Hello and welcome to the new mindset hootis podcast. My name is Case Kenney at case.kens.k on

Instagram and this is my weekly podcast where I create short no BS episodes dedicated to helping

you become the person you're meant to be, leave your comfort zone and live a purposeful and

fulfilling life. Let's go.

Thank you. live a purposeful and fulfilling life. Let's go. All right, welcome to episode 709.

Hello, my friend.

Welcome to a fresh new episode of New Mindset.

He does, as always, thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting me. And today, the most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness. I want to talk about this idea. The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness. This is a quote from philosopher Michel du Montaigne, and I've had this pinned in my notes for a while because I think it's such a profound reflection, not only of what

wisdom is as like a thing that you can have or not have, but also as like, speaking personally,

as a delusional optimist and someone who tries to help others be more hopeful in life,

I think this is the purpose of life. The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

This is a statement that, frankly, flies in the face of modern day, just rampant cynicism,

where we all rally around gloom and doom and complaining about how

men suck and women are crazy and romance is dead and previous generations had it easy and nothing

works anymore and so on and so on, right? Like I could literally go on with all the lists of things

that frustrate us because I myself sometimes find attempting to dip my

toe in that water. But to say the most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness, this is acknowledging

that, yes, there are things in life that are bad, there are things that need attention, there are

things that are heavy, Yes, we need to

rally around certain things that need social and cultural change. But this is affirming that amidst that

we will not allow pain to dictate the terms of our existence. Cheerfulness. Cheerfulness certainly isn't the result of an easy life. It's the

result of choosing not to let a hard life harden you. But again, this is in contrast to a certain

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