The Daily Stoic - Ask Daily Stoic: Ryan and Wellness Expert Kimberly Snyder Talk Stillness, Yoga, and the Beauty of Daily Life

Episode Date: July 29, 2020

Ryan speaks with wellness and natural beauty expert Kimberly Snyder about the intersection of Stoicism and Eastern practices, the pursuit of simplicity, finding beauty in the natural world, and moreKimberly Snyder is an author, celebrity nutritionist, and wellness expert. Kimberly founded the lifestyle brand Solluna and has written multiple New York Times-best selling books, including one co-written with Deepak Chopra. Kimberly has been featured on shows like Ellen, The Today Show, The Dr. Oz Show, and more. She also hosts the Feel Good Podcast with Kimberly Snyder.Get Recipes for Your Perfectly Imperfect Life: Everyday Ways to Live and Eat for Health, Healing, and Happiness: https://geni.us/kgGzG3This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic is a maker of mushroom coffee, lattes, elixirs, and more. Their drinks all taste amazing and they've full of all sorts of all-natural compounds and immunity boosters to help you think clearly and live well. And now, Four Sigmatic has a special offer for Daily Stoic readers and listeners: get up to 39% off + free shipping when you order now using this link (https://geni.us/DS_4S).This episode is also brought to you by GoMacro. GoMacro is a family-owned maker of some of the finest protein bars around. They're vegan, non-GMO, and they come in a bunch of delicious flavors. Visit http://gomacro.com and use promo code STOIC for 30% off your order plus free shipping.This episode is also brought to you by Trends. Trends is the ultimate online community for entrepreneurs and business aficionados who want to know the latest news about business trends and analysis. It features articles from the most knowledgeable people, interviews with movers and shakers, and a private community of like-minded people with whom you can discuss the latest insights from Trends. Visit trends.co/stoic to start your two-week trial for just one dollar. ***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 @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: See 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 Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. of necessary for living good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us and a Virgo. Just the name of you. Now, I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovingly nicknamed me Kiki Kiki Pabag Palmer. And trust me, I keep a bad love.

But if you ask me, I'm just getting started. And there's so much I still want to do. So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the Baby Mrs. Kiki Palmer podcast. I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest experts in the hot seat to ask them the questions that have been burning in my mind.

What will former child stars be if they weren't actors? What happened to sitcoms? It's only fans, only bad. I want to know. So I asked my mom about it. These are the questions that keep me up at night, but I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you. Because on Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits.

Follow Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits. Follow Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, whatever you get your podcasts. Hey, Prime members, you can listen early and app-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. 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 Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting, hosted by myself, Megan Galey,

Chris Garcia, and Kurt Browneau, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking, oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong, what would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone.

So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I know I've mentioned this before, but one of the things I admire most about Santa Cah was his desire and interest in ideas very far from his own. So for instance,

Senaqa quotes Epicurus more than any other philosopher because he felt that understanding, you know, what he quote, called the enemy schools, he felt that understanding those better made him wiser. He said, I'll quote from any author, if the line is good,, said I'm like a spy in the enemy camp. I certainly wouldn't classify today's guest as an enemy in any way. Kimberly Snyder is a wonderful person, a friend of a friend, very well-known writer and nutritionist and yogic practitioner. And so again, while certainly not an enemy, she does follow Eastern philosophy,

whereas what we talk about here tends to be Western philosophy. But the reason I wanted to talk to her was I wanted to talk about and explore some of those differences between Eastern and Western philosophy. I think ultimately we find the schools have a lot more in common than we think. Kimberly is a multi-time New York Times best-selling author. She wrote a book called The Beauty Detox, another one called Radical Beauty, which she actually

co-wrote with Deepak Chopra. She's a holistic wellness expert, a nutritionist, yoga instructor, a meditation teacher. She's also the founder of Saluna, which offers beauty products, information, an online community. She even has an organic juice and smoothie bar in the four seasons in Beverly Hills. You may have seen her everywhere from Ellen to the today's show, Dr. Oz Vogue, and the Fair, the Wall Street Journal, Elle, and In Style. She happens to be married to a friend of mine, John Beer, who is business partners with Brent Underwood, who we had recently on the podcast.

