The Daily Stoic - Can You Fight To See Their Side? | Ask DS

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

One gets the sense that Seneca, like many smart and active people, was often frustrated by other people. It is inevitable that someone like him—someone creating art, actively participating in government, managing properties, etc—would have regularly found his interest and his will thwarted. Perhaps a neighbor opposed some changes he was making to his land. Or an intriguing enemy at the palace sought to undermine him with the emperor. Maybe his brother jostled for an inheritance. Maybe he bumped into a rude person in the street.These are timeless and common occurrences. And, quite naturally, they are prone to make us angry—especially if we impute the least charitable motivations on the other party.---And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions about Stoicism at Andrews Air Force Base, The topics he covers include how Stoicism can be applied to a wide variety of professions, using Stoicism to embrace your emotions, and the Stoic view on work/life balance.✉️ 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.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. 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. Thank you for listening. And we hope this is of use to you. [♪ Music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in art, actively participating in government, managing properties, etc.

Would have regularly found his interests and his will thwarted. Perhaps a neighbor opposed some change he was making to his land, or an intriguing enemy at the palace sought to undermine him with the emperor. Maybe his brother jostled for an inheritance. Maybe he bumped into a rude person in the street. These are timeless and common occurrences, and quite naturally they are prone to make us angry, especially if we impute the least charitable motivations on the other party. My neighbor is trying to screw me over, so-and-so wants my job. My brother is up to his old tricks.

This guy is a selfish jerk. When we think this way, we get angry. It's hard not to, which is why Seneca, from experience, said that we have to try to resist. Instead, we should try to go through life like a lawyer, or rather a public defender. We must, he said, plead the case of the absent defendant despite our own interests. That is really take the time to think about what is motivating other people. Take

the time to act as if we were trying to help them escape punishment from the judge and jury that is the emotional and vindictive part of our mind. Oh, he really just wants what's best for everyone. My brother doesn't know any better. This guy didn't mean to bump into me. It's just having a hard day. Don't just fight to see the worst fight to see their side. When we do this, when we give people the benefit of the doubt, the presumption of innocence instead of the presumption of guilt and ill motives, everything relaxes. We can forgive, we canine common ground, we can focus on what is actually important, our own behavior.

It's funny I talked to lots of people and a good chunk of those people haven't been readers for a long time. They've just gotten back into it and I always love hearing that and they tell me how they fall in a long time. They've just gotten back into it. And I always love hearing that. And they tell me how they fall in love with reading. They're reading more than ever. And I go, let me guess, you listen audio books, don't you? And it's true. And almost invariably, they listen to them on Audible.

And that's because Audible offers an incredible selection of audio books across every genre from best sellers and new releases to celebrity memoirs. And of course, ancient philosophy, all my books are available on audio, read by me for the most part. Audible lets you enjoy all your audio entertainment in one app. You'll always find the best of what you love, or something new to discover, and as an audible member you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog, including the latest

best sellers and new releases. You'll discover thousands of titles from popular favorites, exclusive new series, exciting new voices in audio. You can check out stillness is the key the daily dad I just recorded so that's up on audible now coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the obstacle is the way audiobooks so all those are available and new members can try audible for free for 30 days visit audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500-500, that's audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500-500. Well, it's great to be here. Thank you all. I'm going to send a show to you because that's the other story. It's time I'll stand. All right. I'm going to start this. I'm going to get kicked off. And you're beginning to, how the stilis is different from profession to profession, for instance, sports versus humility.

Yeah, I think the course, so is an epicotitis, a great stovie, says, you know, the chief asking life is a separate nation, the two categories, what's the inner control, the outside part of the show. So, I think whatever profession we're talking about, what those externals are, what's the inter-conchial and the test type of RQ-shall. So, I think whatever profession we're talking about, what those externals are, what's inter-conchial is going to differ from one to the other, but the fundamental tasks of saying, and don't control what happens, I think, how we've disponse. What happens? This is the task, this is the job.

So I think when I talk about sports teams or military or insurance salesmen, the joe maids are in a different variety widely. But at the end of the day, I think it's sort of performances, performance, maximizing one's potential is maximizing one's potential, focusing on one's control is the chief task. So I see services, I think part of the reason it works so well, is that it's not dependent on what you do exactly, but how you adapt the principles or the ideas to what you do. Thank you. Yeah.

