#185: Practicing What You Preach

My job is usually to deconstruct world-class performers and tease out their routines and habits you can use. But in this in-betweenisode, I'm going to present some short nuggets of practical, tactical philosophy about practicing what you preach. This is a letter from Stoic heavyweight Seneca the Younger -- who lived a mere 2,000 years or so ago -- to his friend Lucilius. It's from a collection of letters that comprise, effectively, my favorite book of all time. I've read it dozens of times, and I loved it so much that I turned it into The Tao of Seneca http://www.audible.com/timsbooks, a three-volume set of audiobooks. This is a letter you've not heard on the podcast before; it's worth the listen just for the definition of wisdom, alone. Then you have some incredible quotes from Epicurus, and it also discusses how you can have riches without riches having you. Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This episode is brought to you by Headspace https://www.headspace.com/tim, the world's most popular meditation app (with more than 4,000,000 users). It's used in more than 150 countries, and many of my closest friends swear by it. Try Headspace's free Take10 program https://www.headspace.com/tim, 10 minutes of guided meditation a day for 10 days. It's like a warm bath for your mind. Meditation doesnít need to be complicated or expensive, and it's had a huge impact on my life. Try Headspace for free https://www.headspace.com/tim for a few days and see what I mean. This podcast is also brought to you by 99Designs http://99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The 4-Hour Body, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service http://99designs.com/tim. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you're happy with or your money back. Click this link http://www.99designs.com/tim and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Tim Ferriss?

  Now would be an inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Headspace. More than 80% of the people I have interviewed, world-class performers across the military, entertainment, sports, and beyond, all have some type of meditative practice. I tried for years and years and failed miserably. The key is making it simple, and you can dramatically improve your life in just 10 minutes a day, and technology can help you. This change comes through guided meditation, and Headspace is by far the most popular app for this purpose. More than 4 million users, it's meditation made simple. So what I recommend is that you take this practice, meditation, which is rooted in thousands of years of tradition, supported by thousands of scientific studies, and try

• 1:07Tim Ferriss?

  it for 10 minutes a day for 10 days. That's all you need to do. You could also check out the founder, Andy Puddicombe's TED Talk, which has more than 5.5 million views. His last name is P U D D I C O M B E, if you want to look that up. But otherwise, download the free Headspace app, I have it on my phone, and begin their Take 10 program. For 10 days of guided meditation, completely free, 10 minutes a day, that's all it takes, you should give it a shot. Headspace.com/Tim. Just go to Headspace.com/Tim.

• 1:43Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. When your business needs a logo, website, business card, thumbnail, or any other design, I recommend checking out 99designs. I use them myself, I've used them for many years. I use them to create book cover prototypes for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number one New York Times bestseller. I've also used them for banner ads, illustrations, and much more. With 99designs, you get a variety of original designs from designers around the world, give your feedback, and then pay. Pick your favorite. Your happiness is guaranteed. So, check out some of my competitions and designs and some of your competitions and designs from fellow Tim Ferriss Show listeners at 99designs.com/tim. And, right now, you can get a free $99 upgrade on your first design.

• 2:27Tim Ferriss?

  So, check it out, 99designs.com/tim. Hello, my little munchkins. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is usually my job to deconstruct world-class performers, tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, etc. that you can apply, test in your own life. This episode is an in-between-isode, a little bit different, but some of my most popular episodes have been these short nuggets of practical tactical philosophy. And, what I'm going to present to you is "On Practicing What You Preach." This is a letter from Seneca the Younger, who lived a mere 2,000 or so years ago, and

• 3:12Tim Ferriss?

  his letters to Lucilius are, or comprise, effectively my favorite book of all time that I have read dozens of times, The Moral Letters to Lucilius, which I loved so much, as a labor of love, I turned them into the Tao of Seneca, a three-volume set of audio, so that I could listen to one letter every day when I walked to the coffee shop. So, Tao of Seneca is where you can find all of it, but this is a letter you have not heard on the podcast before, "On Practicing What You Preach." It is worth the listen just for the definition of wisdom alone. Then, you have some incredible quotes from Epicurus, and it also discusses how you can have riches without riches having you.

