Declare Your Own Independence Today

Just a quick message today before I go fire up the grill with my brother-in-law and jump in the pool with my son:

242 years ago, the Second Continental Congress unanimously declared the sovereignty of the thirteen united States of America from the British Empire. The Declaration of Independence, written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, listed colonial grievances against King George III and asserted an individual’s natural rights:

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

Today, I believe that no matter where you come from, you and I are entitled to the same natural rights now more than ever.

Though (some) governments certainly serve a few useful purposes (sometimes), bloated bureaucracies tend to prioritize their own survival above your individual freedoms, no matter what the cost.

When it really comes down to brass tacks, it’s up to you to protect yourself, your family, your empire, and your freedom from those who would try to take them away from you. As history has shown many times, nobody else will hold them sacred for you.

There may come times when you will have to FIGHT for your life, FIGHT for your liberty, and certainly you will have to FIGHT for your own happiness.

Freedom is a paradox, because it comes with RESPONSIBILITY. You are responsible for defending your own life when the rubber hits the road, and you are responsible for the consequences of your chosen pursuits.

So while true freedom is the opportunity to make your own choices, living a truly free life REQUIRES taking full responsibility for your choices, your behaviors, and your results.

And if you don’t like your current results — your current reality — there is nobody to blame but yourself.

This can be a hard pill to swallow. Believe me, I understand.

When my business collapsed and my world came crumbling down, I wanted to blame ISIS. I wanted to blame repugnant sex traffickers and martial law in my wife’s home country. I wanted to blame Homeland Security for insisting that we uproot our family and relocate internationally in order to get travel documents. I wanted to blame the partner who betrayed me and cooked the books.

I wanted to blame my mother for getting cancer. I wanted to blame my wife for giving me a child. I almost wanted to blame my son for scratching my cornea during roughhousing and landing me with an eye infection that took me out of commission for a month.

Hell, I even wanted to blame the flesh eating parasites burrowing intolerably slow and painfully through my feet.

I was laying in the fetal position on the tile floor of my 4-bedroom condo in Chiang Mai, Thailand one night cursing God Himself.

But the Truth was that too much avoiding responsibility caught up with me.

It was me — I had made every choice that got me there on that cold hard floor, pulling my hair out, crying and throwing a tantrum like my toddler.

Declare Your Individual Freedom

I used to think that chasing “freedom” meant running away from responsibility.

For 10 years I wanted nothing but more time freedom, more financial independence, and more freedom of location.

And I got it. For almost a decade, I lived in 8 countries across four continents.

I built and experimented with five small companies. We sold two of them.

I dated women from around the globe, and enjoyed all kinds of travel misadventures across at least 35 countries. But I allowed myself to get too comfortable, I let myself become a “victim” of my own success, and bought into the lie of the “four hour work week”, pleasure seeking, fleeing from commitments, and basically drank and smoked away a literal fortune.

In the pursuit of riches, I wrecked my health, and then I carried on abusing my body probably out of sheer self-hatred.

But it was when I realized my real RESPONSIBILITY to show my son a good example, to do my damnedest to be a good role model, to teach him everything the world will neglect to teach him, to be involved in his life and guide him any way I can, that was when my own results began ever so slowly to turn around.

In order to achieve true freedom, YES, you must cultivate an ability to control your money, control your time, and eliminate the mindset that you are subject to any higher authority (at least not here on earth).

But avoiding responsibility, perhaps counterintuitively, will ensure your failure. It will ensure that your health and vitality go down the drain. It will ensure that you create strained, stressed, and broken relationships. It will ensure you create chaos all around you.

You must take RESPONSIBILITY for your Mindset, your Health, your Wealth, and your Relationships.

This Fourth of July, take stock of where you’re at, appreciate what you have, and accept radical responsibility for your current situation. Some things will be great. Others may be a trainwreck.

This is not about guilt or shame. We are all screwups.

For my fellow Americans, be grateful that you ARE the privileged 1% of the world. The USA is an imperfect mess, but it’s one of the safest, most functional places in the world. For my Canadian friends to the north, happy belated Canada Day to you!

