The Daily Stoic - Better Days Will Shine Through | What Can Go Wrong… Might

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

“Imagine you are Seneca and tuberculosis has claimed ten years of your life in convalescence. Imagine you are Seneca and after climbing to the top of Roman life, you were cruelly exiled to some rock in the middle of nowhere.”Ryan explains how Fortune behaves as she pleases–what she gives she takes away, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.This episode is  brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. It’s the largest marketplace for job seekers in the world, and it has great search features so that you can find candidates with any hard or soft skills that you need. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit linkedin.com/STOIC to post a job for free. ***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/dailystoicSee 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 Stoke podcast each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes illustrated with stories from history Current events and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree'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. These are better days shining through. Imagine Uarsenica and tuberculosis has claimed 10 years of your life in convolescence. Imagine you are Seneca and after climbing to the top of Roman

life you are cruelly exiled to some rock in the middle of nowhere. At each of these desperate painful moments when it seemed like all was lost, when the sky was dark and the light had vanished forever. Do you know what happened? Eventually and perceptively, then suddenly, better days shone through. As Bruce Springsteen sings, that's what happens. We're down and out, exhausted, our ass dragon, listening to the hours and minutes ticking away while it's all slipping away and then boom, those better days shine through. That's how it went for Seneca and it's how it will go for you. No one can say when, no one can say in what form it will happen,

but it will. Fortune behaves as she pleases. What she gives, she takes away, but she eventually gives again. It's just how it works. You just have to hold on. You just have to hold on. You just have to be ready. As Seneca was not just once and twice and even the third time when Nero's goons came to finish him off. Even then he chose to

seize the opportunity fate had presented to him and gave us his greatest performance and then moved on from this life to better days once again. What can go wrong might, and this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoke Journal 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living by yours truly, we call people who dwell on what might go wrong pessimists. Some even think that bad thoughts attract bad events. The Stokes found this all to be nonsense. In fact, they had a practice pre-Meditatio Molorum,

pre-Meditation of evils, that specifically encouraged musing on the so-called worst-case scenario. Marcus would begin his day thinking about all the ugliness he would see on display in court, not for the purpose of working himself up, but precisely the opposite, to calm and focus himself, to be prepared to act in the proper way rather than just to react. Seneca 2 practiced meditating in advance, not only on what normally happens, but on what could happen. Epic Titus went as far as to imagine losing a loved one every time he would kiss them. The stokes believed that all we have is on loan from fortune, and that negative visualization

helps increase our awareness of the unexpected. So don't shy away from this in your thoughts. Then we have two quotes today from Marcus Aurelius and from Seneca. When you arise in the morning, tell yourself, I will encounter busy bodies, ingrates, egomaniacs, liars, the jealous, and cranks. They are all stricken with these afflictions because they don't know the difference between good and evil. Because I have understood the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, I know that the

wrong doers are still akin to me, and that none can do me harm or implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I be angry at my relatives and hate them for we are made for cooperation. Before I get to the center, I would say that the many first times I read this quote, especially when I read it, young, I focused on that first part where you list just how awful and frustrating everyone will be. And I think that's sort of the rudimentary understanding. He's like, look, don't go into the eyes.

I'll, you know, don't go into the world. Rosie I rosy eyed and bushy tailed or you're going to get your heart stomped on, right? You got to be aware, you got to be prepared. Mark's really says, don't go expecting plate as Republican. But it's really the second part of that that's hit me more, right? Why is he doing that exercise?

It's so when he's hit by it, when he's hit by a cheat or a liar or a person who is you know messing around on their spouse or you know when when he sees somebody do something wrong, he's not surprised by it, it doesn't make him bitter and it doesn't make him write off all of humanity as a whole. You know, he says, I because I know better, I know that the wrong doers are still akin to me. And he says, and none can do me hard or implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I be angry at my relatives or hate them. That's something I've been working on. It's like I was just dealing with someone who I really

care about in there just, you know, being, you know, not safe or smarter or who I know them to be. And I wanted to unload on them and I had to go, no, I care about this person. I'm not going to let, I should have prepared for this. I shouldn't have built them up in my head. They're human beings, they have flaws, they do the wrong thing sometimes.

I'm not going to cast them out of my heart or out of my life for what they've done. And then this goes into the second centric,ka quote, being unexpected adds to the weight of a disaster and being a surprise has never failed to increase a person's pain. For that reason, nothing should ever be unexpected by us. Our mind should be sent out in advance to all the things and we shouldn't just consider the normal course of things but what could actually happen? For is there anything in life that fortune

won't knock off its high horse if it pleases her? You know, I have the pre-Montasia Malorum coin here on my desk, and I just look at, I go, look, look, Murphy's Law is real man. Things can go sideways fast. I mean, imagine where you were the first week of March 2020. Did you see the next 12 months coming? Very, very few people did.

But we would have been better had we been more prepared, had we been more realistic, had we been less in our own fantasy world. Senaqa says, the only unforgivable thing for a general to say is I did not think it would happen. So of course, positive visualization is thinking of all the good things that can happen. You can succeed, you can break through, you can make it. If it's humanly possible, no, you can do it. Marcus says,

the same time, the law of attraction is not real. If you think about negative things, you don't attract negative things. You actually make yourself more prepared to wrestle with and deal with and conquer those difficult things. And that is why we do our premeditashiumium loram. That is why we think of all the things that can happen. That's why we meditate on the people we're likely to meet so that they can't drag us down. They can't implicate us in ugliness and they can't make us unhappy. If you're trying to not just wait for better days but seize them, strongly recommend you check out the Daily Stoke Alive Time Challenge. It's 14 days of Stoke inspired wisdom.

How do we seize this moment? How do we use it to become our best cells? And that's why we designed some of our best Stoke practices over 14 days. Each one will challenge you. That's why it's called a challenge. But I think you will emerge better, stronger, less anxious with more perspective and hopefully having done some good for the world. You can check that out at dailystoward.com slash a live time.

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. today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.