• 3:55Tim Ferriss?

  So, if you want to listen to more of this, you can go to audible.com/timsbooks and check out Tao of Seneca, but otherwise, this is standalone, very useful on its own. Please enjoy "On Practicing What You Preach."

• 4:12Speaker 03

  Letter 20. On Practicing What You Preach.

• 4:19Speaker 03

  If you are in good health, and if you think yourself worthy of becoming at last your own master, I am glad. For the credit will be mine if I can drag you from the floods in which you are being buffeted without hope of emerging. This, however, my dear Lucilius, I ask and beg of you on your part, that you let wisdom sink into your soul and test your progress not by mere speech or writings, but by stoutness of heart and decrease of desire. Prove your words by your deeds. Far different is the purpose of those who are speech-making and trying to win the approbation of a throng of hearers, far different that of those who allure the ears of young men and idlers by many-sided or fluent argumentation.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  Philosophy teaches us to act, not to speak. It exacts of every man that he should live according to his own standards, that his life should not be out of harmony with his words, and that, further, his inner life should be of one hue and not out of harmony with all his activities. This, I say, is the highest duty and the highest proof of wisdom, that deed and word should be in accord, that a man should be equal to himself under all conditions and always the same. But, you reply, who can maintain this standard? Very few, to be sure, but there are some. It is indeed a hard undertaking, and I do not say that the philosopher can always keep

• 5:49Speaker 03

  the same pace, but he can always travel the same path. Observe yourself then and see whether your dress and your house are inconsistent, whether you treat yourself lavishly and your family meanly, whether you eat frugal dinners and yet build luxurious houses. You should lay hold, once for all, upon a single norm to live by, and should regulate your whole life according to this norm. Some men restrict themselves at home, but strut with swelling port before the public. Such discordance is a fault, and it indicates a wavering mind which cannot yet keep its balance. And I can tell you further whence arise this unsteadiness and disagreement of action and purpose.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  It is because no man resolves upon what he wishes, and even if he has done so, he does not persist in it, but jumps the track. Not only does he change, but he returns and slips back to the conduct which he has abandoned and abjured. Therefore, to omit the ancient definitions of wisdom and to include the whole manner of human life, I can be satisfied with the following: What is wisdom? Always desiring the same things, and always refusing the same things. You may be excused from adding the little proviso, that what you wish should be right, since no man can always be satisfied with the same thing, unless it is right.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  For this reason men do not know what they wish, except at the actual moment of wishing. No man ever decided once and for all to desire or to refuse. Judgment varies from day to day, and changes to the opposite, making many a man pass his life in a kind of game. Press on, therefore, as you have begun. Perhaps you will be led to perfection, or to a point which you alone understand is still short of perfection. But what, you say, will become of my crowded household, without a household income? If you stop supporting that crowd, it will support itself. Or perhaps you will learn by the bounty of poverty what you cannot learn by your own bounty.

• 8:00Speaker 03

  Poverty will keep for you your true and tried friends. You will be rid of the men who are not seeking you for yourself, but for something which you have. Is it not true, however, that you should love poverty, if only for this single reason, that it will show you those by whom you are loved? Oh, when will that time come, when no one shall tell lies to compliment you? Accordingly, let your thoughts, your efforts, your desires, help to make you content with your own self, and with the goods that spring from yourself, and commit all your other prayers to God's keeping. What happiness could come closer home to you? Bring yourself down to humble conditions, from which you cannot be ejected, and in

• 8:44Speaker 03

  order that you may do so with greater alacrity. The contribution contained in this letter shall refer to that subject; I shall bestow it upon you forthwith. Although you may look a scant, Epicurus will once again be glad to settle my indebtedness. Believe me, your words will be more imposing if you sleep on a cot and wear rags; for in that case you will not be merely saying them, you will be demonstrating their truth. I, at any rate, listen in a different spirit to the utterances of our friend Demetrius, after I have seen him reclining without even a cloak to cover him, and, more than this, without rugs to lie upon. He is not only a teacher of the truth, but a witness to the truth.

