This Answers The Great Unanswered Question | Make Honesty Your Only Policy

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0:56This answers the great unanswered question. It was baffling and horrifying even then. He was one of the worst emperors in the history of Rome. No small feat considering some of the deranged and incompetent people who ascended to the purple over the centuries. In the early 200s AD, the ancient historian Cassius Dio wrote his Roman history. And he, like us, was fascinated by the great unanswered question. What happened to Commodus? How did the son of a philosopher king, the son of Marcus Aurelius, bungle things so badly that he was assassinated? in real life by a gladiator and his statues torn down.

1:42Dio's explanation is a good one, and a cautionary tale for all leaders and all of us. Before Marcus Aurelius died and passed the throne to Commodus, he set up what you might call a board of directors, among whom were numbered the best men in the Senate, Dio writes. Marcus knew firsthand how hard it was to step into a great man's shoes the danger of being Caesarified or dyed purple by the cloak of the emperor. He knew he was nothing without Antoninus Rusticus, Herodas Atticus, Fronto, Cinnah, and Apollonius. And so there he was on his deathbed arranging for the best and the brightest to similarly advise his son.

2:25But their suggestions and counsels, Dio writes ruefully, Commodus rejected. And this, he believed was the critical difference between father and son. Marcus had admired how his stepfather Antoninus would yield the floor to experts, and how that humility helped him fulfill his potential. When he was emperor, Dio writes of Marcus, he showed no shame or hesitation about resorting to a teacher. Commodus could not do this, and it cost him and the Roman people. Nero, as it happens, is just another verse in the same sad story. A famous statue shows Seneca giving a daily briefing to the emperor. You can see in Nero's body language the slouched posture, his hooded head, a sullen, bored expression that he thinks he already knows everything, that he's decided what he wants to do and what matters, and that sitting across from one of the wisest people to ever live is totally lost on him.

3:21Of course Nero failed, spinning off the planet into delusion and paranoia and fantasy. There is a reason that companies have a board of directors. Presidents have a cabinet and even a kitchen cabinet of informal advisors. Athletes and actors have coaches, managers, agents, spouses. And those that don't, those that think they can go it alone, almost always fail. In Wisdom Takes Work, which is the new book. You can pre-order it now, just a couple days left to do that. Got a bunch of awesome bonuses there, including some extra chapters, manuscript pages. We got signed, numbered first editions. You can even have dinner with me.

4:01We can talk about this over dinner in our own sort of informal strategy session. But in the book, there are multiple chapters on the art of cultivating these teachers and mentors and advisors because it is essential to leadership. Wisdom is not a solitary pursuit. It is a collective effort. We need people to help us see where we are blind. We need them to serve as parents to our inner children, a sounding board for our ideas, a check against our impulses. They expand our limited experiences and education. They keep us from ending up like Commodus or Nero. Wisdom, it does take work, but that work is not only sitting alone with your books.

4:41It's cultivated in conversations, in meetings, in late night phone calls, even in criticism and arguments. One of the heroes of Wisdom Takes Work is Abraham Lincoln, who would not have been able to succeed as president without his team of rivals, a cabinet he deliberately assembled of brilliant individuals who often disagreed with him, whose differing perspectives and differing skills profoundly shaped his agenda and improved his ability to lead. In whatever position of leadership or followership we occupy, we must be able to take counsel and suggestion from others, to yield to people with more knowledge and experience, to resort to teachers and mentors and advisors.

5:21This is not just the path to wisdom. It is wisdom, and it is work you must do. As I said, just a couple days left to pre-order the new book. It's out on October 21st. Wisdom Takes Work is the fourth and final book in the Stoic Virtue series. I'm so, so proud of it, and I can't wait for you to read it. DailyStoic.com slash wisdom. Check it out.

5:50Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

6:35We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course. Because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you.

