📚 A&B #155

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👋 Hey everyone,

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📚 Book Summary:

This week's book is “The Daily Stoic” by Ryan Holiday.

This book holds 366 days of Stoic insights and exercises that will help you become calmer, wiser, and live a better life. If you want to get into Stoicism or are already a fan of it, this book is for you.

Here are 3 key lessons from the book:

📖

1) Let Go of Fake Friends

“There’s nothing worse than a wolf befriending sheep. Avoid false friendship at all costs. If you are good, straightforward, and well meaning it should show in your eyes and not escape notice.” –Marcus Aurelius

There are two important lessons we can learn here.

The first is to remove fake friends from our lives such as friends who are jealous, narcissistic, or untrustworthy. Time is our most valuable resource so it doesn’t make sense to spend it on people who don’t want the best for us or treat us well.

The second lesson is to avoid being a fake friend to others.

Do we tell people we’re happy to help them with a project but then ignore their text when they ask us to come by? Do we make plans with people but secretly know we’re going to cancel last minute to get out of it?

If so, we need to either work on becoming a better friend or realize that this person isn’t someone we want in our lives and stop being a fake friend to them.

I’m only 28 so I don’t know much about life nor am I filled with much wisdom, but I have found that the only I get, the more I enjoy focusing on quality friendships over quantity friendships.

When I was young, I wanted to be friends with everyone and hated being alone so I ended up hanging out with fake friends and people I didn’t really have any interests with.

Now that I’m older, I realized it’s much more enjoyable to spend my time with a friend I’m super close with or just spend that time alone.

📖

2) Busting The “I Don’t Have Time Myth”

“It’s not at all that we have too short a time to live, but that we squander a great deal of it. Life is long enough, and it’s given sufficient measure to do many great things if we spend it well. But when it’s employed to no good end, we’re finally driven to see that it has passed by before we even recognized it passing…we don’t receive a short life, we make it so.” –Seneca

Here’s a cold hard truth: We take time for granted and waste far too much of life.

We waste it sitting around, chasing the wrong things, or by refusing to take the time to ask ourselves what’s actually important to us.

Many of us (myself included) often find ourselves uttering the words, “I just don’t have enough time.” But unless you’re a single mom, raising a kid, and working two jobs, that’s not true.

Do you actually not have enough time…OR are you just spending time on a lot of unnecessary things?

The average American spends 1.5 hours playing video games, 3.5 hours on their phone, and 1-4 hours watching TV per DAY.

The truth is that a lack of time is actually a lack of priorities.

I loved playing video games ever since I was a kid. But I realized I was spending 1-2 hours a day playing Xbox instead of reading books or achieving my goal of becoming a full-time creator.

So I rearranged my priorities and sold my Xbox to focus on Alex & Books.

Life is plenty long, we just have to use it properly.

📖

3) Stop Reading, Start Applying

“Stop wandering about! You aren’t likely to read your own notebooks, or ancient histories, or the anthologies you’ve collected to enjoy in your old age. Get busy with life’s purpose, toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue–if you care for yourself at all–and do it while you can.” –Marcus Aurelius

The purpose of reading and studying is to help us live a better life.

But at some point, we need to put the books down, turn off the podcasts, close the videos, and take action. Because the truth is that no one will do the work for us.

• We can read 100 books on exercise, but if we never go to the gym we won’t gain any muscle.

• We can read 100 books on entrepreneurship, but if we’re afraid to start a business we can’t implement anything we’ve learned.

• We can read 100 books on health, but if we never change our diet we won’t lose any weight.

So maybe another book, podcast, or video isn’t the answer. Maybe the right answer is to just start.

✅ Actionable Advice:

1) A great tip to become a better friend:

• I have about 5 friends I consider to be my best friends. Whenever I’m shopping online or at the mall and I see something they’d love, I buy it and just hold it until their birthday, Christmas, or some other occasion.

  • This way I always have an awesome and thoughtful gift for them.

    • I’ve literally bought a sweater and t-shirt for one of my friends at the mall and held it for 8 months in my closet until Xmas–they loved it and I didn’t have to do some last-minute panic shopping.

2) Figure out where your time actually goes:

• Grab your phone and list the 24 hours in a day (6am, 7am, 8am, etc) or just print out a 24-hour planner.

  • The next day write out how you spent each hour of the day.

  • At the end of the day, reflect on where time was “wasted” and activities you rather be doing during that time going forward.

3) For whatever big goal you want to accomplish, take the first step today:

• Film your first video.

• Sign up for that gym.

• Buy that domain name.

• Write your first blog post.

📖 Reading Lesson:

I’m thinking about doing a free live webinar next month.

PS: If you want to get notified about the webinar/my course, enter your email here.

💎 Weekly Gem:

How to Get Rich

Naval is one of the most respected entrepreneurs and investors of our time. He’s famous for his “How to Get Rich (without getting lucky)” Twitter thread but this podcast is even more valuable since Naval dives deep into each lesson. Listen and take notes!

PS: Here’s the correct link to last week’s video.

PPS: I’m giving 2 free copies of Alex Hormozi’s new book.

Thank you for your support, I'll see you next Sunday!

Read on,

Alex W.