Daily Wisdom #12

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THE DAILY STOIC

By Ryan Holiday

“You say, good fortune used to meet you at every corner. But the fortunate person is the one who gives themselves a good fortune. And good fortunes are a well-tuned soul, good impulses and good actions.” —MARCUS AURELIUS

What is the more productive notion of good luck? One that is defined by totally random factors outside your control, or a matter of probability that can be increased—though not guaranteed—by the right decisions and the right preparation? Obviously, the latter. This is why successful yet mysteriously “lucky” people seem to gravitate toward it.

According to the wonderful site Quote Investigator, versions of this idea date back at least to the sixteenth century in the proverb “Diligence is the mother of good luck.” In the 1920s, Coleman Cox put a modern spin on it by saying, “I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have.” (That saying has been incorrectly attributed to Thomas Jefferson, who said nothing of the kind.) Today, we say, “Luck is where hard work meets opportunity.” Or is it typically flipped?

Today, you can hope that good fortune and good luck magically come your way. Or you can prepare yourself to get lucky by focusing on doing the right thing at the right time—and, ironically, render luck mostly unnecessary in the process.

THE DAILY LAWS

By Robert Greene

Easy Money This desire to get something for nothing has been very costly to many people who have dealt with me and with other con men. . . . When people learn—as I doubt they will—that they can’t get something for nothing, crime will diminish and we shall all live in greater harmony. —JOSEPH WEIL

Dangling the lure of a free lunch is the con artist’s stock-in-trade. No man was better at this than the most successful con artist of our age, Joseph Weil, aka “The Yellow Kid.” The Yellow Kid learned early that what made his swindles possible was his fellow humans’ greed. Over the years, Weil devised many ways to seduce people with the prospect of easy money. He would hand out “free” real estate—who could resist such an offer?—and then the suckers would learn they had to pay $25 to register the sale. Since the land was free, it seemed worth the high fee, and the Yellow Kid would make thousands of dollars on the phony registration. In exchange, he would give his suckers a phony deed. Other times, he would tell suckers about a fixed horse race, or a stock that would earn 200 percent in a few weeks. As he spun his stories, he would watch the sucker’s eyes open wide at the thought of a free lunch. Don’t let yourself get lured in by the prospect of easy money. As the Yellow Kid said himself: greed does not pay.

Daily Law: Be suspicious of anyone dangling the lure of something for nothing. Get-rich-quick schemes are scams. The lottery is really a tax on the mathematically illiterate. There are no shortcuts to power.

A CALENDAR OF WISDOM

By Leo Tolstoy

Love is one of the manifestations of God in man. The purpose of life is to express love in all its manifestations. In order to be happy, you should love—love with self-sacrifice, love all and everything, and spread a network of love everywhere. No matter who gets into this net, catch them all and fill them with love. Everyone can recall a moment, universal to all, perhaps from early childhood, when you wanted to love everyone and everything—your father, your mother, your brothers, evil people, a dog, a cat, grass—and you wanted everyone to feel good, everyone to feel happy; and even more, you wanted to do something special so that everyone would be happy, even to sacrifice yourself, to give your life so that everyone should feel happy and joyful. This feeling is the feeling of love, and it must be returned to, for it is the life of every person.

Anything you do should be filled with love.

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