We're all tied up in the ghost town that we were talking about. By the time you listen to this, Kimberly is probably at home now with her newborn. She was expecting any day, our plan for the interview was actually interrupted by the fact that a tornado came through central Texas and knocked out the internet here in my office. So we rescheduled for the next week, which was the, I think I got the last hour in the last day that she was working before going on maternity leave. And so we talk about all sorts of interesting things about how Eastern and Western philosophy overlap. We talk about parenting.

We talk about beauty. We talk about health, wellness. It was fun for me to sort of explain some stoic concepts for her. She talks about the Bogavad Gita, which I talked about at length in Stillness is the key. We talk about that idea of stillness, which was good. And then we talk about how do you communicate these ideas in this sort

of social media world that we're in, sort of pop culture world that we're in and no one is better at that than Kimberly. She's got a huge following online. She's got a great podcast herself. She is nice enough to have me on her podcast. And just a just a wonderful fun person. I think you'll really like this talk. I liked talking with her, wish her well. I hope she enjoys the sort of bubble of of motherhood for a second time. We talk about the pain of childbirth, something that I don't think the Stoics explore often enough. So it's a great conversation. Look forward to you listening to it. And until we talk again, be well. and until we talk again, be well.

So this word stillness is an interesting one that appears in the Stoics, in the writing across the different Stoics, but Marcus really is most often. And it's sort of interesting too, I mean, that it appears in his book, which is titled Meditations. So even though the sort of Eastern and Western schools never really touched, I feel like there's a there's a lot of overlap. I mean, certainly that that word stillness appears in in the kinds of was this word equanimity, which is really about coming into your center. And if you look at a lot of the practices, for instance, there's a lot of emphasis on the spine in yoga, which is known as the Shashunanadi, the Central Energy Channel. And the yogis teach that, you know, the left nostril, the left side of our bodies, more lunar, more of the moon qualities, more in and the right side is more solar. And it's really about coming back, coming into the center to create that equanimity. And when we work with the spine, we

can work with more calmness. And it's interesting how much, you know, this word stillness and mindfulness is, it's all pointing to the same thing, but calmness, stillness, equanimity is such a central point in yoga, which is really where my journey began, right? I was backpacking for three years around the world and I'd never tried yoga or meditation. But about two years in, I found myself in India, and that's where I really started to learn about meditation. And I started to use it as a daily practice. And then when I came back to New York City, is when I started to actually take all those practices

and utilize them. And that's when I started to write books and everything came from that still place, which I had never heard about. I was never brought up meditating or never knew about it in my upbringing. Yeah, I think that for the still eggs, their word for equanimity, their sort of... Epicureans use this word adiraxia,

and then the still eggs used apothea. And basically what that means is sort of like, it doesn't matter what's going on outside, what matters is what you're able to, as you said, sort of center on inside. And so my image is sort of the person who is still while the world is spinning around them. Marcus Reles talks about, he's sort of like the rock that the wave is crashing over, but eventually the water settles down. How do you find that center? Is it just meditation or is it a practice you can engage in

like as you're out in the world? So for me, Ryan, I've developed my philosophy over a decade or so, and I like to play with this this word beauty for instance, which is so common in our in our world. And a lot of us think about it in terms of, you know, very fleeting, you know, just very surface. But all the yogis and Rumi talked about beauty as being connected to your essence inside of yourself. So for me, finding stillness is what I call my four cornerstone philosophy, which is food, body, emotional well-being, and spiritual growth.

So I started as a nutritionist, and food, I think, is an easy place for a lot of people to enter the wellness path, especially if you're trying to shift your energy, you're trying to look better because it's tangible when we pick it up. So food is important for energy and then body practices are where yoga comes in, sleep, anything that is not food related but related to having an embodied experience. So I think that's important because a lot of people get in their heads and then the third part is emotional well being and mental health and dispelling stress. And really, there's a lot of research in my last book

about the connection between bloating and inflammation related to circular thought patterns, for instance. And so sometimes I think we, people still say, oh, the mind and the body are connected. And I say, no, they're not actually connected because that implies two separate things that are fused at different points versus something that's really an interrelated loop. So mental health has become a huge part of my practices now,

things I do like being in nature, grounding, I sit in my garden a lot, I just look at plants and find that stoneness from nature. And then the fourth corner stone is spiritual growth, which is also related to nature for me. It is meditation. It's breathing. It's just really focusing on being versus doing. And that could just be really being present playing with my toddler. Or again, being in our garden and just focusing on beingness.

