The Daily Stoic - Freedom is An Opportunity For This | A Strong Soul Is Better Than Good Luck

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

You’d think that the more powerful you are, the more freedom you’d have. The more money and success you have, the more you can do. You’d think that being a millionaire or being a celebrity or being the CEO would finally unshackle you from all the obnoxious and annoying constraints of being a ‘regular’ person…How wrong this is. How wrong this has always been.📕Pre-order Ryan Holiday's new book "Discipline Is Destiny" and get exclusive pre-order bonuses at https://dailystoic.com/preorder ✉️ 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 Facebook 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 Stoke Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stokeic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in 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 Epictetus Marks, 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 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. Freedom is an opportunity for this. You think that the more powerful you are, the more freedom you have. The more money and success you have, the more you can do. You'd think that being a millionaire or being a celebrity or being a CEO would finally unshackle you from all the obnoxious and annoying constraints of being a regular person. How wrong this is. How wrong this has always been.

Seneca once wrote that people of humble station have more leeway when it comes to using force, bringing suits, rushing into quarrels, and indulging their anger. For a king even raising his voice to use in temperate language is at odds with his majesty. This was an idea that Antoninus understood intuitively he would tell his wife shortly after becoming emperor, now that we have gained an empire we have lost even what we had before. Ernest Rannon writing about Marcus put it most plainly, the sovereign is the least free of all men. It's not that anyone can tell the king what to do or what not to do. No one would argue that. History is filled with examples of rulers who use their power to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, however they wanted

to do it. But the rulers who didn't do that, great rulers kind and just rulers, they are rare. But they have in common and just rulers, they are rare. But they have in common as the understanding that they are the only ones who can tell themselves not to do things they could probably get away with. They had that kind of uniquely paradoxical freedom to enjoy themselves. One, they liberally took advantage of. It was Eisenhower who said that freedom is really better described as the opportunity for self-discipline.

And you, you are lucky enough to live in a time of plenty that would have been unfathomable to histories all powerful kings. A time when nearly everything a person might want to do they can, because there is no master standing over you. You are not an all-powerful sovereign, surely. You have also never been more free. So now what? What will you do with this opportunity?

What will you do with your freedom? What will you do with your freedom? Who will you make yourself become? A strong soul is better than good luck. 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 stoke store, over a million copies of the daily stoke and 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 cellist. It's just an awesome experience.

But I'll be checking out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoke.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading. Here we are September 1st. And I can't believe, man, it does not feel like September less than a month until discipline is destiny. Is out. You can pre-order it now at dailystoke.com.

Sash pre-order. I hope you check it out. But man, time flies. And I don't know about you, but the pandemic feels like it is just continues to just mess with my sense of what are things where it feels like it was just January, February, I was putting the finishing touches on the book. But here I am reading today's September 1st entry

from the Daily Stoke. The rational soul is stronger than any kind of fortune. Sennaka writes in moral letters 98, from its own share it guides its affairs here or there, and is itself the cause of a happy or miserable life. Cater the younger had enough money to dress and find clothing, yet he often walked around Rome barefoot indifferent to assumptions people made about him as he passed.

He could have indulged in the finest food he chose instead to eat simple fare, whether it was raining or intensely hot he went bare-headed by choice. Why not indulge in some easy relief because Cato was training his soul to be strong and resilient. Specifically, he was learning indifference and attitude of let come what may, to would serve him well in the trenches with the army in the forum in the senate, and in his life as a father and a statesman. His training prepared him for any conditions, any kind of luck, and if we undergo our own

training and preparations, we might find ourselves similarly strengthened. The Stokes undergo a hard winter training to borrow epictetus's phrase. The point of that training, whether it's the physical training that Kato is doing, whether it's dressing awkwardly in your worst clothes, Asenico was talking about, you're trying to cultivate an inner citadel, a strength, a fortitude, a sense of preparedness, so that you can, as epictetus would later say,

