A Guide to the Good Life

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” – Marcus Aurelius

Lessons learnt: Negative visualisation can be as effective as positive visualisation. Worry only about things you can control (and not worry ever again). Plan for the future, live like it is your last day on earth.

What do you want out of life? This is the first sentence in A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine and it is your first introduction to a philosophy of life. So what is that philosophy of life thing I am talking about? Stoicism is the study of having both a 1) meaningful and 2) fulfilling life. Stoicism is the vehicle of choice for the current book and has also become my own philosophy of life. The book discusses the philosophy, the techniques you can explore and advice how to live a meaningful and fulfilling life. Stoicism is not the pursuit of happiness, stoicism is the pursuit of tranquillity. In this review, I will explain why, and give a preview of how.

Tranquillity instead of happiness is the ultimate goal. This may sound strange at first sight, but becomes evident when we dig deeper into how we are trying to achieve both in our lives. Many of us are chasing happiness by becoming richer, having more things, and becoming successful in our careers. Sometimes we are faced with challenges and at other times we succeed. So if we succeed, are we then actually happier? The answer is no. When we have more stuff we become used to having it. When we have a big house we have to worry about filling it with ‘stuff’. If we have many possessions we start to worry about theft and losing your job that is paying for it al. If we pursue happiness through becoming bigger and better, we only set ourselves up to be part of a rat-race we cannot win.

Of course, this picture of the pursuit of happiness is a bit grim and could benefit from many nuances, but let me give you the alternative. The pursuit of tranquillity means that you want to banish negative emotions (and keep the positive ones).  One of the main lessons from Stoicism is to be happy with what you have. You can find delight in your own resources and desire no joys greater than your inner joys. In order to achieve this, we have to change our thinking and persuade ourselves to want the things we already have. If we can achieve this (see next paragraph) we can become tranquil, have no negative emotions and experience positive emotions.

“Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier.” – Randy Pausch

There are multiple techniques you can explore to become more tranquil, for instance, 1) negative visualisation, 2) the dichotomy of control, 3) fatalism, 4) self-denial, and 5) meditation. Let me explain you the first one; negative visualisation. Epictetus (one of the Greek Stoics) said “all things everywhere are perishable”, all good things will eventually come to an end. When we never think about the chance that bad things can happen, we may live in bliss until something bad eventually happens. If you practice negative visualisation, you think about the bad things that might happen, and by this lessen the impact it will have on you. The Stoics provide three reasons for practising negative visualisation:

1. It will lessen the chance of that bad thing happening (i.e. thinking about how someone can break into your house – and improving your locks)
2. It will lessen the impact it will have on us – by already having played out the scenario in your head
3. It will prevent hedonic adaptation – by thinking about how you can lose something you will keep enjoying it

The Stoics also have many bits of advice for daily life, ranging from social relationships (relate to others, stay true to yourself), anger (put things in perspective), to insults (laugh it off) and old age (your mind does not decay). The advice that is most disputed – and the one I want to talk about – is about luxurious living. Where some Stoics thought that money would automatically corrupt you, others lived lavish lives (i.e. Marcus Aurelius in his palace). What they do agree on is that not needing wealth is more valuable than wealth itself. One thing that you should always keep in mind – when presented with riches – is to keep enjoying the small things. Negative visualisation, for instance, could help a person to do this.

In conclusion, Stoicism can be defined as a lifestyle for people with a small philosophical tendency, who love to be happy and believe that tranquillity is the way there. William B. Irvine does a great job of explaining what Stoicism is and how you can apply it in your own life. Not only does he give a comprehensive overview of how it started in Greek and Roman age, but also relates it back to the present 21st century. If you are looking for a philosophy of life, this is the book for you!

