One of the Best Minds of All Time
Welcome to the one day at a time podcast where we forget about yesterday. We don't worry about tomorrow. It's what are we going to do today? This all matters because you've only ever had or will ever have the fantastic twenty four hours a day you're about to embark on. Hopefully this episode is going to give you some daily dose of wisdom that you can take action on today to improve your life.
Speaker 1:And remember, all it takes is one day at a time. Good morning, It is Tuesday. And like I always say, you better be out on your daily walk, getting no steps in and making sure you start the day off the best way possible. But so who's this now? God is phoning me.
Speaker 1:Jesus. Okay. Hold on. Hello? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Scott speaking. How are doing, God? Good. Yeah. I was just phoning you.
Speaker 1:I was wondering if you could increase my height. Know, I'm half five foot nine and a half and I wanna give it all up. Can't be done. Born with it. So nothing I can do about it.
Speaker 1:It is. I gotta what? Suck your. No, mate. Let's leave it at.
Speaker 1:I can't do anything about it. No probes. Well, there we go, guys. I have inquired about my height and unfortunately, it is unchangeable. So I'm gonna have to live with it.
Speaker 1:Like many things, Like many things we're born with, you can't change your height, can't change where you're born. You can't change your family really. There's loads of stuff you can't change, but most of us focus on those things that we can't change and then get so frustrated we can't change them. We build up this massive stress in our head. We actually should leave it go and laugh about it if anything.
Speaker 1:You know, there's a lot of there's a lot of wisdom in the ancients about being able to be humour is essential. So they've just read in the ancients, had a way of actually taking things. Mean, they laughed but even in the worst scenarios. So you look back during more times, people in the underground of World War II in London, knitting, having a laugh, just sitting down, you know, there's nothing they could do about the situation, but they were making the best they could. I think it's kind of a lost art in today's world.
Speaker 1:We take things way too seriously. There's obviously things to be serious about. But when it comes to some things we can't change, the best option I do think is to try and find the humour in a way. But that is to be decided upon yourself. But give it a go, try and look at flip it and look at things in a different way.
Speaker 1:And, can't be used against you then either, do you mean? You don't take it so personally all the time when it comes up or whatever. But this voice note, I wanna give you some wisdom from a guy called Goethe. He was a German, one of the best German minds of all time. I know many people know of him outside of Germany and maybe you might have heard his name somewhere, he was a guy Napoleon really admired, one of the greatest thinkers Napoleon thought he was.
Speaker 1:Napoleon read one of his novels seven times because Napoleon was obsessed with love stories and stuff. He had this kind of like, he wanted this perfect love story but the book that Goethe created, the novel about this love story was actually based on his own experience by just giving names to characters and people resonated with the story so much. They would read it over and over because they could see themselves in the story. So this guy wrote the law, he wrote the law, he was kind of well known in his time, people looked up to him. But there's a book about his maxims and reflections about life and I think there's a lot of gold in it.
Speaker 1:So I'm gonna share that with you today. After you've taken on board, you can't change some things, you can't, so let them go. Let's have a look to see some of these things can help us today. So first one that pops up to me, tell me with whom you associate and I will tell you who you are. If I know what your business is, I know what can be made of you.
Speaker 1:Yes, Goethe. Yes. Okay. A man or woman is really alive only when he or she delights in the goodwill of others. How important is that?
Speaker 1:You know, of the quickest hacks you can do in your life is assume good intent from people. So if they're speaking to you, assumes good intent. Someone asking you questions, assume good intent. A lot of people have got their chimps in control and they assume the bad all the time, right? So every time they think someone's speaking to them or someone approaches them or whatever, they think automatically the bad and the worst case scenario makes them defensive, less open.
Speaker 1:And that's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy from the start, isn't it? So people do wanna help and if you actually, and people say, oh yeah, I've got taken advantage of. Yeah, okay. Some people will take advantage of you. They will.
Speaker 1:It's the same as when you look into products and stuff like that. So legally you've got to give a thirty day return policy for physical product. Like someone returns it in the current, you know, a good, you know, new state you have to return it, right? So there's companies and they're like, thirty day guarantee and I say to people doing this course on marketing, I was saying like, you know, go big on the guarantee, give him forty five days, make the guarantee even bolder and they're like oh but won't people abuse it though? I'm like yeah, some people will abuse it.
