5 key insights from the new book, The Truth About Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit

We all lie, all the time—including you. Human deception is no different from its animal equivalent of camouflage, spots, and stripes. Charm is our very own version of frilly fins and peacock feathers. Like a stick insect adapted to hide among twigs, the effort to deceive, from camouflage to creative bullshit, is an evolutionary arms race as old as organic life.

1. You’re a natural-born liar.

Trickery is fundamental to interaction, and the instinct to misrepresent objective reality to suit our needs is fundamental to communication. In the evolution of deceit, language only came about quite recently, billions of years after more basic and more effective tools of the con. In fact, humans may have developed language specifically to manipulate each other in new and cleverer ways; it’s just the latest innovation in a billion-year-old chess game.

As Rutgers Professor of Anthropology and Biological Sciences Robert Trivers put it, “Our most prized possession, language, not only strengthens our ability to lie, but greatly extends its range.” Consider that when you lie with your scent, your pattern, or your petals, you can only lie about what you are, here and now. But lie with words, and you can lie about anything, anyone, anywhere; you can rewrite facts past, present, and future. In other words, human speech allows deceptions to transcend space and time. Dishonesty is truly a feature, not a bug, of our nature.

Jefferson Randolph Smith was a con man who set up the first telegraph office out of Skagway, Alaska. For the price of five dollars, settlers, frontiersmen, and prospectors could send a telegraph message to anyone in the United States. Unsurprisingly, there were lines around the building every day. It was great business—even though the first telegraph wires didn’t actually arrive in Alaska until two years later.

People lined up and paid for over a year to send important messages that went as far as the wall of Smith’s office. So why were people so ready to believe that Smith could send out telegrams just because he said so?

In the absence of evidence, humans tend to believe that whatever we’re presented with is true—be it someone’s name, a random fact, a complex explanation, even something as obvious as the presence of a physical object we see Neurologists refer to this tendency as the “honesty bias,” and it’s how we know almost everything that we know. It’s because of your honesty bias that you don’t automatically wonder if a lamp is a hallucination that only you can see, or suspect that everyone you meet might be lying about their name. If we didn’t lean toward this neurological shortcut, we’d all go insane.

It’s also the single adaptation that has allowed humans to develop speech, literacy, history, science, and civilization itself. You don’t have to discover, confirm, or even understand every fact or idea you learn, because you are biased to just accept them as true and keep climbing. This is the mechanism behind our species’ collective intelligence: To rapidly acquire another’s lifetime of experience or problem-solving for ourselves, all we need to do is ask—and then trust the answer.

So in the long run, we benefit more from the honesty bias than we risk in being overly trusting. Our honesty bias may be exploitable, but it’s also indispensable.

Seeing may be believing, but it really shouldn’t be. Your brain doesn’t actually have the processing power to deal with all of the sensory data available at every second—so, like all gamblers, it cheats. As a result, we often end up seeing what we expect to see.Take shell games; everybody falls for sleight of hand because it exploits several loopholes in perceptual cognition, the ways in which your brain processes and interprets input from your senses. In other words, if you have a normally functioning brain, you literally can’t not fall for it.

3. Lies take advantage of the way we perceive—and construct—reality.

Your visual cortex—the part of the brain that processes electrical signals from the retina and turns them into images in your mind—functions with a 0.1-second delay. So you can’t believe your eyes, because while your eyes may work, your brain is processing everything your eyes pick up about one-tenth of a second behind what’s happening.

Your brain also doesn’t have the bandwidth to process everything you see, so it fills in most of what’s around you with what it expects to be around you. It’s only when something changes radically that your brain notices, and loops back around to see what’s going on.

There are other exploitable neurological loopholes as well—for example, there’s the mirroring effect. Mirroring is when specialized cells in your brain called “mirror neurons” cause you to imitate the gesture, posture, or subtle movements of whomever you’re interacting with. Someone smiles, you smile back. Someone looks up suddenly, you look up too. You assume these are conscious choices, but they’re not—and it’s an incredibly effective way to make people look (or not look) at whatever you want.

In 1898, four Denver reporters from different newspapers went to a bar, got really drunk, and made up a story. They all claimed in their separate papers to have met a team of four American engineers on their way to China. The engineers, they said, told them that they’d been hired to destroy the Great Wall at China’s request. Supposedly this was being done as a gesture of goodwill, and as an invitation to foreign trade.

