My Top 3 ANCIENT WISDOM Books of All Time (+ a Life-Changing Idea From Each!)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hey guys, what's up? This is Bry with 500 of my favorite books. We're back. Optimized Philosopher's notes top three series. My favorite books of all time across a range of domains. Today we're going to talk about Ancient wisdom. My top three favorite books. Ancient wisdom number one, life changing idea from each of course, philosopher's note, etc. Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, Epictetus's Discourses and selected writings and the Bhagavad Gita as translated by Eknath Sran. Now of course that was tough to pick the top three. I've got a top 10 including some the Nox by Con of Confucius, the Dhammapada, Marcus Raelius's Meditations, Letters from a Stoic by Seneca, Etc we'll talk about that today. I'm excited. Ancient Wisdom, modern science, practical tools. That's we're all about here at Optimize. Of course you can get access to all 600 philosopher's notes. So I take these books, this is 500 plus, we've got more than this. And I distill them into these notes. Six page PDFs with the life changing ideas from each of those. You can get instant access to those 600 notes for free as part of our two week free trial. It's like 10 bucks a month after that and if you know you want to go all in, you can actually sign up for a special lifetime offer. 250 bucks. The team is set up slash lifetime. But just go to Optimize Me. Get access to all 600 notes and 50 optimal living 101 master classes and a thousand optimize plus ones little bite sized bursts of wisdom people enjoy. And of course you can follow along at optimize me top three, see all 30 of these little episodes I'm doing and and get three free notes on my top three favorite books of all time. All right, let's get to work now. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Thank you Aristotle for being so wise. We've got Socrates who taught Plato, Plato taught Aristotle. Aristotle distilled his summum bonum. The highest good of life, he says, is to live with Eudaimonia. Now we translate that in English weekly as happiness. It really means something closer to flourishing. Which by the way is why Martin Seligman, the founder of the Positive Psychology movement, named his book Flourish. He's leaning on Aristotle there. Aristotle said the highest good of life the summum bonum is to live with eudaimonia. That literally means to have a good soul, to flourish, to express the best version of yourself. How do you do that? Well, if I had to summarize my entire philosophy in one word, it would be arete. We translate that as virtue or excellence, but it means something closer to being the best version of yourself. Moment to moment to moment. If this is what you're capable of being and this is what you're actually being, and there's a gap, that's where regret, anxiety, disillusionment, ick exists. You close the gap by living with arte the you high five your inner soul and then you experience eudaimonia and you become a eudaimon. Which is why our lanyard that we give to our optimized coaches at graduation goes like this. Optimizes from the Latin optimus, which means the best. We want you to be the best version of you. Optimus, you equals eudaimon equals good soul. But that's not enough. We need you to be a hero, which literally means protector. Have strength for two. Give your best self to the world today. Optimize equals optimist equals best equals eudaimon equals hero. We actually talk about this in depth in our mastery series as part of our optimized coach program. The first module is eudaimonology, the study of a good soul. Powerful stuff. Longer chat. But that's why I love Nicomachean ethics and why it has to be the number one book in my all time favorites. Because I've. This is the cornerstone of every single thing we do. I connect the ancient wisdom to the modern science, which we'll talk about next. And then we've got Epictetus. Epictetus is my favorite teacher, period. I've got a top three. Epictetus, Abraham Maslow and Joseph Campbell. Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science and the Hero's Journey. We've got a video on that separately. But I love this book for a number of reasons. First of all, if you're interested in Stoicism, this is basically stoicism 101. Now we're going to do a top three on modern stoicism. Ancient Stoicism, Modern Stoicism, Modern Stoicism. I would offer Ryan Holiday's the Daily Stoic is the best place to get an introduction to Stoicism in all the different teachers. Not just Epictetus, but also Musonius Rufus, who's the one you never heard of before? Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Letters from a Stoic by Seneca Ryan Holiday goes off on all those, and of course, we've got notes on all those. But in terms of giving us a great overview of Stoicism from the source, this book is it. And again, I love Epictetus. The guy is unbelievably intense. He says, when you're done hanging out with a philosopher, listening to him speak, you should feel like you're leaving a hospital, not a spa. The Sophists of his day versus the philosophers, they made you feel good. You stood up and you clapped at the end of their presentations, the philosopher, these ancient Stoics. No, no, no, he says at the end of one of their lectures, you should be sitting there stunned, thinking to yourself, he told me, I have to do what I got to give up, what habits if I want to live with virtue and be my best self. You should feel like you're leaving a hospital. You just had surgery done on your soul. I love that I channel Epictetus in my work. He's also a former slave turned philosopher who influenced the great Roman emperor philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Epictetus is the number one philosopher, most frequently cited in Aurelius meditations. Now, he didn't learn directly from him. Aurelius learned from Epictetus. Students were Aurelius tutors, which is kind of a fun little lineage there. Now, rule number one of Stoicism, that literally is right in the beginning of this. And we talk about it. And of course, I haven't busted out our notes. We've got the philosopher's notes, six page PDF, where I break down what I just talked about. So in. In the Nicomachean Ethics, it was Eudaimonic happiness versus hedonic and arete, which is how we get there. Then he's got a lot of fun metaphors, Olympic Games. You got to train. You can't just show up and look good. You got to put these things into action. Then, of course, the vice of excess and deficiency, et cetera. And then his discussion on magnanimity. By the way, magnanimity literally means great soul. Oh, it's. It's unbelievably powerful. Check that out in the philosopher's note. One of my favorite ideas of all of them. And then in discourses, of course, we talk about a ton of stuff as well. This is another really good one. Hercules needed the challenges in order to be Hercules. Without them, what would he do? He'd just fall back asleep. Epictetus says, anyway, rule number one of Stoicism, which we talk about in the note, is some things are within our control and others are not. Some things are within our control, others are not. You know, the whole serenity prayer. God, please grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. That's Stoicism. Deeply influenced by Stoicism. Modern cognitive behavioral therapy. It's Stoicism. We talk about that in a different note on the Philosophy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy by Donald Robertson, which is up there in that stack of notes on Stoicism. Yeah, Stoicism. Viktor Frankl, man, Search for meaning. He's a Stoic. Stimulus, response. Something happens to you in this gap between stimulus and response is where your freedom lies. He attributes his, the core of his philosophy to Stoicism. Some things within our control, others not. The only thing within our control, can you guess what it is? Our behaviors and our thoughts, how we choose to respond to what life gives us. And of course, the ancient Greeks and the Roman Stoics told us the same thing. Close the gap. Live with Arete. Express the best version of yourself. Experience Eudaimonia. That's why I love the discourses. Then we've got. And this was tough. The top two were easy. Then I struggled with, well, what's the top three? Because there's a lot to choose from, right? But I had to go with the Bhagavad Gita. I'm deeply influenced by Stoicism. I'm a Stoic at heart. We have dozens of notes on Stoicism. We've got Stoicism 101, etc. And it's kind of what I lean on. But I love the Bhagavad Gita, which was Gandhi's Bible, the Dhammapada, the cornerstone of. Of Buddhism. And then of course, we've got the Analects of Confucius. They're all saying the same thing, right? Which is again, be the best version of you. Live with virtue in service to the world. But I picked the Bhagavad Gita because it was Gandhi's Bible, literally, right. And it was translated by Eknath Eswaron. I have the most notes on Eknath Eswron's books than any other authority. He's like an Indian Joseph Campbell. They're like soul brothers. So Eswaron translated the Bhagavad Gita and we also use his translation for the notes we have on the Dhammapada. And he's a spiritual teacher. He taught the first meditation class in the US at Uc Berkeley, where I happened to drop out of law school. Bolt hall, class of 2000. Anyway, Eknath Eswaram's amazing. His commentary on this is. This translation is astonishing. And