Wherever you are, I invite you to accept the challenge to take responsibility for cleaning up whatever areas of your life that are lacking, to realize the necessity for balance in your life, and how your mental health, your fitness, your finances, your spirituality and your connections with people around you are all interconnected.

If you go through life on autopilot, chances are you are going to let at least one of these dimensions of your life completely deteriorate.

So take responsibility to give each of these areas of your life attention, to go through your life consciously, to craft a plan for how you can maintain balance in your life, and always be vigilant looking for opportunities where you can seize MORE responsibility for things around you.

Declare YOUR personal freedom from the mistakes you have made in the past, from your baggage, from your stories, and FIGHT for your life like the men who built America had to.

Declare your freedom from the TYRANNY of victimhood. Choose not to accept the role of “victim” in this life. There is nobody holding you down. Choose to rewrite those negative stories. Trust me.

It is Time for You to Choose FREEDOM, Sovereignty, and Personal Responsibility.

If you are ready to commit yourself to a higher purpose, to double down on yourself, and have accountability, systems, and structure to help you find balance across your Mindset, Health, Wealth, and Relationships, join us as we embark upon a 12-week Dragon-slaying challenge inside the Foundry accelerator this month to turboboost your progress toward your dream goals in Q3.

Normally $333, you can register for one of our remaining 12 lifetime seats in the program today for just $76! Nearly 80% off, in honor of the Founding Fathers (1776).

America homecoming

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The Power of Incremental Improvement (30 Day Challenge Winner!)

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Over the last month, several fellow fathers joined me participating in the 30-day HERO Challenge, where we witnessed the value of committing to one simple, daily practice. We got to watch first hand the exponential growth possible with small iterative habit improvements, and the power of routine practice.

Whatever goal you want to reach, or behavior you want to improve, PRACTICE the things you want to get good at — even if you have to start in very small ways. If you commit to it every single day, you are bound to see transformation over time.

Take it one step at a time, and eventually you’ll find yourself in a whole new world.

One person who has really proven this for me recently is Andrew (watch below) who shares his journey sof habit change and personal transformation on his video channel Sorting Myself Out. He’s been incredibly transparent and very inspiring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jngE4ktovsk

Andrew helped inspire me to set a monthly behavior change goal EACH MONTH, to drill a 30-day habit change challenge around it, and gather an accountability group of guys around me to help keep me pointed at my target each month.

So August became the Heroic Dad Pushup Challenge. Throughout September, I’ll be waking up bright and early for a cold shower each day at 7am! (Have the discipline to join me?)

But before we start our next 30 day challenge, my friend and fellow HERO Project member Brandyn Shoemaker and I promised to award the dad who made the most progress on this pushup challenge with a little gift from the Heroic Dad store. So, with that, please welcome Brandyn to the blog:

And the Winner Is…

August 18th marked the end of the #30DayHero Challenge. It was 30 days of sore arms, squirmy kids, frustration, and joy. We also did a ton of pushups.

The challenge was simple: for 30 days do pushups with your kids, or with your kids on top of you. Some of the dads even did pushups with their wives on their backs. Props to those guys.

On the surface it was a pushup and physical fitness challenge, but it went much deeper than that. While physical fitness is extremely important, the challenge was really a way to build good habits with our kids.

Traditional wisdom says “Your kids won’t listen to what you say, they’ll do what you do.” We’ve all heard it, and it’s become one of those cliche sayings we don’t even pay attention to, but it’s true. We’re all guilty of telling our kids to go out and play and be active while we’re sprawled out on the couch binge watching Rick and Morty, or to clean their room while we have piles of laundry sprawled all over our room. (I might not be speaking from experience, don’t judge me.)

So with the challenge we aimed to create something that would force us to build good habits, teach our kids the importance of building good habits, and bond with our kids all at the same time.

I think it worked.

The challenge ended about a week ago, but the pushups haven’t. Earlier today my three year old hopped on my back and told me to do pushups. My one year old got next to us and started doing his own version of the pushup. You should see it, his form is AMAZING. We all had fun while doing something productive. The best part of the 30 days was watching the habit form in my little man. There were days I would forget but he was right there to remind me.

We had a good group of great dads that stuck it out with us the entire 30 days. All of us had good days and bad days. We all had days that we didn’t want to have anything to do with a pushup, but we did them anyway. It felt great fighting through the struggle.

