Story

When Hercules was a young man, he came to a fork in the road on an unfamiliar path and sat down to think.

He didn’t just think of which path to take. He began to think about his future. He was at a crossroads - figuratively and literally.

As he sat there, two women appeared — one on each road.

The first was beautiful, dressed in fine clothes, smiling. Her name was Kakia. She told him her road was easy. On this road there was no suffering, no adversity, no struggle. In fact, the whole road was basically a shortcut. Everything he needed would be given to him, his dreams would simply come true and he would live like a king.

The second woman was plainly dressed and her face was serious. Her name was Arete. She told Hercules her path was quite different. She warned him her road would be long and sometimes painful. He would have to learn courage. He would have to learn discipline. He would face things that hurt. Nothing truly good, she said, could be bought without effort.

Hercules chose Arete.

The women’s names give away what the choice really is. Kakia meant vice, wickedness and depravity. Arete meant excellence and virtue — the full expression of what a person was made to be. The choice we have in common is what we choose at the crossroads. A life of vice or virtue.

The Greeks used the term arete for everything. It illustrates excellence of any kind. A knife had arete when it cut well. A horse had arete when it ran fast. A person had arete when they became the best version of themselves.

The whole story is asking one question: how do you become your best?

Truth

Aristotle said: “It is impossible to be wise without being good.” The Bible puts the same idea in Proverbs 9, where wisdom and folly are personified as two women calling out from the streets — presenting the same choice Hercules faced.

But what is wisdom? Wisdom isn’t what you know. It’s what you do with what you know.

You can read every book ever written and still live like a fool. You can quote Socrates and Solomon and never become either. Information isn’t transformation. The proof of wisdom is never in how you think — no one can see how you think. The proof is in how you act, and what your life produces.

So how do you become wise? Not the way most people assume.

Solomon wrote a whole book (Proverbs) about this, and the answer he keeps returning to is:

Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid. (Proverbs 12:1)

Wisdom starts with how you respond to correction.

Most of us hate it. Someone points out our blind spot and our first move is defense — they don’t know the whole story, they don’t understand my situation, they’re being unfair. Or even I already know what they are trying to teach me.

But why does correction happen? It’s not because we don’t know something. It’s because we aren’t doing something. And what then is the goal of correction?

To get us to do what needs to happen without having to be told.

In other words, if you don’t want to be corrected, accept the correction and fix it. And then don’t need correction next time.

That’s our simple definition of wisdom for today.

Wisdom is learning to correct yourself.

When you learn to correct yourself, you will seldom need correction from others. That’s the path of Arete - of being your best. Wisdom is not the absence of mistakes, it is the willingness to see them, own them, and change. The person who can do that grows. The person who can’t, doesn’t, no matter how smart they are or how much they claim to have learned.

So either we can learn to love correction, or we can be stupid. We can be our best, or we can be our worst.

We’re choosing between them every day, in a hundred small ways. Mostly without noticing.

Practice

This week, pay attention to the next time someone corrects you or gives you feedback.

It can be your spouse, your boss, your child, a stranger, or a one-star review.

Whatever it is, notice your first reaction. Most of us go straight to defense before we’ve even considered whether the feedback is valid.

Before you respond, ask yourself one question:

What if this is true?

Not is it fair? Not do they understand my situation? Don’t justify with statements like I’m trying my best or negative self talk.

Just / what if it’s true.

Think about it for ten seconds before you say anything.

Be careful, considering this question this might change your life.

Because the goal of every correction — from a boss, a friend, a stranger, or God himself — is to get you to the place where you can correct yourself. And once you can do that, you’ve stepped into being your best.

One story, one truth, one practice. Every week.

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It’s been about a month since I last wrote here. That break has most definitely not been intentional. Although I have been writing quite a bit /

I finished ghost writing a book that’s going to release soon this year.

Completed a book that may not come out anytime soon.

Completed a book proposal for a book that should release in 2027.

One of my biggest lessons as a communicator in the last 12 months has been: There’s a difference between what I want to say and what people need to hear.

This seems like a small distinction. But it’s not. There are many great thinkers out there whose thoughts could change the world. The problem is not the quality of their thinking, it is the quality of their presentation. It’s one thing to think well about an issue, it’s another thing entirely to be able to communicate your thinking well.

It seems like every communicator has a strength on one side of the spectrum and has to learn how to work on the other side. There are many charismatic communicators whose thoughts are not well thought out. There are also many great thinkers whose communication style turns us off completely from their thinking. I’m not sure if this strength is natural or acquired. For me personally, I have spent much of my life learning about how to think. I have also spent a lot of time learning to communicate. However, there’s a gap. What I have realized that I learned is how to communicate what I want to say. On one hand that’s important, on the other hand, that doesn’t really help people.

When you spend a lot of time thinking about what you want to say, an interesting phenomenon happens. In Psychology, it’s called the Curse of Knowledge. People that have a lot of information tend to overestimate how much other people know. In other words, once you know something really well, it becomes difficult for you to remember what it was like to not know it. As a result, an expert on a subject will often explain things at a level that beginners can’t follow. There’s a danger to becoming an expert in anything. When a person becomes an expert, it is easy for them to forget what it’s like to be a beginner. Which can then make them unable to help beginners. This has potential to be a significant problem. Who do beginners need the most help from? Experts.