then the Gita, as you may know, it's set on a battlefield. So Gandhi, the non violent activist, his Bible, literally, the characters in it. Arjuna is a reluctant warrior being counseled by Krishna, his God, to go play his role well, renounce the fruits of his labor, but go to war, literally. Now of course that's a metaphor for the war within. We need to. If you want to be the change, you need to win the internal civil war. And I love the fact that this seminal book captures the challenge of living as our best selves. It's not easy. It's not supposed to be easy. You need to go engage in the most important battle, as Socrates would say, who influenced Plato, who influenced Aristotle, the combat of life. To become the best version of yourself, that's not easy. You got to embrace the challenge. That's why the Bhagavad Gita made the cut for me. And also to introduce you to Eknath eskron now top 10. Then of course we've got the Philosopher's note on the Bhagavad Gita where we unpack all those favorite big ideas. I also give some historical context, blah, blah blah, six page PDF, 20 minute MP3. We've got apps as well. I haven't mentioned that in this series yet, but check out the apps. We've got iOS, we've got Android, highly reviewed, etc. Musonius Rufus, he's the fourth Roman stoic, the guy you've never heard of. You've got Seneca and then you have Epictetus and you have Marcus Aelius, everybody knows about them. But then we've got Musonius Rufus, he is epic. He influenced Epictetus, he's just awesome. The Analects of Confucius. I love this book as well. And if you want to have a decent sense of wisdom, then out of all These books, these 10, at least check out the notes. And I would encourage you to understand what these great thinkers have to say. Here's ancient Greece in a nutshell. Here's ancient Roman Stoicism. Here's Hinduism and the Bhagavad Gita in a nutshell. Here's Buddhism in a nutshell. Here's Confucianism in a nutshell. The Analects of Confucius and then the Dhammapada. And then we have the continuation on Stoicism. If you're feeling it. Meditations by Aurelius, Letters from a Stoic by Seneca. The Enchiridion, which is a shorter version of the Discourses. And then another one by Seneca on the shortness of Life. Seneca is an amazing writer. And then of course the Dao de Jing. And then we've got the Way of the Bodhisattva back there as well. Shantideva, etc. And then I could have included Roomie, depending on how new you want to go. Nietzsche, Emerson, etc. But that's the ancient wisdom. Next up, we're doing modern science. Then what do we got? Then we're going to go. Then we're going to walk through the fundamentals. Nutrition, weight loss, fitness, sleeping, breathing, focusing, celebrating. All of which brings us back to the beginning. You can follow the whole series at Optimize Me. Top three and get three free philosopher's notes. If you know you want to at least check it out, go to the free trial at Optimize Me. Get access to all 600 notes, 50 masterclasses and 1,000 micro lessons. And then lifetime again, 250 bucks lifetime offer. And then coach. If you want to go deep and operationalize this wisdom, ancient wisdom, modern science, practical tools, check us out. Optimize me coach. 2000 optimizers from over 70 countries around the world, half of whom are doing it because they want to be coaches or take their coaching practice to the next level. The other half just want to master themselves, to serve heroically and empower others to do the same so we can change the world one person at a time together. Starting with you and me today. That's why I read these books. So I can personally move from theory to practice to mastery. Then I can pull out. I'm kind of like your personal philosopher, your trainer. Give me three more reps finding all these great ideas, putting them into a simple format you can use, connecting all the dots and helping you change your life. Today. Let's get on it. Make today another awesome day. See ya. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optymyze with Bryan Johnson. To find out more, go to optimize.com me. Hi, this is Brian. Hope you enjoyed that. Quick note. If you want to go deeper into Optimize, check us out at Optimize Me. The team has set up a free two week trial where you can get instant access to all 600 plus philosopher's notes, all the PDFs, the MP3s, get it on the app, etc. And 50 optimal living 101 classes on a range of subjects and of course, the thousand plus optimize ones. And then if you want to go all in, check out Optimize Coach. Optimize me for the free trial, for the core wisdom. Optimize Me Coach if you want to go all in and master yourself, serve heroically and empower others to do the same. Have a great day. See you tomorrow.