The Daily Stoic - 7 Things the Stoics Can Teach Us in 2020

Episode Date: November 29, 2020

On today's episode, Ryan discusses 7 lessons we can all learn from the Stoics that are especially pertinent to the trials of 2020.This episode is brought to you by Neuro. Neuro makes mints and gums that help you retain focus and clarity wherever you go. Made with a proprietary blend of caffeine, L-theanine, and other focus-building compounds, Neuro’s products are great for anyone who needs help focusing in these trying times. Try out Neuro’s gums and mints at getneuro.com—and use discount code STOIC at checkout to save 15% on your order.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stood Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wondery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target. The new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance.

And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stowed philosophers, we reflect, we prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school. When we have the time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals, and to prepare for what the future will bring.

Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes,

or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together they discuss their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondering. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another weekend episode, the Daily Stoke Podcast.

Man, when I recorded this episode back in October, the pandemic had gone on for a really long time and I was sort of exploring how stoicism had helped me cope. I was going through the pages of the Daily Stoke calendar. I was basically out of the Daily Stoke calendar. It's at my desk, I tear off a page every day, it's an awesome quote. And I was just, I went back through

and I wanted to see like what had transpired over the last, I guess at that point, seven, eight months, you know, sort of how had I been waking up, what was the stoic wisdom that was guiding me? And it was quite a surreal experience just to see some of these quotes from the stoics, you know, Marcus Aurelius writing during a pandemic, during a plague, and then how often, I think what's so awesome about the Stokes is, even though I've written this stuff a long time ago, even though they wrote a long time ago, and I arranged it several years ago, in some cases, how serendipitous, how perfect some of the quotes or the ideas happened to be on the days they land on.

It's like you're struggling with X, and you know know, you flip open a page of Marcus Aurelius and boom, that's exactly what you needed on that day. And so I found that to be true as I was going through. I think I went from like March 7th, 8th when the pandemic lockdown started in Texas. That was when I stopped traveling. I know all the way to like I think October 17th. That's when the episode you're going to listen to spans. What's also crazy about it is just how much is transpired in the month or so since, right?

It's certainly hasn't gotten better. We are in the, you know, we are in the throes of some people calling it the third wave. It's really kind of just the first wave that never stopped, but it is as bad as it's ever been, thousands of Americans are dying, every single day people are dying all over the world. What I want you to take from this episode is first off, House Doysism helps one cope

with something like a pandemic, but I also hope it makes you take the pandemic seriously, be smart. I hope people were smart about Thanksgiving. I hope you're it makes you take the pandemic seriously, be smart. I hope people were smart about Thanksgiving. I hope you're going to be smart for the holidays. Looks like they're working on a vaccine, which is incredible, but we can't expect a magical solution. It's not going to be here right away. This is going to be with us for a while. So let's settle in. This is going to be a marathon on top of a marathon, on top of an ultra marathon, but we will get through this, it will survive. And stoicism is there to guide us as always.

So enjoy. You can bind up my leg, Epictetus would say. Indeed, his leg really had been bound and broken, but not even Zeus has the power to break my freedom of choice. We'd like to think that the modern world is so different from the ancient, but is it? Marcus Arelius' reign from 161 to 180 AD was defined by a pandemic which originated in the distant east and quickly overwhelmed Rome's institutions. Civil unrest, interminable wars in the provinces, personal health issues, cultural decadence,

income inequality, and so much else. This was his daily existence. As he would observe in meditations, people have always been people, and life has always been life. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Yet Marcus Arelius and the Stoics still found a way to be success-happy, strong, productive and good, despite all these

difficulties. In this, we must learn from them. The history of Stoic philosophy is filled with all sorts of unique characters from unique backgrounds, from slaves to generals, lawyers to writers, daughters to doctors, and they thrived amidst both adversity and prosperity. After more than a decade now of writing and thinking about the Stoics, most recently, with my book Lives of the Stoics, here are seven lessons we can take from the ancient world and apply in our modern times. It begins with finding a mentor. Choose a master whose life, conversation, and soul expressing face have satisfied you.

