Book Notes - The Daily Laws by Robert Greene
You can buy this book here.
The book in thirty seconds…
This book contains excerpts taken from five of Robert Greene’s books, presented as a “Daily Law”, with one to be read each day, starting on 1 January (you can start any date you’d like obviously).
Not all of them resonated with me but a lot of them did and I made them a focus for my day.
If you find Greene’s books overwhelming in terms of length, I’d recommend starting with this book, as the bite-sized sections are easier to absorb, yet still provide value.
The book will help you to think about power, seduction, mastery, strategy and human nature.
Greene’s Five Books
Monthly Focus
There is a different focus for each month, examples below:
January: Your Life’s Task - Planting the Seeds for Mastery
February: The Ideal Apprenticeship - Transforming Yourself
March: The Master at Work - Activating Skills and Attaining Mastery
I’ve included daily laws that I want to remember below.
Caveat
I’d like to add a caveat, some of the daily laws are taken from Robert Greene’s book on Power, which has been banned from some prisons.
I don’t necessarily agree with all of what I’ve included below, but I’ve included them because I find them interesting and it’s a helpful way to protect yourself against those who do agree with the quotes.
January - Your Life’s Task
January 6: Change Is the Law
Before he became the great boxing trainer, Freddie Roach was forced to retire from boxing. He instinctively found his way back to the ring because he understood that what he loved was not boxing per se, but competitive sports and strategising. Thinking in this way, he could adapt his inclinations to a new direction within boxing.
Like Roach, you don’t want to abandon the skills and experience you have gained, but to find a new way to apply them.
Daily Law: Adapt your inclinations. Avoid having rigid goals and dreams. Change is the law.
I think this is a good one for people who are looking to change careers. What abilities and skills can you take from your current career, and apply to a new one?
January 8: Occupy Your Own Niche
Daily Law: Embrace your strangeness. Identify what makes you different. Fuse those things together.
This is in line with something I heard recently, “Don’t be the best, be the only.” I can’t remember who said it, if you know, send me an email as I’d love to credit them!
January 9: Find Inspiration from Your Heroes
In order to master a field, you must love the subject and feel a profound connection to it. Your interest must transcend the field and border on the religious.
Daily Law: Are there people whose work affects you in a powerful way? Analyse this and use them as models.
If I apply this to myself, I really enjoy coaching employees, teaching and facilitating training courses. I love to see employees learn something and improve their lives. I look up to people who share their knowledge and help others to be better.
January 15: Let a Sense of Purpose Guide You
Daily Law: Think back on the moments when you felt deeply and personally connected to an activity. Think about the pleasure it brought you. In such activities are signs of your true purpose.
January 17: The True Source of Creativity
The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self—our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds. To make a discovery, to invent something that connects with the public…inevitably requires time and effort… years of experimentation, various setbacks and failures, and the need to maintain a high level of focus.
Daily Law: Work at what connects to you emotionally and ideas will come to you.
I think this is why creative endeavours (starting a podcast, starting a blog, starting a YouTube channel) can be so difficult.
January 19 - Listen to Your Inner Authority
Daily Law: Reflect on those moments in life when you were active (followed your own path) and those moments when you were passive (followed what others wanted). Compare the emotions you experienced.
This makes me think about what I truly enjoy.
January 20 - See Mastery as Salvation
The misery that oppresses you lies not in your profession but in yourself! What man in the world would not find his situation intolerable if he chooses a craft, an art, indeed any form of life, without experiencing an inner calling? - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
January 21 - Depending on Others is Misery
Dependency makes you vulnerable to all kinds of emotions—betrayal, disappointment, frustration—that play havoc with your mental balance.
Daily Law: It is simple: depending on others is misery; depending on yourself is power.
January 26 - Avoid the Counterforces to Mastery
What weakens that force within us, what makes you not feel it or even doubt its existence, is the degree to which you have succumbed to another force in life—social pressures to conform.
They may seek to direct you to a career path that is lucrative and comfortable.
“Focus on the future…”
“Be sensible…”
“Will this degree help you to get a well-paid job?”
These are all “reasonable” things to think about, but do they hold us back from achieving what will truly be fulfilling?
