The Daily Stoic - Good Leaders Give This | 10 Rules For Life From The Stoics

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

General Victor Krulak was an exacting Marine. He drove his troops hard. He cared about the tiniest details. He expected perfection. So you might think he would be upset–or at least disappointed–when a major leading review of troops inadvertently knocked off his own hat…which was then trampled by every Marine who followed.---And in today's Daily Stoic video excerpt, Ryan shares his top ten rules that the Stoics promoted in order to help ensure that they stayed on the right path and didn't let the complexity of life overwhelm them.💪 Visit store.dailystoic.com/pages/leadership to sign up for in the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge before September 25th.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I'm Rob Briden and welcome to my podcast, Briden and we are now in our third series. Among those still to come is some Michael Paling, the comedy duo Egg and Robbie Williams. The list goes on so do sit back and enjoy Briden and on Amazon Music, Wondery Plus, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Hannah. And I'm Suryte. And we are the hosts of a Red Handed, a weekly True Crime Podcast. Every week on Red Handed, we get stuck into the most talked about cases. But we also dig into those you might not have heard of.

Like the Nephiles Royal Massacre and the Nithory Child Sacrifices. we yet stuck into the most talked about cases. But we also dig into those you might not have heard of, like the Nephiles Royal Massacre and the Nithory Child Sacrifices. Whatever the case, we want to know what pushes people to the extremes of human behavior. Find, download, and binge-read-handed wherever you listen to your podcasts. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual

lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy. Good leaders give this. Victor Krulock was an exacting marine. He drove his troops hard. He cared about the tiniest details. He expected perfection. So you might think he would be upset or

at least disappointed when a major leading a formation in front of him inadvertently knocked off his own hat, which was then trampled by every Marine who followed after him. Certainly the major was humiliated, and noticing he was missing from a party later that evening after the parade, Krulock sent one of his aides to the man's house. As Robert Korum details in his book about Krulock, the aides delivered the major's hat with a note from the general. All it said was, dear major, in 1934, a young marine second lieutenant knocked off his cover while passing in front of President Roosevelt.

I don't think it seriously affected my career. Semperfi VHK. As we've said before, Asterok is very strict. They have high standards. It's part and parcel of being a leader, but they must also complement this strictness with grace and tolerance. Remember one of Seneca's great essays is on the topic of clemency. Marcus really was famous with his ability to work with and make

use of flawed people. He had managed himself in meditations to be more forgiving and to think the best of others. He also spoke glowingly of the way that Antoninus, whom he revered above all others, was so good at making people feel at ease. Very few people need you to yell at them. Your best employees, your best allies, they have high standards for themselves too. They know it when they screw up. They feel bad enough already, but they need his grace,

but they need his help. What they need is a pick me up. Are you strong enough, strict enough with yourself to give that? This is the kind of leadership that I am trying to work on myself. It's one of the things we talk about in the Daily Stoke Leadership Challenge. I think is one of the best things we've done. We actually got some advice from a two-star general in the Air Force, so you can listen to that as part of the challenge,

one of the best interviews I think that we've done. Lots of great lessons in there, and there's a reason. So many people have taken and loved the challenge. It's a six plus week course on leadership, but it's really digestible, it won't overload you, and it'll give you actual tangible stuff you can use. I can't wait for you to check it out. Go to dailystowick.com slash leadership, or you can check out the leadership challenge at store.dailystowick.com can't wait for you to check it out. Go to dailystoic.com slash leadership

or you can check out the leadership challenge at store.dailystoic.com and I'll link to it in today's show notes. The great general Mattis, very influenced by stoic philosophy says, figure out your flat ass rules and stick to them. Talk about rules for life. What do you live by? What are your standards? And really that's what stoicism has been for thousands of years. Here are 10 of the best stoic rules, 10 commandments if you will, that if you follow will make you a better wiser, healthier and happier person. This comes to us from Epic Titus. He says it's the chief task of life, which is

focused on what you control. Is it up to me? Is it not up to me? If it is up to you, it gets 100%. If it's not up to me, it gets 0%. We focus on what we control because that's where our energy, effort and emotions actually make a difference. Seat-Cout challenges. Do one thing every day that scares you as the cliche goes. We become better for what we struggle with just as the way you have to lift weights to get stronger. Seek out challenges. Tackle hard things.

