The Daily Stoic - Ask Daily Stoic: December 28, 2019

Episode Date: December 28, 2019

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Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 journaled philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at aleystonec.com. I welcome to ask daily stoic where we answer your stoic inspired questions.

The first question we've got today are what are five habits that can improve my life? So I got a couple for you. So number one, I would say wake up early, right? Marcus really opens book five of meditations of talking about waking up early, about getting out from under the covers. You don't accomplish great things laying in bed.

You gotta get up early. And I like to get up early because that's where the stillness is. There's fewer interruptions. You know, it's just great. I think the next thing from the stokes would be journaling, right? Are you sitting down and spending some time putting pen or pencil to paper and preparing or reviewing or reflecting on what lies ahead on what you did recently on, you know, just things you want to improve or get better. Marcus Aurelius' meditations is the way that he gets to where he gets at the end of his life.

That's how he accumulates wisdom. He's writing down these lessons, these observations. He's following Epic Titus' advice, which is to keep these ideas and words around you all the time and to be engaging with them on a deep and active level. The other I would say is like go for a walk every morning when I get up, I go for a long walk. This morning I went about three and a half miles.

My son didn't take the phone, I got up early, was outside, I was active. You know, Seneca, he talks about, he's like, look, a mind overstressed is easily fractured. He says, you have to take long, long during walks. And there is a reason almost every philosopher is an active walker. Putting the body in motion is a way to activate the brain

at a deeper level that's really good. I think you would have a better life, and I know I'm just something I'm actively working on my life, the more kindnesses you can do for other people, the better your life will be. So pay for somebody's coffee when you're Pay for the person behind you in line leave a big tip pick up trash by the time You know that you see laying by the side of the road do something nice for other people

Santa Caz line was every person you meet is an opportunity for kindness And then the last thing is are you making time for yourself in your life? The last thing is, are you making time for yourself in your life? Mark Serrealis says, ask yourself at every moment, is this necessary? Do I need to do this? Or is this some made up obligation? So separating the essential from the inessential? So if I was like the fifth thing, if I was trying to improve your life, I'd just start saying no to things. Like, what could you say no to? What doesn't matter?

What don't you need to do anymore? And you will carve out more time for yourself, more time for philosophy, and more time for happiness, if you can do that. The next question is, how can I stay calm in difficult situations? Well, to me, this is like the essence of stoicism, right? Like, the whole, even that's what the word stoic means

in the sort of common parlance is, like, how do you stay calm? How do you not be tricked around by your emotions? So I think the first part is like sort of asking yourself is freaking out going to make this better? Yes or no? Right? If freaking out is, and on the rare case, go for it, but the reality is

most of the time strong emotions are not making situations better. You, there's something that your boyfriend or girlfriend is doing with spothering you, is yelling at them about it, going to make situations better. There's something that your boyfriend or girlfriend is doing that's bothering you, is yelling at them about it, going to make them better, is being angry about it, or sad about it,

or depressed about it, or worried about it, is that making it better? No, talking to them kindly and nicely and rationally is what's going to make them better. Realizing that calm is contagious is really important, too. So who do you surround yourself, right?

That idea, you become the average of the people you spend time with. Are you spending your time around calm people or the people that you're around, amping that up? So like if you're around people that are, you know, are convinced politically that the sky is falling all the time, you're gonna think that the sky is falling all the time. So realizing that calm is contagious and surrounding yourself with the right people is really important.

At the core of the stoic practice about this is like that idea of objectivity, you know, epictetus is it's not things that upset us, it's our judgment about things. So realizing that the events are objective, there is no good or bad, there is just what there is. And so reminding yourself, no, I got in a car accident. That's it. It's, I don't know that it's gonna cost a fortune on my insurance company. I don't know that my back is gonna soar and be sore. I don't know that it was so and so's fall.

I don't know that this was terrible luck. I don't know that I got screwed over. You don't know any of that. All you know is that you got in a car accident. All you know is that somebody said something to you. You don't know that it was rude. You know, you can't say for sure that it was ill intention. It just is what it is.

So this objectivity is really important. And then when we realize that objectivity is important, this can lead to the last part, the thing that's very calming for me, which is reminding myself that I have the power to tell myself a different story about this event. So that idea of the obstacle being the way that I can choose for this to be good, I can choose for this to be a positive is the power that I have. So I can't

control that this thing happen, but I can control the story that I'm going to tell myself about it. So, you know, there's a famous story about an employee who costs like Intel, like $10 million. Look, I walks into his boss's office and he says, you know, you're gonna fire me for this, right? Boss says, why would I fire you? I just paid $10 million teaching you something. And so that's a person who's decided that he's gonna see this differently. He's gonna see, he's gonna,

he knows that getting angry is not gonna make it better. He knows that the event is objective, but then he could choose to tell himself a story, which is that he is now invested in this person, that this person is learned from it and that they are both going to get better for it. That's how he was able to calmly and rationally and successfully navigate a difficult situation. The third question for today is like how can I find good books to read? This is a question we get a lot, it's something I think about.

So first off, like there are lots of books on stoicism about stoicism. I suggest you read all those. What I like to do when I'm reading, and this is how I found many of the stoic texts that I like and many of my favorite books of all different stripes, my rule is what is a book that is mentioned in the book that I'm reading. So you're reading Marcus Reales and he mentions that Pectetus, well, check that person out. You're reading the introduction to Gregory Hayes' translation of meditations and he mentions an essay

by Matthew Arnold about Marcus Reelis. We'll read that. And now you're introduced to this guy, Matthew Arnold. Well, who is he, is someone written a book about him? What are some of the books that he's written? So I kind of follow this chain method where each book that I'm reading, I read a different related book to that book. And so this has taken me down all sorts of fascinating rabbit holes. Where I'm not looking for books is the New York Times book review or the New York Times bestseller list or the, you know, the new editions table at Barnes & Noble.

I want to read a really good book and then I want to read the people that influenced or shaped the thinking in that book that I just read. So for me, this sort of chain method is really great. And so I would suggest that. Obviously, in my books, that's one of the things I do. I have a recommended reading list at the back, but I'm also trying to cite different authors

and then obviously they're all referenced in the bibliography, but don't just read randomly, don't just roll the dice, try to find connections between one book you're reading and another book that might be related to that. And then what you're getting is you're getting sort of overlap an idea. So people ask Colin to read so fast.

One of the ways I'm able to do that is that I'm never reading about things that I'm utterly and completely unfamiliar with. I'm reading about related overlapping topics. And in doing that, I'm able to skim a little bit. I don't have to, I'm never like, wait, what was that? I totally don't understand.

But I'm sort of inching my way to understanding that way. So thanks is another great episode of Ask Daily Stoic. Keep your questions coming. You can email them to us at infoatdailystoic.com. Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic early and add free on Amazon music, download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery

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