It was extremely inspiring to watch all of the dad’s daily photos and video check-ins. Everyone worked hard and everyone gave it their all. At the end though, one father stood above the rest. He’s even starting his own pushup challenge to build off of what he accomplished in the #30DayHero Challenge.

Christopher Wolf worked hard all month, built a strong new habit, bonded with his kids, and maybe most importantly, he won a comfortable new Heroic Dad tshirt!

heroic dad

(If you want a Heroic Dad shirt, head on over to the store. At checkout just use the code “HERO” for free shipping on anything. I won’t even make you do pushups every day for a month.)

When the challenge started I struggled to do 5 pushups. STRUGGLED. It was embarrassing. It still is. But by the end of the 30 days I was doing 25 pushups with a 40-pound wiggleworm on my back.

I hated pushups. Pushups were the enemy. I’ll be honest, they still are, but I’m not afraid to do them anymore. I can drop down with my little man and knock some out anytime, anywhere.

What are you struggling with right now? What do you want to teach your kids? Whatever it is, do it. Do it everyday and soon enough it will change from a struggle to a habit.

“I hadn’t really done any exercise in about 2 to 3 years,” said winner Christopher Wolf. “I’ve been following a ketogenic diet since October of last year, and I’ve lost about 50 pounds. But all of that was due to food, none due to exercise.”

“I’ve had a real serious battle for about 10 years with anxiety, most of it being health anxiety, that culminated in 10 to 15 major panic attacks — several of those resulting in hospital visits because I was convinced that I was having some sort of cardiac event.”

“My heart is fine, but somewhere deep in my mind I was convinced that that wasn’t the case, and that kept me from doing anything physical. I walked slow, I was very hesitant to play rough with my kids for fear that raising my heart rate to I would trigger something.”

“I saw this challenge as something I could control. It was just doing push-ups every day. I could do five or ten, and have little to no change in my heart rate and be fine. After doing that the first couple days, and then passing 20 or 30 about a week into the challenge, I started changing that deep-held belief about what I could and couldn’t do safely.”

Day 29! I did 50 push-ups a day early! #heroicdad #30dayhero

A post shared by Christopher Wolf (@aaaarrrrgggghhh) on

Chris is now launching his own September pushup challenge to increase his one-set pushup max from 50 to 80. “Just goes to show that facing your fears head-on is generally one of the most effective ways to overcome them,” Chris shared. “This is probably one of the five most important things I’ve done in the last year.”

Final Note from Cody: September HERO Challenge!

Every month at the HERO Project, we drill incremental habit change and gather accountability groups to help you connect with others and become the best version of yourself!

If you want to join me for the next 30-day HERO Challenge, we will host the group inside my mentor David’s private group The Warrior Way.

From my coach David DiFrancesco:

“I thought it would be appropriate to bring one of my favorite ‘tests’ to this group as a way of starting the initiation process. A step in proving you’re worthy and have been tested. It’s something I’ve done with all the guys I’ve trained for Navy SEALs and something I’ve personally done every New Years Eve at midnight. A cold water swim in the ocean for about 20 minutes in trunks. (one year I even got to enjoy having a shark swim with me)”

“But as I’m here and you’re, well, there and perhaps not near a convenient, freezing cold body of water, I’m thinking of the next best thing. After a great conversation with Cody today we’re putting this idea into action as a part of his next 30-Day Hero Challenge. Beginning this coming Monday, September 4th, we’re all going to take a bracing cold shower first thing upon rising. It’s probably (well, most assuredly) the last thing you’ll want to be doing, but the very practice of making yourself do something you don’t want to do, along with a little bit of physical discomfort will have a host of benefits in your mindset that we’ll be discussing over the coming weeks and certainly as we wrap it up at the end of September.”

“I’m going to be with you along the way and will be following up with you each day as we go through this testing together. Feel free to share your own experiences on what’s happening for you and what you’re discovering. As I tell the SEAL guys, you are not going to get through the days ahead relying on only yourself. You’ll get through it as a team, a tribe. So tribe, let’s get to it!”