• 9:29Speaker 03

  May not a man, however, despise wealth when it lies in his very pocket? Of course. He is also great-souled, who sees riches heaped up round him, and, after wondering long and deeply because they have come into his possession, smiles and hears, rather than feels, that they are his. It means much not to be spoiled by intimacy with riches, and he is truly great who is poor amidst riches. Yes, but I do not know, you say, how the man you speak of will endure poverty if he falls into it suddenly. Nor do I, Epicurus, know whether the poor man you speak of will despise riches should he suddenly fall into them.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  Accordingly, in the case of both, it is the mind that must be appraised, and we must investigate whether your man is pleased with his poverty, and whether my man is displeased with his riches. Otherwise, the cot-bed and the rags are slight proof of his good intentions, if it has not been made clear that the person concerned endures these trials not from necessity, but from preference. It is the mark, however, of a noble spirit not to precipitate oneself into such things on the ground that they are better, but to practise for them on the ground that they are thus easy to endure. And they are easy to endure, Lucilius, when, however, you come to them after long rehearsal,

• 10:52Speaker 03

  they are even pleasant; for they contain a sense of freedom from care, and without this, nothing is pleasant.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  I hold it essential, therefore, to do as I have told you in a letter that great men have often done, to reserve a few days in which we may prepare ourselves for real poverty by means of fancied poverty. There is all the more reason for doing this because we have been steeped in luxury and regard all duties as hard and onerous. Rather, let the soul be roused from its sleep and be prodded, and let it be reminded that nature has prescribed very little for us. No man is born rich. Every man, when he first sees light, is commanded to be content with milk and rags. Such is our beginning, and yet kingdoms are all too small for us.

• 11:45Speaker 03

  Farewell.

• 11:46Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered, it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 12:29Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourhourworkweek.com, that's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by 99designs. When your business needs a logo, website, business card, thumbnail, or any other design, I recommend checking out 99designs. I use them myself. I've used them for many years. I use them to create book cover prototypes for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number one York Times bestseller. I've also used them for banner ads, illustrations, and much more. With 99designs, you get a variety of ...designs from designers around the world.

• 13:12Tim Ferriss?

  Give your feedback and then pick your favorite. Your happiness is guaranteed. So check out some of my competitions and designs and some of your competitions and designs from fellow Tim Ferriss Show listeners at 99designs.com/tim. And right now, you can get a free $99 upgrade on your first design. So check it out, 99designs.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by Headspace. More than 80% of the people I have interviewed, world-class performers across the military, entertainment, sports, and beyond, all have some type of meditative practice. I tried for years and years and failed miserably. The key is making it simple.

• 13:56Tim Ferriss?

  And you can dramatically improve your life in just 10 minutes a day, and technology can help you. This change comes through guided meditation, and Headspace is by far the most popular app for this purpose. More than 4 million users. It's meditation made simple. So what I recommend is that you take this practice, meditation, which is rooted in thousands of years of tradition, supported by thousands of scientific studies, and try it for 10 minutes a day for 10 days. That's all you need to do. You could also check out the founder, Andy Puddicombe's TED Talk, which has more than 5.5 million views. His last name is P U D D I C O M B E, if you want to look that up. But otherwise, download the free Headspace app, I have it on my phone, and begin their Take 10 program.

• 14:40Tim Ferriss?

  For 10 days of guided meditation, completely free, 10 minutes a day, that's all it takes. You should give it a shot. Headspace.com/tim. Just go to Headspace.com/tim.