Monthly Top 10

1. If it doesn’t cause you physical pain to not have it, you don’t need it. The Epicureans rivaled the Stoics, though they had a lot in common. Both, for instance, believed virtuous living was the key to happiness. Epicurus, the founder of Epicureanism, spoke at length about the virtue of moderation (one of the four core Stoic virtues). He said, “All desires that do not lead to physical pain if not satisfied are unnecessary.” Our nature requires little—it’s our imagination that requires a lot. For example, take eating. When we’re hungry, we feel pain. When we eat, the pain stops and our body is once again content. Now, take ice cream. When I’m craving ice cream, I’m not actually in pain. It may feel like I am, and may use that feeling to justify a Ben & Jerry’s run, but my body is just fine (better off, even) without it.

2. Pleasure occurs when we’re free of mental disturbances and anxieties. This is similar to the idea above. Epicurus said that the Epicurean “thinks it preferable to have bad luck rationally than good luck irrationally. In other words, in human action, it is better for a rational choice to be unsuccessful than for an irrational choice to succeed through the agency of chance.” The Stoic Epictetus said something similar: “Man, the rational animal, can put up with anything except what seems to him irrational; whatever is rational is tolerable.”

3. It’s very hard to fail completely. You know the Norman Vincent Peale quote, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars”? It may sound corny, but it’s true. I like how Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, put it: “Even if you fail at your ambitious thing, it’s very hard to fail completely. That’s the thing people don’t get.” Plus, landing among the stars almost always turns out better than the moon you imagined.

4. Take the shortest route—go inward. “Once it happened . . . Someone came looking for the Isha Yoga Center in southern India. They came to a nearby village and asked a local boy, ‘How far is the Isha Yoga Center?’ The boy scratched his head and said, ‘24,996 miles.’ The man was aghast. ‘What? That far?’ The boy said, ‘Yes, the way you’re going. But if you turn around, it’s just four miles.’

If you go outward, it is an endless journey. If you turn inward, it is just one moment. In that one moment, everything changes. In that one moment, you are not in pursuit of joy anymore. Instead, your life becomes an expression of your joyfulness.” -Sadhguru, Inner Engineering

5. Knowledge is the tool, not the goal. Progress is the goal. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is pointless. We study philosophy not to look smart or win arguments, but to be a better person and live a better life. When we make knowledge, not progress, the goal, Epictetus said, “it’s as if I were to say to an athlete, ‘Show me your shoulders,’ and he responded with, ‘Have a look at my weights.’ ‘Get out of here with you and your gigantic weights!’ I’d say, ‘What I want to see isn’t the weights but how you’ve profited from using them.'”

6. The cost of cutting corners: “If you think hiring a professional is expensive, try hiring an amateur.” -Red Adair

7. If someone tells you a book has changed their life, read it.

8. Overwork is the falsest of economies. This is a paraphrase from John Steinbeck that reminds me of our limits. We can’t do everything, we can’t get it all done. Accepting this makes life sweeter.

9. Reflective thoughts are truer than everyday thoughts. As we go about our day, thoughts sometimes pop into our head seemingly out of nowhere. These thoughts can be irrational or impulsive, which can lead to feelings that are irrational or impulsive, which can lead to actions that are irrational or impulsive. This is why awareness is so important. It’s why exercising our reasoning ability is so important. It’s why journaling or meditating is so important. When we do these things, we take our brain off autopilot. We become more intentional, less prone to acting contrary to our principles. As Epictetus put it, “Very little is needed for everything to be upset and ruined, only a slight lapse in reason.”

10. Notable books I read this month: How to be Content by Horace, How to Give by Seneca, Why Buddhism Is True by Robert Wright

1. We don’t want you to be authentic, we want you to be kind. I recently wrote about Seth Godin’s advice to professionals: we don’t want you to be authentic—we want you to be professional. This got me thinking about how we can apply this to our greatest duty as human beings: being kind to one another. Oftentimes people will excuse their intolerant behavior by saying they’re just being “authentic” and “real”. But we don’t want that. We don’t want you to be authentic—we want you to be kind.

2. Mindfulness, or there’s no point. A great experience “can still end up feeling fairly meaningless if you’re incapable of directing some of your attention as you’d like. After all, to have any meaningful experience, you must be able to focus on it, at least a bit. Otherwise, are you really having it at all? Can you have an experience you don’t experience? The finest meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant might as well be a plate of instant noodles if your mind is elsewhere; and a friendship to which you never actually give a moment’s thought is a friendship in name only.” -Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks

3. From the fear of missing out, to the joy of missing out. “Once you truly understand that you’re guaranteed to miss out on almost every experience the world has to offer, the fact that there are so many you still haven’t experienced stops feeling like a problem. Instead, you get to focus on fully enjoying the tiny slice of experiences you actually do have time for—and the freer you are to choose, in each moment, what counts most.” -Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks

4. Don’t let anyone tell you reading isn’t work. We’re quick to accept a meeting invite when we’d probably be fine missing it, but how often do we schedule something that is always 100% worth our time? I’ve been scheduling a half hour each day for reading (instead of just reading when I have time) and trying not to miss it. And don’t let anyone tell you reading isn’t work. It is. It’s some of the most important work you can do.