It’s completely free to join The Warrior Way on Facebook. Join me and David here all through September for a cold shower challenge. I’ll be waking up early every day at 7am and starting my day with a cold shower for a month!

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My Secret Key to a Happy Life

I was recently asked to write a chapter for my good friend John Bardos’ ebook Change Your Life.

“Is there something specific that really helped put your life on a better path? Can you talk about a transformation that occurred because of one particular strategy? Is there something you do every day that is critical to your productivity?”

Rather than the typical personal development tips you hear, beyond practicing meditation and establishing a morning routine, my answer is the same one I give to people who ask how they can find more happiness in their lives. It’s incredibly simple advice, but requires great discipline to implement:

Choose Wisely

The secret to life is deceptively simple: choose carefully what you focus your attention on.

Namely, focus on the things you genuinely and deeply want more of. Look for what makes you happy.

Don’t obsess over the things that frustrate you. Don’t let anger, or resentment, become the center of attention.

Because as the saying goes, what you focus on grows. When I started to focus on cultivating an attitude of gratitude, my whole life transformed. And I find that when I consciously acknowledge the experiences, the people, and events I’m grateful and thankful for, somehow I tend to find more and more similar things that inspire gratitude.

Whereas, when I focus on my problems — when I go into emergency mode fighting fires and looking for every little detail of what is wrong with my work and family life — then I’ll find plenty of problems.

Seek, and you shall find. So seek the right things, and discipline your mind to search for opportunities rather than limitations.

I highly recommend any ambitious young person in the world today develop a regular gratitude practice as part of your daily rituals – write your answers in some kind of journal, or keep an ongoing note on your computer — but start the day with 3 things you’re thankful for, and end your day with 3 amazing things that happened for you. (If you have a hard time getting started, I recommend trying The Five Minute Journal: A Happier You in 5 Minutes a Day)

You’ll be surprised how quickly this daily practice can change your outlook, and even your circumstances.

Count your blessings, not your problems.

If you want to read 99 other great chapters from experts sharing their top strategies for reaching your highest potential, download your free copy of the book here.

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On Discouragement

Today’s affirmation:

I am GREAT because I deal with 10,000 people’s ignorance and hopelessness and discouragement and unconscious indoctrination and I move the needle forward anyways.

Every day in every way I’m getting better and better.

the Dude abides

From Uncle Dwight at Courageous Kitchen:

“Either you dwell on people’s feedback and you don’t do it, or you knock on every f****n door until you get a couple people to say yes…” –Gary Vaynerchuk at RISE Conference, Hong Kong

BTW – I’m raising money for Courageous Kitchen, and I pitched in the first $55, go here to make a donation, plus see their upcoming Austin cookout and enter for a FREE trip to Bangkok!

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13 Tenets of the Warrior Mindset

Be FEARLESS and DESIRELESS. Just Becoming. This is the condition of a warrior going into battle with perfect courage. That’s life in movement.”

–Joseph Campbell, father of the Hero’s Journey

Over the last few years, I’ve had the great pleasure to work with David DiFrancesco — the Living Warrior — who has become a great mentor to me.

David is the author of The Warrior Way and has spent his career dedicated to releasing the warrior inside every man.

After witnessing the death of a police officer as a child, David understood that a life well-lived is one with purpose. He dedicated himself to seeing that all men have the opportunity to discover and live their own purpose through his work — work that guides men through accepting their fears and inner demons and moving forward with them, rather than being pulled into inaction by them.

Coach, author, speaker and mentor, David leads men through physical and mental training designed to strip away the lies and myths they hide behind; coming through the fire of battle into the strong, powerful, masculine hero all men are called to be.

After over 30 years working with Navy SEALS, as a gym owner and mental toughness trainer, here are the top things David says men need to hear. A succinct mastercourse on the Way of the Living Warrior:

1. You are owed nothing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvrm5chs9Zw

Life is not fair, you make your life a success through hard work, not because you’ve earned some imagined right to it. Similarly, you are not entitled to be loved, respected, or anything else you’ve convinced yourself is your entitlement simply because you exist and are being a well-behaved, well intentioned, good boy. You and you alone are responsible for making sure your needs are met.