4. What matters is not if something is true, but if it is believed.

It was a multi-person hoax, and unfortunately, other newspapers picked up the story, and it went viral. Within weeks, a major east coast newspaper did an entire special Sunday spread about the fake destruction of the Great Wall, including elaborate illustrations and further exposition about the Chinese government’s historic plan to end their isolationist policy.

Because this was a respected newspaper, the story quickly spread to Europe, then to Asia, and finally to China, where political tempers were already running high. In fact, this fiction allegedly contributed to the Boxer Rebellion, a destabilizing and violent disaster that hastened the decline of the Qing Dynasty.

The point of this story is not that a single fake news story may have radically altered the course of 20th-century Chinese history—though it did—it’s that the Boxer Rebellion occurred just as it would have had the news been real. The cause may have been fictitious, but it had the same effect as its truthful parallel.

Reality, in other words, is circumstantial. In the greater scheme of things, it matters less whether or not a thing is actually true, but rather whether or not it is believed to be so.

If a whole civilization believes certain objects have power or value, and everyone behaves accordingly, then for all intents and purposes, they do possess that value or power. It may be a lie, but a quality counterfeit object still works precisely the same way the real object would—for exactly as long as it is believed to be authentic. And if a thing only needs to be believed in to be effective, then that begs the question: Was there ever anything to value or authority other than belief in the first place?

5. Nothing is entirely real.

The rule of law, the value of diamonds, the existence of the economy—when we all agree to believe certain things, those things become real. Take paper money—it’s just paper, but as long as we all agree to believe in it together, it has value. It takes on the weight of reality.

Why we lie and how we believe are so inextricably intertwined that there can be no faith without fraud, no truth without lies, no civilization without cons. Whether they’re the lies we tell each other, or the subtler and more complicated lies we tell ourselves, deceit and belief are two halves of one whole. One can’t exist without the other, and society can’t function without both.

The Truth About Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit 

Scientist and historian Aja Raden untangles the complex relationship of truth to lie, belief to faith, and deception to propaganda.

Understand yourself and those around you.

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Psychology

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Philosophy

history

History

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

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Science & Nature

The Truth About Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56756745-the-daily-laws">The Daily Laws </a> is a page-a-day, calendar-style book covering the three big topics of mastery, power, and emotions, sharing Robert Greene’s best lessons from 20 years of research of the dynamics within and between humans.

The Daily Laws - Book Summary 

"Embrace your strangeness. Identify what makes you different. Fuse those things together and become an anomaly."-Robert Green

Author Quote 

If your son had worked some 60 odd jobs by the time he was 36, would you write him off as a lost cause? It’s a brutal question, but it’s hard to imagine any parent wouldn’t at least be deeply worried. And yet, in <a href="https://powerseductionandwar.com/">Robert Greene’s </a>case, everything ultimately turned out more than just fine.

Book Overview 

After what can only be called “a rough start” — and that’s an extreme understatement — Greene has now published multiple million-copy bestsellers. After researching the dynamics within and between humans for more than 20 years, he decided to curate the best of his many “laws” from <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/robert-greene-books/">his books </a>. The result is <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56756745-the-daily-laws">The Daily Laws </a>, a 366-page compendium with short, daily life lessons.

The book is structured like a calendar, but the months are sub-grouped into three major sections. Here’s a lesson from one of each of them: <ol><li>Mastery is a lifelong journey, not a destination we arrive at. </li><li>The game of power is always on, and there are only 3 ways to react to it. </li><li>Avoid tactical hell by zooming out regularly in all kinds of life scenarios. </li> </ol>

Top 3 Book Ideas 

Over the first three months, the book deals with mastery, about which Greene wrote <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/mastery-summary/">a book of the same name </a>. Going back to his own journey to becoming a writer, Greene had loved words since he was a child, but a career in journalism didn’t pan out, and so he began bouncing from job to job. He kept writing on the side, however, and eventually, opportunity struck. Greene published <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/the-48-laws-of-power-summary/">The 48 Laws of Power </a>, a book that sold over two million copies and changed his career.

Lesson 1: Mastery is a never-ending process — it must be maintained, not attained.

