryan Holiday
It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s not okay to quit. To know you want to quit but to plant your feet and keep inching closer until you take the impenetrable fortress you’ve decided to lay siege to in your own life—that’s persistence.
—Ryan Holiday
Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn’t mean you have to agree. Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn’t mean it is. We decide what story to tell ourselves.
—Ryan Holiday
Life is defined by how much you do, how often you took the difficult road and were rewarded for it.
—Ryan Holiday
All great victories, be they in politics, business, art, or seduction, involved resolving vexing problems with a potent cocktail of creativity, focus, and daring. When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go—carving you a path. “The Things which hurt,” Benjamin Franklin wrote, “instruct.”
—Ryan Holiday
We forget: In life, it doesn’t matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens and what you’ve been given.
—Ryan Holiday
The only guarantee, ever, is that things will go wrong. The only thing we can use to mitigate this is anticipation. Because the only variable we control completely is ourselves.
—Ryan Holiday
The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.
—Ryan Holiday
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