January 28 - The Path Is Not Linear
Eventually, you will hit upon a particular field, niche, or opportunity that suits you perfectly. You will recognise it when you find it because it will spark that childlike sense of wonder and excitement; it will feel right.
Daily Law: You must see your career or vocational path more as a journey with twists and turns rather than a straight line.
I see this in organisations all the time. Employees want to know what their next role is and the next role after that, “What is my career path?” In some cases, this works well. In other cases, this is wasted energy. Given how quickly technology and organisations change, you could spend years preparing for a role that ends up being no longer required…
In other cases, I’ve seen employees have higher job satisfaction because they focus on the journey as opposed to the destination. They focus on the skills and experiences that they are gaining along the way, as opposed to, “My next job is… X”.
February - The Ideal Apprenticeship
February 1 - Submit to Reality
After your formal education, you enter the most critical phase in your life—a practical education known as The Apprenticeship. Ever time you change careers or acquire new skills, you reenter this phase of life…
The goal of an apprenticeship is to literally transform yourself.
February 7 - The Only Shortcut to Mastery
The mentor-protégé relationship is the most efficient and productive form of learning. The right mentors know where to focus your attention and how to challenge you.
Once you have internalised their knowledge, you must move on and never be in their shadow.
February 9 - Redefine Pleasure
Real pleasure comes from overcoming challenges, feeling confident in your abilities, gaining fluency in skills, and experiencing the power this brings. You develop patience. Boredom no longer signals the need for distraction, but rather the need for new challenges to conquer.
Daily Law: See the fruits of discipline and skill as the richest pleasures of all.
February 10 - Learn From Everything
Daily Law: Approach every task, even the most menial, the same: as an opportunity to observe and amass information about your environment.
This has been a really helpful way to reframe certain tasks at work.
I think everyone has times in their career where they have to do something that they think is below them. Something that they may have done when they first started their career. It happens to me from time to time.
This daily law has helped me to rethink low-level tasks, they can still be an opportunity to learn.
February 13 - How to Learn Quickly and Deeply
When you enter a new environment, your task is to learn and absorb as much as possible.
Daily Law: Revert to a childlike dependence. Today, act like those you interact with know much more than you.
This concept of “childlike dependence” would be a struggle for some people, but I think it would be particularly useful when changing careers. Especially if the career change was an internal move i.e. moving from Finance to HR within the same company.
February 14 - Move Toward Resistance
Daily Law: Invent exercises that work upon your weaknesses. Give yourself arbitrary deadlines to meet certain standards, constantly pushing yourself past perceived limits.
For me, this is easier to think about when it comes to physical training. Running, going to the gym, martial arts etc.
When it comes to the workplace, I’ve noticed that for myself and others, there is a “holding back” when it comes to working on weaknesses.
Why is that? Is it a fear of failure? Is it because the consequences of failing in the workplace are higher than failing when it comes to your physical training?
February 15 - Concentrated Practice Cannot Fail
Although it might seem that the time necessary to master the requisite skills and attain a level of expertise would depend on the field and your own talent level, those who have researched the subject repeatedly come up with the number of 10,000 hours.
Although the number of hours might seem high, it generally adds up to seven to ten years of sustained, solid practice…
February 18 - Two Kinds of Failure
The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time.
The second kind comes from a bold and venturesome spirit. If you fail in this way, the hit that you take to your reputation is greatly outweighed by what you learn. Repeated failure will toughen your spirit…
…you must act on your ideas as early as possible, exposing them to the public, a part of you even hoping that you’ll fail.
You have everything to gain.
This makes me think about my Youtube Channel. I’ve made some videos which I was really proud of, and they’ve tanked. 200, 300 views. I’ve made other videos which I’ve watched before posting and thought, “No one is going to watch this.” 12,000, 24,000, 51,000 views.
The videos that have done well, have felt good. However, the videos that haven’t done well, have provided me with more learnings.
February 19 - Choose Time
Daily Law: Time is the critical variable. Take one thing off your plate today to make more time for your Life’s Task.
February 26 - Venture Outside Your Comfort Zone
Daily Law: Try the thing you don’t think you’re quite ready for.
