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Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
Welcome back to the One Day at a Time podcast. So I'm going to be covering quotes and book notes, and maybe giving a bit of a review on them or some examples, inspired by maybe like the book, like The Daily Stoic, which covers a quote and then explains it a bit more, maybe 48 Laws of Power and similar books like that. But hopefully you get some of this. I plugged a lot out of you guys, some of my favorites, come back through them a lot recently and I'm loving it. First thing is Austin Kleon says, right, Major personal decisions should be made not by asking, Will this make me happy?
Speaker 1:But Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me? I've mentioned that one before, I think it's powerful. Is this going to make me happy right now, pleasure? Or is this going to enlarge me and it's going to give me my character arc I've always wanted? And it turns me as the person I want to be.
Speaker 1:So, we know happiness is fleeting, but growth of character can sometimes be we'd hope is permanent, but at least it's something more permanent than fleeting happiness. So, when we face a crossroads, we should ignore emotions at that moment. We should choose the path that expands our capacity even if it hurts a bit. Right? So, how do we handle the pain of that expansion?
Speaker 1:Well, the stoics, of course, reframed everything. The ultimate cognitive reframe is not things that upset us, but our judgments about them. I'm going to mention that most things because it's so powerful. So, you strip the event, you strip the adjective about the event or someone disagree with you or whatever, and you remove the judgment, remove the hurt, and then that's it then. It's broken down into this raw form.
Speaker 1:There's another one quote that I liked as well from The Courage to be Disliked, and it says that freedom is being disliked by other people. Because if you are disliked, there's proof you're exercising your freedom. It's like living by your own principles. If everyone likes you, you're basically living someone else's life, you're a people pleaser, you're always changing yourself to fit into everyone else. So if you think everyone should like you, then you're saying that I should always bend to other people's will.
Speaker 1:And we know people are very illogical sometimes when it comes to these things, so we can't live that way. So it's hard to maintain that standard and please everyone. In Lives of the Stoic, there's another book about Stoics, there's a quote there about You can't all be Cato's, and Cato was the iron man of Rome refused to compromise. We can't all be Cato's and stuff like that, but we should factor them a bit, be who you are, live the life you wanna live, build your character arc, but also be a bit flexible because all of us aren't the best. We're not all perfect, guys.
Speaker 1:Come on, we do annoying things. We can grow. So yeah, and into a book called The Art of Worldly Wisdom, there's a quote in there that says, There is no higher rule than over oneself, over one's impulses. There is triumph of free will. So real power isn't controlling others, it's controlling your reaction to them.
Speaker 1:Again, stoic, essentially, the same wisdom said in different ways. I think it's important. So real power is in control of others, control of other things, it's controlling your reaction. And that's ultimately what you have to do each day. Today's a Monday, weekends come.
Speaker 1:How many of you have said, Oh my God, I've eaten too many calories in the weekend. Are you going to give the power to the weekend calories? Are you going to give the power to living your life and say you should've done better? Or are going to focus on what you can control today? And that is improving your LeanShield score, eating enough protein, you know, getting your steps in, maybe doing a workout, maybe doing a micro workout, who knows?
Speaker 1:But you focus on what you can do and not what's happened because it's Christmas time, weekends are going to be likely heavy in calories. Maybe you want to think about not losing fat over Christmas, maintaining and getting strong and focusing on protein and power. Maybe that's more, logical to do over Christmas. Don't beat yourself up for having a few more mince pies and stuff, Come on, we're living a life here. We're not trying to torture ourselves with eating like in broccoli soup and just drinking water over Christmas because you think a few more pounds are going make us happy.
Speaker 1:Unless you work on your mind and be flexible, you're not going be happy when you lose the weight because you're going to still be rigid and you'll still be broken over the little extra things. Anyway, moving on, more notes. We start with the master of war, Napoleon the Great. So he said, There is a moment in combat when the slightest maneuver is decisive and gives superiority. It is a drop of water that starts the overflow.
Speaker 1:So he mentions here his momentum is nonlinear, you don't need to win everywhere, you just need to apply maximum force at the singular decisive point. So find the drop of water in your project, in your weight loss journey, or whatever, that one phone call, that one feature, that one action, and then it breaks the dam. And it's true. And that's when it comes to focusing on weight loss and weight management. If you focus on your deficit size, your protein intake, your steps and training, not anything else, all the hundreds of things you can do, that's what's going to drive the momentum forward and really break the dam, not focusing on 100 things and a million billion gut microbiota you can think of.
Speaker 1:And there's a military strategist called John Boyd, and he noted in the book Certain to Win. So he said, there's a quote there by Sun Tzu, Numbers alone confer no advantage. Thanks, Sun Tzu. Basically, speed and agility beat size in battle and strategic warfare. So don't be intimidated by a larger competitor or a massive project, out cycle them, make decisions faster than they can.
Speaker 1:And I think this means when it comes to our own life is that it's not just about doing everything, right, that not doing everything is going to be the difference between us winning and losing. Bruce Lee once said, I don't fear the man that's done 10,000 kick once, I fear the man that's done one kick 10,000 times. Same here, we don't, you know, if you do your deficit and your pro t stuff, I like, I'm gonna say all the time, it was boring, but you do those three things, you can be powerful, man. You know, you can let other people focus on a 100 diets a year, a thousand different things a year. You can let them do it.
Speaker 1:But you're focused on the core, you're focused on what moves the needle, and that's how you're going to win, not by doing everything, right? I'm back to my good boy, Anirin Bevan of the coal mines, the founder of the NHS. He famously quipped, A rabbit warren accommodation leads to a rabbit warren mind. So here he mentions the environment dictates your psychology. If you want big thoughts, you cannot live in a world that's crammed, chaotic space.
