Ep. #515: 8 Ancient Laws for Creating a Simpler and Happier Life

Confucius once said that life is simple but we insist on making it complicated.
Come again?

What’s simple about the myriad demands, dilemmas, and dealings of everyday life that push and pull on our body, mind, and soul?

What’s simple about love, success, health, wisdom, satisfaction, spirituality, and the rest of the brass rings we all strive for?

Many times, life appears overwhelmingly complex, like trying to build an airplane while in flight, or even bitterly abusive, like licking a car battery.

And understandably so.

In this age of liberty and abundance where we’re free to be and do whatever we want, we must choose tasks and responsibilities from a dizzying number of possibilities. And then, as efforts evaporate, wins elude, and penalties encroach, we realize we’re not spinning an elegant web but cobbling up a clumsy knot.

And so we sputter, skid, and spiral as our self-confidence leaks from a thousand wounds.

Many people try to escape this existential strike zone by heaving more lumpy stones into the rock tumbler of life. This only makes more noise.

What they need to do instead is, as Confucius counseled, strive for simplicity by jettisoning everything that’s unclear, unsound, and unworkable and seeking the opposite—clarity, sanity, and practicality.

Often, this means doing less but doing it better by focusing on what’s essential and saying no to everything else, by learning to do the right things, not trying to do everything right.

And in this podcast, I want to share with you several simple and essential laws of successful living, some of which go back thousands of years.

These principles have remained in currency because they form a robust operating system for life—one that not only helps you make smart decisions but also avoid very stupid ones, which many people fail to appreciate the importance of.

Most of my biggest wins in life have come from remembering the obvious and ignoring the esoteric and trying to be consistently not stupid instead of sporadically brilliant.

Anyway, let’s get to the laws . . .

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Mentioned on The Show:
Books by Mike Matthews: legionathletics.com/products/books/
The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation: legionathletics.com/the-little-blac…out-motivation/

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