Speaker 1:Does that mean you should not look after your number one customers because there's gonna be a few people that abuse it and actually the weight to the ratio is some people will abuse, most people will see it as a good indication. And you know, if you've got a solid product, you pull through. So obviously it's the same when you're and you speak to people or you assume the good in people all the time that yes, you will get taken advantage of, that's gonna happen. But actually same the stoicism thing, that's always gonna happen. You just get better at sniffing her out and then you can cut it off, like tit for tat type of thing.
Speaker 1:So there was a, I can't remember what book it was, maybe it's barking up the wrong tree. And it talks about this computer algorithm that kept beating people in this game. So this game, they had these computer programmers come up with a program to fight each other wherever. Or like it was like dealing with each other and the simplest programme one all the time. The simple programme was I was gonna go good, I'm always gonna collaborate first and if I get taken advantage of my next move then is to, you know, not collaborate.
Speaker 1:And it was just tit for tat. And that kept beating like the most sophisticated programs that are like, we do three good, one bad and all this stuff. So just simplify it, just assume good intent and you'll live a better life 100%. Okay. The really foolish thing in men who are otherwise intelligent is that they fail to understand what another person says when he does not exactly hit upon the right way of saying it.
Speaker 1:Oh, I hate this. I hate it. When you say something, the content is what you say the content of, but then people will nitpick maybe it's grammar when you send them something about writing or it's like something you said weirdly and it's like, ugh, you're missing the point to me. Like, the the message is gonna come in different forms. You're missing the point, the content.
Speaker 1:Don't be one of those people. Look at what's actually being said. It's important. There are people who make no mistakes because they never wish to do anything worth doing. Very true.
Speaker 1:Hope is the second soul of the unhappy. I like it. Mastery often passes for egoism. That's true. When you truly become a master of something and you wanna and you wanna say, oh, you're really good at your job or whatever it is, and you've gone past the, the Dunning Kruger effect where, you know, you start off, you think you know everything and you go, wow, I know nothing and you come climb back up the other side, you're like, actually, I got experience, I know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:And you just know people think it's ego but then it's like the experience and you have that battle that you're people, it's ego versus ego, it's definitely true. But if you know you've got the skills and stuff there, we spoke about this in the book club before, especially true for the female, well, most of our members are female, people listening in the workspace and stuff like that. It's a tough line where there's confidence and ego, but really it's just that you know you can do it on people. Again, it's the assuming bad intent and thing. The assuming bad intent thing, where if you think someone's just doing something because of the ego, but actually they're doing it because they think they're competent, that's gonna be a better, you're gonna be better manager and you're gonna be a better person in the workplace.
Speaker 1:Imam is not deceived by others he deceives himself. Yes indeed. Is more highly to be prized than the value of each day. There we have it again the one day at a time. See you again.
Speaker 1:It's everywhere guys when you look for this everywhere. If you miss the first buttonhole you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat. If you miss your morning you will not succeed in having the best day possible. End of. You can maybe claw back sometimes if I'm telling you the morning, you know that quote win the morning, win the day for five a.
Speaker 1:Club. The morning is that first buttonhole, just get it right, boom, things flow. Tommy Carbis talks about this, there's a few things you do each day that lead into other automatic kind of behaviors. You need to figure out what those are. I'm telling you waking up early is one of those big things.
Speaker 1:So if you're listening to this and an Alexa sitting next to your bed like, should I get up? Get up. No. Straight away. No messing.
Speaker 1:Straight at the door, no naked, put some pants on or whatever you got, don't go on the street naked but do get out in the street and go for a walk. Right, some books seem to have been written not to teach us anything but to let us know that the author has known something. Most books. I like that. Okay let us remember how great the ancients were and especially how the Socratic school holds up to us the source and standard of all life and action and bids us not indulge in empty speculation but live and do.
Speaker 1:Yes you have to live and do it, not just waste your time talking. If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together one sees as one never saw before how much time is wasted with this kind of literature. Oh my god, this is like seventeen, eighteen hundreds guys. Imagine he's saying this like two, three hundred years ago before the internet, before phones. Imagine what his head would explode today.