Speaker 1:Clear the desk, clear the mind. I've got to be reminded of that. But that quote is in relation to him talking about building social housing, and the Tories were mentioning to him at the time, no gardens, thin walls, door by the road. And he was like, what type of mind are we going to build in this country if all housing is like that? No gardens, no greenery, no space between the door and the road.
Speaker 1:You're going to create a gray, dim, Brabenwara mine. He's true. You know? So that's why he pushed through and the council I was building that era have gardens and they have front gardens and back gardens, relative good size, decent size. And that's what makes a difference, you know, it helps people for sure.
Speaker 1:And he also gave us a strategy that I love, only by saying no more and more to many things that you can say yes to the most valuable things, you know. It's important, you're going to say no to the 100 diet plans given to you over Christmas time, Someone's going to tell you they've been drinking a special wine from the Southwest Of France. It's apparently going to help burn 29.3% more fat because there's some chemical in it. You're going to be told that eating a protein bar is going to kill you. You're going be told, well, someone else is drinking whiskey that is.
Speaker 1:You know, the contradiction is crazy. And you can say no to all these things. Just shut up. So you can say yes to your sanity. Right?
Speaker 1:Next one, the art of worldly wisdom again. Always have some novelty wherewith to dazzle. To show something fresh each day keeps expectation alive and conceals the limits of capacity. And I want to talk about this when he talks about unpredictability creating awe. Never let your team or your opponent think they have you fully figured out.
Speaker 1:Now there's an interesting one about like people pleasing or, you know, if you're trying to improve your career or something like that. Like this type of thing that people are thinking about is like be fresh, be alive, don't a big mouth about all the diets, don't be a big mouth at Christmas of all the results you've been getting and all this stuff, like it's important to be mature, to not let the ego get in the way. That's one of the things we can think about is, in our careers for sure, is that we are not people pleasers, and we're not drained by doing things for other people all the time. Being fresh is key. And how to stop worrying and start living, another quote.
Speaker 1:Let's have a look at this one. The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your gains. Any fool can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your losses. Amazing.
Speaker 1:So when you do a failure, if you lost money, gain less than it prevents future bankruptcy, you've actually made a profit. If you tried a GLP-one drug, didn't focus on protein and do any resistance training and realize you became skinny, phytoxemic face, then it's not a failure if you stop there, but you think, you know what, I've learned lesson the hard way, it's time to rebuild muscle. And if I'm going to use it again, make sure my protein is high, my weight training is there so it doesn't happen again. And I'm going to tell other people that this happened to me, maybe you help other people from that problem, you know. So you can profit from your losses is important.
Speaker 1:Weekend, too heavy, that's fine. What can you do next time to make it slightly better? Laws of human nature. Let's have a look at this one. So you can't think yourself out of stress, basically.
Speaker 1:You can stress think into stress, but sometimes thinking is about distress is hard. That's why it's recommended sometimes. Robert Sapolsky mentions this. When you do get a stress response turned on and you are, you know, heart rate is running and going like, it's good to get a walk, do a workout, do some movement, so you can utilize that body changing its state to use in the energy, you know, so it's important not to just sit and try and think your way out. Movement helps a lot here, you know.
Speaker 1:Next one, in wanting, Runeet Gerard taught us mimetic desires like gravity, it just is. So what does this mean? You don't want things because you want them. You want them because others want them. Acknowledge this, curate your models, choose to imitate people who have the life you actually want, not just the object you think you want.
Speaker 1:We often overcomplicate change. Right? And the thing is, we tend to follow other people. We want what they want. That's true.
Speaker 1:And if you're not careful, you're to want what other people want, which is not great for you. So, you know, in the investment world, talking about VCs and investors now, like they say they need a lead investor. And then once there's a lead investor, then everyone else will invest. But they need a lead investor because they want what they want, you know. We do the same.
Speaker 1:Your friends will start, you know, the quick, fast 1,000 or whatever, and the next thing you know, your friends are on it. But you can use this to your advantage. If you think of people that have got good character and you can maybe look at what they get, what they want, and you want what they want, maybe it helps. Especially over Christmas, guys. Good God, don't be pulled into materialistic games.
Speaker 1:It doesn't end. It doesn't end at all. Right. And finally, to finish off this podcast, patience. As noted in the book Great Thinkers, Lazu reminds us, Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
Speaker 1:So there is a rhythm to effectiveness, you know, activity is often a mask of lack of direction. You want to slow down to speed up. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. So calm down, chill out, take things one day at a time, focus on the core metrics, slow down, and the results will pick up momentum. And you will do as Napoleon says, you specifically target in one point and boom, it all happens, momentum bursts through and things change, that's what's going to happen.
Speaker 1:But if you try and do everything all the time, all at once, you're going to run out of energy, you're going be going in every direction, going in zero direction and you'd be run out, and you'd be tired and you'd give up. So focus, Bruce Lee, focus. Less is more. Was it more things away? Less is more.
Speaker 1:Addition via subtraction. Subtract to add to your life. There's loads of closeness. All that stuff is true. So do that now before you keep hard on things to do.
Speaker 1:And before Christmas, build momentum. Even if you're building your protein score, your training score, your calories, or your steps, whatever, just do one thing and improve it day after day. You don't have to do everything at once. Have a good day. It's Monday.
Speaker 1:Take care of yourself. Don't be too hard on yourself.