If you asked him today, however, he’d still tell you he’s constantly learning. Greene believes mastery must be maintained , not attained . After discovering your “life’s task,” a process he likens to “an archaeological dig” rather than a magical revelation, you first must apprentice. Following years of mentorship, you’ll become a master — but that’s not where the journey ends.

In <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/the-one-thing-summary/">The One Thing </a>, Gary Keller shared a great way of looking at it: “When you can see mastery as a path you go down instead of a destination you arrive at, it starts to feel accessible and attainable. Mastery is a way of thinking, a way of acting, and a journey you experience.” No matter how good you are at your job, how famous you become, or how many books you sell, remember that you must always <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/the-practice-summary/">keep practicing </a>, learning, and growing. Mastery is a path we walk, not a destination we arrive at.

Most of Greene’s writing deals with power: how we attain and lose it, and the games people play to get and keep it. For five months, his daily laws cover various questions around power. One of the most fundamental yet important ones is that humans are always playing power games.

Lesson 2: Power is a never-ending game that’s always being played, and you can only embrace it, ignore it, or accept it.

Whether you like it or not, people want power, and so wherever humans are involved, power struggles come into play — pun intended. There are only three ways to deal with the fact that life is a never-ending game of power:

<ol><li>Embrace it . Many people love power games. Unfortunately, the <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/the-prince-summary/">Machiavellis </a>out there often lose their power due to corruption and being too desperate for it. </li><li>Ignore it . Others pretend power doesn’t exist or turn up their nose at anyone who gives in to a desire for status. But that’s just opting out of a game everyone else plays. You can — but you’ll also end up with no power. </li><li>Accept it . A balanced person will choose when and which power games to play. You can sit out some of them but make sure you attain power where it really matters to you, and thus live a good life. </li> </ol>

Power isn’t inherently good or bad. Like money or status, it’s just a tool. What it leads to depends on how you use it. Stay aware of the power games happening around you at all times, and then make conscious decisions about which ones you actually want to play.

“Tactical hell” is a term Greene uses for the reactive mode all of us find ourselves in from time to time. You’re so stressed out, you don’t even know where to begin. Deadlines, chores, the demands of friends and family — it’s all too much, and all you can do is react, react, react. But that’s not living. That’s just being pushed around by life’s events and your emotions.

Lesson 3: If you don’t want to get stuck in “tactical hell,” you must take a higher, wider, more long-term perspective regularly.

In order to combat tactical hell, we must “take an elevated perspective,” Greene says. What does that mean? Zoom out! Remember the big picture. Think about how big life is, and how small your problems in comparison. Consider the long-term view: Will your neighbor really stay angry at you forever because you blocked his driveway once?

Most of the battles you find yourself in aren’t really battles you have to fight. You can disengage. Take a breath when life gets stressful. Write an angry email but don’t send it. Remember your mortality, and think about long-term consequences rather than short-term discomfort. Take these steps, and you’ll rarely get stuck in tactical hell!

In <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/simon-sinek-books/">Simon Sinek’s </a><a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/the-infinite-game-summary/">The Infinite Game </a>, there is an exercise to discover your “Just Cause.” When I did it for Four Minute Books, I realized our larger purpose was this: We want to build a world in which every person reads at least one page a day, and no human, child or adult, is afraid to open any book.

The Daily Laws - Boo Review

“Read a page, save the day.” That’s the mantra we want you to adopt, and in that sense, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56756745-the-daily-laws">The Daily Laws: 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy, and Human Nature </a>is the perfect tool. Try reading a page a day, and if it doesn’t stick, just flick around to see which laws grab you the most!

Fun fact: Ryan Holiday was Greene’s mentee, and he likely helped him with this book, which is very similar to <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/the-daily-stoic-summary/">The Daily Stoic </a>, an equally valuable and easy-to-read book.

The 33-year-old frustrated project manager who can’t seem to get ahead at his job, the 46-year-old successful painter who’s wondering where next to take her career, and anyone who wants to get an overview of Robert Greene’s work.

Who would I recommend the Daily Laws  to?

Our summary of The Daily Laws by Robert Greene will teach you 3 lessons from the big topics of the book: mastery, power, and emotions.

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Motivation & Inspiration

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Habits

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Books

The Daily Laws Summary

Positive affirmations are some set of words filled with positively. We should practice daily positive affirmation.Here is 20 positive affirmation to build your confidence and live your life fully.

