Life in Balance: Amit Chaudhary’s Blog
• • • • •

I looked up Golden Verses of Pythagoras after reading a reference about them in the The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin. Pythagoras was a Greek Philosopher who lived roughly during 500 BC.

These are guidelines on how to live one’s life and are full of wisdom.

Many of the Verses are relevant for Personal Development including the one about “Reviewing each day of your life”. Some of the other concepts are similar to those in Yoga texts.

Here are a few selected Golden Verses of Pythagoras:

• Do not neglect the health of your body. Give to the body food, drink and exercise in measure — so that it strengthen and know not surfeit and slumber.

• Before sleep closes your eyes remember thrice your deeds of the day. Consider them as an impartial judge and ask yourself: “What good did I do? What did I fail to do that I should have done?” Thus review everything you did throughout the day. Reproach yourself severely for all wrong deeds and be glad about the good ones.

• Remember about the law of cause and effect in your life.

• You are given the ability to overcome your passions: greed, laziness, lust, and anger; use it and restrain yourself.

• As for the misfortunes that are sent to people according to their destinies, you have to endure them patiently. Strive nevertheless to alleviate the pain as much as you can. And remember that the Immortal Gods never send to people trials which are above their strengths.

• Choose for yourself a wise friend; heed his advice and learn from his example; do not quarrel with him for trifle reasons.

• Listen to others’ advice and deliberate yourself. Only fools acts thoughtlessly, without consideration.

• And abstain from eating flesh: this is contrary to your nature and will prevent you from purifying yourself.

For the complete Verses, here are two translations of Golden Verses of Pythagoras:

• At Pythagoras.name, by the Russian E.P.Kaznacheeva

• At Sacred Texts by Florence M. Firth who in turn uses different translations
  

If you never got around to starting a company earlier in your life like right out of college or withing a few years after that, I do believe you missed the best time to do it. But there are a few advantages on doing it later in life, say in yours 30s or 40s.

• You would ideally have enough saving to create it with you own funding. No need for the typical $5000 per founder put in by a startup school like Y Combinator or TechStars.

• You probably have expertise in the area you have been working. You can tell if and what channel is needed, what expertise is needed at different stages, how long and what kind of effort does it take to get a project done.

• You already have or can get the connections needed for mentoring and guidance. These are people who worked with you, who you meet at a conference or some friend mentioned they know him or her. If it is none of the earlier, you can just Cold Call or Email them, Nivi actually asked people to do it on his blog.

More reading on Age and Entrepreneurship:

Valleywag: Is 30 too old to start a company? Valleywag does a quick survey on the software and internet superhits:

The most spectacular successes are launched by founders still in their twenties. The peak age: 26.

Paul Graham: Why to not not to start a Startup

Talks about reasons and phases as to when to not start a startup and on starting on right out of College.

A VC: The Mid Life Entrepreneur Crisis:

Nine of our eleven entrepreneurs are in their 30s. One is in his 20s, and one is in his 50s.

My earlier blog entries on the topic:

Startup Thoughts 1: What to look for in a Startup co-founder

Startup Thoughts 2: Lessons from when I was exploring creating a startup