The Daily Stoic - Daily Stoic Sundays: The Important Thing is to Not Be Afraid

Episode Date: April 12, 2020

On today’s episode, Ryan talks about the importance of courage in the face of great peril—and the distinction between being scared and being afraid. It's especially relevant in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.Read the original article here: https://ryanholiday.net/the-important-thing-is-to-not-be-afraid/We’ve made a Four Virtues medallion commemorating courage along with the other Four Stoic Virtues. Get yours at https://geni.us/FourVirtuesThis episode is brought to you by Thrive Market, an online marketplace where you can get over 6000 products, whether it's pantry staples, food, wine, and other groceries, or cleaning products, vitamins, or even bath and body products. They have products for any diet or value system, whether it's vegan, non-GMO, paleo, keto, kosher, halal, non-FODMAP, and more. Visit https://thrivemarket.com/stoic to get 25% off your order today.  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 the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We reflect. We prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time.

And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school, when we have the time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals, and to prepare for what the future will bring. 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. The important thing is to not be afraid. In scary times, it's easy to be scared. Events can escalate at any moment. There is uncertainty. You could lose your job. Then your house and your car, something could even happen to your kids. Of course, we're going to feel something when things are shaky like that. How could we not? Even the Stoics who were supposedly masters of their emotions admitted that we are going to have natural reactions to things that are out of our control. You're going to feel

cold if someone dumps a bucket of water on you. Your heart is going to race if something jumps out from behind a corner. These are the things the Stoics openly discussed. They had a word for these immediate, pre-cognitive impressions, things, they called it fantasya. No amount of training or wisdom, Senika said, can prevent us from having these reactions. What mattered to them and what is urgently needed today in a world of unlimited breaking news about pandemics

or collapsing stock markets or military conflicts, was what you did after that reaction, what matters is what comes next. There is a wonderful quote from Faulkner about this very idea, be scared, he wrote, you can't help that, but don't be afraid. A scare is a temporary rush of feeling. Being afraid is an ongoing process. Fear is a state of being. The alertness that comes from being startled might even help you. It wakes you up. It puts your body in motion. It's what saves prey from the tiger or the tiger from the hunter. But fear and worry and anxiety being afraid, that's not fight or flight, that's parallelization that only makes things worse.

Especially right now, especially in a world that requires solutions to the many problems we face. There's certainly not going to solve themselves and in action or the wrong action may make them worse and may put you in even more danger. An inability to learn adapt or embrace change will too. There is a Hebrew prayer which dates back to the early 1800s. The world is a narrow bridge, it says, and the important thing is to not be afraid. The wisdom of that expression has sustained the Jewish people through incredible adversity and terrible tragedies. It was even turned into a popular song that was broadcast to the troops and citizens alike during the Yom Kippur War.

It's a reminder, yes, things are dicey and it's easy to be scared if you look down instead of forward. But fear won't help. What does help? Training, courage, discipline, commitment, calm. But mainly that courage thing, which the Stoics held up as the most essential virtue. One of my favorite explanations of this idea comes from the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. It's not that astronauts are braver than other people, he says. We're just, you know, meticulously prepared. Think about someone like John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth,

whose heart rate never went above 100 beats per minute, the entire mission. That's what preparation does for you. Astronauts face all sorts of difficult high-state situations in space, where the margin for air is tiny. In fact, on Chris' first spacewalk, his left eye went blind, then his other eye teared up and went blind too. In complete darkness, he had to find his way back

if you wanted to survive. He would say later that the key in such situations is to remind oneself that there are six things I could do right now, all of which would help make things better, and it's worth remembering too. There's no problem so bad that you can't make it worse also. That's the difference between being scared and afraid. One prevents you from making things better, and it may make things worse.

After the stock market crash in October 1929, America faced a horrendous economic crisis that lasted 10 years. Banks failed, investors were wiped out, unemployment was some 20%. Herbert Hoover, who'd been in office barely six months when the market collapsed, tried and failed repeatedly for the next three and a half years to stem the tide. FDR who succeeded him would have never denied that things were dangerous or that this was scary. Of course it or that this was scary. Of course it was. He was scared. How could he not be? Yet what he counseled the people

in his now legendary first inaugural address in 1933 was that fear was a choice. It was the real enemy to be fought because it would only make the situation worse. It would destroy the remaining banks. It would turn people against each other. It would prevent the implementation of cooperative solutions. And today, whether the biggest problem you face is the coronavirus pandemic or the similarly dire economic implication, or maybe it's both those things

plus a faltering marriage or a cancer diagnosis or a lawsuit, you have to know what the real plague to avoid is. This life we're living, this world we inhabit is a scary place. If you peer over the side of a narrow bridge, you lose the heart to continue. You freeze up, you sit down, you don't make good decisions, you don't think or see clearly. The important thing is that we're not afraid, that we don't overthink things, that we don't think or see clearly. The important thing is that we're not afraid that we don't overthink things, that we don't get distracted with the worst case scenario on top of the worst case scenario, on top

of the collision of two other worst case scenarios. Because that doesn't help us with what's right in front of us right now. It doesn't help us put one foot in front of the other, whether it's on a spacewalk or a tough business call. It doesn't help us slow our heart rate down, whether we're re-entering the Earth's atmosphere or watching a plummeting stock portfolio. It doesn't help us remember that we've trained for this,

that there is a playbook for how to proceed. Remember Marcus Aurelius himself faced a deadly, dangerous pandemic. His people were panic, his doctors were baffled, his staff and his advisors were conflicted, his economy plunged. The plague spanned 15 years of his reign with a mortality rate of between 2 and 3%. Marcus would have been scared. How could he not have been? But he didn't let it rattle him. He didn't freeze. He didn't relinquish his ability to read. He got to work.

Don't let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. He wrote to himself as it was happening. Don't try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand and ask, why is this so unbearable? Why can't I endure it? You'll be embarrassed to answer.

The crisis could have crippled him, but instead he stood up. He not only endured it, but he was a hero. He saved lives. He prevented panic from turning the battle into a route, which is what we must do today and always whatever we're facing. We can't give into fear. We have to repeat to ourselves over and over and over again. It's okay to be scared, just don't be afraid. We repeat, the world is a narrow bridge, and I will not be afraid. We have to focus on the six things

as Chris Hadfield might say that we can do to make it better. And we can't forget that there are plenty of things we can do to make things worse, foremost among them, giving into fear and making mistakes. Rather, we have to keep going like the thousands of generations who have come before us

because time marches in only one direction forward. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. And if you don't get the Daily Stoke email, go to dailystoke.com slash email. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page 6 or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai.

And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Disantel, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the build up, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them.

It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. or the Wunder App.