Positive Affirmation

I am confident and I highly value myself.

Confidence

I am growing and learning about new things everyday.

Grow

I believe in myself, my skills and my capabilities.

Skills

I have the power to change myself and I have to be confident about my actions by doing that can change the world.

Power

I am determined and I can do anything I set my mind to.

Determination

I am confident in my ability to solve issues and problems.

Abilities

I grow with every challenge and won't let obstacles stop me. Also I seek discomfort, it helps me to overcome my insecurities

Challenges

I am consistent in my hard work and have the vision to achieve my goals.

Hard Work

Success is a journey and I am on a journey. I have or can easily get everything I need to succeed

Success

I let go limiting beliefs and choose to trust myself.

Trust

There will be a lot of problems but I know I can face every challenge with ease, there is nothing I can't overcome.

Problems

I am creating my dream life every single day

Dreams

I believe in my ability to express my true self with ease and transparency

Expressions

I show up every day and do my best to present the best version of myself.

Best Abilities

All I need to succeed is my belief and my faith within me.

Beliefs

I am in full control of my life and what happens to me.

Control

I release negative self talk and don't need validation from others

Negative Talk

It's ok to leave my comfort zone and explore myself.

Comfort Zone

I can embrace my flaws and imperfections

Authentic Self

It gives me a push and reminds me who am I and what I want in life. 

20 positive affirmations to build your confidence

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Mental Health

problemsolving

Problem Solving

There are many great books and resources for personal development and self-improvement, and the best ones for you may depend on your specific goals and learning style. Here are a few highly-regarded ones to consider:

"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey - This classic book teaches the habits of proactive people who take control of their lives and focus on what's truly important.

"How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie - This book offers practical advice for building better relationships, improving communication skills, and becoming a more charismatic and persuasive person.

Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill - This book is a guide to wealth and success, drawing on the experiences of successful individuals and providing practical advice for how to achieve financial independence and personal fulfillment.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success" by Carol Dweck - This book explores the role of mindset in success, and explains how adopting a growth mindset can help you achieve your goals and overcome obstacles.

"The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment" by Eckhart Tolle - This book teaches the importance of mindfulness and living in the present moment, and provides practical advice for cultivating inner peace and happiness.

education

Learning & Education

5 Great Books for Personal Development 

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Making money is not a thing you do - it's a skill you learn.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Getting rich is about knowing what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity — a piece of business — to gain your financial freedom.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage.</li></ul>

Understand How Wealth is Created

<ul><li>Specific knowledge cannot be taught, but it can be learned.</li><li>Specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion. </li><li>You do need to be deep in something because otherwise you’ll be a mile wide and an inch deep and you won’t get what you want out of your life. </li></ul>

Find and Build Specific Knowledge

“Escape competition through authenticity”

<ul><li>People seem to think you can create wealth—make money through work. It’s probably not going to work.</li><li>Without ownership, when you’re sleeping, you’re not earning. When you’re retired, you’re not earning. When you’re on vacation, you’re not earning. And you can’t earn nonlinearly</li><li>If you don’t own equity in a business, your odds of making money are very slim.</li><li>The real wealth is created by starting your own companies or even by investing. In an investment firm, they’re buying equity. These are the routes to wealth. It doesn’t come through the hours.</li></ul>

Build or Buy Equity in Business

<ul><li>The meaning of life is to do things for their own sake. Ironically, when you do things for their own sake, you create your best work. </li><li>The less you want something, the less you’re thinking about it, the less you’re obsessing over it, the more you’re going to do it in a natural way. </li><li>Knowledge workers function like athletes — train and sprint, then rest and reassess. </li></ul>

Find a Position of Leverage

<ul><li>To get rich without getting lucky, we want to be deterministic. We don’t want to leave it to chance. </li><li>Build your character in a certain way, then your character becomes your destiny. </li><li>Be a maker who makes something interesting people want. Show your craft, practice your craft, and the right people will eventually find you. </li></ul>

How to get Lucky

<ul><li>You have to enjoy it, and keep doing it. Don’t keep track, and don’t keep count because if you do, you will run out of time. </li><li>It takes time — even once you have all of these pieces in place, there is an indeterminate amount of time you have to put in</li></ul>