The Book:

A Guide to the Good Life – William B Irvine – ISBN-10: 0195374614 – ISBN-13: 978-0195374612

More on A Guide to the Good Life / Stoicism

http://philosophy-of-cbt.com/2013/05/17/review-of-irvines-a-guide-to-the-good-life-the-ancient-art-of-stoic-joy-2009/ – Another Review

http://www.slideshare.net/jerwschm/a-guide-to-the-good-life-the-ancient-art-of-stoic-joy-by-william-irvine – Slideshare on A Guide to the Good Life

http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2010/07/29/a-guide-to-the-good-life-listen/ – William B. Irvine on CBC

Meditations

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.” – Marcus Aurelius

Lessons learnt: Our thoughts & opinions shape our world(view). You have the power of your own mind, not outside events. If you look closely enough, there is tremendous strength inside you.

Writing for only himself, Meditations is a personal book that reflects the thought processes of one of Rome’s greatest Emperors. There are a million life-lessons hidden in the text and filler nonsense did not make the cut. Meditations is a non-chronological compilation of Marcus Aurelius‘ life. This book is interesting for everyone interested in philosophy, ethics, or more specifically, stoicism. Get ready to set aside your ego, control your emotions and shape the world around you (by moulding yourself).

It is difficult to review a book like Meditations, the chapters have no names, there is little use of examples and the language is somewhat complex. Each chapter describes another theme, and here is a short description of the one in chapter 3 (according to my interpretation). The third chapter presents you with lessons on how to use your mental capacities. The bottom line states: every day you get closer to your death, so do not waste your (mental) capacities. Do not get lost in the battles of others, do not lie or deceive and do nothing against your own will. Be cheerful and help others, but never lose yourself (Eminem reference?). Be intent and pursue things that are righteous – nothing more, nothing less.

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” – Marcus Aurelius

I have decided to keep this review very short. Meditations is a book that you should read once, study twice and look back to many more times. Around the web, you can find many quotes taken from Meditations and I reckon that this is one of the best ways to respect and remember his writing. For the Stoics among us (see A Guide to the Good Life) this book gives a good peek into the mind of Marcus Aurelius.

More on Meditations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditations – Wiki on Meditations

https://librivox.org/the-meditations-of-marcus-aurelius/ – Librivox audiobook of Meditations

http://www.philaletheians.co.uk/Study%20notes/Living%20the%20Life/Marcus%20Aurelius’%20Meditations%20-%20tr.%20Casaubon.pdf – .pdf of Meditations

Losing My Virginity

Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson is a great look into his brain and how he looks at business. And maybe less so a look inside the brain, but into his heart.

It’s been a long time ago since I read the book, so if I ever read it again I will make a review.

See other reviews at Goodreads.

Elon Musk

Peak

“You have to keep upping the ante.” – Anders Ericsson

Lessons learnt: Deliberate practice is king. Do it.

http://www.summary.com/book-reviews/_/Peak-Secrets-from-the-New-Science-of-Expertise/

What do you wan

Peak Summary

The Book:

Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise – Anders Ericsson – ISBN-10: 1531864880 – ISBN-13: 978-1531864880

Early Retirement Extreme

“By sowing frugality we reap liberty, a golden harvest.” – Agesilaus

Lessons learnt: Align your goals, let them build on each other. Money should work for you instead of the other way around. There are better ways to live than the 9-5 lifestyle.

What is money to you? Is it something you always spend when you have it? Or is it something you save up for a rainy day? In the Early Retirement Extreme, Jacob Lund Fisker proposes another way of thinking about money: as your employee. Instead of working for money, what if it could work for you! Of course, that’s not only what it’s about, the book describes everything from frugal living to aligning your goals. It’s the perfect book for the renaissance man (or if you don’t know what that is, it’s also perfect for you!)

In the first few chapters, Fisker describes the ‘lock-in’, or the current way of how we look at finances. ‘Normal’ people pursue a degree, a career, a big house with a white picket fence around it. Most don’t save for the future and an emergency fund is almost always small or non-existent (read: people on average have more debt than savings, in America). Is there a way out of this cycle?