I have a question, Ryan. All right. I think when you were talking about how we started to be, how we control how we respond. And I think we look at society now where people were rushing grace, kind of feeling your emotions and embracing your emotions, how do we go to the sources and with, I think embracing those emotions, which we have instead of

having to incorporate them down. It's attention. I think, unfortunately, when we hear the word stoke, we tend to think of the lowercase word stoke, which means surpassing the emotion, invulnerable robotic, et cetera. One of the great tragedies of both the word stoke and the word that we're hearing in the English language

is that it's a total perversion of what the actual philosophies which would be about. So we make a distinction between lower case ofism, which is maybe even the character that all of you deal with is sort of lower case still, I stuff it all down, I suppress the emotions, I don't feel things, I just endure. I mean, we contrast that with the uppercase ofism,

which is the actual philosophy which is based around the core virtues of courage and discipline, and justice, and wisdom. It's a robust way of living. And when we think about who the actual so-hats were, these are people that got married, these are people that did great at their jobs, these are people that raised children,

these are people that look great works of literature and art. So, you know, just sort of nothing matters. I don't care. I sort of take things as they come. That's not what the actual stoics work and practice. And so, I do think it's important that we want to push back on the stereotype. And then, too, that we make another distinction when I try to make which is having the emotion and then acting in the sway of that emotion. So being angered or outraged by something is different than sending the angry email, right or acting or reacting emotionally in the moment not fully thinking through the consequences of what one's doing or how one's going to feel about this later.

So I think we're going to make a distinction between feeling the emotion and then acting out in that emotion. We think we're getting closer to what maybe the modern conception of what soicism should be. And I tend to think of it as how do I process those emotions. So I'm feeling X. Why am I feeling X? What is the best for the healthiest or the most appropriate, the most effective way to deal with that emotion? And it's usually not you know, vomiting and all over the person next to you or sort of flying off the handle. So I don't think this shows, you know, we're a motionless, but they did try to of stuff and stuffing it down is that I find

it eventually does come out, it comes due, but there's interest attached, or it's even less control than it should have been. And so I don't think so, this is an SBA, you know, emotionless, but I do try to think about it as being less driven by emotion. Certainly less constructive emotions, or the social fridges, the passions, and being the sway of the passions is usually never the place where afterwards, where I'm so glad I did that. you know, afterwards, but like I'm so glad I did that. Hello.

So one of the biggest challenges in the military is the work-life balance. We are just talking about a lot. So I was wondering if you could just kind of speak to the people in the other. Yeah, it's a timeless issue, but there's actually a line in meditation. So it works really well. It's the most powerful man in the world. 2000 years ago, it was writing these notes to something that was, you know, stop being balanced around, and he says, stop being all about business. Right? And so I think we can go in two directions, would you be all about business,

or we can have no space for businesses, or personal lives, or mess, or a month. I do like the idea of balance. We have no space for businesses, our personal lives are a mess or a month. I do like the idea of balance, I like the idea of tension. I think people tend to have professional goals. I want to get to this rank, I want to make this amount of money, I want to have this kind of life. I think we're less likely, unfortunately, or less prone to creating goals for our personal life. So one of the other interesting parts of meditation is Marcus says, you're trying to be a better wrestler, but not a better friend. He says not a better friend,

a better football, a better friend in tight places. And so I think the idea of like, what are you working on? Are you working only on your professional development? Um, are you also working on your personal development? And I tend to find that when we're working on both, they help each other. And I probably argue that personal development helps you professionally more than professional development transfers over personally. So I kind of think about my goals or who I want to be or how I want my life to look as kind of a couple of things that are in tension with each other. But understanding that if I go too far in one direction, it comes at the expense of another one which ultimately harms me in all capacity. So if my personal life is ordered and peaceful

and productive and happy, like when I sit down to write in the morning, I'm coming at that from a better place. But also if I'm procrastinating, putting off, you know, not being my best self-professionally, I bring those feelings of inadequacy or frustration or gale, I bring those, so I kind of, I think about it that way as a, as a, as a tension. Um, and I come, as, as opposed to having just some really clear professional goals, I,

I have a sense of like, well, what I want my life to look like day to day, and I try to keep that in balance with each other, that makes sense. 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. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for? FTX Founder's Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded with other people's money, but he allegedly stole.

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