Be Patient

"In an age of leverage, one correct decision can win everything"

<ul><li>The really smart thinker are clear thinkers. They understand the basics at a very, very fundamental level.</li><li>What you feel tells you nothing about the facts— it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts. </li><li>It’s actually really important to have empty space. If you don’t have a day or two every week in your calendar where you’re not always in meetings, and you’re not always busy, then you’re not going to be able to think.</li><li>It’s only after you’re bored you have the great ideas. It’s never going to be when you’re stressed, or busy, running around or rushed. Make the time.</li></ul>

How to Think Clearly

<ul><li>Mental models are really just compact ways to recall your own knowledge.</li><li>Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at upper echelon of human success.</li><li>What are the most efficient ways to build new mental models? — Read a lot. Just read.</li></ul>

Collect Mental Models

<ul><li>The three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order, but their importance is reverse.</li><li>Happiness is really a default state. Happiness is there when you remove the sense of something missing in your life.</li><li>A happy person isn’t someone who’s happy all the time. It’s someone who effortlessly interprets events in such a way that they don’t lose their innate peace.</li><li>Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.</li><li> </li></ul>

Learning Happiness

<ul><li>Happiness is being satisfied with what you have. Success comes from dissatisfaction. Choose.</li><li>If you’re peaceful inside and out, that will eventually result in happiness.</li><li>You can get almost anything you want out of life, as long as it’s one thing and you want it far more than anything else.</li><li>Peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion. You can convert peace into happiness anytime you want. If you’re a peaceful person, anything you do will be a happy activity</li></ul>

Success Does Not Earn Happiness

<ul><li>In any situation in life, you always have three choices : you can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it.</li><li>Pick one big desire in your life at any given time to give yourself purpose and motivation.</li><li>Acceptance looks like being okay whatever the outcome is. It’s to be balanced and centered. It’s to step back and to see the grander scheme of things.</li></ul>

Find Happiness in Acceptance

<ul><li>If there’s something you want to do later, do it now. There is no “later”.</li><li>Set up systems, not goals.</li><li>Read everything you can.</li><li>Inspiration is perishable. When you have inspiration, act on it right then and there. </li><li>Sit and close your eyes for at least an hour a day. Make no efforts for something, make no effort against anything.</li><li>Value your time. It’s all you have. As long as you’re doing what you want, it’s not a waste of your time.</li><li>A taste of freedom makes you unemployable. Once you’ve truly controlled your own fate, for better or for worse, you’ll never let anyone else tell you what to do.</li></ul>

Choosing to Grow Yourself

<ul><li>Much of finding great relationships, great coworkers, great lovers, wives, husbands, is finding other people where your value line up.</li><li>If your values line up, the little things don’t matter.</li><li>“To find a worthy mate, be worthy of a worthy mate.”</li></ul>

Live by your Values

Things to know about Wealth and Happiness 

GETTING RICH IS NOT JUST ABOUT LUCK; HAPPINESS IS NOT JUST A TRAIT WE ARE BORN WITH. These aspirations may seem out of reach, but building wealth and being happy are skills we can learn. So what are these skills, and how do we learn them? What are the principles that should guide our efforts? What does progress really look like? Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, philosopher, and investor who has captivated the world with his principles for building wealth and creating long-term happiness. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval's wisdom and experience from the last ten years, shared as a curation of his most insightful interviews and poignant reflections. This isn't a how-to book, or a step-by-step gimmick. Instead, through Naval's own words, you will learn how to walk your own unique path toward a happier, wealthier life.

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

Getting rich is not just about luck; happiness is not just a trait we are born with. These aspirations may seem out of reach, but building wealth and being happy are skills we can learn. So what are these skills, and how do we learn them? What are the principles that should guide our efforts? What does progress really look like? Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, philosopher, and investor who has captivated the world with his principles for building wealth and creating long-term happiness. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant is a collection of Naval's wisdom and experience from the last ten years, shared as a curation of his most insightful interviews and poignant reflections. This isn't a how-to book, or a step-by-step gimmick. Instead, through Naval's own words, you will learn how to walk your own unique path toward a happier, wealthier life.

