Can a 2,409 year-old dead guy fix your life?

He can if it's Aristotle. A collaboration with the strangely popular writer/artist PETER MOORE.

Peter does the newsletter Road2Elsewhere—a must-read for Stackers who like their wisdom with a sprinkle of gifs. When Peter saw that my book was coming out on (yikes!) JULY 15, he proposed a cross-post. Why? Because he thinks I know Aristotle personally. (And he calls me a mouth-breather.)

WRITTEN & ILLUSTRATED by PETER MOORE (with lots of help from JAY HEINRICHS)

MOORE: You’ve begun flogging your new book ARISTOTLE’S GUIDE TO SELF-PERSUASION here on Substack. I’m very good at self-persuasion, Jay, especially when it comes to not spending money unnecessarily.

Like, on hardcover books.

Give me three reasons that Aristotle—or god-forbid, even you the desperate author—would use to persuade me to part with my hard-earned cash for alleged life improvements.

HEINRICHS: I love a skeptical reader, and it’s nice to know you have money. I’m skeptical too, especially because my publisher is forcing me to post on f&%$ing TikTok! Here’s why you should save me from all that by buying my book and letting Aristotle and me change your life:

1. My book will save you money. (Disclaimer: You also have to read it.) Your daily self, the one who blows your savings on pricey bicycles, offends your noble soul. Aristotle and I show how to tell how to separate your needs from your wants—for less than a pair of padded bike shorts.

   

Tip: Plan a vacation anywhere in the world. Your “want” will take you to selfie-land. Your “need” is an unprestigious break that gives you rest and a new perspective.

2. Experience Jaylight Saving Time. Even after quitting your last legitimate job, you still can’t find the time to do all you want. Thanks to some handy rhetorical tools, I’ve created my own time zone, Jaylight Saving. The same tools will let you escape Mountain Time.

   Tip: This fall, use the change back to standard time to go to bed an hour early. Set your alarm an hour early. It’ll feel the same. You’re in your own time zone! (The ancient Greeks had a whole philosophy of using time, called kairos.)

3. Use the lure and the ramp. Most self-help books waste pages telling how to motivate yourself. Aristotle’s theory of habit lets you gain good routines and shed bad behavior without any motivation at all. I translated his philosophy into a system I call the Lure & Ramp.

Focus on a glorious goal. (A carrot! Or a carrot-enabled hardbody!) Then proceed a tiny step at a time. To make yourself work out, carve half an hour (or your own time zone!). Frame it as your own time, away from your phone. Read, stretch, relax. After a week or two, do a short easy workout. Ramp up over time to hardbody status. I used this method to go from Limping Old Guy to Man Who Attempted a Gloriously Stupid and Pointless Feat of Mountain Running.

Bonus: You’ll find joy. My book tells how to find joy, through techniques like a rhythmic expression called the paean, through what Aristotle called philos, radical friendship with your soul, and through thaumaston–openness to the wonders of nature and the universe. All this comes from Aristotle and his descendants, the Epicureans.

Extra bonus: You’ll learn the art that created democracies, and just might save ours! Rhetoric enables people to argue without anger and make choices through consensus–not through telling everyone to be nice but through deliberative argument.

Extra extra bonus: You’ll feel less angry. Monitor what tense your head is in when you doom scroll or get into a tough conversation. Aristotle said the past (forensic) is the realm of crime and mistakes. The present is about tribal values–who’s good and who’s evil. The future is about choices: What to do to solve problems and make everything better.

MOORE: I’m still not sold. Give me a specific example of a current problem/solution that 2,409-year-old Aristotle—and improbably, you, (also ancient)—can help me with.

HEINRICHS: Well, are you good at napping?

MOORE: I’m an all-star napper!

If Aristotle is going to tell me to quit, forget it. Zzzzzs are part of my creative process!

HEINRICHS: Au contraire, Boss. For those who don’t nap, achieving Full Nap offers the greatest proof of ability to self-persuade, engaging almost all the tools in my book: rhythmic “charms,” awareness of your Aristotelian soul, inductive logic, reframing…. Now, there’s ambition for you.

So…what else do you want to make yourself achieve?

MOORE: I want to overcome my personal hangup over public performance. I once had a panic attack during a story-idea meeting at Playboy, and I haven’t really recovered all these years later. Fix that, Aristotle!

HEINRICHS: Aristotle offers several ways to get your presentation game up:

1. Use “analogical thinking.” You already do public performances, and the public loves you. They just happen to do with…do you call those scribbles art? If you put your drawings on the Web, or write a newsletter, or play piano for your cat, you’re performing. Repeat to yourself that performing is performing. (Repetition engages the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most responsible for reality.)

2. Set a wildly ambitious goal called a “Hyperbole,” a word from the Greek meaning “throw beyond.” Screw Playboy (and how are THEY doing these days?). Prepare to perform a TEDx talk a year from now in front of adoring Substack subscribers. The book will show you exactly how to talk yourself into that! (One secret: reframe every failure as “training.” Every comic will tell you that bombing at a comedy club counts as education.)

3. Compose motivational “paeans”—ridiculous but irresistible slogans with a certain rhythmic pattern. Paeans got Roman soldiers to march to their death. You can use them to march to your…stage. Example: I love them, they love me, the audience will hang on my words! That same rhythm helped Roman legions force the Celts to relinquish Gaul.

(Happy to continue this, but it’s naptime.)

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Both writers retire to their couches for a mid-day snooze. Feel free to join us.

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MOORE. (STRETCHING AND YAWNING): OK! OK! I’ll read your damn book! And try the techniques! And meet TedX, whoever he is. Thank you, kind author.

HEINRICHS: But wait, I have more!

MOORE: More what?

HEINRICHS: More solutions to life’s biggest rhetorical questions. For instance…

Shyness: You’re invited by your college roommate to her big round-number birthday party. “Just enjoy yourself,” she tells you. Ignore that. This advice does not apply to you. Meeting strangers while wanting to duck behind a parent’s legs is not enjoyable. Instead, this party provides a test of your ability to suffer. You have borne worse slings and arrows. Now stand up straight and bear the social pain.

Feeling old: Ultimately, aging might be an opportunity to work on your ethos. Achieve mastery in a skill you hadn’t had time to perfect before. Do some free consulting with your town, practicing your problem-solving Craft. Found a tiny summer camp for grandchildren out of your home, a work of admirable Caring. Or demonstrate great virtue with a Cause, driving people to the polls on voting day. (Craft, Caring and Cause are Aristotle’s three favorite traits for the ideal reputation–including that of the person in the mirror.)

Taylor Swift: She has caused an epidemic of CWS, Celebrity Worship Syndrome. The cure: ​​the trope of metonymy. Focus on a slice of the character, not the whole thing. So you will never sing as well as Taylor. Could you write autobiographical lyrics? Or aim at her work ethic? She famously trained for her Eras tour by singing all forty-four songs while jogging on a treadmill. That turned into an extreme workout that endurance athletes across the land hyperbolically attempted.

And, on top of that….