The Daily Stoic - Before You Go Anywhere, Remember This | Righteousness Is Beautiful

Episode Date: May 6, 2021

“The people on your flight tomorrow will be slow and rude. They will recline their seats into you. They will clog the aisles. They will watch videos on their phone without earbuds in. They will fight you for the armrests, even though they obviously belong to the person in the middle seat. They will take too long in the bathroom. And they will do ungodly things in there while they’re at it. They will take forever to deplane; they will not care that half the plane have connections to make.”Ryan discusses what is in your control, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. The new Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. You can add the Cover to any mattress, and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. Go to eightsleep.com/dailystoic to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout.***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/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic 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 Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast.6 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and 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. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery'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. Before you go anywhere, remember this. The people on your flight tomorrow will be slow and rude. They will recline their seat on you. They will clog the aisles. They will watch videos on their phone without earbuds in.

They will fight you for the armrest, even though they obviously belong to the person in the middle seat. They will take too long in the bathroom. They will take forever to de-plane. They will not care that you have a connection to make worse. They may not even wear a mask. They will do all these things and more. Do you understand that?

No amount of frustrated, muttering, anxiety, impatient, and dirty looks will fix it. It's just how it is. Why are they like this? They are like this because they are flawed people because they don't fly as much as you because they are dealing with their own anxiety and worries because maybe they have had a nightmare of a trip so far because they have their own connection to make.

They are like this because they can't tell good from evil Marcus Aurelius would say of rude people in his own time because they don't know any better because they haven't had the training or the awakening that you have had. We can't let this get to us. We can't let them implicate us in ugliness. To feel anger at someone Marcus Aurelius wrote is to turn your back on him and this is unnatural. It's also beneath you.

It's a sign that you haven't properly prepared yourself for the experience that was and remains quite predictable. Flying is a pain. Being trapped in a thin metal tube with a diverse collection of humanity under stressful conditions, it's not going to be fun. It's not going to bring out the best in people. You can't control that. You can, however, control whether it brings out the worst in you.

Righteousness is beautiful. This is today's entry in the daily stoic, 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living by yours truly. Then what makes a beautiful human being? Isn't it the presence of human excellence? Young man, if you wish to be beautiful, then work diligently at human excellence. And what is that? Observe those who praise you without prejudice, the just or the unjust, the just,

the even tempered or the undisciplined, the even tempered, the self-controlled or the uncontrolled, the self-controlled, in making yourself that kind of person you will become beautiful. To the extent you ignore these qualities, you will be ugly even if you use every trick in the book to appear beautiful. That's from Epictetus's Discourses 3-1. Contemporary notions of beauty are ridiculous. Our standards for what's attractive are incredibly unstuck in what we prize and extol things people have almost no control over. High cheekbones, complexion, height, piercing eyes. Is it really beautiful to win the genetic lottery? Or should beauty be contingent on the choices, actions, and attributes

we develop in even keel, a sense of justice, a commitment to duty. These are beautiful traits that go much deeper than appearances. Today, you can choose to be without prejudice, to act with justice, to keep an even keel, to be in control of yourself, even when that means dedication and sacrifice. And if that's not beautiful, what is? And I think if we if we really summarize what Epictetus is saying, he's like, beautiful people make beautiful choices or that beautiful choices make beautiful people. We tend to get so obsessed with superficial things, but we know that beneath that superficiality, because we see

this in people, there's a real ugliness, or Gertrude Stein says, there's no there there. Underneath, there's nothing there. What we admire, what we should be striving for, what makes us truly attractive are those other traits, that other work that we do, right? It's the whole of one's personality, the whole of one's set of standards, the whole of the decisions and actions that you take in your life.

So again, it's easy to look in the mirror and, or to look at someone from across the room and sort of make a snap judgment. They're ugly, I'm beautiful, I'm ugly, they're beautiful. But the truth is the picture is fuller than that. And the stokes would say, unless it's in our control, there's not really anything to admire. The fact that this person was born to a great name,

they would say is far less impressive than the fact that you turn your ordinary name into a great one by the actions that you took by living with those four virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. Beautiful choices. That's what makes a beautiful person. You have to remember that. You have to believe that it's the whole philosophy right there, right? In that way, epictetus is just as great as Marcus Aurelius, despite one having a very glamorous position in the other not. And I would argue that epictetus is far greater as a slave and does far more for the world and lives a more beautiful life than many, many, many rich, beautiful Romans

whom we've forgotten or even those that we have remembered. Right? Cato is ultimately greater than Caesar because of the more beautiful, temperate, virtue-driven decisions that he makes. Make beautiful choices, you will be beautiful. It's as simple as that. Thanks so much for listening. If you could leave a review for the podcast, we'd really appreciate it.

The reviews make a difference, and of course every nice review from a nice person helps balance out. The crazy people who get triggered and angry anytime we say something they disagree with. So if you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. 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 Plus in Apple Podcasts. 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, Manduke 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 Wonder yet.