to reflect who we are and what we hope to build i am proud to announce that starting today our company is now meta hey guys in this video i'm going to share with you one of the biggest secret habit of the elite that most people don't know about or even worse don't even care most prominent leaders inventors and pioneers in their respectable fields have been doing this for centuries and millennials the real tragedy is that very few of us realizes how important this is we all know that many ceos and leaders around the world likes to read about four five books per month while an average person reads about two to three books per year so you know reading is important now this is not a secret however only tiny amount of them managed to be like steve jobs albert einstein or abraham lincoln obviously they were geniuses and some people will never be as smart as them but what if i told you that that statement is wrong yes some of them were taught by their elite parents who already knew this secret or were simply very lucky enough to acquire this knowledge of an early age the real secret behind their great wealth and intellectual superiority was years of absorbing the essence of so-called classical canons into their brains so what are classical canons in fiction and literature the canon is the collection of works considered representative of a period or genre here is what professor jordan peterson thinks about the canons the books that have influenced the largest number of other books are the canonical books well then those books are about you they're the the patterns in those books are the patterns of your perceptions and your actions and without understanding them then you don't know who you are and you can't guide yourself properly through life and so you you you come into university and you encounter experts and they say look this is canonical why because it's had a disproportionate influence on everything else so you need there's something here that you need to know about because it's about you the western canon is the body of high culture literature music philosophy and works of art that is highly valued in the west a classical example of these canon books would be socrates to immanuel kant and philosophy and from homer to charles dickens in literature but what do ancient philosophy and classic novels have anything to do with the elite i used to love studying classics and the word meta comes from the greek word meaning beyond for me it symbolizes that there is always more to build did you know that mark zuckerberg could read and write in ancient greek french hebrew and latin his college friend recalled zuckerberg as really into greek odysseys and all that stuff that how he once quoted lines from the roman epic poem annie it by virgil not many people read these kind of books do you know who alexander the great's tutor was for about 14 years you know aristotle and i read this i became immensely jealous and i think i would have enjoyed that a great deal and and uh through the miracle of the printed page i can at least read what aristotle wrote without an intermediary and maybe if there's a professor they can they can add to that but at least i can go directly to the source material and that is of course the foundation upon which our western civilization is built but i can't ask aristotle a question i mean i can't i won't get an answer on an interview steve jobs once said i would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with socrates that is how much steve jobs valued studying philosophy especially the work of plato in his young age it was the foundation of his creativity max talmy a jewish student was the family tutor of albert einstein when einstein turned 12 talmy gave him a geometry textbook and after a short time einstein had worked through the whole book later on he introduced einstein to emmanuel kant's critique of pure reason the hardest book ever written in philosophy and euclid's elements when einstein turned only 13 years old einstein fell in love with philosophy and subjects of other science he continued devouring various kinds of literature and brought in his knowledge and he became one of the brightest minds humanity has ever seen his name einstein is now used as a synonym for genius young winston churchill was a miserable failure at school his teachers even complained that he was unreliable and careless he did poorly academically and regularly misbehaved but he was ambitious enough to try for sandhurst the british army's officer training school he failed the entrance exam twice hired a crammer to help him study and barely made it in on the third try his marks were too low to be admitted as an infantry cadet but he was accepted into the cavalry at the age of 22 while stationed in bombay believing himself poorly educated he began a project of self-education reading the work of plato adam smith charles darwin and henry hallam his self-education reading great books written by great people slowly transformed his brain later on winston churchill became the prime minister of the united kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and these are only a fraction of people from countless more who transformed their life with studying classics the question is how is this even possible what does reading these classic canon books do to your brain these books were written by geniuses who also read and studied the works of other geniuses and once you swallow these words written by them how hard it may be it slowly rewires your brain similar to the authors and the more you read and deeply understands each texts and the meaning behind it well you are slowly becoming a genius this is the greatest secret of the elite becoming someone who can think think different and think outside the box here is another explanation from professor jordan peterson and that's one of the things that people aren't taught about why you go get educated especially in the humanities humanities education if it's real organizes your psyche grounds you puts you on a rock and makes you a force to contend with but you have to read the right people and so and those are the great they're the great people of the past in my list they're the great men of the past and that's just how it is so if you or educate yourself and this is a really good place to start if you read these authors then you'll know what else to read if you read these authors it'll take you a good long time and it will be very very hard on you and and you won't be the same person when you come out and that's very frightening and because being torn down and rebuilt is no is no joke but it beats the hell out of the alternative which is just to stagnate and stay a stagnant infant i want to end this video with one of my favorite quote from charlie munger the vice president of berkshire hathaway in my whole life i have known no wise people who didn't read all the time none zero you'd be amazed at how much warren reads and how much i read my children laugh at me they think i'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out this was my first video i hope you liked it and i thank you sincerely for watching my video until the end please consider subscribing and leaving a comment below if this information was helpful peace because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do you