The Daily Stoic - Can You Savor it | Expect To Change Your Opinions

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

Ryan talks about why it’s so important to soak in the present moment, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day.For a limited time, the ebook edition of Courage Is Calling by Ryan Holiday is only $1.99! We have no idea how long the discount will last, so grab your copy now! Or if you prefer hardcover, you can get those over in the Daily Stoic store, where you can also get signed copies!Go Macro 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 gomacro.com and use promo code STOIC for 30% off your order plus free shipping on all orders over $50.As a member of Daily Stoic Life, you get all our current and future courses, 100+ additional Daily Stoic email meditations, 4 live Q&As with bestselling author Ryan Holiday (and guests), and 10% off your next purchase from the Daily Stoic Store. Sign up at https://dailystoic.com/life/Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and 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 another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, the daily Stoic, 366 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 Wanderer'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. Can you savor it? The Epicurians and the Stoics were actually not that different, at least

in the ancient world. Epicurists like Marcus Aurelius or Santa Castrov to be sober, to live frugally and austerely. The Stoics chose to be more active in political and civil life, and that should be to their credit. But the Epicurians, one gathers, deserve a point for something it often feels that the Stoics missed. Although they each may have partaken in the same diet, it was clear that the Epicurians savored what they ate more. The same went for drinking, for friends, even sex. When they spoke of pleasure, the Epicurians weren't referring to gluttonous feasts or really excesses of any kind. They meant enjoying what one had, whatever that was.

Epicurus always stopped before the hangover or the regret. It's just that while he was doing it, whatever it was, he took the time to soak it in, to appreciate it, to feel the pleasure for what it was. Not something to feel guilty about, not something to avoid, but something to experience as part of our nature, and as a gift.

Reading Marcus Aurelius' meditations or epictetus one is not wrong to think that these two men could have done a better job of that. Indeed, they deserved that. So do you. No one needs to chase pleasure. No one needs to become a hedonist. Just enjoy what's there in front of you. Notice it. Roll it around in your mouth. So get in. Save it. Hey, crazy news. It's sort of copy by surprise, but courageage is calling as an eBook, it's just 199 right now in the US.

Anywhere you get your eBooks, it's my first book in this 4v2 series that I'm working on. I'm actually just sending in the sequel, which is on Temperance to the publisher now. But in the meantime, you can get Courage is calling the first book in my 4v2 series for 199. That's as cheap as it'll ever be. If you were looking to try it, you wanted to give it as a gift. Now, it's the time to do that. You can get it anywhere, your ebooks are sold, or you can just check out the show notes and grab a link to it and pick it up. And I hope you do. Expect to change your opinions. your opinions. And I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoic 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living by yours truly.

My co-author and translator, Steve Enhancelman, you can get signed copies by the way in the Daily Stoic store over a million copies of the Daily Stoic in print now. It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. It's been more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the best cellos, just an awesome experience. But I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystock.com as well.

But let's get on with today's reading. There are two things that must be rooted out in human beings. Epictetus says in discourses 3, 14, arrogant opinion and mistrust. Irrigant opinion expects that there is nothing further needed and mistrust assumes that under the torrent of circumstances, there can be no happiness. How often do we begin some projects certainly know exactly how it will go? How often do we meet people and think we know exactly who and what they are?

And how often are these assumptions proved to be completely and utterly wrong. And this is why we must fight our biases and preconceptions because they are a liability. Ask yourself always what haven't I considered? Why is this thing the way that it is? Am I part of the problem here or the solution? Could I be wrong here? Be doubly careful to honor what you do not know and then set it against the knowledge that you actually have. And remember, if there is one core teaching at the heart of this philosophy, it's that we're not as smart and wise as we like to

think we are. And then if we ever do want to become wise, it comes from questioning and from humility, not as many would like to think, from certainty, from mistrust, and from arrogance. Of course, this is the idea of if ego is the enemy, epithetists, you cannot learn that what you think you already know. And this is the irony, the tragedy of most stupidity is that the stupid are too conceited to dumb to know how dumb and stupid they are, right? Ignorance often also hides from us the extent of our ignorance. This is called the Dunning Kruger effect. It's a primary strain in our politics, our cultural life these days.

