Hello, ! I want you to flourish in your endeavors. What follows is a set of aphorisms to make you smarter, more effective, respected, and happier. If you missed the last edition on How to Leave a Lasting Impression, you can catch up right here.
“For I believe a good king is from the outset and by necessity a philosopher, and the philosopher is from the outset a kingly person.” - After Musonius Rufus
Be careful what you require in order to be happy. Money, recognition, sex, and affection can enrich your life, but each involves conditions you can’t influence in their entirety. The Stoics placed a good life in the practice of wisdom, courage, justice, and self-control. These give you something worth doing and finding contentment in in every circumstance. Even on a difficult day, you can act in a way you respect. There’s freedom and joy in having a purpose that bad luck can’t make meaningless.
Learning asks you to endure the discovery that you know less than you thought. Ask the question anyway. Someone has spent years understanding the thing you’re struggling with, and a thoughtful conversation could save you months. The embarrassment of being a beginner passes. But the cost of pretending you already know keeps growing.
When dealing with people, self-interest is the rule. It’s thus much better to be a man of value than well-connected, but best to be both. Men will appreciate, respect, and consider you more for good opportunities when you’re good at what you do and they’ll do so first when you’re a friendly person. Keep learning. Work on your weaknesses. Refine your craft. Aim for excellence. Be genuine in helping others with problems aligning with your expertise. Together, this art of good-will will make you perennial.
Every profession has defective habits that survive because people have stopped questioning the status quo. Learn the work well enough to recognize where a better approach would matter. Then accept the difficulty of proving it. A useful improvement earns its place through the problem it solves. The people who benefit will have a reason to remember and reward who made it possible.
Be delusional in your ambitions. The undying commitment to uncomfortable goals traction you to stretch to their height in the quality of your character, mind, and spirit. Limiting yourself is thus a waste of time, abilities, and potential as you contain a generous margin of malleability to meet the desires of the self. A strategic, bold, and industrious spirit in one man soon trumps the possibilities of natural aptitude in a timid other.
You would rather achieve little at a grand enterprise than win at a mid adventure. With prudence, and in worthy pursuits, the bigger the price you have to pay, the more the reward. Have a dream that forces you to learn ancillary wizardry like leadership, public speaking, social skills, building a valuable network, writing, marketing, listening, critical thinking, sales, lifting, emotional control, and patience. This is how you improve. It’s the way.
Your first attempts will probably disappoint the part of you that already imagines mastery. There will be awkwardness, rejection, repetition, and days when improvement is difficult to see. Allow for that learning curve. You can take an attempt seriously without making its initial outcome a judgment on your entire future. There is still another version to make. Another rep. And another idea to try.
You inherit ways of living long before you’re mature enough to examine them. Some deserve your loyalty. Others continue costing you simply because they feel familiar. Your beginnings and environment influence what comes easily, what frightens you, and what you believe is possible. But as you recognize and sift those influences, you gain opportunities to choose which ones you’ll carry forward on your way to being a sovereign individual. This is why journaling and exposing yourself to ways of thinking alien and elevated to your own is useful.
Good manners make another person’s experience of you more pleasant. A cultured man is an oasis in a desert of the boring self-absorbed. Clean clothes, attention, consideration, and gracefulness are attractive and charming. One also expects a graceful man’s well-ordered mind, beauty, and elegance pours into other aspects of his life.
Anticipation gives an experience part of its pleasure. A good story needs room to develop; a promising project can hold our interest before we see its full shape. Give people enough to care about what comes next, and make the eventual result worth their attention. Every delay spends some of their patience to your advantage- their deeper enjoyment of the experience.
You can allow people to discover your abilities over time. A thoughtful observation, a problem handled well, or an unexpected skill often leaves a stronger impression than a prattled catalogue of achievements. There is pleasure in realizing that someone has more to them than you first understood. Keep developing that depth, and reveal what the occasion calls for.
Chance will always have a part in your life. But give your judgment and character significant more stake in your destiny. Prepare for what you can foresee, take the opportunity you’ve recognized, and consider the cost of doing nothing. An unanswered letter, an avoided decision, or a concern you never raised can shape your future as surely as an action you regret.
Great men absorb the spirit in the stories, poems, and wise quotations they learn from conversations and books through their practice and embodiment in the real world. Understand and then live what you believe for it to bear significance. That’s how you live an interesting and illustrious life.
Maintaining a desirable solid reputation pushes you to become a better, more competent person as you’re now forced to live up to someone’s expectations. But it’s silly to worry about what most think of you unless the criticism is well-founded. A chronic attitude of fake it till you make it, though sometimes effective, will be found out or give you unnecessary trouble in maintaining the charade.
Imagination is neither good nor evil, it all depends on how you use it. If your fantasies lead to desires not within your power of acquisition despite doing your best, it’s wise to ignore them and focus on what you can get.
But if, for instance, you use your creativity to dream of possible terrible consequences if you fail, as a tactic to motivate effective action on a promising enterprise, then it’s prudent to indulge.
Bad news, situations, or facts should always motivate you toward forward action. A lot of time sinks into useless whining, rumination, and complaints when you could be happier using your wisdom and skills in pivoting. Time wasted on negativity is a tragic and careless loss — a cosmic failure of the intellect. God won’t forgive you.
Success in persuasion requires knowing what moves each person. Common needs are ease, status, pleasure, and money but mostly connection and a good time. Help people achieve their deepest desires and you’ll have their hearts.
Focusing on many goals disperses the potential of doing one well. It’s thus wise to try one thing before moving on to another. How can you handle this task fast and create the best outcome possible? You might have to learn ancillary skills to support your work’s quality and distribution, but excellence in one domain ought to be your chief aim.
‘Til next time, dear reader. Have a great week ahead.
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With love,
Antonius Veritas, M.D
Number seven really resonated with me. We inherit so many beliefs and ways of behaving before we’re even capable of questioning them. And then we spend a remarkable amount of adulthood discovering which ones actually belong to us. I love the idea that becoming your own person involves examining what you’ve been carrying rather than simply accepting it as part of who you are.
If my eyes didn’t trick me, my name appears here, surprised even a little shocked, just can’t help expressing my thankfulness for this inspiring and encouraging reading. Thank you!