No, I want to come back to the food thing in a minute, but I think you make a good point on beauty and again, the overlap between East and West is so interesting. You know, Epictetus says like, if you make beautiful choices, that's where beauty is, right? He's saying that's not what you look. It's, are you making good decisions?

Are you thinking right thing? So I like that. And again, I know you've read a little bit of meditations, but what I think is most striking about it is here you have this guy's private diary. He doesn't think it's going to be published. And there's all these sort of beautiful meditations on nature, but it's not, hey, I'm looking out over,

the ocean, he's talking about, he's walking through a field and he can see the wheat bending under its own weight. He talks about the way that figs fall from the tree and he talks about the flecks of foam on a boar's mouth or on a lion. He talks about the brow of a lion. My favorite to tie this to food, he talks about the brow of a lion. My favorite to tie this to food, you talk about the way that you put a loaf of bread in the oven and how it cracks open on top

that nobody knows why this happens, it just happens and the sort of the beautifulness of just ordinary life. And I feel like that's a stoic practice and a yogic practice which is to just sort of fully be present and see the kinds of ordinary beauty that the rest of us are just kind of zipping through and ignoring. Yes. And I think that the more you go into this idea of beauty, there's this really dominant

quality of wholeness, right? Like so a couple couple years ago, I went through a series of big life events where my mom passed away suddenly when my son was one, and I just had all these big changes. And out of that, my brand was born, which is called Saluna, which is literally the son of the moon.

And I was going through this really dark phase in my life, and I realized there how much growth happens in the darkness, you know, with the food analogy, the seeds emerge out of the soil. They have to go into the dark and then they come out into the light. So there's, to me, beauty, you go into a forest and there's decaying, the dying plants and then there's new fresh ones. So, it's the idea of wholeness and cycles that we see in nature, again, with the sun, you know, the lunar cycles and the circadian rhythms and the solar cycles and the seasons.

In our culture, sometimes we really think about beauty as something you need to hold on to and something that's very surface and only a few people have it and it's only when you're really young. But again, this word has been used so much in yoga philosophy, this idea, you know, in Roomi and all these scholars, we talk about the essence of nature and life and, you know, I'm sure there's some of that relates to soicism about beauty in this deeper sense and so the more I've gone on Ryan I see that as wholeness and there's something that's inside of all of us and I think it's really empowering. I try to really teach that in my philosophy especially to

women. I think which have a lot of pressure to fit into certain ideals. We live in this image-based society. Instagram, all of this is just about the surface part. But then we miss out on the magnetic, the essence of beauty. What is your garden give you? I mean, obviously, it gives you food, but there's a sister reliant. It says, all you need for the happy life is a library in a garden. And I feel like with this quarantine that's sort of been proven quite vividly to me how how sort of simple the actual needs of like a happy life actually are. You know, I moved from New York City to West Hollywood to Venice to to Topanga about four months ago. And I am so happy, I don't know if you know LA,

but it's next to Malibu, and it's just a really natural place, it's very community-based. And we have about an acre of land, but it looks out over the mountains in this national park, and it's so serene, and there's so many different birds here. And I feel that, you know, we talked about the beingness

versus the doing, just being more isolated and it's just easier for me to, I mean, now we're quarantined, but even before that, say no to things, it's like, oh, you know, we live so far. I can't go to this and that. It's just helped me slow down and breathe and live more presently. We have a vegetable garden, but we also have tons of flowers and I said tons of animals. There's owls and hummingbirds and I just like you said

that this the more simple my life gets, the happier I am. I'm so happy being in my garden and getting my hands dirty and just sitting out there with our son. It's a totally different life for me and I love it. Well, so talking about simplicity and then food, I'll read you this centric quote and I want you to tell me if you love it, hate it, agree, disagree, sort of where it connects to how you think about things. He says, eat merely to relieve your hunger, drink merely to quench your thirst, dress merely to keep out the cold. How is yourself merely as a protection against personal discomfort?

Oh, I mean, if you didn't tell me that was Senaqa that could as easily be from Ramana Maharshi, who I don't know if you know his tell me that was Senaqa, it could as easily be from Ramanama Harshi, who I don't know if you know his story. He was sitting there meditating for 50 years. He said his guru was the mountain, Runa Chala. And he said Chivo was in the mountain. And when they found him, he was meditating so deeply that there were rats, that he had eaten holes in his legs.