2. Positive thinking will get you nowhere

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBWtiEjRwwE

Determination and perseverance wins the day. Determination takes the place of dreaming. Willpower takes you through the work. Self-discipline takes you through the pain (when you no longer feel like doing the work).

3. We are not all equal or capable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJPXCMVMuWg

…but we all are flawed and limited.

4. Failure is part of the process of improvement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA0CeAm8_nI

Expect failure, but don’t accept it. You must be prepared for a lengthy time of poor or mediocre performance before you can become world-class.

5. You need more haters in your life, not supporters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTz8g7Szieg

6. Embrace the suck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-fR5CCQq5s

Life is struggle. Don’t put your effort into living a life without pain, instead choose your struggles and work on raising your pain threshold. Seek pain, not comfort, for pain is the barrier keeping those who haven’t put in the work and time in from the success that lies on the other side.

7. Men do not try

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O73ubIEVeFs

Either decide not to do something, or have the determination and discipline to see it to its conclusion.

8. Actions not words

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NysXd8R-klA

What you intend to do means shit. What you are doing now means everything. Don’t tell other men what you’ll do, show them the results of what you did. Winners do, losers dream.

9. Success comes from hard work and time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jnfj0iwOPs

While you can compress the time needed by working with other men, but only you can do the hard work.

10. Seek the battle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtQQs2yV-e4

Men thrive on hardship. Comfort, pleasure and instant-gratification feminizes men. Men seek struggle, battles and prove themselves through hard work and effort. Always seek the harder thing.

11. Not everyone is good deep down

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxN9uRs6Erw

There are people who truly want to harm you. Learn to defend yourself and build the confidence necessary to minimize the chance of attacks. Become a strong, virile man capable of determining your own destiny. Show others that you are a man of strength, power and confidence simply by looking at you.

12. Seek a tribe of men

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSJfAzWhY44

Camaraderie in its support of fellow brothers knowing we are all striving to become the men we were meant to be and Competition in that it drives us to continually improve and not settle.

13. It is good to be a man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0nP_d6T1xc

BONUS: Men need Rites of Initiation

This one is so true. I spent my teens pulling all kinds of pranks with my close circle of best friends, some of them trending towards dangerous, got into street racing, got arrested twice, then the challenge moved on to women, seeing how much I could drink for years, and far worse.

Instead of leaving my children to figure life out on their own, I aim to provide some kind of rites of passage for my son.

If you’re interested to learn more about the Warrior Way of Living, grab your copy of David’s book The Warrior Way: Conquer Your Inner Battles and Level Up Your Life.

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A Call to Arms

What is your Great Work? The important stuff you know deep in your soul you MUST accomplish during your short speck of time here in a meatsuit on this strange little ball flying a thousand miles an hour through the cosmos?

The thing that’s been calling you, for months, maybe years? Your Holy Grail.

If you know what it is, then you’re probably terrified just like me.

Because starting is scary. The unknown is scary. People are assholes and criticism hurts.

But thank the heavens, God gave us Ze Frank. The man who started video blogging before vlogging was a thing.

If you don’t know what your Great Work is yet, then you should probably go dive into something that scares you until you discover it.

But if you know perfectly well, and you’ve been stuck in a rut like me…

Then watch that again.

I’m scared. I’m scared that my abilities are gone, I’m scared that I’m going to fuck this up, and I’m scared of you.

I don’t want to start, but I will.

This is an invocation for anyone who hasn’t begun, who’s stuck in a terrible place between zero and one.

Let me realize that my past failures at follow-through are no indication of my future performance. They’re just healthy little fires that are going to warm up my ass.

If my FILDI is strong, let me keep him in a velvet box until I really, really need him. If my FILDI is weak, let me feed him oranges and not let him gorge himself on ego and arrogance.

Let me not hit up my Facebook like it’s a crack pipe. Keep the browser closed.

If I catch myself wearing a too-too (too fat, too late, too old) let me shake it off like a donkey would shake off something it doesn’t like.

And when I get that feeling in my stomach — you know the feeling when all of a sudden you get a ball of energy and it shoots down into your legs and up into your arms and tells you to stand up and go to the refrigerator and get a cheese sandwich — that’s my cheese monster talking. And my cheese monster will never be satisfied by cheddar, only the cheese of accomplishment.