For we must indeed have someone according to whom we may regulate our characters, you can never straighten that which is crooked unless you use a ruler. Santa-ka. Fittingly the story of stoicism begins with misfortune. On an emergent voyage, Zeno was shipwrecked. He lost almost everything. He washed up in Athens where he walked into a bookstore and listened to the bookseller reading dialogues from Socrates. After the reading, Zeno asked the question that would change his life. Where can I find a man like that? That is, where can I find

my own Socrates? Where can I find someone to study under? In that moment, Cratee's a well-known Athenian philosopher happened to be passing by. The bookseller simply extended his hand and pointed. You could say it was faded. The still eggs of later years certainly would have. And according to the ancient biographer Diogeny's Leartus, Xeno Jocke, now that I have suffered shipwreck,

I'm on a good journey. Or according to another account, he said, you've done well fortune driving me thus to philosophy. Nearly all the ancient stoics had a formative mentor, living or dead. Clientys had Xeno, Cato had Sarpitan, Seneca had Adelis, Epictetus had Musonius Rufus, Marcus Arrelius had Rousticus who turned himus, Epictetus had Musonius Rufus, Marcus Aurelius had Rusticus who turned him on to Epictetus, Crasipus had Clientes, Thrasia had Cato, and Tipeter had Diogenes, Panateus had Cradis, Postodonius had Panateus. The Stoics knew that life was hard and required help.

Only beasts can do it alone, Marcus said, we need guidance from those who are further ahead on the path. We cannot do without mentors. We control what happens. We control how we respond. The chief task in life is simply this to identify and separate Matters so I can say clearly to myself which externals are under my control and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to the uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own. That's Epic Titus. Epic Titus is most powerful insight as a teacher derives directly from his experience as a slave. Although all humans are

introduced at some point to the laws of the universe, almost from the moment he was born, Epic Titus was reminded daily how little control he had even of his own person. He adopted this lesson into what he described as our chief task in life to distinguish between what is up to us and what is not up to us. Once we have organized our understanding of the world into these black and white categories, what remains, what was so central to Epic Titus' survival as a slave, is to focus on what is up to us, our attitudes, our emotions, our wants, our desires, our opinions about what has happened to us. These choices are our choice. You can bind up my leg, Epicetus would say, indeed his leg really had been bound and broken, but not even Zeus has the

power to break my freedom of choice. And that is your most ephacious gift, Epictetus said, the power to control how you respond to control your reactions. And that is the key ingredient to freedom, whatever one's condition. We must be different. It never ceases to amaze me, Marcus, really, as said, we all of ourselves more than other people,

but care more about their opinions than our own. If you want to improve Epictetus said, we all of ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinions than our own. If you want to improve epictetus said, if you want to achieve wisdom, you have to be okay looking strange or even clueless from time to time. Epictetus tells us the story of the stoic agrippinus, who said that we are all threads in a garment. Most people were indistinguishable from each other, one thread among countless others. Most people were happy conforming, being anonymous, handling their own tiny, unsung role in the fabric.

In a Roman Empire that had given itself over fully to averis and corruption, the strategy chosen by most Romans was to keep a low profile, to blend in so one did not catch the attention of capricious or cruel rulers who held the power of life and death. But to agrippinus, this kind of compromise was inconceivable. Despite what everyone else was doing, he refused to keep that low profile during Nero's reign, refused to conform or camp down his independent thinking. Why do this agrippinus was asked, why not be like the rest of us?

I want to be read, he said, that small and brilliant portion which causes the rest to appear beautiful. Be like the majority of people. If I do that, how shall I any longer be read? Years later, the band Alice in Chains would sing the song Nut Shell, which captured what a grippinous carried in his heart. If I can't be my own, I'd feel better dead. Beautifully said. And a reminder to all of us today, I'd feel better dead, beautifully said. And a reminder to all of us today, embrace who you really are, embrace what makes you unique. Be red, be the small part that makes the rest bright. We desperately need you to do that.

Value virtue, be wise and self-controlled, and share courage and justice, the art by which a human would become good. We must do that. Musoneus Rufus. Courage, justice, temperance, wisdom. They are the most essential values in stilicism. If at some point in your life Marcus Aurelius wrote, you should come across anything better than justice, truth, self-control, and courage, it must be an extraordinary thing indeed.