5. There are fools and there are seekers of wisdom. Everyone else suffers. “An idiot is incapable of drawing conclusions. A [wise person] is unwilling to draw conclusions. The rest have glorified their conclusions as knowledge. The fool just enjoys whatever little he knows and [the wise person] enjoys it absolutely. The rest are the ones who constantly struggle and suffer.” -Sadhguru, Inner Engineering

6. You don’t become useful when you find your calling, you find your calling when you become useful. (Source: Kevin Kelly’s review of So Good They Can’t Ignore You)

7. Enjoy what you’ve worked for. I think of this quote whenever I feel discontentment start to creep in: “There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.” -Logan Pearsall Smith

8. I wrote a piece about how to handle insults. Here’s the shortened version: There’s really nothing to handle. What someone says about you doesn’t concern you—it concerns them.

9.  Roosevelt’s imperturbable cheerfulness. Theodore Roosevelt’s zest for life has been well documented. Stories abound of wilderness excursions that left him and his friends badly injured, exhausted, and starved. Through it all, according to fellow riders, Roosevelt always appeared to be having “the time of his life”. His cheerfulness persisted even when facing grave uncertainties. “What Roosevelt termed the “great day” of his life—the day that ended with the triumphant charges up Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill—began with him exhibiting to the Rough Riders the most placid morning-time demeanor,” says Doris Kearns Goodwin in Leadership in Turbulent Times, “calmly shaving and knotting a blue polka-dot bandanna around his neck. Rough Rider Arthur Crosby found it heartening ‘to see our commanding officer on the dawn of a great battle performing an everyday function as though we were on an enjoyable camping trip.'” 

10. Notable books I read this month: Buddha by Karen Armstrong, Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman, The Art of Happiness by Epicurus, and The Girl Who Would Be Free by Ryan Holiday. Also, I made a list of the best books I’ve ever read.

1. If I survive today, tomorrow I will be free. This month I read The Choice—the incredible true story of Dr. Edith Eva Eger, a Holocaust survivor who’s now a practicing psychologist. Her mission: to show people that there is hope, light, and kindness, even in the darkest times. The motto she used to survive the horrors of Auschwitz: If I survive today, tomorrow I will be free. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

2. Love is not about the other person. It’s about you. This was one of my favorite takeaways from Sadhguru’s Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy. Love is not about the other person. It’s about you. It’s a choice. It’s a way of being.

3. Think beyond your ego

4. That One Should Disdain Hardships by Musonius Rufus. I recently wrote a blog on this idea. The basic idea: people struggle for money, for their opinions to be heard, for fame and recognition—things that are not inherently good. Yet, Musonius says, they’re not nearly as willing to struggle to acquire things like courage, discipline, kindness, or wisdom–things that are inherently good and would, without a doubt, improve the quality of their life.

5. Consistency over intensity.  “You don’t get in shape by going to the gym for 8 hours a few times a year. You get in shape by going to the gym for 30 minutes four or five or six days a week,” says Simon Sinek in the video “Leadership Explained in 5 Minutes”. “It’s little things adding up over time. Your teeth don’t not rot because you go to the dentist twice a year. They don’t rot because you brush them for a couple minutes every day. It’s the little things adding up over time.” (Source: Billy Oppenhiemer’s Six at Six Newsletter)

6. Stop letting yourself be distracted by things that don’t matter. I got this idea on my sixth reading of Meditations. I’ve written this affirmation every morning this month in my journal: I am not distracted by things that don’t matter.

7. How to be sure you’re living life to the fullest: Be present, right now.

8. The power of responsibility. We all know the quote from Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility”. In The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck, Mark Manson says, if you switch the nouns around, the quote becomes even better: “With great responsibility comes great power.”

9. The greater the difficulty, the greater the meaning. In Yes to Life, Viktor E. Frankl says that the meaning of life is found in suffering. The greater the suffering, he says, the greater the meaning. “Life no longer appears to us as a given, but as something given over to us, it is a task in every moment. This, therefore, means that it can only become more meaningful the more difficult it becomes.”

10. Many mickles make a muckle. “We overestimate what we can do in one year, and underestimate what we can do in ten years.” This quote is attributed to Bill Gates. I think of it often. Keep going, even if it doesn’t seem like you’re making progress. You are. It’s slowly adding up. Keep going.