Before we get to that, let’s consider four types of men. The salary, working, business-, and renaissance men. They are of course only prototypes, so imagine that you can also be anywhere in between these four:

• Salaryman: The cog in the machine. A person who is dependent on salary and can’t stop working without going in deep debt.
• Working man: The freelancer. A person who work intermediately and needs to have an emergency fund.
• Businessman: The entrepreneur. He or she turns assets into income.
• Renaissance man: The diversified intellectual. Independent of a job or income. Vast amounts of savings.

The renaissance man is a person who thinks about his or her life and takes a conscious decision on what is important. The renaissance man thinks about goals as building blocks that should complement each other. And he or she breaks apart the expenses into needs, wants and savings.

The renaissance lifestyle considers living frugally as one of the main philosophical pillars. It ponders whether we should own that brand new car (no) and if we can’t borrow the drill from the neighbours instead of buying one (yes). One of the key takeaways I found most interesting is that you should think about the lifetime spending you will have on things. Your TV subscription ‘only’ costs you 10 euros per month, but in 20 years that is easily 2400 euros (or much more if you incorporate returns). Throughout the book you will be introduced to many more frugal principles, relating to everything from health to transportation.

 

“Creation is a better means of self-expression than possession; it is through creating, not possessing, that life is revealed.” – Vida Scudder

In the end, the book is much more philosophy and contains little actual financial advice. There is a good reason for this, financial advice is always personal and differs greatly per situation, philosophy can be good for more than 3000 years. And so when you finish The Early Retirement Extreme you will be educated on living the renaissance life. And if everything works out you will become financially independent in only a few years.

Get it on Amazon:

The Early Retirement Extreme – Jacob Lund Fisker – ASIN: B0046LU7H0

Outliers

“Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.”  – Colin Powell

Lessons learnt: 10.000 hours of dedicated work is more important for success than luck. Giving meaning to your work will give you drive. Your environment has more impact on your success than you know.

As always Malcolm Gladwell keeps on amazing me. In Outliers: The Story of Success he digs into the hidden forces of not social events or our thinking, but what makes us successful. The book is divided into two parts, 1) opportunity and 2) legacy. In the first part, he tackles the notion that success comes from luck or inherent ‘talent’. He argues – very successfully – that hard work and dedication for something you stand behind are much more important than talent. In the second part, he argues that we are not alone in creating our success, we are very much dependent on our circumstances and the people around us. In an ever entertaining way – with the use of plenty of examples and stories – Gladwell has written another classic.

Many people like to believe that success comes from ‘talent’, that you are just lucky to have it. If you find out that you do not have ‘talent’ then you will never make it, others will always be better. Some may say that this is a fixed mindset (versus a growth mindset), you cannot fight the status quo. People love to bring up the young prodigy Mozart. He was composing music before most kids were even writing full sentences. Gladwell investigates this story and comes to three conclusions. The first is that Mozart was strongly pushed by his family, the second that his early work is actually not that good (go listen to it!), and third that at about 10,000 hours of deliberate practice his work came to be as brilliant as we all remember it to be.

You may argue that this is a one-time fluke and that there are many other people that have gained great success without much practice. For this, I challenge you to think of someone who has climbed the Mount Everest without training, a great voice without years of practice (pop-stars with auto-tuning do not count!), or a professor who only reads one book a year. Gladwell argues that you need about 10.000 hours of dedicated work to become an expert in your field. That does not mean you will be the best, that is dependent on how dedicated others are too. What he does strongly state is that it has little to do with intelligence (sorry SAT scores) or luck. If you are really dedicated to your work, you will put in the hours and become an expert.