So the story goes. And it was just about this stripping away, stripping away to connect with the essence. So I do, I do really connect with that because I think when I started out, there's a lot of emphasis on in the wellness world, especially, as it's gotten more popular on looking outside of ourselves. And biohacking, there's all these different aspects of wellness where people can take several hundred supplements a day and then feel like they need more devices, more products, more of this, you know, and for women,

it's more makeup, more hair treatments. And for me, as I've gone along, I realized that so much of it is unnecessary. And then when you simplify and you stay calm and you can self-regulate your organs and your health through, again, mental equanimity and meditation and breath practices, you need less and less and less.

So, you know, I used to like shop and I used to like close and stuff, I don't like that stuff anymore, but it just starts to, your priority shift. And, you know, again, all this outer stuff, right, and eat outer validation. Just, I mean, I made a big move in my career when I was pregnant the first time away from, you know, I used to be called quote unquote celebrity nutritionist or I would be

trailer on the world with all these celebrities and live with them on film sets and do all this stuff and walk red carpets. It was all glamorous, but I was starting to feel really disconnected and it was too much and it wasn't making me happy. So I just been the, for me, the last few years simplifying, simplifying, listening more, writing more, serving more, connecting with more, just people versus a few select clients. And so I love that quote. And like I said, it could just as easily be one of these

yogic masters. Well, so the way the Stoics think about those nice things, like you read that from Seneca and you go, oh, he must have been like a monk or something. And then you find out he was actually like one of the richest men in Rome. And he threw great parties and he had a nice house and he had a country estate.

And so his sort of point was there's actually no contradiction between, say, philosophy and wealth or having nice things. He said, like, the key is that you just can't be attached to them. So his point, he calls him preferred indifference. So he that he's indifferent to being richer poor. But if he has a choice, of course, like, who wouldn't rather have a nicer house than a house that's falling apart.

And that's kind of how I think about it. It's like, I've been lucky in my career. I've made good investments. I've, you know, I happen to live in a place for cost of living is less than saying New York City or Los Angeles. So I can afford a nice house. I can drive a nice car, but I always try to make sure that I don't identify with the car that I could live in a much smaller house at the snap of a finger.

Do you know what I mean? Well, I think that, you know, this word attachment, again, is very yogic. This idea that there's nothing wrong with having money and there's nothing wrong with wealth or external beauty or any of these things. But if our self-worth is so tied in them that if you were to make a bad investment or you start to age and suddenly ring goes down, your self-worth doesn't plummet with those things. There's a detachment from it that's really powerful. And this other thing, Ryan, that I've seen the daily stoic coins. I, my husband has somewhere around the house, the Momento Mori. And I also really struck me the symbolism with a skull, which is about remembering death, mortality, so we can live more. And the skull imagery is used so much in yogic philosophy

around certain, the symbolism is actually not true death, but the death of the ego. So I don't know if you're familiar with Kali who's this really fierce-looking goddess. She is her tongue out. She wears a necklace of skulls. And it's all about the death of delusion and ignorance and the parts of you that aren't really you. Like you know,

you were saying being attached to all the externals and she's the most fierce because she's like always trying to to peel away your attachment to things, but she's also said to be the most compassionate and to be the most loving. So I was looking at these coins. There's one in our kitchen and I was, I love that skull imagery. I actually have a crystal skull and I love see how that imagery is used in different ways. Well, I was, I was just writing about this. I have, obviously, I have the coins and stuff too, but the sort of momentum, more that I have, I was just writing about this. I have, obviously I have the coins and stuff too, but the sort of momentum, or that I have it in my bathroom,

my mirror has like a little shelf on it and I keep it on the shelf. And it's like a chunk. I don't want to know where it came from or how it was came to be for sale, but it's a chunk of a Victorian tombstone. And it just says that we're dad on it. So that's what this person, you know, in the 1800s identified with. And then

they died. And then not that long after clearly, their tombstone fell in disrepair. And you could buy it on the internet. And I think I sort of have that as a sort of a reminder that like, Hey, this is this is the only time you get with your kids. This is the only time, like this, when I wake up in the morning and I see that, I go like, you woke up this morning, this, so that's guaranteed, but tomorrow is not. And I try to kind of keep reminders of that around the house.

