The Daily Stoic - A Leader Must Be a Reader | You Are The Project

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

Ryan talks about the importance of establishing a great reading practice, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day.If you want to become a great reader, the Stoics can help. We built out their best insights into ourRead to Lead: A Daily Stoic Reading Challenge. Since it first launched in 2019, Read to Lead has been our most popular challenge, taken on by almost ten thousand participants. Today, we’re excited to announce that, for the first time ever, registration to jointhe 2022 live cohort is officially open.Framebridge makes it easier and more affordable than ever to frame your favorite things - without ever leaving the house. Get started today - frame your photos or send someone the perfect gift. Go to Framebridge.com and use promo code STOIC to save an additional 15% off your first order.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee 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 Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic 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 Epititus Markis, Relius, Seneca, then some analysis for 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 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 briefly 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. That a 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? Marcus Aurelius does not become Marcus Aurelius without having read Epic Titus at his teacher Rousticus' urging. Seneca would not have been Seneca without

analysts introducing him to the works of the Stoics, but equally he would not have been Seneca without his diligent reading of Epicurus, which actively challenged his mind and his assumptions. How did he bravely face death at the hands of Nero's goons? He was aided by his reading of Kato's life, just as Kato faced his death by reading of Socrates. A leader must be a reader. We must learn from the experiences of others. We must be challenged. We must exercise our brains. We must prepare ourselves for the things. We'll only be able to experience once by learning from the experiences of others. It's not just the best way, it is the only way. And obviously, this is what we built the Daily Stoke Read to Lead challenge about. It's great.

It's like two weeks of stoic inspired insights about reading. It's built on my own reading practice. That's helped me write the books I've written and do the things I've done. Check that out right now at DailyStoke.com slash read to lead. I think it's a bunch of great stuff in there to start the new year off right. And of course remember DailyStoke Life members get all the courses for free so you can check that out at DailyStokeLife.com. You are the project. And I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoic 366 Meditations on Wisdom Perseverance in the Art of Living by yours truly. I'm a co-author and translator, Steve Enhancelman.

You can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoic store, over a million copies of the Daily Stoic in print now. It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. It's been more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the best cellos. It's just an awesome experience. But I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoke.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading.

The raw material for the work of a good and excellent person is their own guiding reason. The body is that of the doctor and the physical trainer and the farm, with the farmer. This is epic teetuses discourses, three three. Professionals don't have to justify spending time training or practicing their work. It's what they do, and practices how they get good at it. The raw materials vary from career to career, just as the locations and duration vary depending on the person and the profession. But the one constant is working on those materials, the gradual improvements and proficiency. According to the Stokes,

your mind is the asset that must be worked on most and understood best. Something that hit me when I read one of my favorite books ever for the first time. This is Stephen Pressfield, The War of Art. He talks about how in Hollywood, writers create what are called loan out corporations. So you don't work for the movie studio or on the project. They hire your company, your LLC,

and you like loan out your labor to that company. It's sort of a complicated industry thing that we don't need to get into. But the idea that you have to start a company and then you work for that company or that you are that company is really important as you turn pro, which is Stephen Preswell's other book. And you should read the War of Art in turning pro, I carry in both and the Daily Soak Store.

In fact, I carry them both in the Pain in Fortune fact. I think Stephen just sent us a big box of signed ones if you're looking for one. But the point is, a pro sees themselves as a business. So if you need a pair of headphones to function better at your job, like, it's not, oh, do I deserve a hundred dollar pair of headphones? It's my job requires a hundred dollar pair of headphones, right? Me, running, if I don't run or walk, if I don't take my walk in the morning,

the running the afternoon, if I'm not actively engaged in some sort of physical practice, my writing suffers. So I'm not a professional athlete, but if I am not investing in and actively spending time on running and working out my professional life suffers. So it's part of my job. Reading is part of my job. I've always thought this way, my wife hasn't. Until we started this bookstore together, she thought reading was this fun thing she did on the side. But realizing, no, like me following what I love about books, me spending time reading, this makes the bookstore better. It also makes me as a person better. And so I'm not going to feel guilty or self-conscious, I'm not going to shortchange that, I'm going to do it, it's part of my job.

Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for? FTX Founder Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded with other people's money, but he allegedly stole. Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes and Vanity Fair. Some involved in crypto saw him as a breath of fresh air from the usual Wall Street buffs

with his casual dress and ability to play League of Legends during boardroom meetings. But in less than a year, his exchange would collapse. An SPF would find himself in a jail cell, with tens of thousands of investors blaming him for their crypto losses. From Bloomberg and Wondering comes Spellcaster, a new six-part docu-series about the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of FTX and its founder, Sam Beckman-Free. Follow Spellcaster, wherever you get your podcast. Hey, prime members, you can listen to episodes

ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Look, it does say something that we make more allowances for our job, for our profession. We understand investing in spending on et cetera in ways that we don't for just like pure personal development or acquiring knowledge or whatever. But if that metaphor is helpful for you to see the silliness of that distinction, so be it. Seeing this stuff as your job, right? Like, I think about this again, like,

if I'm sitting on my computer, that feels like work. But if I kick, if I lean back in the chair, kick up my feet and I'm reading, I'm like, if someone's gonna walk in and be like, well, you're having a fun day. But that book, I might learn 10 times from that book, what I would learn, you know, browsing, you know, ESPN articles when I should be writing or whatever, right?

Like think about what's making you better and are you seeing yourself as a project? Epic Teed says this, he says, look, some people delight in improving their farm. Some people delight in improving their body. He says, me, I delight in improving myself day to day. So are you seeing yourself as a project? Are you willing to invest in the way that, yeah, like you'd say, hey, to start to open this store to make, to buy this stock, I have to put

up some money, I have to put up some time, I have to do some research, I have to do some development to put up a plan. We'll do that for yourself also, because you're worth it. And by the way, like once you pick the low hanging fruit of life, it gets harder, right? The professional level is harder, and you're going to have to invest and spend some serious time. So you are a project. And the dog's marvel at how the things we're willing to do to have some physical pleasure, or what are appetites, or make some more money,

but how little we're willing to invest in ourselves and in our own personal development, even though that contributes also to our personal development, but also to our happiness and fits in with our obligations as human beings and all that. So, that's the prompt for you today. You are a project. You as the startup.

You as the LLC. You as the corporation. Invest, operate, accordingly. Take your obligations seriously accordingly. And I think you'll be very impressed and pleased by the results. The Stoics in real life met at what was called the Stoa. The Stoa, Poquile, the Painted Porch in ancient Athens. Obviously, we can all get together in one place.

Because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people and we couldn't fit in one space. But we have made a special digital version of the Stowe. We're calling it Daily Stowe Life. It's an awesome community you can talk about like today's episode. You can talk about the emails, ask questions. That's one of my favorite parts is interacting with all these people who are using Stowe's system to be better in their actual real lives. You get more daily stoke meditations over the weekend, just for the daily stoke life members, quarterly Q&As with me,

cloth bound addition of our best of meditations, plus a whole bunch of other stuff, including discounts and this is the best part, all our daily stoke courses and challenges, totally for free, hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our new year, new U challenge. We'd love to have you join us. There's a two week trial, totally for free hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our new year, new year challenge. We'd love to have you join us. There's a two-week trial, totally for free. Check it out at dailystokelife.com.

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 add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondery that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia,

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