Let me think about the people who I care about the most, and how when they fail or disappoint me I still love them, I still give them chances, and I still see the best in them. Let me extend that generosity to myself.

Let me find and use metaphors to help me understand the world around me and give me the strength to get rid of them when it’s apparent they no longer work.

Let me thank the parts of me that I don’t understand or are outside of my rational control like my creativity and my courage.

And let me remember that my courage is a wild dog. It won’t just come when I call it. I have to chase it down and hold on as tight as I can.

Let me not be so vain to think that I’m the sole author of my victories and a victim of my defeats.

Let me remember that the unintended meaning that people project onto what I do is neither my fault or something I can take credit for.

Perfectionism may look good in his shiny shoes, but he’s a little bit of an asshole and no one invites him to their pool parties.

Let me remember that the impact of criticism is often not the intent of the critic, but when the intent is evil, that’s what the block button’s for.

And when I eat my critique, let me be able to separate out the good advice from the bitter herbs.

There are few people who won’t be disarmed by a genuine smile.
A big impact on a few can be worth more than a small impact.

Let me not think of my work only as a stepping stone to something else, and if it is, let me become fascinated with the shape of the stone.

Let me take the idea that has gotten me this far and put it to bed. What I am about to do will not be that, but it will be something.

There is no need to sharpen my pencils anymore. My pencils are sharp enough. Even the dull ones will make a mark.

Warts and all. Let’s start this shit up.

And God let me enjoy this. Life isn’t just a sequence of waiting for things to be done.

decision making

We’ll do it live!

“There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.”

–attributed to Victor Hugo

Time to start slaying dragons…

thrilling heroics

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Clear Skies

Always on the hunt for clear skies, especially through stormy times.

Music helps.

Immerse yourself in the rapture of music.
You know what you love.
Go there.
Tend to each note, each chord,
Rising up from silence and dissolving again.
Vibrating strings draw us
Into the spacious resonance of the heart.
The body becomes light as the sky
And you, one with the Great Musician,
Who is even now singing us Into existence.”
—
tantry ādi vādya śabdeṣu dīrgheṣu krama saṁsthiteḥ | ananya cetāḥ pratyante para vyoma vapur bhavet | | 41 | |
—
Lorin Roche – The Radiance Sutras

[from our very own John Carey]

And a song made fresh in my mind today thanks to Jeremy Frandsen (and baby Groot!)

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32 Maxims for Men

Maxims are universal ethical rules of conduct that guide us when we encounter unexpected or difficult situations in life.

It was asked on Quora:

If you could write a rulebook for being a man, what “Man Law” would you write?

Don’t feel limited by anything. Think about what you would want to see in an ideal man. What are the qualities of a good husband, father, brother? What one thing would you want to see in your daughter’s boyfriend or husband?

Here is the wise list of guiding maxims espoused by Dr. Jordan Peterson, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto and clinical psychologist:

  1. Encourage children through play.
  2. Promote the best in people.
  3. Keep the sacred fire burning.
  4. Guard the women and children from harm.
  5. Confront the eternal adversary.
  6. Build the crystal palace.
  7. Confront death with courage and return.
  8. Dare to cut down a tree.
  9. Offer your sons up as a sacrifice to God.
  10. Protect your daughters from exploitation.
  11. Store up wealth for the future.
  12. Consult the ancestral spirits.
  13. Read great books.
  14. Speak the truth about unpleasant things.
  15. Pay close attention.
  16. Make a worthy temple for the Lord.
  17. Keep the howling winds of winter at bay.
  18. Stand up for the oppressed.
  19. Provide a warm and secure home.
  20. Be a prince of peace.
  21. Don’t be too civilized. (related video)
  22. Organize yourself with other men. (related video)
  23. Be faithful to your wife.
  24. Be hospitable to friends and strangers.
  25. Rout the wolves and chase the lions so the shepherds can eat.
  26. Establish a destination – and a path.
  27. Bring heaven to earth.
  28. Take on the sins of the world.
  29. Dig the wells and mine the gold and copper.
  30. Gather everyone to the banquet.
  31. Grow up and take responsibility. (related video)
  32. Resist pride in all things.

