The Philosopher King Maxims
Surprise is better than being a vexation.
“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.
What follows is a handful of short aphorisms to make you smarter, more effective, respected, and happier. They've been distilled from ancient times, but they work because they’ve stood the test of time. These laconic sayings aren’t just for kings or presidents—the bits of advice are useful for all of us, whether we’re leading a country, a family, a company, or just steering our own lives. Let’s dive in.
1. Happiness comes from satisfying your desires or avoiding pain while unhappiness is from failing to do either. Aiming to practice the rational life then, one lived by practicing the four virtues: discipline, courage, justice, and wisdom, as an end in itself has the highest probability of granting you happiness, what the Greeks called eudaemonia, anytime and anywhere you want. Your well-being hinges on how attuned, devoted, and faithful you are to living that objective as your highest and immediate goal, success or failure notwithstanding.
There’s no room for disappointment as you’ll always reach this goal of living; its execution is fully under your conscious control. You may value externals like money, power, women, status, the body, feelings, thoughts, and intelligence, but they’re capricious. They ebb and flow and are therefore unreliable to provide a lasting merry spirit. In fact, the odds of them making you happy depend on the application of rational judgment toward their utility.
It’s in this perspective that bad luck, calamitous events, and pleasurable but slavish temptations lose their effect. That you become free. Freedom then begets ineluctable joy.
2. The wise learn through people. You need courage and humility to assess your knowledge gaps and ask experts the right questions, and enough discipline to acquire new skills or information. You’ll inevitably feel humiliated, inadequate and inferior at first as the natural order of learning pre-supposes. But it’s all in the mind. The terrible feeling is short-lived, people don’t care as much as you imagine and it’s only a matter of time before you’re winning as you’re used to.
3. 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 lucrative 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 in your niche. Be genuine in helping others with problems aligning with your expertise. Share a lot of your high-quality work for free. And learn the art of good-will, conversation, being desirable, and how to influence people.
4. Disrupting the status quo on important matters with more effective ways to perform is the surest way to earn esteem and success. Elon Musk is a great example.
5. 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.
6. While completing a few good projects arouses expectation and desire and consolidates a good reputation in men’s hearts, it’s prudent not to show your work until it’s done as it keeps the excitement and reverence alive.
7. It’s wise to manage expectations on the first try of mastering anything. There’s a learning curve. Rejection, doubts, and drudgery abound. You’ll get over this discomfort if you put it in its place and don’t allow it to disrupt life from flowing out of you. Detach. Remember “externals are nothing,” Epictetus quipped. Your objective remains.
8. Your environment doesn’t define who you are. You don't decide where you’re born, but you control the values you adopt. And you can as well foster those promoting self-reliance, flourishing, and joy. It’s habitual but foolish to remain a disgusting caricature, a bird caged in old ineffective ways you’ve known all your life. You can do better because you’re worth better.
9. Being polite, well dressed and cultivating good manners disarms and charms people. A cultured man is an oasis in a desert of the boring self-absorbed. One expects a graceful man’s well-ordered mind, beauty, and grace pours into other aspects of his life.
10. Unpredictability fruits frustrations, whose alleviation amplifies the pleasure of consummation. A wise man would rather have his audience frustrated, or even angry, with the unfolding of his plans — than bored.
11. Wisdom is in the subtle and drip-like revelation of your strengths, character, and abilities unless the situation warrants the full expression of your competencies.
Bewilderment, then, is a powerful influential weapon. You want people to wonder how much else you know and can do thus earning more estate in their minds.
The established and bold may even take this strategy further and let people think they've fallen off then make a winning move when least expected. Surprise is better than being a vexation. Lacking a need to please also allows enough time and space to purify art to its uttermost aesthetic form.