That was almost 20 centuries ago. We have discovered a lot of things since then, automobiles, the internet, cures for diseases that were previously a death sentence. But if we found anything better than those virtues, than being brave, than doing what's right, then moderation and sobriety, then truth and understanding, no, we have not. So memorize those four virtues, keep them close to your heart and hands always, act on them, live them, tell everyone you meet about them. If you can't do good, at least do no harm. To do harm is to of the Stoic, said that the good we do in life is easily forgotten, but the evil we do lives on and on.

No Stoic philosopher illustrates this principle more than diotimus. Sometime around the turn of the first century BC, he committed what can only be described as an unjustifiable crime. He forged dozens and dozens of letters that framed the rival philosopher Epicurus as a sinful glutton and depraved maniac. It was an act of despicable philosophical slander, and Dio Timis was quickly brought up on charges. For a school that prized logic and truth as much as virtuous behavior, his actions are inexcusable. Sanika, who writes about all sorts of philosophers, never mentions this incident, but he should

have, and he should have condemned it. But it was, in the end, Dio-Tymesis' sole contribution to stoicism. A cautionary tale. Musoneus Rufus best captured the prevailing lesson of this man's life when he said, if you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good and derrs. You do something shameful and pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame, endures. Compromise is key. No one can implicate me in ugliness or can I feel angry at

my relative or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower, to obstruct each other is unnatural, to feel anger at someone to turn your back on him. These are obstructions. Marcus Aurelius. Cato, one of the most vaunted and towering stokes, built a reputation in a career out of his refusal to give an inch in the face of pressure. He refused political compromise in every form to the point that people turned his name into an aphorism. What do you expect of us? We can't all be Kato's. But Kato's inflexibility did not always best serve the public good. When Pompey, one of Rome's great generals and political forces returned to Rome from his foreign

conquest, he felt out potential alliances with Kato. The two had tangled in the past, and so when Pompey proposed a marriage alliance either with Kato's niece or daughter, Kato dismissed it and dismissed it rudely. Go and tell Pompey he instructed the go between that Kato is not to be captured by the way of women's apartments. This was a missed opportunity, as Plutarch would later note, if Kato had been willing to compromise he could have saved Rome. Instead by refusing this overture, he drove Pompey into the hands of his enemy. Pompey would marry

Julius Caesar's daughter, the two men would soon overturn centuries of constitutional precedent. For Kato to compromise to play politics with the bedrock laws of his nation at stake, would have been moral capitulation. But this all or nothing strategy ended in crushing defeat. Few did more to rage against the republic's fall than Kato, and yet in this one instance, few did more than Kato to bring it to pass. Memento, Mori. We're all the geniuses of history to focus on this single theme.

They could never fully express their bafflement at the darkness of the human mind. No person hands out their money to pass their buys, but how do many of us hand out our lives? We're tight-fisted with property and money, yet thinned too little of waste in time, the one thing which we should be the toughest of Meizers. Senika. Born with a chronic illness that loomed large throughout his life, Senika was constantly thinking about and writing about that final act of life. Death. Let us prepare our minds as if we've come to the very end of life, he said. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance

life's books each day. The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time. Most interestingly, he quibbled with the idea that death was something that lay ahead of us in the uncertain future. That is our big mistake, Seneca wrote, to think that we look forward toward death. Most of death is already gone, whatever time has passed is owned by death. That was Seneca's great insight that we are dying every day and no day once dead can be revived. So we should listen to the command that Marcus Aurelius gave himself.

Concentrate every minute like a Roman he wrote on doing what's in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly willingly and with justice, and on freeing yourself from all other distractions. The key to this kind of concentration, do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life. That's the power of momento mori of meditating on your mortality. It isn't about being morbid or making you scared, it's about giving you power. It's to inspire, to motivate, to clarify, to concentrate like a Roman on the only thing that matters what's in front of you. Because it may well be the last thing you see in your life. The Stoics were philosophers, but more than that they were doers, and they didn't have

room for big words or big ideas, just stuff that made you better right here, right now. As Marcus Aurelia said, just as honest, the self-control encouraged don't make room for anything but this, for anything that might lead you astray, tempt you off the road, and leave you unable to devote yourself completely to achieving the goodness that is uniquely yours. If you like the podcast that we do here and you want to get it via email every morning, you can sign up at dailystoic.com slash email. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.

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