March - The Master at Work
March 2 - Get to the Inside
Daily Law: If you work hard, you will make your way to the inner circle of knowledge. That is the end goal of mastery: an inside-out understanding.
I think about this in terms of organisational coaching, facilitation of training and workshops. How do I get on the inside of that? Practice? Time? Learning from others?
March 3 - Cultivate the Craftsman Ethic
The great masters, including contemporary ones, all manage to retain the craftsman spirit. What motivates them is not money, fame, or a high position, but making the perfect work of art, designing the best building… mastering their craft.
This helps them to not get too caught up in the ups and downs of their career.
It is the work that matters.
Daily Law; Retain the craftsman spirit. Keep in mind: the work is the only thing that matters.
I read this and I instantly think, “How does this apply to corporate professions? To knowledge workers? Accountants? IT Professionals? HR?” Is this realistic?
March 12 - Perfect Yourself through Failure
Your failures also permit you to see the flaws of your ideas, which are only revealed in the execution of them.
You learn what your audience really wants…
Daily Law: Malfunctions are a means of education. They are trying to tell you something. You must listen.
This links back to February 18, “The Two Kinds of Failure”. You learn more from your failures than your successes. They hurt more, but they teach more.
March 13 - Creative Endurance
In the last few months, when the looming deadline made me work even harder than before, I noticed that I was considerably calmer, better able to handle the stress, and that I had reservoirs of energy to draw upon for the long hours… the mind and the body are so intertwined that it is impossible to separate out their effects on us.”
This makes me think about Rich Roll’s podcast Episode #533 - Dr Andrew Huberman - How to Change Your Brain with Dr. Andrew Huberman. Huberman discusses the science that surrounds behaviour change. How in a lot of cases, you can’t use the mind to control the mind, you need to use your body to control your mind. It’s worth a listen.
March 21 - The Universal Master
…the design of the human brain—its inherent need to make connections and associations—gives it a will of its own.
Aspects of technology now offer unprecedented means to build connections between fields and ideas.
Daily Law: Extend your knowledge further and further, leading to wide-ranging connections.
I was in a training session recently and an employee was sharing how they thought that their varied career path put them at a disadvantage. They thought that because they didn’t have years of specialisation in one particular field, they were not as competitive as their peers…
I’ve long thought differently. I think that a broad career path, a broad range of experiences leads to better problem solving and more diversity of thought. There are benefits to being a generalist. There are benefits to reading widely and looking beyond your career, your field.
March 22 - On Meditation
Meditation has significantly improved my ability to concentrate when reading or taking notes… I have developed patience in dealing with the drudgery of practice and am better able to handle petty criticisms.
If you are feeling restless on your path to mastery or find that little things often aggravate and distract you from your life’s work, I recommend you take up meditation.
Daily Law: The Master’s mind must be able to concentrate on one thing for a long period of time. Develop such habits.
March 23 - Listen to Your Frustration
Daily Law: Walk away when you’re blocked. Do something else. The brain will eventually lead you back.
I think walks are an underestimated tool when it comes to knowledge work, in particular corporate employees. I’ve observed that when employees and leaders are stuck, they dig in deeper. They work longer hours, they keep working the problem. Whilst perseverance is important, a quick break and a walk around the block can help to solve the problem you’re facing.
March 25 - Cultivate Negative Capability
Daily Law: Develop the habit of suspending the need to judge everything that crosses your path. Consider and even momentarily entertain viewpoints opposite to your own, seeing how they feel. Do anything to break up your normal train of thinking and your sense that you already know the truth.
Great quote for leaders to think about! Especially when it comes to problem solving.
March 27 - The Power of Peak Experiences
The person in peak-experiences feels himself / herself, more than other times, to be the responsible, active, creating center of his / her activities and of her / his perceptions.
She / he feels more like a prime-mover, more self-determined (rather than caused, determined, helpless, dependent, passive, weak, bossed). Sh / he feels herself / himself to be his / her own boss, fully responsible, fully volitional, with more free-will than at other times, a master of his / her fate, an agent. — Abraham Maslow
Daily Law: Get into a flow state today. Rid yourself of the distractions and cheap pleasures. Lose yourself in the work.