meet whatever situation happens and go, ah, this is what I've trained for. I got this. I know I'm capable of withstanding this. I've talked a lot about physical training here, and that practice for me, the working out, the getting up off the couch, I don't want to, jumping in the cold water when I don't want to, lifting the weights when I don't want to, running a little bit further when I'd rather be home, taking the longer way on the run than the shorter way, trying to speed up a little bit, trying to get up the hill faster,

whatever it is. This is creating, cultivating that strength so that when things are difficult, you got it. You've trained for that. But it's not, of course, not just the physical training. I think about this when I think about the pandemic. I was talking about how it's messed with my sense of time. But the good part about it is that it has, I think, made me stronger as a person. Obviously, I've been through adversity in my life, but it was one of those truly historic events,

those big things that you're like, I was there, right? Was it a great depression or I was in New York on 9-11 or whatever, where my philosophical training and my maturity as a human, I was like, this is going to be training for whatever else happens in life, right? And also, this is why this is precisely what I've studied history for, what I studied stilicism for, what my wife and I have worked on for, what I studied stosism for, what my wife and I have worked on together, what I've worked on in therapy, what I've worked on every place in my life.

It was for something like this, and also the sense that this itself would be training for future adversity and difficulty. There's a Frederick Douglass quote, maybe it's not totally accurate. Some people doubt that he said it. He says, it's easier to create strong children than repair broken men. And I think that's what Senaika is saying here about adversity. And you think of the adversity that Senaika goes through in his life is to break elosis young. I suspect 10 years in convalescence as a child in Egypt of all places. I talk about this in lives of the Stokes,

if you don't know, Santa Claus' life story, it's pretty incredible. On the way back, his uncle is killed in a shipwreck. Santa Cah makes his legal debut, he's going places and then he's exiled on these trumped up charges.

He loses a child. He's called back, but he's called back, he's in Nero's court. Obviously, things are difficult working for Nero. It's one thing after another for Seneca up until the end when he's forced to die by his own hand at Nero's demand. But Seneca had trained for this, even Tacitus, who's not a fan of Seneca,

it's very clear that in that difficult moment, it was something he thought about, worked on, prepared for. That's who you want to be. You want to be strong. You want to be able to bear what comes. And it might be physical trading, like running for a marathon, it might be something like, hey, I crank the shower cold, or it's the reading you're doing, the conversations you're having, the community that you're building, the relationships that you're building, the exercises you're walking through in your mind. All of this is training you, preparing you, putting yourself in a position so you can succeed whatever happens.

So you can be strong enough in that moment and not need to be repaired afterwards. That's what we're doing here. That's to me, kind of the mission of Daily Stoke. It's the preparation my own philosophical practice is about. And it served me well the last couple years. I hope it served you well. And I hope the training and work you're doing now sets you up to be served well in the future. Enjoy it, Taksim. As I write in my new book, Discipline is destiny. All true greatness is rooted in the ability to keep your ass in line, the ability to work hard, to persevere through difficulty to train and to practice, to know your limits,

to focus, to find balance, to practice good habits, to avoid, which should be avoided. And self-discipline is that ground from which great things mastery happiness, a good life grow. If you wish to make the most of the opportunities freedom has given you, you're going to need it. That's the aim of the new book. To have right here, discipline is destiny, the power of self-control. It's available everywhere on September 27th. I'd love for you to pre-order wherever you pre-order books, but you can also pre-order at dailystoward.com. Sash pre-order. You've got a million awesome bonuses.

I'll sign your copy. We can do some bonus chapters. If you do book orders for your team, you can even get signed manuscript pages from the drafts I created as I was writing the book. The Stokes believed we're all born to fulfill a great destiny and discipline is how you do it. That's what this book is about. It's the second in my four virtue series. I can't wait for you to read it. And grab the pre-order bonuses dailysteauic.com slash pre-order.

Thanks everyone. Enjoy. 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 ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brownauer, we will be your resident not-so-expert-expert.

Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking, oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong, what would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music

or Wondery app. you