I find it sort of philosophically centers me. So, right, I have a stoic question for you. Yeah. So, I was reading a little bit about how we control what's up to us. There was an article saying, you know, we control our thoughts, we control our judgments and our actions. But the outside parts, death will come when it comes, outside events, so on and so forth. We sort of keep that level

of non-attachment. In the yogic world, they'll say, control your inner space, your energy, your vibration. But the teachings go on to say that you can actually, when you control the inner, the outside world starts to be impacted. So it's more, where is Newtonian science is predictive of the future.

Yogic philosophy is more in alignment with quantum, which will say it actually is causative. There's a causative effect of changing your inner world because everything's vibration. So you become more magnetic, you know, in the moving into a 5D reality versus 3D, there is, you know, the way particle theory just things start to be influenced. So at the same time, it's, you know, non-attachment for non-attachment sake, you actually can impact external

circumstances. What would stoicism say to that? Hey, I think when you start to get too close to say the law of attraction, that's where I sort of like throw up my hands and go like, maybe I do it for you. Oh, no. Not all of it. But what I love, you know, Marcus DeRueleus

says, sort of, your life is died by the color of your thoughts. And so I think that's kind of how I think about it. So it's like, the Stoic say like, events are objective. They just sort of are what they are. The coronavirus is neither good nor bad. It just is, right? It has no sort of opinion about what's happening.

And so what the Stoics say is what upset, what upsets us is our opinions. And that's what we do have control over. So instead of going around and saying, this is the worst pandemic in history. This is whose fault it is. It's so scary. The Stoics try to sort of turn down the judgments, the opinions, and just sort of focus on what

it is or what you can do within it. And so where I do think it is sort of causative, as you say, is like, if you tell yourself that something is impossible, it becomes much harder. By the same token, if you tell yourself that's something, just because you tell yourself something is possible, doesn't mean that it is. So I think it's, I see it more as like your attitude, certainly opens up and closes different opportunities to you,

but then ultimately, you're gonna have to take actions. So like for the Stoics, the first two disciplines are the discipline of perception, how you see things which either opens doors or closes them. And then the discipline of action is like, are you gonna walk through that door yes or no? And so those two ideas are related to each other. And also, I believe the Stoics don't,

it's not that they don't have emotions, but they're not ruled by their emotions. That's the reason. So in that way, if you're not flying off a handle and getting upset, angry, holding resadmints, you're in a much more, you're in control of yourself than it seems like you would have you know, wider breadth of opportunities, you wouldn't close people off. So in that way, it's causative as well. Yeah, yeah, Marcus says, if you tell yourself you haven't been harmed, you haven't been.

And so I think it's causative in that sense, right? If Epictetus, I think, says like, he was sent to prison and he doesn't mean like for a crime, he means like by some sort of dictum by a tyrant or something, but he says, but that he has suffered an evil is your opinion, right? So, so that's the other part of it. It's like, if you tell yourself, hey, like my business was ruined by the pandemic, that is true. If you don't tell yourself that, it's also true, right? And so if you tell yourself, Hey, I'm going to thrive because of this that can become true. Of course, just magically

doing something doesn't, doesn't change the reality of the situation. Well, in the great Indian epic, the Bhagavad Gita, it's the story of Arjuna and he's, he's fighting the Pandavas and he is the chance. He's the choice to have the biggest army in the world or the Council of Krishna. And he chooses Krishna and it's this amazing battle, epic story, but it's really symbolism for battling the senses and reigning it back in, you know, to the stoic idea of not being over emotional to keeping your reason and pulling in all the energy from your senses back inside of yourself So that's really interesting that overlap to where It's our senses so much that pull us into addictions food sex, you know

food, sex, you know, thrill, seeking all this, but if we can remain more in equanimity, we actually have more power over ourselves and in that way. It's more causative in our outer world as well. Yeah, I know that that's absolutely right. And so something I was going to ask you related to that speaking of equanimity under sort of real pressure. I know you're you're you're very pregnant. You're expecting you to and any day now. Yes. How do you how do you prepare yourself mentally for what is probably the most painful thing that a human can do short of like actually dying?