[source: Quora]

What would you add? Or what do you think needs more context?

For a more thorough understanding of maxims, see this video about Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy and conscience in the film Kingdom of Heaven, particularly at 1:45

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Blessing In Disguise

I am often reminded of this old Chinese fable about a farmer and his horse.

There are many varying versions of the story, but it goes something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX0OARBqBp0

Alan Watts’ telling of the story.

The Chinese farmer’s attitude illustrates a deep understanding of how seeming bad fortune can often be a blessing in disguise. And vice versa.

I believe I first learned this story from Derek Sivers, whose telling I’ll quote in full below, along with his 1998 song based on this classic parable:

My favorite fable (塞翁失马)

A farmer had only one horse. One day, his horse ran away.

His neighbors said, “I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.”

The man just said, “We’ll see.”

A few days later, his horse came back with twenty wild horses following. The man and his son corralled all 21 horses.

His neighbors said, “Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy!”

The man just said, “We’ll see.”

One of the wild horses kicked the man’s only son, breaking both his legs.

His neighbors said, “I’m so sorry. This is such bad news. You must be so upset.”

The man just said, “We’ll see.”

The country went to war, and every able-bodied young man was drafted to fight. The war was terrible and killed every young man, but the farmer’s son was spared, since his broken legs prevented him from being drafted.

His neighbors said, “Congratulations! This is such good news. You must be so happy!”

The man just said, “We’ll see.”

Reprinted from Sivers.org here. Listen to Derek’s song “Still Too Soon to Tell” below:

If you enjoy this timeless parable, and the beautiful song Derek composed to retell the tale, you might find my exclusive interview with him here interesting.

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Forty Foundational Principles to Live By

A principle is a concept or value that is a guide for behavior or evaluation. In law, it is a rule that has to be, or usually is to be followed, or can be desirably followed, or is an inevitable consequence of something, such as the laws observed in nature or the way that a system is constructed. The principles of such a system are understood by its users as the essential characteristics of the system, or reflecting system’s designed purpose, and the effective operation or use of which would be impossible if any one of the principles was to be ignored.

In seeking well-organized principles to live by, I’ve not come across a better, more comprehensive example than these shared by Dr. Jordan Peterson, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto (also author of the upcoming book 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos).

In response to the question: “What are the most valuable things everyone should know?” These are the forty lessons the good professor had to share. Hard to beat:

  1. Tell the truth.
  2. Do not do things that you hate.
  3. Act so that you can tell the truth about how you act.
  4. Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient.
  5. If you have to choose, be the one who does things, instead of the one who is seen to do things.
  6. Pay attention.
  7. Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you need to know. Listen to them hard enough so that they will share it with you.
  8. Plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationships.
  9. Be careful who you share good news with.
  10. Be careful who you share bad news with.
  11. Make at least one thing better every single place you go.
  12. Imagine who you could be, and then aim single-mindedly at that.
  13. Do not allow yourself to become arrogant or resentful.
  14. Try to make one room in your house as beautiful as possible.
  15. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
  16. Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens.
  17. If old memories still make you cry, write them down carefully and completely.
  18. Maintain your connections with people.
  19. Do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or artistic achievement.
  20. Treat yourself as if you were someone that you are responsible for helping.
  21. Ask someone to do you a small favour, so that he or she can ask you to do one in the future.
  22. Make friends with people who want the best for you.
  23. Do not try to rescue someone who does not want to be rescued, and be very careful about rescuing someone who does.
  24. Nothing well done is insignificant.
  25. Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.
  26. Dress like the person you want to be.
  27. Be precise in your speech.
  28. Stand up straight with your shoulders back.
  29. Don’t avoid something frightening if it stands in your way — and don’t do unnecessarily dangerous things.
  30. Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.
  31. Do not transform your wife into a maid.
  32. Do not hide unwanted things in the fog.
  33. Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.
  34. Read something written by someone great.
  35. Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.
  36. Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.
  37. Don’t let bullies get away with it.
  38. Write a letter to the government if you see something that needs fixing — and propose a solution.
  39. Remember that what you do not yet know is more important than what you already know.
  40. Be grateful in spite of your suffering.

[original source: Quora]

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