The Daily Stoic - Don't Think About It, ACT On It | What's In Your Way Is The Way

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

Ryan talks about the importance of living out philosophy, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal.InsideTracker provides you with a personalized plan to improve your metabolism, reduce stress, improve sleep, and optimize your health for the long haul. For a limited time, get 20% off the entire InsideTracker store. Just go to insidetracker.com/STOIC to claim this deal.✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow 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 Stoke Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery'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. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, 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. Look, the stoics practice the art of momentum. Moreover, they know that life is short and unpredictable, but that doesn't mean they're trying to die faster.

Right? Mark's really says a doctor. He wants to live as long as that's possible, as long as that's within his control. And if you're looking for ways to extend your lifespan or slow down the aging process, the key to that is, is in your blood. And that's why today's sponsor Inside Tracker provides you with a personal plan to improve your metabolism, reduce stress, improve sleep, and optimize your health for the long haul. Created by leading scientists and aging, genetics, and biometrics, inside tracker, analyzes

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For a limited time, you get 20% off the entire inside tracker store. Just go to inside tracker.com slash stoic. That's inside tracker.com forward slash stoic. I'm waiting on my DNA results right now to see about the changes that I'm going to make in my life. And I'm excited to see what you all come up with by trying inside tracker and inside tracker.com slash Stoic we can get 20% off using that landing page. Don't think about it, act on it. The 16th century English poet Robert

Southwell stared at a picture each day. Each day he would look at a little totem too and then read a little inscription, all of it for one purpose, to remind him. To remind him of what, that he would die, and yet even with this trinity of daily reminders, he struggled as we all do. As his poem reads, continually at my bed's head, a hearth-doth hang, which doth tell me, that I air morning may be dread, though now I feel myself fully well, but yet alas for all of this, I have little mind that I must die. The gown which I do use to wear the knife wherewith I cut my meat,

and eke that old and ancient chair which is my only usual seat. All these do tell me I must die. Yet my life amends not I. Does this sound familiar? Is that not us? Momentumori is something easy to pay lip service to. You can read Marcus Aurelius. You can read Seneca, perhaps even the recent collection, How to Die. Maybe you even carry one of our Momentumori coins. Or like Southwell, you have a dance of death, print, aimed, right at eye level. All good. But this isn't an intellectual exercise.

It's about changing your life. Marcus Eurelia said, you could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think. He was saying the same thing, amend your life before it's too late, while you still can, while there is still time. What's in your way is the way.

And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Steal of Journal, 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, and there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand, write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them.

You can check out the Daily Stoke Journal, anywhere books are sold, you can also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoke store at store.dailystoke.com. Obstacles are a fact of life. Even the most powerful and lucky of us are not exempt from this reality, but we have a superpower at our hands through stoic philosophy in that our purposes, our intentions, our attitudes can adapt to any conditions to find a way forward. The stoics talk about acting with a reserve clause that allows us to reconsider and set a new course of action if needed, and Marcus Aurelius tells us that any obstacle can actually become raw material for a new purpose.

So that's what you should think about today in this week, how might the obstacles you're facing reveal a new path? And we've got three quotes from Marcus Aurelius along these lines today. While it's true that someone can impede our actions, they can't impede our intentions or our attitudes, which have the power of being conditional and adaptable. For the mind adapts and converts any obstacle to its actions into a means of achieving it. And that, which is the obstacle to action, is turned to advance action.

The obstacle on the path becomes the way. That's Meditations 520. Marcus also says in 835, just as nature turns to its own purpose, any obstacle or any opposition sets its place in the destined order and co-ops it so every rational person can convert any obstacle into the raw material for their own purpose. And then Meditations 832, so clearly he thinks about this a lot. He says, you must build up 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. But there will be some external obstacle, perhaps he says, but no obstacle to acting with just a

self-control and wisdom. But what if some area of my action is thwarted? Well, gladly accept the obstacle for what it is and shift your attention to what is given. And another action will immediately take its place, one that better fits the life you are building. And as you know, this is what I built the obstacles the way around these ideas. But let me read you Gregory Hays' translation in that same line 520, because it's obviously been so instrumental to me. And I think Hayes does it quite well also. He says, and it's interesting, he's clearly referring Marcus to a specific kind of obstacle, difficult

people. In a sense, people are our proper occupation. This is Meditations 520. Our job is to do them good and put up with them. But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us, like the sun, wind, or animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions, because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes, the obstacle to our acting, the impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way.

And then let's look at the Robin Waterfield translation of the same one, right? There's five, twenty. From one point of view, nothing is more proper to me than a human being. And so far as it's my job to do people good and tolerate them. But in so far as some people threaten my proper work, I count a human being as just another indifferent, no less than the sun or the wind or a wild animal. These things may impede some of my activities, but they can't impede my impulses or my state of mind, because I have powers of reservation and adaption and adaptation. The mind can adapt and alter

every impediment to action to serve its purpose, something that might have hindered a task contributes to it instead, and something that was an obstacle on the road helps you on your way. And then here's Waterfield's note. He says, again, Marcus stresses the independence of the mind and the possibility of seeing the world in a positive light. So, it doesn't matter which translation you read, the message is the same. Stuff happens, stuff gets in our way, but it presents us the opportunity to do something different. So, in this sense, the obstacle is the way it's not that, you know, life erects this wall in front of you

and the way is through that wall. It's that when the door shuts a window opens, it's that when you wanted everything to go well and then someone screws it up, now it's a chance to practice patience, now it's a chance to practice forgiveness, now it's a chance to practice forgiveness. Now it's a chance to start over. Now it's a chance to, you know, extricate yourself from this toxic relationship, whatever it is,

right? What Marcus is saying is that everything that happens in life, every obstacle, as maddening and frustrating and painful as they might be, they are opportunities to practice a different virtue, that virtue is always the way and that nothing stops us from being able to do that. I just love that passage so much. If I had the time, I'd grab the Pierre Hadoe chapter on this very idea, which also helped inspire the obstacles away. He talks about sort of the art of turning obstacles upside down. To me, this is a central practice in stoicism.

It's why I've got a tattooed on my arm. It's why I wrote a book about it. It's why we talk about it so much. It's idea of a more faulty, we accept. And then we use what's happened to our advantage. That's the essence of stoicism. I hope that inspires you a little bit today. People are our proper occupation.

We tolerate them. We put up with them. And all the obstacles they roll into our way, all the problems they cause us, are actually not problems but opportunities to practice. The very virtues of courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom, that's what we're doing here. And by the way, we do have the new leather bound addition

of the obstacles the way, which comes with the obstacles the way, challenge coin, as well, really proud of this thing. You can check that out at dailystoke.com slash obstacle leather. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at 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

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