Speaker 1:Literally he'd be like, what are you doing? You're just on your phones, taking all his stuff in. Imagine, my God, he would never handle it. No way. He said that, Just take that, that's what he thought back in.
Speaker 1:Lessover okay, ignorant people raise questions which were answered by the wise thousands of years ago. Yes, if you think of the timeline just to simplify things so the timeline of sensei you know, sorry, say like 3,000, like say south February, if we think about it from February to about May. Where you had the the rise of Rome, ancient Greece, and you had the this era of just like legendary philosophers, thought leaders, mathematicians, all this thing. All this unbelievable amount of knowledge and wisdom and insight, right, then you had the fall of Rome, you pretty much then went into the dark ages where you kind of in a way extreme religious things took over the churches and domination. We kind of lost our way in terms of thinking about life and opening up to different ways of thinking until we got to about the early, just over 1,000 AD, November, '12 hundred.
Speaker 1:We get to the, I believe the re renaissance is called. So this is like December to like 1800 if you think about it, so like another five hundred years where they rediscovered the works of the ancient Greeks and Romans. They rediscovered these classic works of the classicists and they looked into these works and they were like these people really knew what they're on about, they were way ahead of us, like we've gone backwards guys, what has happened, all this like all this wisdom, look at this incredible, that's only the stuff that survived, right. So when these people realised it and Goethe would have realised it as well, they were like all of our answers are back in this era because they were literally like living, they were thinking, were doing, they were just it was a good period and it was kind of like, I don't know, what what can how can you explain it? Just the flowering of all these ideas at the once and it got written down and we lost them.
Speaker 1:So that's the timeline, Then 1800 onwards, we've always like gone back. So we think about the medications by Marcus Aurelius, they were coming back into action in the seventeen, 1800s because it was found and rediscovered and retranslated and all that stuff. So we're now if you think about it, we're not that far from the rediscovery of like you know the printing press. Think of this, think of this, the printing press being able to mass produce books mid 1800s to 1800s right. The working class of The United Kingdom right didn't know how to read and write until about 1891 they were allowed to go to public school for free for the first time.
Speaker 1:It's only been one hundred and thirty years since the working class of one of the top nations in the world, a superpower at the time, were able to read and write. So it's only been one hundred and thirty years. So really, it's only been one hundred and thirty years since the vast majority of people have ever been able to read the classic works of the ancient Greeks and stuff. And actually, even then they were translated from Latin and it was confusing and maybe it was all still in Latin and all that upper class whatever. So really it was still in the early ages of us discovering all of this old ancient work, do you know, that's what blows my mind and if you think of it that way there's a lot to discover that we will still behind them in terms of how we think and how we live.
Speaker 1:Let me rephrase that, how we think and how we go about living and thinking. I mean they obviously were backwards in some things like obviously go back a lot years ago as we've come a long way in certain regards but they were in their own thoughts all day, no social media distract them on the phones from needing newspapers, they were just living. So I'll leave you with that, it's kind of still the early stage of rediscovery for most of working class people so on that note if you do want answers and you want to look into it you'll find the answers in the ancient books, like no doubt read Plato, Epicurus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, you you can read Montaigne in the 1500s who looked back into these things and did his personal essays. Know there's a lot of peep, there's a lot of loads of different schools of philosophies, Socrates and you know Aristotle and stuff like that, that some of it's dry but you definitely should give it a go. That's my ramble today, I hope you found it enjoyable, if not let me know.
Speaker 1:Have a good day, have a good walk. One big thing, maybe bye. I would recommend Seneca's On Shortness of Life, really short book that'll get you that'll get you into living no doubt. But have a good day guys remember one day at a time make the most of today and everything falls into place end of. So speak to you soon.
Speaker 1:And that's it. Thank you for listening to the one day at a time podcast with your host, Galf Lear. Hopefully, you understood something I said. I hope that some wisdom kind of distilled through into your mind. And I want you to now action it today.
Speaker 1:I don't want you to think about tomorrow. I don't want you to think about yesterday. I don't want you to think about leaving a review on this podcast. I don't want you to think about going to another website. What I want you to do is as soon as this podcast ends, you will take action and make the most of today.
Speaker 1:Ground yourself today. Follow the one day at a time philosophy and your life will change.