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8:12Make honesty your only policy. That's what we're journaling about in the Daily Stoic Journal. That's where this little meditation comes from. As Emperor Marcus Aurelius did not see the best of humanity, leaders never do. At court, there would have been backbiting people who sold their friends out when they saw an opportunity to advance themselves, avarice and deceit. He especially didn't like faux attempts at honesty. His point, if you have to say, I'm going to be honest with you here, what you're casually saying is that honesty is an exception for you and not the rule, that you're making a special effort to tell the truth here because you usually don't.

8:52And how sad is that? It's time to think about what these little statements say about us and how to make sure that our default policy is honesty and straightforwardness. And then the two quotes we have from Marcus Aurelius' meditations and then from Seneca's moral letters go as follows. How rotten and fraudulent when people say they intend to give it to you straight. What are you up to, friend? It shouldn't need to be your announcement, but be seen readily as if written on your forehead, heard in the ring of your voice a flash in your eyes, just as the beloved sees it all in a lover's glance. In short, the straightforward and good person should be like the smelly goat.

9:31You know it when they're in the room with you. I love that quote. That's so great. A calculated give it to you straight is like a dagger, and there's nothing worse than a wolf befriending sheep. We should avoid false friendship at all costs. If you are good, straightforward, and well-meaning, it should show in your eyes and not escape notice. That's from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 1115. And then Seneca's Moral Letters 109, he says, it is in keeping with nature to show our friends affection and to celebrate their advancement as if it was our very own. For if we don't do this virtue, which is strengthened only by exercising our perceptions, will no longer endure in us.

10:08Look, I think this idea that honesty is your best policy is really important. And obviously, we should cultivate a reputation for candor, for straightforwardness, for not holding back, for not being two-faced. If you have an opinion, you put it out there. You don't say one thing in private, another thing in public, right? But I would say, you know, and we had Randall Stuttman on the Daily Stoic podcast and in the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge, and he did push back on this trend of radical candor, you know, that often it can be an excuse for being a jerk. You know, the Stoics take their original roots from the cynics, you know, Diogenes, who sort of walks the streets of Athens just saying whatever he thinks.

10:49But I don't particularly admire him. I see him as sort of antisocial. So I think what Marcus is saying, cultivate a reputation for straightforwardness, this is in context of the other stoic virtues. It takes courage to be clear and to voice unpopular opinions and to say what people don't want to hear. But it also takes moderation and an understanding of justice to know what opinions to voice, how to voice them, how not to be a jerk about them. You know, radical candor in Wall Street firms, Randall was saying, is, again, often excuse for asshole bosses to be more of a jerk. And that's not the excuse they need.

11:30We want to be both straightforward as well as restrained. And I know that seems a little contradictory, but, well, life is complicated and it's about balance. So when we say we want to be the smelly goat in the room, as someone who owns goats, let Let me tell you, man, goats can stink. I can sometimes smell my neighbor's goats. He's like a half mile away. I'll catch a whiff of it in the wind. A male goat, this sort of musk they have, man, it is repulsive. It's disgusting. I don't think that's what Marcus is saying. I think he's being a bit exaggerated. He's just saying that, you know, these, I'm going to be level with you here.

12:06When we say, I don't mean any offense or no offense intended, you can almost expect that the next words out of this person's mouth are going to be really poorly thought out, not so nice things. And so I think we should take some time here to think about this balance. This is what temperance is really about, right? Just in the way that courage is a midpoint between cowardice and recklessness. I'd like to think that honesty is a line somewhere between omission, not saying things and saying too many things or something like to that regard, if you get what I'm saying. It's that, yes, we have to tell the truth, but you don't have to tell someone that you find them repulsive today.

12:50You don't have to tell them that you really hate the sound of their voice, right? There are things you can keep to yourself. And I guess I just wanted to add a little color to this week's meditation. So all things in moderation, including this kind of honesty that we're talking about from Marcus Relius. Have an identifiable sense that you are an honest person, but don't be a stinky goat.

13:35and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.

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