I’ve added she / her / herself to Maslow’s quote.
April - The Perfect Courtier: Playing the Game of Power
April 1 - Never Outshine the Master
Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are, and you will attain the heights of power. If your ideas are more creative than your master’s, ascribe them to him, in as public a manner as possible. Make it clear that your advice is merely an echo of his advice.
Daily Law: Always make those above you feel comfortably superior.
This is one of the laws and concepts that I don’t necessarily agree with, but I think is useful to bear in mind that some people do agree with it and expect it.
April 4 - Know When to Take and Give Credit
Daily Law: Take credit from those below you. Give credit to those above.
This feels unnatural to me.
April 6 - Seem Dumber Than Your Mark
Know how to make use of stupidity: The wisest man plays this card at times. There are occasions when the highest wisdom consists in appearing not to know—you must not be ignorant but capable of playing it. —Baltasar Gracian
Daily Law: In general, always make people believe they are smarter and more sophisticated than you are. They will keep you around because you make them feel better about themselves, and the longer you are around, the more opportunities you will have to deceive them.
Again, this is another one of the laws that I find uncomfortable. It’s from the 48 Laws of Power (Law 21 - Play a Sucker to Catch a Sucker—Seem Dumber Thatn Your Mark). I have noted it here because I think it’s useful to reflect on this, even if I don’t agree with it.
April 8 - Master Your Emotional Responses
A sovereign should never launch an army out of anger, a leader should never start a war out of wrath — Sun Tzu.
Angry people usually end up looking ridiculous, for their response seems out of proportion to what occasioned it.
Daily Law: Displaying anger and emotion are signs of weakness; you cannot control yourself, so how can you control anything?
Will Smith should have read this before the 2022 Oscars…
April 15 - Create a Cultlike Following
Daily Law: People have an overwhelming desire to believe in something. Become the focal point of such desire by offering them a cause, a new faith to follow. In the absence of organised religion and grand causes, your new belief system will bring you untold power.
April 20 - Be Royal in Your Own Fashion
It is up to you to set your own price. Ask for less and that is just what you will get.
This makes me think about a saying I heard years ago, “We train people how we want to be treated.”
April 23 - Fear the Power of Infection
…there are others who are not born to misfortune or unhappiness, but who draw it upon themselves by their destructive actions and unsettling effect on others.
It would be a great thing if we could raise them up, change their patterns, but more often than not it is their patterns that end up getting inside and changing us.
Do not enmesh yourself in trying to help. The infector will remain unchanged, but you will be unhinged.
Daily Law: People sometimes draw misfortune on themselves; they will also draw it on you. Associate with the happy and fortunate instead.
Be careful of who you keep in your team. Be careful of who you bring into your team. Be careful of who you hire.
May - The Supposed Nonplayers of Power — Recognising Toxic Types and Disguised Power Strategies
May 4 - The Appearance of Naiveté
Those who claim to be nonplayers may affect an air of naiveté, to protect them from the accusation that they are after power. Beware, however, for the appearance of naiveté, can be an effective means of deceit.
May 5 - Be Careful Whom You Offend
Never assume that the person you are dealing with is weaker or less important than you are.
Daily Law: Swallow the impulse to offend, even if the other person seems weak. The satisfaction is meager compared to the danger that someday her or she will be in a position to hurt you.
May 6 - See Through the False Front
The appearance of weakness often brings out people’s aggressive side, making them drop strategy and prudence for an emotional and violent attack.
…nonplayers present a face to the world that promises the opposite of what they are actually planning.
Daily Law: Never take appearances for reality.
May 7 - The Subtle-Superiority Strategy
You must pay attention to the pattern more than the apologies. They are not really sorry.
Daily Law: If this is chronic behaviour, you must not get angry or display over irritation—passive aggressors thrive on getting a rise out of you. Instead, stay calm and subtly mirror their behaviour, calling attention to what they are doing, and inducing some shame if possible.
I don’t agree with inducing shame, but I think this is an interesting point to consider when dealing with passive aggressors.