One of the most famous examples of the curse of knowledge came from Stanford researcher Elizabeth Newton. She performed a simple study where she asked people to tap the rhythm of a song on a table for someone who didn’t know which song they were tapping. She asked the tappers what the likelihood would be that the listeners would identify the song. They thought they would ~50% of the time. The actually success rate was ~2-3%.

Why? Because the tapper hears the entire song in their head. The listener just hears tapping. This is the curse of knowledge. The expert hears music, the beginner hears tapping.

Experts in every field can often forget how hard it was to learn things that have become simple for them. In fact, all the research points to the fact that the more of an expert someone becomes in any field; parenting, leadership, communication, medicine, etc. the harder it is for them to actually be an effective teacher.

For much of my life, until my late teens, I played multiple musical instruments. Piano, guitar and the saxophone. One of my guitar teachers was a legitimate genius-level guitar prodigy. I remember the day he tried to teach me chord inversions. They are incredibly useful, and a significant part of mastering the guitar. Inverted chords can be played faster, since you don’t have to move your hands up and down the fretboard as much. They add a lot of depth to the music you are playing, and they help a guitar player master the fretboard. Using inverted chords is a simple concept, but can be difficult to master because you are playing chords completely differently than your muscle memory. I remember asking him how he was able to contort his fingers so easily and his answer was: “I don’t know, I just do it.” I’m pretty sure that was my last lesson with him. The truth is, even if he is a prodigy, there was a day where inversions were hard for him. He had just forgotten it.

Think about when you try to teach your kids something that you are familiar with. How hard is it for them to follow the most basic instructions? It can be hard for an adult to control their attitude, even if they have a lifetime of experience and training. How much harder is it for a five-year old who doesn’t?

Ultimately, the question is not “how good is my content?” It’s “can someone who doesn’t know what I know understand what I am saying?” This is the battle that every teacher, writer, leader, and parent faces. The better we become at something, the easier it is to forget what it was like when we started.

So, how am I learning to fix it?

1. Starting with the question - “What do they need to hear?” Instead of “What do I want to say?”

There’s still plenty of room for what I want to say, but only after I’ve considered what people need to hear. What I want to say is the endpoint, what they need to hear is the starting point. Great leaders/communicators understand how to take the journey from what people need to hear, to what they want to say.

2. Storytelling

Abstract information is rarely helpful. Jesus taught through story and metaphor for a reason. Truth is easier to grasp through stories than simple information

3. Think like a beginner

“In the end, people are not looking for a better idea, they are looking to do life better.” // Erwin McManus

Better ideas help people do life better. But only once they’ve been shown how the idea can practically help them right now. There are so many great ideas out there, so why aren’t they helping more people? Because the people who have these great ideas are not connecting the dots for their audience. People don’t need more information, they need more helpful information. Our lives are filled with real, practical, daily challenges. If the information I’m being presented with right now doesn’t help me right now then I don’t care about the information.

It is not the responsibility of the listener to understand the practicality of a message, it’s the responsibility of the communicator. It is not my children’s job to understand what I am saying, it is my job to make myself understandable.

This, like much of life is not a binary issue. This is a tension between two ends of a spectrum, and we should always be working to find the balance. And the balance will be different in each relationship and room we happen to be in. This lesson is visceral for me right now. I just spent most of last year writing a book that I wanted to write, but when I showed it to my agent, the biggest feedback I got was “I’m not sure this is a message people need/want to hear.” You might say, “well, that’s just one person, publish the book anyway.” And cite JK Rowling, Mark Victor Hansen and various other authors who were rejected by publishers many times before writing a bestseller. That is certainly one path.

However, it really wasn’t just one person’s feedback. My book was shown to multiple publishing people and they had the same feedback. In addition, this is in line with the same kind of feedback I have gotten over the past few years as a speaker from my audiences. So, maybe I’m supposed to listen to it. Just maybe.

Ken Blanchard said “feedback is the breakfast of champions.” And I trust experts in my life who actually want to help me succeed. The first book I wrote was great practice. That writing may see the light of day. The good news is that I think we’ve hit on an idea that I’m excited about, my agent and publishers will be excited about too. Overall, I write this much about this lesson for me, because hopefully my lesson will be yours too. Remember your own curse of knowledge and mitigate it.

Letters

This week I am launching a new short-form email simply called Letters.

For most of human history, the best ideas in the world weren’t in books. They were in letters.

The New Testament is mostly a collection of letters. Many of Paul’s writings were letters to specific people and churches dealing with specific problems.

Seneca wrote letters to his friend Lucilius near the end of his life. They were practical reflections on friendship, anger, death, suffering and virtue written to a younger friend. Two thousand years later, Letters from a Stoic is one of the most accessible introductions to Stoicism.

A letter is more thoughtful than a conversation, more personal than an essay and often more practical than a book.

So, you’ll be getting a letter from me weekly containing timeless lessons for living better right now. Each letter contains a story, truth and practice to help you master the art of living. The first one goes out this Friday, June 5.

If you could, forward that email to your friends. Read it to your kids and show it to your coworkers.

I’ll still be writing a lot of longer-form stuff. But considering all that I just wrote above, it’s time for me to think a little better about the practicality of what I am communicating.