How to have a mentor that has taught the greatest influencers of history.
And what three things you can learn from him today
Ever hear a word, and assume the worst?
When I first heard the term stoicism, I thought what you are probably thinking if you have never heard of this phrase before.
“Isn’t this when someone sits around with a stone-like face??”
At first, I thought this was what stoicism was about. But then I started listening to Tim Ferriss.
If you’re unfamiliar with Tim Ferriss, he wrote several bestsellers, but the most popular one has been the Four Hour Workweek.
He also has a podcast, and he kept referring to a guy named Seneca. The only Seneca I knew was the backup quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks. Seneca Wallace.
But nope, Seneca was one of the first proponents of Stoicism, in the same vein of a guy named Marcus Aurelius who wrote Meditations.
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius was the Roman Emperor from 161 AD to 180 AD, and he was the most powerful man on the planet at the time. Literally..the most powerful man on the planet. He wrote Meditations for himself, not for anyone else.
You’d think it would be easy to give a summary of the teachings of Marcus Aurelius when you see how short Meditations is, but you’d be mistaken.
Most who read it take 4+ months to get through it, and take it in bite by bite. If you average more than one page a day, you’re probably not absorbing much.
So I wanted to give you a sneak peak of the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius and stoicism.
Stoicism is a belief system that many of the greats have followed: Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, Tim Ferriss, to name a few.
But what is stoicism?
The essence of stoicism can be absorbed with this statement:
Never in a hurry, never worried, never desperate, never stopping short.
I thought it would be difficult to give a full review of a book that is filled with so much wisdom, so I thought I would just share some of the passages that have impacted me greatly, and invite you to read the rest.
My three takeaways from Meditations:
1. Life is short:
Though thou shouldst be going to live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and shortest are thus brought to the same.
For the present is the only thing of which a man can be deprived, if it is true that this is the only thing which he has, and that a man cannot lose a thing if he has it not.
If you need to read this a few times, I understand. His message is that our lives are what we have in front of us right now. We don’t know if we will live another day, or another 20 years.
What we do know is that 3,000 years and one day is the same, because the present moment is all we have.
2. Time is short:
We must make haste then, not only because we are daily nearer to death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them cease first.
You see, with only so much time on this earth, our clock is ticking. Time is the only treasure we cannot get back. As time goes, so does our ability to enjoy it. As we age, we may have some of our abilities degraded such as our cognitive abilities and our physical capabilities.
This is a call to make sure you spend your time in the best possible way.
3. Don’t waste your life trying to meet others’ expectations:
Do not waste the remainder of thy life in thoughts about others, when thou dost not refer thy thoughts to some object of common utility. For thou losest the opportunity of doing something else when thou hast such thoughts as these, What is such a person doing, and why, and what is he saying, and what is he thinking of, and what is he contriving, and whatever else of the kind makes us wander away from the observation of our own ruling power.
We start to lose steam on our own potential if we get caught staring too long at these things:
- What we think others expectations of us are
- How others are doing better than us
- How we aren’t good enough
When we do these things, we fail to realize our potential and it hinders our ability to truly grow and succeed.
I could give you 100+ more insights from this wise man. But I encourage you to start reading. Meditations is free on to listen to here, and it’s only $1.78 on Amazon.
If you’re interested in getting a whole plethora of books to read, be sure to download our list of 150 books sure to 10x your growth.
Until next time.
