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The lowest people to bring in three words of meaning and significance to their lives.

And we use that as a springboard for conversation. And then at the end of the show, we ask them for a word that they'll be happy never to hear again.

So that's 3.0 Words with May John Bishop and Tony Pitts.

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Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stood Podcast.

On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Steve Enhancelman.

And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics from Epipetus Markis Relius, Seneca, then some analysis from me. And then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

A leader must be a reader.

A leader will be forced into countless situations that they have never been in before, trying painful, stressful, baffling dilemmas and difficulties unlike any they have ever known.

Nothing could have prepared Kennedy for the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it's a good thing he had read a book of BH Lidel Heart a few years before.

And it was Hart's Wisdom that helped Kennedy rationally and calmly deal with that unprecedented moment.

Nothing could have prepared Churchill for the outbreak of World War II, except of course for the decades he had spent as a historian, which intimately acquainted him with the strategic insights and moral clarity required to bravely fight on.

One common characteristic of virtually all great leaders I have known is that they have been great readers, Richard Nixon would later write in life.

Reading not only enlarges and challenges the mind, it engages and exercises the brain. Today's youth who sit mesmerized by a television screen is not going to be tomorrow's leader.

Television is passive, reading is active, great advice.

Better reader of history also knows that Nixon didn't quite live up to, in all Nixon watched more than 500 movies while in office in less than six years. Might he have been better served by engaging and exercising his brain? Might he have been better off had he had more of his assumptions challenged and fewer of his paranoid delusions indulged?

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