So I'll preface this by saying I had a pretty traumatic first birth. That was 50 hours long and my water broke before. Contractions came into it's a very long story. I attempted a home birth, ended up in the hospital. And I had a very elaborate plan with a whole team and a tub and all this stuff. So for me, the thing that I focused on is just the end goal of a healthy birth

with a healthy baby and me being healthy. And I've completely surrendered the planning, the ABC, how to get there. We'll probably go to the hospital. I'm not trying to stick to a rigid plan. And that's actually given me a lot of comfort because I'm open to anything that life brings me. You know, I guess that's,

is that in the line with a more faulty, I wrote this turn down, everything, you know, fate, whatever happens. And when you're surrendered, it's the resistance. It's, you know, last time there was, it was so stressful right because I was trying to stick to this plan. And once my water broke, I only had 24 hours to labor at home.

Whereas this is this time, I'm just open. And that releases a lot of pressure. Yeah. That's something I notice. And I don't know how timeless it is or if it's a function of sort of social media and just media in general these days. But I noticed that with with my wife, we have a three and a half year old, and a one year old, I noticed, I noticed like how, like obviously it's incredibly stressful having young kids.

You don't sleep. There's a million things that you do. It's even harder than you're all locked in that same house together. But I noticed so much of my wife's distress comes not from that in and of itself, but from how she thinks it should go in comparing herself to other moms. Do you know what I mean? I feel like women are very hard. It's not men who are projecting

some image of the perfect mother anymore. I feel like that comes a lot from other women. Oh my gosh, I mean, that's a whole other topic. Is the mom community and mom shaming, which I think is really unfortunate. And I fell into that too when this whole thing started. You know, our son is a toddler. He just started preschool in the fall.

And I was thinking, you know, oh my gosh, am I doing enough activities and my stimulating him enough? But back to this idea of stepping back and realizing that every breath, every experience is an experience in and of itself. And if we play in the garden and he helps me pick spinach for an hour, he's learning. And if we play with Play-Doh for an hour, that's great too.

I mean, he's a toddler. He's not getting his PhD right now. So, I think all this pressure for things to be a certain way and look a certain way is a function of, like you said, social media, Instagram, everyone's posting their best moments and perfect cookies, their baking, their kids and all this stuff. But the reality is life is messy and very full. We're doing our best. And for me, I was supposed to get ahead for my maternity leave.

I had my business and a podcast as well and books and all these things. And that just went out the window because he's home with us all day. So there's that, okay, this is how it's working out. It looks very different than how I planned, but we can still breathe and enjoy this moment. And I loved this quote that I saw in the Daily Stoke in speaking of Instagram.

I love that yours is, inspiration, I actually learned things where it says life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past neglect the present and fear the future. So this fear with moms, am I doing enough, am I, my, my kid gonna be okay? We're just present with them. I think and they, they, they feel hurt and they feel seen and then we're present with

ourselves. I think that's probably the best lesson we can give our children. It's not about activities and you know, all these complex things. Well, I think what the Stokes would say also is like let's let's say that that your child and and I'll use mine. So it's not projecting. Let's say that my son was going to a monastery school and now he's at home. So and let's say that the education he's getting from us is 80% as good as he was getting at school. So there's some sort of objective deficit.

Us feeling shitty about that, or feeling guilty about it, or carrying around that sort of insecurity, not only does it not change the situation, but it might actually even harm the situation. So that's like, that's the other thing I see is people go, you know, like there's this quote from about Lyndon Johnson, I love you. He went to a very crappy school and then, you know, ended up in, you know, in JFK's administration where everyone had gone to Harvard or Yale. And one of the advisors said, you know, Johnson was never harmed by his lack of education,

but he was certainly harmed by his sense of lacking in education. And so it's like, actually the emotions that we make up about these things, and the guilt we carry, and the fear, and the worry, that actually is having an impact. Meanwhile, the situation just sort of is what it is. Well, it needs such a potent time.

This is such a precious time where, you know, as Eckhart Toley said, the businesses have shut down, but the busyness of life has also shut down. We don't have the option for plate-aids right now and branches and parties and shopping. So this is a time where we can actually learn to be more present and to cultivate that stillness.