Push yourself. If you want to write a mighty book, Ralph Ellison says, choose a mighty theme. Challenge yourself. That's how you get better. Don't run away from challenges. Run towards challenges. Well begun is half done as they say. So own the morning. If you want to have a good day, have a good morning.

If you want to have a good life, have a good day. So it all comes back to how you start the day, own the morning. It's a great passage of Marcus really, it's really, it's arguing with himself about getting up at a bed in the morning and he says, look, were you meant to huddle under the covers and stay warm? He says, no, get to work. Do what you got to do. Do what you were put here on this earth to do and do it early. Seneca says, we suffer more in imagination than reality.

And that gives us the next law, which is don't suffer imagined troubles. The stuff that you're worried about, it'll happen or it won't. Worrying doesn't affect it, right? So, Seneca says, don't feel more than you have to. Do with that when it comes. For now, focus on what's in front of you, focus on what you need to do.

Don't add to your suffering by anticipating it, by suffering in advance. That's only adding humanively up to more suffering. EpicTidus says that every situation has two handles, and that's where this rule actually adapted from Thomas Jefferson comes from. He says, always grab the smooth handle. EpicTidus says, one of the handles will hold weight, the other won't. What handle are you going to grab in this situation, the one that empowers you or disempowers you? The one that makes you angry or gives you something to focus on and change. Right?

So every situation has two handles. Which one are you going to grab? Grab the one that makes you better, that gives you something to do, that challenges you, ignore the other handle. It's easy to get upset by things, which is why the Stoics say that we have the power to have no opinion. You can just think nothing about something. If you didn't know it existed, you wouldn't have an opinion.

Now that you know it exists, great, but you don't have to say it's positive, it's negative, you don't have to say it's anything. It just is. Seeing things objectively with drawing judgments from them is really important. As Epictetus says, it's not things that upset us, it's our opinion about things, we control our opinions. Seneca's rule was put the day up for review. Ask yourself, what could I have done better?

Where did I fall short? Who do I want to be? Was I being that person? So every day the law is put your day up for review, evaluate yourself, interrogate yourself. That's how you get better. The next is a question for Mark's release. He says ask yourself and every moment is this essential. Because the truth is most of what we do, most of what we spend time on, most of the things that other people do and spend time on are not essential. And he says, when you eliminate what's inessential, you get the double benefit of

doing the essential things better. Do I need to do it? Yes or no? And if I do need to do it, then because it is essential, I'm going to give it everything I have. You have to find a way to love everything that happens. This is the stilk idea of a more faulty. The stilks aren't resigned to what happens. It's more than that. They embrace it. They say, this isn't something I have to do. It's something I get to do.

This isn't something that happened to me. It's something that happened for me. Marks to realize, is everything you throw on top of a fire becomes fuel for the fire. That's what the idea of a morpati is. They embrace. They love everything that happens because they know they can use it and they know that it's what destiny had in mind for them. Are you meditating on your mortality? I carry a coin in my pocket that says,

Memento Mori. You could leave life right now, Mark. It's really says, life is short, don't waste time, don't focus on things that don't matter. Going through our life with a clear sense of arm mortality is essential. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke early and add free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wundery Plus in Apple podcasts. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it. Tomorrow sounds like hydrogen being added to natural gas to make it more sustainable. It sounds like solar panels generating thousands of megawatts, and it sounds like carbon being

captured and stored, keeping it out of our atmosphere. We've been bridging to a sustainable energy future for more than 20 years. Because what we do today helps ensure tomorrow is on. And bridge. Life takes energy.