It's not just a disinterest in ideas or what's going on in the world, but it's a sense that one already knows all these things, that one knows better and thus is superior. There's a great book that I recommend I carried in the bookstore and I had them on the podcast a while back by Tom Nichols called the Death of Expertise. Right? This sense that we know better than the people who have spent their entire lives studying and exploring these things. I even see this with ego as the enemy, right? People go, oh, but isn't ego a good thing? And I go, you know, I talk about that at length in the book and they go, oh, I haven't read it. And it's interesting. Oh, it's so nice that you have a strong opinion about the book that you have not bothered

to read, right? That's it in a nutshell, right? What gets in the way, and I think the Zeno said that it's that conceit is the impediment to knowledge, right? That our sense of what we know, our preconceptions, our suspicions, our cynicism, right? That our sense of what we know, our preconceptions, our suspicions, our cynicism, right? This isn't just from ignorance. It can also come from a sort of a jadedness or a sense of superiority or a sense of, it could come from that other place too. But the point is, we get in our own way and we close ourselves off, right? And this

prevents us from learning, prevents us from having our minds change, prevents us from understanding new things. It's a toxic force in the world today. It's just a toxic, terrible force. And it holds us back. So let's go back a while, right? Let's go back to Socrates, this hero of the Stokes. Socrates is considered wise, but what is the source of Socrates' wisdom, D'Aginis's layer, to says it's that he is aware of his own ignorance.

Now whether Socrates really says this himself, you know, that quote comes later, it doesn't really matter, think about what the socratic method is. It's Socrates asking questions. It's almost exasperating. Listening to Socrates never coming out and taking a position or making an assertion. Just it's all questions. But that's who Socrates was. He was trying to learn, trying to ask, trying to get to truth. He wasn't trying to prove that he was smarter than anyone else. He was trying to really articulate how elusive and complicated the truth actually is.

Think about what the scientific method is. It's a hypothesis. But then the next thing you do after the hypothesis is try to disprove the hypothesis. Try to get the information that points one way or another whether that hypothesis is correct. It doesn't, the hypothesis isn't a conclusion. It's not a certainty. It's a sense. Here's what I think based on my knowledge, based on past information, based on what's intuitive, but then I'm gonna go do the work.

I'm gonna get the evidence. I'm gonna poke holes in this. You know, we talk about, they talk about this idea of a confirmation bias that when you think things are a certain way or are you looking for something, when you have a preconceived notion, you tend to only find the things

that confirm that preconceived notion. But the opposite of that is true. It means you don't see all the things out there that would make you see it differently, that would make you think differently, that would open your mind to this or that or the other. So remember, the stoic comes to knowledge from a place of humility, from a place of questioning. Our forefather is Socrates in this regard. It's humility. You cannot learn that what you think you already know. Focus on what you don't know. Focus on learning. Focus on getting better. If you think you know everything in one sense, you're right. Because you have made yourself incapable

of learning anything new. So expect to change your opinions, keep your mind open, focus on all you have yet to learn, as opposed to all the things you think you already know. You know, the Stoics in real life met at what was called the Stoa. The Stoa, Pocule, the Painted Porch in ancient Athens. Obviously, we can't all get together in one place, because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people, and we couldn't fit in ancient Athens. Obviously, we can all get together in one place because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people and we couldn't fit in one space.

But we have made a special digital version of the stove. We're calling it Daily Stoic Life. It's an awesome community. You can talk about like today's episode. You can talk about the emails, ask questions. That's one of my favorite parts is interacting with all these people who are using stoicism to be better

in their actual Real lives you get more daily stoke meditations over the weekend just for the daily stoke life members quarterly Q&As with me Clothbound edition of our best of meditations plus a whole bunch of other stuff including discounts and this is the best part All our daily stoke courses and challenges totally for free hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our new year, new you challenge. We'd love to have you join us. There's a two week trial totally for free. Check it out at dailystokelife.com. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily stoke early and ad free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music

app today, or you can listen early and ad-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. Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes and Banity Fair.

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