Eric Jorgenson is an entrepreneur, writer, and investor. He is on the founding team of Zaarly, and has been publishing online since 2014. His blog has educated and entertained over a million readers.Eric is on a quest to create (and eat) the perfect sandwich. He tweets at @ericjorgenson and publishes new pieces and projects on ejorgenson.com/blog

Eric Jorgenson

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant

Four words every writer is dying to hear at least once in life: “One million copies sold.” But you wouldn’t expect to hear them four months after the publication of your second book. Then again, <a href="https://jordanbpeterson.com/about/">Jordan Peterson’s </a> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30257963-12-rules-for-life">12 Rules For Life </a>  isn’t just a book. As for his first one, Peterson spent years collecting and refining the ideas that would create a sort of blueprint for a good life. This time, however, the book didn’t flop and sell less than 500 copies.

12 Rules For Life - Book Summary 

Since its publication in January and Peterson’s accompanying world tour, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30257963-12-rules-for-life">12 Rules For Life </a>  completely exploded, dominating bestseller lists around the globe. Suddenly, millions view, listen to, and follow Peterson on social media, he’s racked up over $60,000 in monthly donations through Patreon, and, of course, one million copies sold.

Whether he’s just struck the right nerve at the right time or put his finger on true significance and meaning, only time will tell, but with thousands of people messaging him how the book’s changed their lives, chances are good it’s the latter. Let’s look at 3 of his 12 <a href="http://fourminutebooks.com/simple-rules-summary/">rules </a>to begin to find out:<ol><li>Sweep in front of your own door before pointing out the street is dirty.</li><li>Treat yourself like a child you’re responsible for.</li><li>Aim to do what is meaningful, not convenient.</li></ol>These form the premise Peterson’s book is built on and thus, the context for understanding why it’s been such a success. Let’s go!

Life isn’t fair. We all learn that one way or other. Some of us sooner, some later, some in small ways, some from terrifying blows. But we all realize it eventually. Like the Russian writer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy">Leo Tolstoy </a>, who, in his short, philosophical piece, <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Confession_(Maudes_translation)">A Confession </a>, concluded there are only four reasonable responses to the absurdity of life: <ol><li>Ignorance, like a child refusing to accept reality. </li><li>Pleasure, like an addict on the <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/the-code-of-the-extraordinary-mind-summary/">hedonic treadmill </a>. </li><li>Suicide. </li><li>Holding on, despite everything. </li> </ol>

Lesson 1: Before you judge the world, take responsibility for your own life.

Even though he concluded suicide was the most honest answer, Tolstoy himself chose the last option, forever struggling on, which tells you a lot about his and Peterson’s beliefs about a good life: No matter how unfair life gets, you should never blame the world . There’s always someone who’s suffered worse than you. Like <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/mans-search-for-meaning-summary/">Viktor Frankl </a>, for example. Besides, even though the future may sometimes look bleak, if you can focus on taking responsibility and keeping your own house clean, so to speak, you’ll find the bad times will pass.

Have you ever gotten a prescription from the doctor and thought: “Naaa, I don’t need that?” Over one third of people do it regularly. According to Peterson, it’s neither smart nor smug. It’s a subversive form of self-punishment. We do it a lot and, as a result, tend to take better care of others than ourselves.

Lesson 2: Care for yourself like you would for a loved one.

Peterson suggests this is a consequence of our inability to deal with the insanity of life described above. Just like Adam and Eve had to taste the forbidden fruit of knowledge, we too indulge in our dark sides from time to time and thus, feel we deserve punishment. But, as with the unfairness of life, we all got thrown out of the Garden of Eden. Like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang">Yin and Yang </a>, we all carry both light and dark inside us. One can’t exist without the other.

That means instead of just striving for either one, we should seek balance, which is why his second rule is to care for yourself like you would care for a loved one: do what is best for you, even though it might not always make you happy .

Balancing your light and your dark side can take many different forms. Sometimes, it may be staying in bed to get healthy, even though you want to work. Other times, it might mean staying late at work on a Friday. However it looks like, it always involves choosing meaning by making a sacrifice, rather than temporary happiness by choosing pleasure .

Lesson 3: Seek meaning through sacrifice, not happiness through pleasure.

Peterson says this is a great coping mechanism, because it helps balance your life between drowning in hedonism and being so righteous it drives you mad. Of course not all sacrifices are equal. Those you make for personal gain, like working overtime to pay for a vacation, hold less meaning than those you make for the greater good, like volunteering on a Saturday.

