PNTV: The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson (#61)

Hey, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we're going to do Ralph Waldo Emerson's collected essays. So I love Emerson so much I took his book and I had a artist actually create a little portrait of him. He is my spiritual great great great grandfather. And he's also kind of the great great grandfather of the self development, positive psychology overall, Western self actualizing movement. In my opinion, he was the first guy to kind of integrate eastern and western philosophy. Created Transcendentalism, as you might know, with Henry David Thoreau. They had a rule, you had to have three names in your name in order to get into the club. Maybe, but Emerson just rocks. Absolutely love him. He's got some great essays in this book which is the collected works by New World Library. No, not New World Library, but a modern library. My favorites are Self Reliance Compensation, Nature and I think it's called Hero or something to that effect. You can google all those and get them for free online or you can check them out and hook yourself up with a book. But you if. And Emerson just is a beautiful, beautiful soul. He's all about essentially embracing our highest selves, connecting to the divine within ourselves and fully giving ourselves to the world and trusting ourselves. So let's look at a few of my favorite big ideas from the 6 page PDF. Note. He's also incredibly quotable, an incredible writer, an incredible reader. His biography documents. He's basically always studying, always reading, always discovering these ideas and expressing them through his writing. Awesome guy, a rock star in his era, 19th century, 1860s or so. So first big idea here is enthusiasm. So he says that nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm. We talk about enthusiasm a fair amount. We're going to talk about it a lot more in my evolving philosophy. Ten principles. The last one is entheos. It's actually the zero principle. It's the first and the last, the starting point. Entheos, which is the Greek origin of the word enthusiasm. Entheos, God within enthusiasm. When we have God within us, when we're connected to the divine, we're connected to God. Whatever you call it that expresses itself in our lives as enthusiasm. Entheos to enthusiasm. One of my absolute favorite ideas. And again, nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm. As I see it, our job in this lifetime is to do what we can to connect to that divine within us so that we can shine and we can give ourselves most fully. We're going to talk about some of the things we can do in that priority pursuit. First Thing he says is we've got to trust ourselves. He has an entire essay called Self Reliance. I don't know how many times I've read it, but it's a lot. Check it out. It's all about trusting thyself. Socrates says, know thyself. Awesome. Emerson says, trust thyself. We've got to trust ourselves, as Emerson says, as our own task master everyone. Most people anyway are doing what society tells them to do. He says, for nonconformity. Society whips you for your non. Conformity, Right. Conformity, conformity, conformity, conformity. He says we've got to break free of those chains of conformity, discover our own truth and have the courage and the willpower and the audacity to live it. Which is nearly identical to what we just talked about in the last episode with Nietzsche and his idea of the Uberman. He says it's such a challenge. It takes something godlike in us to break free of the common motives of man and to discover ourselves as our own source of energy, intuition, power, instruction, etc. He also says that God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. How cool is that? God will not have his work or her work made manifest by cowards. It takes courage to fully express ourselves, to fully express the divine within ourselves. He also says that good luck is just another name for tenacity of purpose. How cool is that? Good luck is just another name for tenacity of purpose. Thomas Jefferson said, it's interesting. This is Jefferson. The harder I work, the luckier I seem to get. The harder I work, the luckier I seem to get. And Emerson says a good luck is just another name for tenacity of purpose. Napoleon Hill in Think and Grow Rich, which we do, says the same thing. He says, one of the keys is persistence. Too often we give up a step or two before we're going to hit that point. That will really be an inflection point. One of my favorite teachers, S.N. guenka, who I mention all the time I talk about in detail in the note on James Allen's As a man thinketh, diligently, patiently, persistently. We need to work diligently, work patiently and work persistently. If we do that, diligence, patience, persistence, we're bound to be successful when we're bound to be lucky. It's amazing. I'm sure you've seen it in your life. When you're clear in your intention and you work toward it, and you work toward it and you move through obstacles, things happen that couldn't have happened, you couldn't have imagined of coming to fruition. So really important, work hard and experience that good luck. And if you find yourself too often saying, well, they got lucky, check in on that. That's a very, very much a victim mentality. A creator says, wow, that person must have worked hard and they might have caught some breaks. But we know that those breaks only come to those who are prepared and those who are capable of riding the brakes in a good way. Next big idea, and we can talk about Emerson forever is reaping a Destiny. He's got a great quote here. He says, sow a thought, you reap an action. Sow an action and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny. So thought creates action, action creates habit, habit creates character, character creates destiny. So you trace it all the way back. Check into your thoughts. He says as well, if you want to change your luck, change your thoughts. How are you perceiving things? And then change your actions. As you know, I'm a huge fan again of the diligent, patient, persistent actions that create habits. Michael Beckwith's idea of blissipline. I'm a huge fan of turn your discipline into blissipline. I'm a huge fan of rituals, as you know, if you've listened to many of these or read the notes. And I'm also a big fan of the distinction between positive and negative rituals. Tal Ben Shahar introduced me to this idea of awesome guy, Pursuit of perfect and the how of happiness. Two incredible books. Positive psychologists. We need to have positive rituals, things we're going to do more of. For me right now it's meditation, training intensely. I'm turning up my training a lot and I'm loving it, eating really well. I journal every day and I create every day. Those are my current fundamental rituals. It's what I do. And then my negative rituals are I do not check email now until I've done all those things. Email is my number one or Internet is my number one Creativity killer. Might be yours as well. So now I've decided, well, look, I'm not here to check email. That's not going to be my legacy. It's not going to be what I want to give to the world. I want to produce and I want to create extraordinary things. These are the things that help me do it. Consistency on my fundamentals is the key to my own joy and appreciation and love and bliss and creative expression. All the things that I want to experience in my life. So I'm going to do that positive rituals. Before I do this, I'm going to have negative rituals, things I will no longer do. And the number one thing for me is no email before noon. And before I've done all this stuff and then generally reducing my email, that's my number one negative ritual. It's amazing to see my creativity flourish. I spent a year in Bali, as you might know. I didn't have a lot of email. My creativity was huge. I came back, all of a sudden, I plug back in to the Internet and I'm way busier, but less productive. So think about it. What is your positive ritual? Your set of positive rituals and your set of negative rituals. Your actions are creating habits which are creating your character, which are creating your destiny. Break it down. Create the destiny you want to create by getting in control of yourself, having the discipline we talk about often. One more big idea. We got so many in here. Check out the notes for more and check out his essays for more. How about this? Zigzag lines. He says, look, if you look at a ship, or in his day, a ship, in our day, a plane, it's often off course. But over the long run, it's a straight line. Zigzag lines. Our lives are like that. If you find yourself off course, no big deal. Just get back on course. That's how our life works. We're out of time. Hope you dug it. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Love you. All right, talk to you soon. See you.