And it's actually much easier now than when everything reopens. And so if we shift our perspective to breathing energy into that, again, I think that's what I want to model for my son is that it's not all about scheduled activities and running around and doing this, back to the yogic philosophy, which is that beingness is prevalent, beingness is really the goal being present,

which overlaps with that Sena quote, quote, not neglecting the present, not worried that we're not doing enough, but just letting it be as it is. Yeah, and I think obviously this is a scary time to bring a kid into the world. I think about that a lot myself. And then, so that's one way to look at it, the Stokes would say. And then the other way would be like, hey, like, ordinarily, you know, you and John would be thinking about the places you could go, the businesses you had to, you know, the business you had to run, like you essentially, you have much more protected

paternity leave, you know, like you will get the cocoon that ordinarily you might be tempted to break or not be able to have because of the events of the world. So I think it sort of comes down to how we choose to look at it. Oh no, oh no. My perspective is, you know, with our first child, and you've probably had this experience as well. Everybody wants to come see the baby and everybody's flying in. And I'm a very, I mean, I have this outer world

and business and so on and so forth. But I'm actually quite introverted and I really like living here where it is the land and it's very earthy and I like just being with the family. So the positive part is we are in quarantine and people aren't going to see this, you know, this our baby for some months realistically speaking. And I think that's a gift that we can just get to know each other. You know, they say newborns have to smell the parents and their eyes don't open for a few days. And these are talking about presents.

These are moments you don't get back. And obviously it's great to have a love around. They're not saying it's bad to have a lot of relatives and so on. But this is a different experience from our first child where now we can just really ground in as a family. No, I think that's right. I got a message from someone the other day and they were like, hey, you know, so it was very nice.

They said, hey, you know, I'd love to get coffee at some point. I remember feeling such relief seeing that email and I thought, not only am I not going to have coffee with this person, I don't have to have coffee with anyone for probably six or eight months. And I don't even have to hem in Ha about it. It's not even it's not even a possibility and like as an introvert, but also as someone who has like what I think is important work to do. It's such an incredible gift that this is finally sort of being respected. Well, I mean, that's that's the worst. There's people that ask me all the time too, hey, can I just take you up for coffee? And I'm like, okay, well, the whole thing, driving there, being there and getting back is probably two hours.

And you're going to buy my $4 coffee, but I'm sorry, my time is so, my free time is so limited. How do I say this in a nice way? But no. Well, that's maybe a good place to close because it ties back into the momentum. limited. How do I see this in a nice way? But no. Well, that's maybe a good place to close because it ties back into the momentum or anything. You know, Seneca's point was if someone tried to steal two hours of money that you earned from doing labor, you would be like, you'd punch them in the face or you'd call the police. But if someone wants to steal

two hours of your time or you will thought, you will thoughtlessly steal two hours of somebody else's time and not think about it. And so yeah, I think this is a great reminder sort of with the specter of mortality looming over us that it's like, oh, not only do I not wanna do that for me, not only do I not wanna do do that for me, not only do I not want to do it because it's not healthier safe, but I think about it now.

It's like I've spent so many, this is the most amount of days I've ever spent consecutively at home with my family or with anyone, probably since I was lived at home with my parents, when I was 18 years old. Even then, I went more places, right? And so now, if there is something like, things are starting to be rescheduled for later in the fall,

now I have almost this, it's so vivid to me who I'm taking that time from, from myself and from my family, that I'm trying to think about how do I keep that going? Because I realized that, oh, I'm giving my life away is what I'm doing. Well, isn't there something in stoicism too about the emphasis for the greater good? And to your point, if you're reading and writing and teaching this work, it's for the greater good.

And so you can sort of use that as the benchmark for this person asking me for coffee or I'm gonna put something out that's gonna affect a lot more people. Yeah, you're right. Santa could talk about that too. He says, you know, there's many ways to serve, to serve your country. It doesn't have to be holding office. It can be being a good neighbor.

It can be writing a book. It can be a lot of things. And I think, yeah, we tend to default to what's easiest or most impressive as opposed to what is most efficient and what we are most talented at. Beautiful. Well, thank you so much. I hope the labor goes slightly less terrifying than 50 hours. It's just totally inhuman. uh, terrifying than 50 hours. It's just totally inhuman. What was lovely talking to you, Ryan, I, uh, I'm glad we fit this in before this baby comes any day. And thank you for teaching me more about stoicism. I love

learning about, I'm going to learn about it more because I think there was a lot of parallels with yoga, which is, uh, just interesting. I think so. All right. I really appreciate it. Good luck. Talk soon. I think so. All right, I really appreciate it. Good luck. Talk soon. Thank you so much. Hey there. Today's episode sponsor is ForSigmatic,

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