May 10 - Don’t Mistake Extra Conviction for Truth
…the conviction bias—if I deny or say something with so much gusto, with an air of being a victim, it is hard to doubt me. We tend to take extra conviction for truth.
Daily Law: When people try to explain their ideas with so much exaggerated energy, or defend themselves with an intense level of denial, that is precisely when you should raise your antennae.
I have worked with some talented leaders during my career. There have been some who have been able to back up their energetic speeches with delivery of results. However, there have been some who are a clear example of why this law is useful to consider.
May 13 - Recognize Deep Narcissists before You Fall for Them
…They immediately turn the conversation back to themselves…
They can be prone to vicious bouts of envy if they see others getting the attention they feel they deserve.
People exist as instruments for attention and validation.
In a relationship, they will slowly make the partner cut off contact with friends—there must be no competition for attention.
May 15 - The Machiavellian Gift
When we are children, all kinds of complicated feelings around our parents center around gifts; we see the giving of a gift as a sign of love and approval. And that emotional element never goes away.
The recipients of gifts, financial or otherwise, are suddenly as vulnerable as children, especially when the gift comes from someone in authority.
Daily Law: Although we often view other people’s actions n the most cynical light, we rarely see the Machiavellian element of a gift, which quite often hides ulterior motives.
May 17 - Deciphering the Shadow
In the course of your life you will come upon people who have very empathic traits that set them apart… unusual confidence, exceptional niceness and affability…rugged masculinity, an intimidating intellect… you may notice a slight exaggeration to these traits…
As a student of human nature, you must understand the reality: the empathic trait generally rests on top of the opposite trait, distracting and concealing it from the public view.
Daily Law: Be extra wary around people who display emphatic traits. It is very easy to get caught up in the appearance and first impression. Watch for the signs and emergence of the opposite over time.
I was friends with a girl once who was the embodiment of the concept. Exceptionally nice, to everyone who crossed her path. However, over the course of our friendship, I realised that she had a viciousness which she kept well hidden. It was a very interesting contrast.
May 18 - Look Beneath the Mask
Your task is to look past the distractions and become aware of those signs that leak out automatically, revealing something of the true emotion beneath the mask.
Daily Law: Train yourself to pay attention to the front that people display.
May 23 - Don’t Always Believe Your Eyes
The visuals carried the message better than any words could do. As one Reagan official said, “What are you going to believe, the facts or your eyes?”
Daily Law: Nonplayers are masters at visual effects, to distract from their manipulations. Guard yourself by paying more attention to the content and the facts than the form of their message.
May 27 - Detect Their True Motives
To decipher events that seem hard to read, I sometimes rely on a strategy that comes from the Latin Cui Bono? It was first used in this context by Cicero and it literally translates to, “For whose good, or benefit?”
It means: when you are trying to figure out the motives behind some murky action, look to see whom it really benefits in the end, and then work backward.
Self-interest rules the world.
Daily Law: Don’t be fooled by appearances, by what happens, by what people do and say. Always ask: Cui bono?
June - The Divine Craft: Mastering the Arts of Indirection and Manipulation
June 2 - Use Absence to Increase Respect
Daily Law: The more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you are already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about, even more admired.
You must learn when to leave.
Create value through scarcity.
How does this apply in today’s world of social media?
June 7 - Never Impugn People’s Intelligence
Daily Law: Subliminally reassure people that they are more intelligent than you are, or even that you are a bit of a moron, and you can run rings around them.
June 10 - Infect the Group with Productive Emotions
Daily Law: People are naturally more emotional and permeable to the moods of others. Work with human nature and turn this into a positive by infecting the group with the proper set of emotions. People are more susceptible to the moods and attitudes of the leader than anyone else.
I think this is something that leaders in organisations often forget or underestimate.
June 11 - Strike the Shepherd
First, recognise troublemakers by their overbearing presence… Once you spot them do not try to reform them or appease them—that will only make things worse.
Daily Law: When the leader is gone, the center of gravity is gone; there is nothing to revolve around and everything falls apart. Strike at the source of the trouble and the sheep will scatter.
Perhaps this is why new CEOs change out their leadership teams when starting at a new organisation.
June 13 - Lead from the Front
Morale is contagious, and you, as leader, set the tone…
Personal example is the best way to set the proper tone and build morale.
