Wisdom Is Knowing What to Embrace and What to Release: The World's Happiest Philosopher on Living Well

What if the secret to a good life isn't about getting more, but about knowing what to let go?

Most of us approach life as an accumulation problem. More success. More achievement. More certainty. But beyond resilience and grit, there is a transformational art we all can use; and it begins, according to one of the most sought-after public philosophers in the world, with a lemonade stand.

In this episode of Good Is In The Details, Gwendolyn Dolske and Rudy Salo sit down with Tom Morris, author of 30 published books, former Notre Dame philosophy professor whose classes became campus legend, Chairman and CEO of the Morris Institute for Human Values, and the man his peers have called the world's happiest philosopher. He has spoken to over 1,200 audiences including Ford, GE, Toyota, the US Air Force, Bank of America, and Walmart, and his work has been covered by The New York Times, CNN, NPR, Newsweek, and The Economist.

Tom is the perfect guest to kick off a new year, and this conversation, recorded at the start of 2024, is the one Gwendolyn and Rudy point to when someone asks where to begin with Good Is In The Details.

His most recent book, Plato's Lemonade Stand (St. Martin's Press), takes the oldest piece of folk wisdom, when life hands you lemons, make lemonade, and asks what philosophy's greatest minds actually have to say about how to do that. The answer, drawn from thirty years of research across global wisdom traditions and modern business success, involves a transformational art that goes far beyond positive thinking or resilience culture.

What we explore in this episode:

• What wisdom actually is, and why Tom Morris defines it as knowing what to embrace and what to release in life, a definition that is both ancient and immediately practical
• How to move forward productively and flourish in the midst of massive, disruptive change, and what the best wisdom from philosophy's greatest thinkers says about navigating uncertainty with integrity and purpose
• The 7 Cs of Success: seven universal conditions for deeply satisfying, sustainable excellence derived from a close reading of all the great wisdom traditions, east and west, and how they differ fundamentally from the achievement culture definition of success that leaves so many people accomplished but empty
• Why Plato's lemonade stand is not a self-help metaphor but a genuine philosophical framework, and what the Stoics, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, and Emerson all agree about how to transform adversity into growth
• Why becoming our best selves is the surest path to lasting success, and why money and achievement, necessary as they are, are not satisfying goals in and of themselves
• What fifteen years of teaching one eighth of Notre Dame's student body in a single philosophy class taught Tom about what people are actually hungry for, and why the ancient questions are more urgent now than ever
• The philosophy of change: why most people resist change not because they fear the future but because they are grieving something they are being asked to release, and what philosophy says about that grief
• Why Tom Morris has been called the world's happiest philosopher, and what his answer to that description reveals about the relationship between intellectual life and genuine joy
• What Gwendolyn and Rudy learned from this conversation about their own goals, their own lemons, and why this episode set the tone for everything Good Is In The Details did in 2024

This is the episode for anyone standing at the beginning of something new, a year, a chapter, a decision, and wondering how to approach it with wisdom rather than anxiety.

Wherever Tom Morris goes, he brings the wisdom of the ages into the challenges of everyday life with high energy and good humor. This conversation is exactly that, and it will change how you think about every challenge in front of you.

Guest: Tom Morris — author of 30 books including Plato's Lemonade Stand, True Success, If Aristotle Ran General Motors, Philosophy for Dummies, The Stoic Art of Living, and The Art of Achievement. Former professor of philosophy, University of Notre Dame. Chairman and CEO, Morris Institute for Human Values. Double PhD from Yale University. Morehead-Cain Scholar, UNC-Chapel Hill. National spokesman for Disney's Winnie the Pooh. Called the world's happiest philosopher.

Good Is In The Details is hosted by Gwendolyn Dolske, Ph.D. and Rudy Salo — a philosophy, books, and ideas podcast exploring the examined life in the spirit of Socrates.

Learn more about Tom Morris's work and books: https://www.tomvmorris.com

Check out Sieze the Moment Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/seize-the-moment-podcast/id1472668685?i=1000636548258

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