For years, I thought momento mori (“remember death”), a common precept in Stoic philosophy, was a cynical expression. Remembering death seemed opposed to embracing life. Why focus on the end of a process I love so much? Naively, I thought this was similar to other...
I now understand why former Navy Seal and ultra marathoner, David Goggins, earned the nicknames the “toughest man alive,” the “sultan of suffering,” a “connoisseur of pain,” and a “disciple of discipline.” Listening to the audiobook of his life story, Can’t Hurt...
Daniel Coyle, in The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups, presents a compelling case for why some teams are more successful than others. His one-word answer is “culture,” which he defines as “the way that people interact within an organized...
Taleeb Starkes, having grown up in a public housing project in Philadelphia, has unique insights into the problems plaguing black, inner-city communities. These insights, combined with a desire to share his message, led him to pen a #1 Amazon bestseller, Black Lies...
After years of books, blogs, and blowhards, I had all but given up on popular self-help advice. That was until I heard Bill Perkins, author of Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life, discuss his book in an interview. Perkins explains how...
The Stoic philosophers, including the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and the slave-turned-philosopher Epictetus, lived some 2,000 years ago and didn’t have the benefit of more recent schools of philosophy, such as Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. Among other things, they...
Several years ago, while procrastinating in graduate school, I discovered a short video clip that helped me at the time—and has now helped me again. The clip, posted below, is of Ira Glass, the award-winning producer of the radio show, This American Life,...
A collection of poetry that has helped me positively develop as a person is The Best Loved Poems of the American People, selected by Hazel Felleman. I found my copy on the free books’ counter at my local library more than a decade ago. Since then, it’s provided...
Here is an opportunity to look into the mind of a super-achiever. Hedge-fund manager, artist, world-record holder (and much more) Stephen Duneier explains, in his TED Talk titled, “How to Achieve Your Most Ambitious Goals,” how he went from being a subpar student...