June 14 - Deter with a Threatening Presence
“When opponents are unwilling to fight with you, it is because they think it is contrary to their interests, or because you have misled them into thinking so. - Sun Tzu
Daily Law: Build up a reputation: You’re a little crazy. Fighting you is not worth it. Create this reputation and make it credible with a few impressive—impressively violent—acts.
June 17 - The Seductive Visuals
Daily Law: Never neglect the way you arrange things visually. Factors like colour have enormous symbolic resonance.
June 21 - The Slow Power Grab
Daily Law: Overt manipulation and power grabs are dangerous, creating envy, distrust and suspicion. Often the best solution is to move slowly.
June 22 - Control What You Reveal
Power is in many ways a game of appearances, and when you say less than necessary, you inevitably appear greater and more powerful than you are. Your silence will make other people uncomfortable…
…they will jump in, nervously filling the silence with all kinds of comments that will reveal valuable information about them and their weaknesses.
Daily Law: Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less.
This is contrary to what I see in many senior leaders, CEOs, Vice Presidents… they talk, a lot.
August - The Master Persuader: Softening People’s Resistance
August 1 - The Hypnotist’s Art
Repetition involves using the same words over and over, preferably a word with emotional content… The effect is mesmerising—ideas can be permanently implanted in people’s unconscious simply by being repeated often enough.
Be on your guard for repetition from others, salespeople, media etc.
August 6 - Keep Them Guessing
Daily Law: To keep the public’s attention, keep them guessing. Let the moralists accuse of insincerity, of having no core or center. They are actually jealous of the freedom and playfulness you reveal in your public persona.
August 7 - Consider Their Self-Interest
The quickest way to secure people’s minds is by demonstrating, as simply as possible, how an action will benefit them.
August 11 - Master the Are of Insinuation
Daily Law: Insinuation is the supreme means of influencing people. Hints, suggestions, and insinuations bypass people’s natural resistance.
Make everything suggestive.
August 13 - Penetrate Their Minds
Daily Law: You may have brilliant ideas, the kind that could revolutionise the world, but unless you can express them effectively, they will have no force, no power to enter people’s minds in a deep and lasting way. Be strategic in your messaging.
August 17 - Persuade with a Light Touch
Laughter and applause have a domino effect: once your listeners have laughed, they are more likely to laugh again. In this lighthearted mood they are also more apt to listen.
August 21 - The Master Motivator
Daily Law: Motivating people is a subtle art. You must aim indirectly as people’s emotions. By setting up your emotional appeal, you will get inside instead of just scratching the surface.
August 23 - Find Their Thumbscrew
One of the most important things to realise about people, though, is that they all have a weakness, some part of their psychological armour that will not resist, that will bend to your will if you find it and push on it.
August 26 - Appeal to Their Unrealized Greatness
Daily Law: Make your targets feel elevated, lofty, spiritual, and your power over them will be limitless.
August 27 - Transform Yourself into a Deep Listener
…each person you encounter represents an undiscovered country full of surprises.
Daily Law: Transforming yourself into a deep listener will not only prove more amusing as you open your mind to their mind but will also provide the most invaluable lessons about human psychology.
The secret to this: finding other people endlessly fascinating.
September - The Grand Strategist: Rising Out of Tactical Hell
September 4 - Avoid Tactical Hell
Often we see this dynamic in marital spats: it is no longer about repairing the relationship but about imposing one’s point of view.
At times, caught in these battles, you feel defensive and petty, your spirit drawn downward. This is a sure sign that you have descended into tactical hell.
This reminds me of a concept from a book called Crucial Conversations. The concept is to ask yourself, “What do I really want?” when you are faced with a crucial conversation. I think this could be used when in “tactical hell”. By asking yourself, “What do I really want?” it could help you to think long term, as opposed to winning the short term argument.
September 7 - Divide and Conquer
Whether you are beset by many small problems or by one giant problem, make Musashi the model for your mental process. If you let the complexity of the situation confuse you and either hesitate or lash out without though, you will lose mental control, which will only add momentum to the negative force coming at you.
