LinkedIn: Stop Reading Business Books, And Read History Books Instead

In order to do great things in life, whether it's start an online business or move up the corporate ladder, you need to have a sense of history. History is what helps us to understand how life works: it shows us what we have to work with and what humans have done with it in the past. History isn't just a warning of many individuals’ follies and mistakes, but it's also a guide on how we should live our own lives, as we strive toward our own goals.

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Too often, we tend to forget what Will Durant, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian, once said,

“Most of us spend too much time on the last 24 hours of news and not enough time on the last 6,000 years.”

One of the best books on history I’ve ever read is “The Lessons of History” by Will Durant, which is essentially a summary of the most important lessons throughout history. In this book, Durant says,

“The first biological lesson of history is that life is competition. Competition is not only the life of trade, it is the trade of life.”

All throughout history, we have seen the negative effects that having a lack of a competitive drive, or a lack of a strong worth ethic, has had on once great nations: The Greeks, the Egyptians, the Romans, and the Spanish. These once dominant empires have all failed.

Why? Because nothing fails like success.

Experiencing anything for extended periods of time, such as prosperity, health, or wealth, typically leads to a lethargic mentality, which brings about a sedentary life. People get to a certain level of success and they get too comfortable. They stop doing what it is that got them to where they are. They stop working hard and they stop competing.

It's like Will Durant said,

“A nation is born stoic and dies epicurean.”

Stoics were people who were willing to put off present pleasure for the long term gain. In a sense, they were investors. Epicureans, on the other hand, were people who were all about present pleasure. They lived for the now. Epicureans were consumers.

Even today, acting like an epicurean may bring you more pleasure in life, but the reason you can’t live as an epicurean is because as Will Durant said, “life is competition.”

It takes grit, hard work, and fortitude in order to reach and maintain long lasting success.

This is the challenge we still face today with our own careers - if you want to find success in your field then you have to re-adopt the stoic mindset.

This means that you’re going to have to stay up a little later, wake up a little earlier, watch less episodes of Grey's Anatomy, and consistently show up to work every day.

Unfortunately, this is something that most people just aren’t willing to do. As a result, these qualities end up getting forgotten over time. However, all great individuals throughout history knew the importance of developing discipline and good habits. They were stoics, not epicureans.

History can teach us many lessons such as this one that we can easily apply in our everyday lives. The lessons and stories of individual achievement and conflict throughout history are more inspiring, more useful, and will provide you with a better base of knowledge on how to achieve success than most business books ever will. Being a student of history will provide you with a proper framework on how you should live your life as you work to achieve your goals.

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If you resonated with this article then please subscribe to my personal blog where I talk about the best ideas from the books I read. And as a thank you, you will get a free copy of my eBook How To Become A LinkedIn ‘Top Voice.’

Thank you for reading! Have a beautiful day.

#StudentVoices

Edited by LinkedIn Campus Editor Miki Ding

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