Our friend Ryan Holiday was kind enough to contribute an excerpt from his wonderful book, The Obstacle Is The Way for our site. The message is perfect for who we are, I thought. Take it away, Ryan... Build Your Inner Citadel By age twelve, Theodore Roosevelt had spent almost every day of his short life struggling with horrible asthma. Despite his privileged birth, his life hung in a precarious balance—the attacks were an almost nightly near-death experience. Tall, gangly, and frail, the slightest exertion would upset the entire balance and leave him bedridden for weeks. One day his father came into his room and delivered a message that would change the young boy’s life: Theodore, you have the mind but haven’t got the body. I’m giving you the tools to make your body. It’s going to be hard drudgery and I think you have the determination to go through with it. You’d think that would be lost on a child, especially a fragile one born into great wealth and status. But according to Roosevelt’s younger sister, who witnessed the conversation, it wasn’t. His response, using what would become his trademark cheerful grit, was to look at his father and say with determination: I’ll make my body. At the gym that his father built on the second-floor porch, young Roosevelt proceeded to work out feverishly every day for the next five years, slowly building muscle and strengthening his upper body against his weak lungs and for the future. By his early twenties the battle against asthma was essentially over, he’d worked—almost literally—that weakness out of his body. That gym work prepared a physically weak but smart young boy for the uniquely challenging course on which the nation and the world were about to embark. It was the beginning of his preparation for and fulfillment of what he would call the Strenuous Life. And for Roosevelt, life threw a lot at him: He lost a…read complete article: dragondoor/build_your_inner_citadel
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 12:21:19 +0000
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