Even though it might feel like it when you do it, sacrifice is never really about giving up rewards, it’s about deferring them until you can get something even better, usually a feeling of whole-ness or contentment. As such, it’s also <a href="http://niklasgoeke.com/increase-willpower/">great willpower training </a>. I’ll leave you with an analogy Peterson makes. The Lotus flower starts out at the very bottom of the lake, drenched in darkness. Inch by inch, it grows its way towards the surface, until, eventually, it breaks through and into the sunlight. I could sure think of worse ways to spend a life than to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C6QhD0CGjM">be a Lotus flower </a>.

I haven’t gotten around to reading the full book, but I’d like to. It’s full of stories, science, myths, a broad mix of engaging ways to get his message across. It’s mainly targeted at male millennials, but don’t let that stop you. There’s something for everyone in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30257963-12-rules-for-life">12 Rules For Life </a> .

12 Rules For Life - Book Review

This 12 Rules For Life summary explains the key lessons from Jordan Peterson's bestselling self-help book 12 Rules For Life. Read it now.

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Religion & Spirituality

mindfulness

Mindfulness

12 Rules For Life Summary

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54447585-75-hard">75 Hard </a>is a fitness challenge and book that teaches mental toughness by making you commit to five daily critical tasks for 75 days straight, including drinking a gallon of water, reading 10 pages of a non-fiction book, doing two 45-minute workouts, taking a progress picture, and following a diet.

75 Hard - Book Summary 

"I firmly believe that no matter who you are; man or woman; how intelligent you are; how talented you are; no matter what skills you lack...you can develop mental toughness."-Andy Frisell

A few months ago, my sister randomly texted me and said, “I just listened to a podcast you might be interested in.” She then sent me the link to <a href="https://andyfrisella.com/">Andy Frisella </a>’s Real AF podcast, where he talks about the 75 Hard mental toughness challenge.  Fast-forward to just a few weeks ago, and I was completing my last day of the challenge. My only regret was that I hadn’t started sooner. This thing is one of the hardest, most life-changing things I’ve ever done, and it’s a ton of fun. It gets you out of your comfort zone and in ways that you can’t <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/imagine-it-forward-summary/">imagine </a>. And it brings out the <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/becoming-the-boss-summary/">boss </a>inside of you that you’ve always wished would take charge. But, most of all, it’s a pathway to building consistent mental toughness, which is the ability to stick to the right things even when you don’t feel like it.  The challenge involves completing five critical tasks every day for 75 days straight, including:

The challenge involves completing five critical tasks every day for 75 days straight, including: <ol><li>Take a progress picture. </li><li>Drink a gallon of water. </li><li>Complete two 45-minute workouts, one of which has to be outside. </li><li>Follow a diet (and no cheat meals). </li><li>Read 10 pages of a non-fiction book. </li> </ol>

The Challenge 

After doing all of these myself for 75 days in a row, I can say that it’s 100% something you should consider yourself if you want to develop mental toughness. And one of the best ways to learn about it is Andy’s book called <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54447585-75-hard">75 Hard: A Tactical Guide to Winning the War With Yourself </a>.

<ol>
<li>The purpose of 75 Hard is to develop mental toughness, which is the key to getting happiness and anything you want in life.</li>
<li>To complete the 75 Hard challenge, you must follow five critical tasks for 75 days straight and start over if you miss even one.</li>
<li>There are eight “eras” of the challenge that you must be aware of and prepared for if you want to complete it.</li>
</ol>
Let’s get into it and start developing mental toughness!

Top 3 Book Lessons

Andy Frisella didn’t have that exciting of a childhood. But he did have a supportive father who taught him <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/mind-gym-summary/">mental toughness </a>.  This lesson would help Andy go on to put in years of effort to <a href="https://fourminutebooks.com/the-leadership-challenge-summary/">build a massively successful business </a>. All seemed to be going well until the night he almost lost his life.

Lesson 1:  The key to happiness and getting anything you want is mental toughness, which is why Andy Frisella created 75 Hard.

75 Hard summary is a fitness challenge and teaches mental toughness by making you commit to five daily critical tasks for 75 days straight.

75 Hard Summary

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