The Daily Stoic - Daily Stoic Sundays: Using Stoicism To Become Unbeatable

Episode Date: April 19, 2020

In today’s episode, Ryan talks to the University of Alabama football team and discusses how to use the concepts of Stoicism to take on any challenge.When you keep one of the Daily Stoic’s medallions by your side, it helps to cement into place the messages espoused by Stoicism. Use the Obstacle is the Way medallion to remember that any obstacle you encounter contains an opportunity as well. And our Ego is the Enemy medallion is a great token of the idea that you need to get your ego out of the way in order to succeed against whatever challenges you face.https://prints.dailystoic.com/products/the-obstacle-is-the-way-medallionhttps://prints.dailystoic.com/products/ego-is-the-enemy-medallion***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: DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Ryan:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: 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 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 MMA fighter, and now he's a coach, his name is Frank Shamrock, he's a UFC champion. He has a system that he teaches his fighters, he calls it plus, minus, and equal. And basically, what he says is that every great fighter needs to have someone who's better than them, that they train under, someone who is equal to them, in ability, that they challenge themselves against

on a daily basis, and someone who is not as good as them, who they teach what they've learned from the other two. And it's this system that's being a student in everything that you do that is what makes you good. It's what makes you better. And most importantly, it's what hammers away at the ego that undermines our ability to be on a team or to relate and work with other people. Emerson has a quote that is how I try to live my life as well.

He says, every man I meet is my master in some point. And in that, I learn from him. He's saying that even when you might be better at someone at 99% of what you do, they're still 1% that they're a little bit better at. And that's what you focus on. It's how can you absorb, if you can absorb one thing from every single person that you meet,

you will become better and better, and better, and eventually you'll become unbeatable. Even when you are doing great, what you want to be looking at is what you could do better, better and better and eventually you'll become unbeatable. Even when you are doing great, what you wanna be looking at is what you could do better, not what you did well. Elizabeth Noel Newman, she's a sculptor and she's saying, this is something I try to live my life by as a writer, she's saying,

I never look back except to find out about mistakes. I only see danger in looking back and seeing things you're proud of, because this is what pops up the ego, this is what makes you think you're invincible, that you are faded to win, that everything is yours by right. And of course, that's not the case.

So you look backwards to find mistakes, and you look forward to find opportunities to apply those new lessons and be better than you were the first time. Marcus, the realist is saying, ambition is tying your well-being to what other people say or do. That's tying yourself to outcomes.

Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you, but sanity means tying it to your own actions. That's tying it to what you do, what you think, what you can improve, not looking at what the scoreboard says, because that's irrelevant. Ultimately, the scoreboard should not be as high as the standard that you personally hold yourself to.

Do your job, do it right, right? Andrew Johnson, before he became president, before he was the governor, he's giving a talk, and a Heckler cries out from the crowd. What the Heckler is joking about and making fun of is the fact that Johnson comes from humble beginnings, right? He wasn't a born politician, he wasn't born wealthy. In fact, he was a tailor.

His job was making clothes for other people who were rich and successful. And what Johnson's response, and this is, I think this is an excellent response, he's saying, that does not disconcert me in the least for when I used to be a tailor, I had the reputation of being a good one and making close fits, Always punctual with my customers

and I always did good work. Essentially, what he's saying is, I don't give a shit what you think about whether being a tailor's a good job or a bad job, I was good at it. I did what I was supposed to do well, and that's what I take pride in, right? And this is something that Stoics talk about

over and over again. We're all assigned roles in life. These roles change, but what matters is what we do in that role while we have the opportunity. Epic Titus is saying, first, you tell yourself what kind of person you want to be, then you do what you have to do.

For nearly every pursuit we find this to be the case. Those in athletic pursuits, they choose the sport they want and then they do that work, no matter whether that's the sexy part of the work, that's the work that gets attention, that's the work that's fun, they do that, and they do the work that's necessary, they do every single thing that they're assigned to do. This is carved on the mantle piece of Sir Henry Royce's house,

right? Sir Henry Royce is the guy that found Rolls Royce. Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble. So you do your job and you do it right, because that's your job and you take pride in that fact. You take pride in excellence. That's what the Stoics are saying. Doesn't matter what happens to you.

Doesn't matter why you're doing it. What matters is that you do that task well and you see it as an opportunity to be excellent in what you do. Marcus Aurelius, again, he's saying, pay attention to what's in front of you, the principle, the task, or what's being portrayed. That's it. The thing in front of you, that's the opportunity, not the thing far off in the future. The lesson I learned from this, this is something I think about when I might be wanting to cut a corner, I might not want to do

something. Well, how you do anything is how you do everything. How you do this task in front of you right now is a reflection of who you are as. How you do this task in front of you right now is a reflection of who you are as a person and it's a reflection of your general attitude towards the rest of your responsibilities. And then that leads us into our final lesson which would be follow the process. Marcus, it really is just saying,

you must build your life action by action and be content if each one achieves its goal as far as possible and no one can keep you from this. So this is 2000 years ago, the most powerful man in the world. He's reminding himself that you take things step-by-step, you don't focus the distant future, you focus on what's in front of you, you focus on doing it well and right.

This might sound familiar to you guys, right? This is the process, right? This is the process, right? This is the Stoke's talking about the process, the thing that you guys hear and see everywhere. I was in your stadium earlier. I saw the process starts here. This is that same idea. 2,000 years later, tested in battle, tested in the highest

military and political offices in the world, tested by creatives, by authors, by entrepreneurs, by some of the smartest people who ever lived. They're living their life by the process. What we ultimately control, the stoics are, again, making the distinction between what we control, what we don't control, and what we control is what's in front of us.

Gertrude is saying, what matters to an active man is to do the right thing, whether the right thing comes to pass, should not bother him. We tend to be eight- is to do the right thing, whether the right thing comes to pass, should not bother him. We tend to be eight-azee thinkers, right? And we forget that all the letters in between we forget the little things, we forget the process, right? If you're pinned on the ground, what you do is,

you don't focus on being free completely. The first thing you do is you don't do something stupid that gets you choked out, you take your time, you get your bearings, and then you break it down step by step, right? You give yourself a little bit of space. You try to get to your side, then you pull maybe a leg out, you trap an arm,

you buck your hips. This is a process. Being trapped, being pinned down is not fade. It's not over. It's a methodical thing. Breaking it down step by step is how you get out of here. It's not one big swoop, it's not one major move. That's not how you do it. You break it down.

And you see the best fighters in the world do this. I'll leave you with one quote. This is a stoic quote that I try to remember more than any other. I think it applies in every single situation. Marcus Aurelius is saying, objective judgment now at this very moment. Right? That's our perceptions. That's how we look at what we're seeing. We're seeing it clearly and objectively. We're not bringing anything to it.

We're looking at it for what it is. Objective judgment now at this very moment. Unselfish action. So that's what we're gonna do about this problem. That's not acting with selfishness. That's not acting with ego. That's acting as a team. That's doing your job.

It's doing it well. Now at this very moment, right? And then willing acceptance, that's accepting the things you can't change, that's focusing exclusively on the things you can change, that's focusing on your response, not on why you're here, not on what caused this, not on what mistakes you made or someone else made.

So objective judgment now at this very moment, unselfish action now at this very moment, willing acceptance now at this very moment, unselfish action now at this very moment, willing acceptance now at this very moment of all external events. That's all you need. Mark Serelias, those are the books, and of course anyone who ever wants to can email me, and that's me on social media too.

I know you guys don't like email anymore. But anyways, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. It's awesome to see some of the best people in the world at what they do, and I hope this was helpful. 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 ad-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 Cotopaxi, 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.