The Daily Stoic - All You Can Do Is This | Ask DS

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

Life is unpredictable. Events are uncertain. What can go wrong will. Nice guys sometimes finish last, bad things happen to good people. So much is outside our control.These realities are all well-known to a Stoic. As Seneca said, fortune behaves as she pleases. So why did they try then? Why did they work hard on stuff when it might not work out? Why did they invest and sacrifice?---And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions as part of the Daily Stoic Stoicism 101 course, addressing topics which include how to manage our own expectations of other people, why it is important not to thrust your own standards onto other people, and when it is helpful and healthy to remove people from your life.📚 Check out the 14-day Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life course at The Daily Stoic Store.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners in fellow Stoics. We're trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from zoom sessions that we do with daily stoic life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have

on the street when there happen to be someone there recording. But thank you for listening. And we hope this is of use to you. All we can do is this. Life is unpredictable. Events are uncertain. What can go wrong will. Nice guys sometimes finish last. Bad things happen to good people.

So much is outside of our control. These realities are well known to a stoke. As Seneca said, fortune behaves as she pleases. So why did they try then? Why did they work hard on stuff when it might not work out? Why did they invest in sacrifice? Why did they form relationships and attachments? Set goals or make plans? Especially when success and rewards were so uncertain. Because to quote a line from the famous play about Cato, one that was often quoted in the uncertain days of the American Revolution by Washington and Adams, we cannot ensure success, but we can deserve it.

The former is outside of our control. The latter is not. Deserving success is up to us. Getting it, not necessarily so. The Stoics aimed high. They did their best. They tried to be good people. They tried to be virtuous.

Was this always appreciated or rewarded? No. Did it always pay off? Yes. Because it's the best way to live. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wondery's podcast, Business Wars. And in our new season, two of the world's leading hotel brands, Hilton and Marriott, stare down family drama and financial disasters.

Listen to Business Wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to a Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. We're doing a Q&A today that's actually drawn from the Stoicism 101 course. I think it's one of the best courses we've done over at Daily Stoic. If you're looking to get introduced to Stoicism, you want to take your study of it to the next level. You want to go back to basics or you want to build a really good foundation of what Stoicism is and how you can use it. That's what the course is about. I'll link to that in today's show notes. But this is drawing from one of the many Q&As.

We've done as part of the session. People got to come in and ask me a bunch of questions. That's where today's Q&A is coming from. It's just a selection and I hope you join us in Stoicism 101. You can ask some of your own questions. I'll link to that in today's show notes, or just type in Stoicism 101 in the Daily Stoke Store. Hi. I'm William. Good. First of all, I am not a student of Roman philosophy or but I fell into listening to some of your podcasts and some guests you were a guest on a couple of podcasts that I was listening to.

And the stoicism, I guess, I had unintentionally been practicing it for a long time. Okay. I did a stunt in the military and some of the things that, you know, the being prepared, you know, pre-planning and I'm more ifati kind of, kind of, let in to my life, you know, instinctually, I guess, or let into it. For example, I was prepared to have a lot of noises, you know, unintentionally on this Zoom call. Like, yeah. So I was already prepared for it just in case that was going

to be shaken. But recently I've been having some kind of like, how would your stoicism system kind of deal with people making, like judging people with their, with my own value system and how to manage, I guess I don't really have high expectations for other people, but trying to deal with, whether it's, people used to work with that, when a crisis happens, you tend to see the true nature of people. And this is just kind of set that up. And I'm trying to, now it's talking to some of that. It's a great question.

I mean, I think the last year, it's gonna be hard to put some, to put some of this stuff back in the box, right? We sort of seen how people that we know, whether it's politically or sort of medically, we now know like, oh, hey, I thought me and this person were on the same page and it turns out, you know, they're fucking nuts, like, not just nuts, but like, also awful, right? So I think it is tough. Social media, unfortunately, gives you a glimpse into people's lives that maybe we talked about being deliberately deaf earlier.

It's hard to be deliberately deaf when people are screaming this stuff into your feed. So it is tough. I like Mark Serialis' line about sort of be tolerant with others strict with yourself, right? So you have your standards, but the operative, where there is your standards, right? Like there's your standards. And it's not fair to hold other people to a set of standards

that they never they never asked for right? They never saw they never said here's the standard that I hold themselves up to so they're not being a hypocrite right? But it's it's tough. I just try to remind myself like look I am falling short in enough ways myself that I've got more than more than I could possibly deal with, like here, then to go around trying to monitor other people. So, and it's not, like, I totally agree with that. I've really enjoyed finding you, for first of all. Yeah, and that's something that I think I've always believed in.

You know, like my standards are not necessarily realistic for anyone else but myself. But I'm just like, man, when people really fall short of anything close to the same value system that you have. And this, I guess, is you going back to, you know, Seneca working with, working with Nero, you know. Yeah. No, you get, you know, like, Jesus, you know, you get the sense reading Marcus really is that he has very low expectations

for other people. And yet he's constantly disappointed, right? Which I think is sort of just a fact of human life that like you, you're not expecting anything of these people and still they manage to go, they manage to surprise you, right? So, yeah, I think realizing that, you know, one, that's a vice, realizing two,

that's a recipe for misery. And that it's inherently unfair, but that's what you signed up for, you know, right? You signed up for it. So all you can do is try to carry your load and maybe try to carry other people's load if you're strong enough, but you can't go around resenting people for not carrying the same load as you.

Um, so have you put on a personal level found that there are people that you just kind of phased out? Of course. Yeah. Definitely. And I think if you're not like, I'm not saying that you're, you're sort of too good for people, but if your social group or your sort of friends are not growing, that's probably a sign that you're not growing. You know what I mean? If you're not progressing, that's probably, you know, that's probably going to be reflected

in the company that you keep. I think that was a really helpful way to explain it. Yeah. Thank you. What were you a writer? I think that was a really helpful way to explain it. Yeah. Thank you. What you're a writer. I forget which joke writer was saying this, but you know, the stoics have like sort of what's up to us and then what's not up to us, right?

But they were saying that's actually probably a little bit simple because there's also stuff in the middle, which is things that we have influence over. And I think this is true for people, friends, family members, right? You can't make anyone do anything. You can't make people love you. You can't make people change. You can't force them to want anything that they don't want from themselves or for themselves.

But you can try to help, right? You can lead a horse to water, you can't make them drink, but you can lead a horse to water. And I think that's to me that if you're trying to look most chariably at Sennaka and his association with Nero, that's what you see. Sennaka is trying over and over again. This guy has power for reasons that Senaika had no influence over, that Senaika outside of assassination cannot change. How can he try to be of service to not just neuro, but to Rome as much as possible within the constraints of his own ethics? When I had HR McMaster on the podcast,

he was saying the same thing. He was like, look, I'm inherently an apolitical person. He's like, I don't even vote. I, you know, I didn't like Donald Trump, but I felt like I had national security expertise. And in so far as I could provide that expertise, that was my job. I couldn't force anyone to listen.

So I thought that was an interesting way to think about it. You could push back and you could say, McMaster should have done X, Y and Z. You could push back and say, but Senna could have done something about Nero, but I at least understand the logic there of like, I don't control this either way, but I'm gonna try to have a positive influence.

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