It is often wise to begin with the smallest problem while keeping the most dangerous one at bay.
Daily Law: Take problems one by one.
September 10 - Never Seem Defensive
Never show that something has affected you, or that you are offended—that only shows you have acknowledged a problem. Contempt is a dish that is best served cold.
Daily Law: By acknowledging a petty problem you give it existence and credibility. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem.
September 12 - Time Is All You Have
Daily Law: Resist the urge to respond to trivial annoyances. Time lost can never be regained.
September 14 - Crowd Out Panic
When circumstances scare us, our imagination tends to take over, filling our minds with endless anxieties. You need to gain control of your imagination. A focused mind has no room for anxiety or for the effects of an overactive imagination.
September 24 - Retreat to Gain Perspective
In our dealings with other people too, we are easily infected by their tempo and mood.
Your task as a strategist is simple: to see the differences between yourself and other people, to understand yourself, your side, and the enemy as well as you can, to get more perspective on events, to know things for what they are.
Daily Law: Retreating shows not weakness but strength. It is something you must do every now and then, to find yourself and detach yourself from infecting influences.
October - The Emotional Self: Coming to Terms With Our Dark Side
October 5 - Do Not Let Success Intoxicate You
Daily Law: After any kind of success, analyze the components. See the element of luck that is inevitably there, as well as the role that other people, including mentors, played in your good fortune.
In October 2022, I ran the Melbourne Marathon. It was my first marathon and my goal was to run it in less than 3 hours (the elusive, “Sub-3”).
After completing a 13 week training plan, written by a retired university cross-country coach from America, I ran the marathon in 2:59:43. I did it.
Later, I was reflecting on my success and I realised that I was lucky that the weather was perfect for running. Without that stroke of luck, it’s very unlikely that I would have gone sub-3.
October 8 - The Madness of Groups
Daily Law: Never relinquish your ability to doubt, reflect and consider other options—your rationality as an individual is your only protection against the madness that can overcome a group.
Or to put it another way, “Allow yourself the luxury of changing your mind.”
October 9 - The Power of Association
Daily Law: Be aware of the power those with whom you associate have over you.
Is it a church? Or a cult?
October 11 - Beware the Fragile Ego
Daily Law: Envy is perhaps the ugliest human emotion. Destroy it before it destroys you. Develop your sense of self-worth from internal standards and not incessant comparisons.
“Comparison is the thief of joy.” This quote is often attributed to President Theodore Roosevelt. I think today, more than ever, this is a problem for our society. Given the prevalence of social media, compare ourselves to others on a daily, if not hourly, if not minute by minute basis.
How often do you take a break from social media? How often do you find yourself doing something, because of what you think your audience may think? Would you still take the picture or do the thing if you weren’t on social media?
October 12 - See Things as They Are, Not as Your Emotions Colour Them
When you are angry, take no action. When you are fearful, know you are going to exaggerate the dangers you face.
Daily Law: Life demands the utmost in realism, seeing things as they are. The more you can limit or compensate for your emotional responses, the closer you will come to this ideal.
October 16 - Test for Envy
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer devised a quick way to test for envy.
Tell suspected enviers some good news about yourself—a promotion, a new and exciting love interest, a book contract. You will notice a very quick expression of disappointment. Their tone of voice as they congratulate you will betray some tension and strain.
Equally, tell them some misfortune of yours and notice their uncontrollable microexpression of joy in your pain, what is commonly known as schadenfreude. Their eyes light up for a second.
Daily Law: If you see such looks in the first few encounters with someone, and they happen more than once, be on the lookout for a dangerous envier entering your life.
October 20 - See Beyond the Moment
Daily Law: Instead of merely reacting, step back and look at the wider context. Consider the ramifications of any action you take. Realise that it is often better to do nothing, to not react, to let time go by and see what it reveals.
October 25 - Examine Your Emotions to Their Roots
You are angry. Let the feeling settle from within, and think about it…
Dig below any trigger points to see where they started. Your greatest danger here is your ego and how it makes you unconsciously maintain illusions about yourself. These may be comforting in the moment, but in the long run they make you defensive and unable to learn or progress.
