Cultivating Genuine Character: 5 Key Components

“When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.” — Billy Graham

here are the list of the influential giants from whom I picked the insights for this work — Charlie Munger, Nassim Taleb , Naval Ravikant, Robert Greene, 50 cent etc….

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants - Sir Isaac Newton”

Embrace Resilience: Reject Self-Pity and Victimhood

Cambridge dictonary defines self pity as — sadness for yourself because you think you have a lot of problems or have suffered a lot:

◉ Charlie Munger : Self-pity is a ridiculous way to behave, self-pity is not going to improve the situation and when you avoid it you get a great advantage over almost everybody else — because it is a [human] standard condition and yet you can train yourself out of it!

◉ Nassim Nicholas Taleb : The interesting thing about stoicism is that it plays on dignity and personal aesthetics, which are part of our genes. Start stressing personal elegance at your next misfortune.

Exhibit sapere vivere (“know how to live”) in all circumstances. …

Dress at your best on your execution day (shave carefully); try to leave a good impression on the death squad by standing erect and proud. …

Never exhibit any self-pity, even if your significant other bolts with the handsome ski instructor or the younger aspiring model. (Book: Fooled by Randomness)

Never Feel Like A Victim Even If You Are

◉ Charlie Munger : As we see, victimhood is useful at a societal level. But at an individual level is disastrous — it robs your agency and makes you dependent on others… Feels good in the short-term (because you put off responsibilities), but in the long-term it can only cause misery and a sense of enslavement.

Avoid politician they get ahead by trying to make everybody else feel like a victim.

But to have a deep feeling that it’s all somebody else’s fault is a very counterproductive way to think. People don’t even like being around them. It’s really stupid…

◉ Naval Ravikant :

The Victim Mentality…

● [Definition] → It’s somebody else’s fault, it’s my skin color’s fault, it’s the system’s fault…

● [Outcome] → Those people are sinking. I feel bad for them… I want to shake them out of it and say: actually you can get out of it.

● [Overcome it] → You just have to stop thinking it’s everybody else’s fault.

As naval said :

at last life single player game because it’s all going on in your head.

Whatever you think. [Whatever] you believe… will very much shape your reality. The world just reflects your own feelings back at you.

My formula for greatness is amor fati: That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backwards, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it….but love it.” — Nietzsche

Leveraging The Power Of Reality Chimps

◉ Robert Greene : Reality has its own power — you can turn your back on it, but it will find you in the end, and your inability to cope with it will be your ruin. (src : The 50th Law book)

◉ Naval Ravikant : One definition of a moment of suffering is “the moment when you see things exactly the way they are.” This whole time, you’ve been convinced your business is doing great, and really, you’ve ignored the signs it’s not doing well. Then, your business fails, and you suffer because you’ve been putting off reality. You’ve been hiding it from yourself.

The good news is, the moment of suffering — when you’re in pain — is a moment of truth. It is a moment where you’re forced to embrace reality the way it actually is. Then, you can make meaningful change and progress. You can only make progress when you’re starting with the truth.

The hard thing is seeing the truth. To see the truth, you have to get your ego out of the way because your ego doesn’t want to face the truth. The smaller you can make your ego, the less conditioned you can make your reactions, the less desires you can have about the outcome you want, the easier it will be to see the reality. ( src : The Almanack of Naval Ravikant )

“The first principle is not to fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” — Richard Feynman”

◉ Robert Greene : It is in fact a function of character and fearlessness. Simply put, realists are not afraid to look at the harsh circumstances of life. They sharpen their eye by paying keen attention to details, to people’s intentions, to the dark realities hiding behind any glamorous surface. Like any muscle that is trained, they develop the capacity to see with more intensity. Your eyes are fixed in the world, not on yourself or your ego. What you see determines what you think and how you act. The moment you believe in some cherished idea that you will hold on to no matter what your eyes and ears reveal to you, you are no longer a realist.

“Reality is my drug. The more I have of it, the more power I get and the higher I feel.” — 50 Cent”

Choose your 5 Chimps Correctly

◉ Naval Ravikant : There’s the ‘five chimps theory’ where you can predict a chimp’s behavior by the five chimps it hangs out with the most. I think that applies to humans as well. Maybe it’s politically incorrect to say you should choose your friends very wisely. But you shouldn’t choose them haphazardly based on who you live next to or who you happen to work with. The people who are the most happy and optimistic choose the right five chimps.” (Book: “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant”)

◉ Warren Buffet : Pick out those [people] whose behavior is somewhat better than yours and you will drift in that direction. Similarly, if you hang out with a ‘bad bunch’ you are very likely to find your behavior worse over.”

The (True) Definition Of Success

◉ Nassim Nicholas Taleb :

There’s a single definition of success: Look at yourself in the mirror — in the evening — and wonder if you disappointed the person you were at 18, right before people get corrupted by life. Let him or her be the only judge [of your success]. Not your reputation. Not your wealth. Not your standing in a community. Not the decorations on your lapel. If you do not feel ashamed, then you are successful. All other definitions of success are fragile modern constructions

Success requires absence of fragility. I’ve seen billionaires terrified of journalists. Wealthy people who felt crushed because their brother-in-law got very rich. Academics with Nobel who were scared of comments on the web. The higher you go, the worse the fall — for almost all people I’ve met external (not internal) success came with an increase in fragility and heightened state of insecurity

Self-respect, on the other hand, is robust. That’s the approach of the Stoic School. So, I’ve seen robust people in my village Amioun who were proud of being local citizens, liked by the community. They wake up happy, and go to bed happy. Or Russian mathematicians, who during the difficult post-soviet period were proud of making 200 dollars a month, and did work that was appreciated by 20 people, and considered that showing one’s decorations or accepting awards was a sign of weakness and a lack of confidence in one’s own contribution.

And believe it or not, some wealthy people are robust. But you just don’t hear about them because they’re not socialized.

“Receive [wealth or prosperity] without arrogance; and be ready to let it go.” — Marcus Aurelius

so that’s all in this blog meet you in another mind blowing article, if you perceive article useful to you make sure to follow Sam..

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