5 Ways Stoicism Rewires You to Get Ahead of 99% of People

Wisdom To Supercharge Your Health, Wealth & Happiness

I’m a huge fan of Stoicism.

Striving to achieve goals in life can sometimes feel like you’re on a never-ending rollercoaster.

I’ve been building businesses for almost a decade and by most people's standards have achieved a lifetime’s worth of success.

But there were many times I wanted to quit.

Stoic thinking has helped me to get back up, dust myself off and go again more times than I can count.

Who Were The Stoics?

Stoicism is a school of philosophy that flourished in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. It includes thinkers ranging from Marcus Aurelius (once the emperor of Rome and most powerful man on the planet) to Seneca (a famous philosopher who was banished from civilisation in 41 AD Ancient Rome but continued his writings for many years).

Beyond the countless life lessons beholden in stoic writing, I’ve found that applying Stoicism to your personal goals can help you build something incredible.

Whether that’s a business that provides the wealth for you to live a life of freedom, a body that adds years to your longevity or a family to be proud of…

In this article I’m going to outline 5 pieces of Stoic wisdom from Philosophers who lived over 1000 years ago, that you can leverage in your journey — whether you’re just starting out or 20 years deep into the game of self-improvement.

I’m 100% confident that following and applying these laws of Stoicism will make you more successful.

Self Belief

“If you find something very difficult to achieve yourself, don’t imagine it impossible — for anything possible and proper for another person can be achieved as easily by you” — Marcus Aurelius

If somebody else has done it, you can find a way to do it.

The great thing about the modern-day era compared to pre-internet days is that the thinking and actions of the most successful people on the planet are accessible easily via books, podcasts, biographies, documentaries, audiobooks and the internet.

If you want to start a software company, the information is out there to do it.

If you want to launch a charity, you can find books and podcasts to do that.

Whatever your goal, by leveraging the knowledge that others readily share, know that you can do it too. If somebody else has done it, then so can you.

Listening

“To the youngster talking nonsense Zeno said, ‘The reason why we have two ears and only one mouth is so we might listen more and talk less” — Diogenes Laertius

The most underrated life skill is listening.

You will learn far more by listening than by talking.

Listen to your customers, listen to your friends, listen to your family, listen to your co-workers. By listening, you truly understand what people want and how to create win/win situations in your life.

The fundamental rule of business and indeed most elements of life is this; provide people with what they want and they will provide you with what you want.

The catch is, you have to give before you get, you have to provide value to get something in return.

When you listen to people, you learn exactly what they want so you can offer it to them and start creating more win/win situations in life.

Perseverance

“Success comes to the lowly and to the poorly talented, but the special characteristics of a great person is to triumph over the disasters and panics of human life” — Seneca

The true making of a successful person in business or life, and the most reliable way to get wealthy, healthy and happy without relying on pure luck is to become someone who perseveres.

Anyone can get lucky in business or life.

Somebody with no talent or work ethic could win the lottery.

People bought some obscure cryptocurrency only for it to explode 1000x overnight and become instant millionaires.

Yet these are fleeting wins. And they’re often accompanied by challenges.

The lottery winner goes bankrupt.

The crypto millionaire makes a bad investment.

The magical thing is, that these people can still succeed if they learn to persevere.

Become somebody who can handle what life throws at them and continue making steady strides towards their goal.

When you can persevere in the face of challenges and obstacles, month after month, year after year, it becomes very difficult not to be successful.

Learning

“Leisure without study is death — a tomb for the living person.” — Seneca

The more you learn, the more you earn.

I’m a huge believer in taking time off in business. Every time I do it, I come back refreshed.

Yet mindlessly spending days watching TV or getting blackout drunk — this is what Seneca would refer to as leisure without study, which in his words — is death.

People operating at the highest level still take breaks, but they use those breaks to improve in some way.

I try to take at least a few weeks off each year. Yet what I do in that time is not mindless. I read, I watch documentaries, I listen to podcasts, I pick other people's brains for information and absorb what they tell me.

A classic example is a host of travelling around the country I had to do around the holidays this year. I turned around 20 hours of driving in the space of a week from a mindless waste of time to an educational experience by listening to two audiobooks in their entirety.

These things expand your mind and mean that you come back to your goal sharper from the new learning, not mentally out of shape from mindlessly wasting time.

Delayed Gratification

“If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures; if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures” — Musonius Rufus

Short-term pain equals long-term gain.

Achieving results is about delayed gratification. With hard work, sustained over time, come results.

If you slack off, spend the day marathoning the latest Netflix show or procrastinate, you may feel comfortable in the moment, but you will not achieve your goals.

Working out is uncomfortable. If you skip your workout and sit at home eating doughnuts, sure it feels good in the moment, but you pay the price in the future.

Delayed gratification is the name of the game.

Putting in a hard workout. Going for a run. Resisting the urge to order a McDonalds and cooking some good home-cooked food instead — these are all examples of short term pain that create long term gain in the form of better health.

It’s the same in business. I spent over 5 years absorbing as much information about business as possible before I started making traction as an entrepreneur.

The feeling of accomplishing your goals from hard work feels exponentially better than any short-term, fleeting pleasure — repeatedly delaying gratification, putting in the work now to bear the fruit later is the essence of self-development in business and life.

Thanks for checking out my article. I’m a UK-based entrepreneur and investor currently scaling two multi-6-figure businesses.

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