Daily Law: Develop the habit of examining in depth your own emotional responses. You will end up slowly eliminating unnecessary reactions.
October 26 - Resist Simple Explanations
Daily Law: It would be of infinite benefit for us to allow more nuances and ambiguity into our judgements or people and events.
This reminds me of two concepts that I try to think about when I’m dealing with people:
Trust is not always binary.
With enough curiosity, almost any human behaviour is understandable.
November - The Rational Human: Realizing Your Higher Self
November 3 - Increase Your Reaction Time
If you find yourself rushing to commit to people to hire or be hired by them, step back and give it a day. The longer you can take the better, because perspective comes with time.
Daily Law: Consider this like resistance training—the longer you can resist reacting, the more mental space you have for actual reflection, and the stronger your mind will become.
November 16 - Integrate the Shadow Side
Daily Law: Your goal must be not only complete acceptance of your Shadow side but also the desire to integrate it into your present personality. By doing so, you will be a more complete human and will radiate an authenticity that will draw people to you.
November 18 - Focus Outwardly
What drives you is not getting attention but bringing the best results possible for the most people. You absorb yourself in the work, not your ego.
Daily Law: If you exude this attitude, people will feel it, and they will be drawn to you by the simple fact that it is rare to encounter a person so sensitive to people’s moods and focused so supremely on results.
November 22 - Embrace Whatever Happens to You
Daily Law: Embrace all obstacles as learning experiences, as means to getting stronger.
November 26 - The Confirmation Bias
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Daily Law: Your first impulse should always be to find the evidence that disconfirms your most cherished beliefs and those of others. That is true science.
November 30 - Advance with a Sense of Purpose
In military history, we can identify two types of armies—those that fight for a cause or an idea, and those that fight largely for money, as part of a job.
Fighting for a cause is known as a force multiplier—the greater the connection to the cause, the higher the morale, which translates into greater force. Such an army can often defeat one that is much larger but less motivated.
Daily Law: In a world where so many people are meandering, those with a sense of purpose spring past the rest with ease and attract attention for this. Find yours and elevate it by making the connection as deep as possible.
December - The Cosmic Sublime: Expanding the Mind to its Furthest Reaches
December 5 - Immerse the Mind in the Moment
Daily Law: This is the most powerful point you can reach in sports or any other endeavour—when you are no longer thinking, you are in the moment. Make it a daily practice: to focus intensely on the present moment.
December 6 - Alive Time or Dead Time?
Vivre sans temps mort. (Live without wasted time.) - Parisian Political Slogan
The time that you are alive is the only real possession that you have. Everything else can be taken away from you—your family, your house, your cars, your job. The time that you’re alive is the only thing you truly possess, and you can give it away.
Daily Law: Never waste a minute. Make today your own—whether you’re stuck in traffic, sick in bed, or working long hours.
December 19 - Feel Reborn
…Fyodor Dostoyevsky, imprisoned for participating in an alleged conspiracy against the Russian czar, found himself and his fellow prisoners suddenly transported to a square in St. Petersburg, and told that they were about to be executed.
At the last moment, a representative from the czar rode into the square, announcing that their sentences had been commuted to several years’ hard labor in Siberia.
Utterly overwhelmed by his psychological brush with death, Dostoyevsky felt reborn.
And the experience remained embedded in him for the rest of his life, inspiring new depths of empathy and intensifying his observational powers.
Daily Law: Imagine that you have been spared from a death sentence, now every day is one you didn’t think you’d get. Live accordingly.
December 27 - Amor Fati
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be other than it is, not in the future not in the past, not in all eternity. Not merely to endure that which happens of necessity… but to love it. - Friedrich Nietzsche
What amor fati (love of fate) means is the following: There is much in life we cannot control… and our task is to accept these moments, and even embrace them, not for the pain but for the opportunities to learn and strengthen ourselves.
Daily Law: We put this into practice by continually seeing events as fateful—everything happens for a reason, and it is up to us to glean the lesson.
I think about this a lot. I think about the negative events in my life that I wasn’t able to control or fix. Embracing these has been difficult, but not impossible.
I ask myself,
How can this make me stronger?
How can I learn from this?
How can I help others through this experience?