But it is not all about you. Your environment has a very large – a much larger than we normally think of – impact. An investigation into the success of Bill Gates leads Gladwell to this conclusion. Bill Gates was born to a (moderately) wealthy family in America (2 points for environment). When he went to school, his school was one of the first to have computers (the really slow kind), he then got interested in them and wound up being one of the first people to work on computers at a university (2 more points for environment). It was the right place at the right time that made him start Microsoft. Also, the people around you can have a great impact. Think for instance about Silicon Valley, tech entrepreneurs do not (only) go there for the great weather, they know that there are likeminded people and opportunities to get to those 10.000 hours as quickly and effectively as possible.

“Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” -Malcolm Gladwell

Of course, success requires hard work, at the same time it is your environment that can greatly help you. I remember the personal story of Dan Ariely (author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality), where he speaks about the accident in which 3/4th of his body was burnt. He has no chance anymore to compete in sports and gets interested in the irrationality relating to small things like (not) taking medicine or how his nurses removed his bandages each time. He is now one of the leading thinkers in behavioural economics and irrationality. Sometimes you do not know what the future will bring, and where you may be motivated to do your work. All that is certain is that the right environment and your 10.000 hours are the (very difficult, but achievable) way of getting it.

The Book:

Outlier: The Story of Success – Malcolm Gladwell – ISBN-10: 9780316017930 – ISBN-13: 978-0316017930

More on Outliers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=596wT4mRq8w – Audio of Outliers on Youtube

http://gladwell.com/outliers/ – Outliers on the website of Gladwell

http://cs.ecust.edu.cn/snwei/studypc/jsjdl/data/OutliersTheStoryOfSuccess.pdf – .pdf of Outliers

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman takes you on a journey through the extensive research that Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have done. Luckily it is not a long, and boring read, that summarises the findings in academic jargon. The opposite is true, it gives a lively overview of their findings, and uses vivid real-life examples.

The main concept of Kahneman’s theory is a division between System 1 and System 2 thinking. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional. System 2 is slow, deliberate, and more logical. When you try and solve the equation 2+2 you will almost immediately shout out the answer. But when you compute 12×37, a deliberate strategy, in which you apply some rules of math, will take place.

System 1 uses heuristics, shortcuts that make understanding the world less tiresome. Although most of the time this poses no problem, Kahneman has come up with an impressive list of worrisome cases when it does. Choice architecture, a topic also discussed by Dan Ariely, is only one of them.

Between The Netherlands and Belgium, there are vast differences in how many people are organ donors (think 25% and 90%). And now consider that The Netherlands has had a very large campaign to promote organ donor and has stuck at 25%. And Belgium has done no such thing. The key here is the form, in The Netherlands, it is an opt-in form, and in Belgium an opt-out form. That means that the default option in Belgium is to be an organ donor unless you actively say you do not want to be one. Kahneman shows that by such a small change, a vast difference between choices is possible.

Also see Predictably Irrational.

In a reflection on his lifetime of research, mostly with Tversky, Kahneman has done a great job of giving insight into the thinking of men. He has exposed many of the underlying principles that govern some of our largest flaws. He states that the System 2 thinking is hard and that our brain loves to be lazy. The power of habits becomes clear in that System 2 actions will become System 1 actions.

With a Nobel Prize in his pocket, Kahneman has done an astounding job of making the field of Social Science open to the public. The only critique on the book may be the length, after 418 pages of new information, your System 2 will be saturated.

The Book:

Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman – ISBN-10: 0374533555 | ISBN-13: 978-0374533557

More on  Thinking, Fast and Slow:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow – The Wikipedia of Thinking, Fast and Slow

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol.-56-no.-2/pdfs/Babetski-Thinking%20Fast%20and%20Slow.pdf – The CIA on Thinking, Fast and Slow

http://www.amazon.com/Blink-The-Power-Thinking-Without/dp/0316010669 – Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/0061353248 – Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/014311526X – Nudge by Richard H. Thaler

http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Habit-What-Business/dp/1400069289 – The Power of Habits by Charles Duhigg

http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/dp/0307352153 – Quiet: The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain