The Daily Stoic - How To Get Out Of A Slump | The Long Way Around

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

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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 Epititus Markis 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.

How to get out of a slump. The path to wisdom is not always as straight with. The journey is long and circuitous. It's a windy road with twists and turns, ups and downs and highs and lows. And maybe you're in the middle of one of those lows yourself right now at the bottom of a valley. And this can be a scary place to be because without the proper perspective, it can feel like you're going to be stuck there forever.

You take a few steps in one direction and it feels like you haven't gotten anywhere. The top of the mountain is just as far away, to a more distant. And there is a term for this phenomenon. It's called being stuck in a slump. It pops up most often in the context of trying to achieve big, important things. No matter what you do, when you're in a slump, your goal always seems to remain out of reach.

You try new things, you try the same things, you try to do them faster or bigger or more often, and still you feel rooted in the bottom of that valley. And the whole ordeal comes utterly exhausted. So how do you get out of this spot? How do you break free from a slump and make progress? We'll take reading, which we talk a lot about here. As an example, maybe you're not reading enough.

Maybe you're not sure why. Maybe you're not getting much enjoyment from what you have been reading. Maybe the insights have become few and far between. What should you do instead of trying something new or doing more of the same, here's an idea from the Stokes. Go return to something that has really spoken to you in the past. Everything we know about the Stokes from precipice to Marcus Aurelius has them passing around some version of this reminder, the idea of meditating on a number of master thinkers, the idea of reading and rereading, of not being satisfied of just getting the gist of something,

of returning to the rhythm, as Marcus said. Instead of expecting the next random book you pick up to really speak to you, go back to something that's already spoken volumes. To find out how much more it has to say, grab a new translation of Marcus Realis and see him from a different view. Go read some of the letters from Seneca not included in the Penguin Classics translation. Go give a man in full or the moviegoer or memoirs of Hadrian, another go. And of course these examples are specific to reading but you can generalize them out to any other kind of goal you're trying to achieve. Working out, being more productive, connecting with your partner or your kids, eating better,

it doesn't matter. Go back to the things that worked for you in the past and re-engage with them. Think of it as a switchback on the path to wisdom. It might not feel like you're going forward, but you're going up, up, up, out of that valley towards new heights. This re-reading thing has been when I've been on a kick-on lately, especially when I'm stuck, when I'm stuck, like I'm in the middle of writing a book, or I just feel like a bit of a funk or a little depressed. I'll just go back and reread a book I've loved.

I reread Gatsby and I reread the movie goore recently. I just reread stuff. And I just find, oh yeah, this is why that book was so influential and important to me when I read it because it's great because it's classic and it reminds us of that idea from Mark's Realist that we can't step in the same river twice. Anyways, we talk about stuff like this a lot in the Daily Stoke reading challenge, which I'd love to have you be a part of.

It's been one of our most popular challenges over the years. I got a lot out of making it. I know you'll get a lot out of taking it. You can check it out at dailystoic.com slash reading. It's all the best Stoic wisdom applied to the reading process to building a reading practice. And if you're more on the habit formation side, maybe you're just stuck with some bad habits,

check out the daily Stoic Habits Challenge, which you can find at DailyStoic.com slash habits, which is like six weeks of better habit formation, which we've also heard a lot of rave reviews on. And of course, remember, if you sign up for Daily Stoic Life, you get those two courses and all our other ones, totally for free. The long way around. And I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoic 366 Meditations on Wisdom Perseverance in the Art of Living by yours truly. My co-author and translator, Stephen Hanselman, you can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoic store, over a million copies of the Daily Stoke in 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 cell, it's just an awesome experience. But I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoke.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading.

What's the most important thing to do? You could enjoy this very moment. but let's get on to become famous whatever. You ask them a couple more questions such as, why are you doing that or what are you hoping it'll be like when you get it? And you'll find that at the very core of it, people want freedom, they want happiness, they want the respect of their peers. Asterisk looks at this and shakes their head at the immense effort and expense we put into chasing things that are simple and straightforward to acquire.

It's as if we'd prefer to spend years building a complicated, roobe, goldberg machine instead of just reaching out and picking up what we want. It's like looking all over for your sunglasses and realizing they were on your head the whole time. Freedom, that's easy. It's in your choices, the stoics would say. Happiness, that's easy.

It's in your choices, the stoics would say. Respect your peers. That too is in the choices you make. All of that is in front of you. No need to take the long way to get there. It's actually like a viral email chain. You've probably seen it before about the fishermen in Thailand or something in the Western businessmen season many says, Oh, you've got this little boat. What if you got

another boat and another boat, you scaled this operation. You could make all this money and the guy says, Well, then what? And it's like, well, then you could retire and live on a beach somewhere. Okay. So that's what I do now. And actually this story dates back to like the 14th century. It's about a king who's advised by his advisor or to, you know, conquer this territory, this territory, this territory, this territory, why? Why? Why?

Well, at the end of it, you can live in peace, although he lives in peace now. I've experienced my, my own version of this as an author. It's been funny. I meet these really successful people who do the things that I sometimes wish I could do. They play professional sports. They have huge audiences where they've made all this money. They have all this stuff. You know, you catch yourself being a little jealous and they invite you over to their fancy houses. You sit there and you go, man, yourself being a little jealous and they invite you over to their fancy houses, and you sit there, and you go, man, what'd it be so cool to live this life?

And then I find out the real reason they invited me over is that they wanna learn how to write books, right? Like, I'm jealous of their life, they're jealous of my life, right? And I think this is what Marcus is saying, is that you can have what you want right now. And more importantly, the thing that you think will bring you something piece, contentment,

happiness, whatever. It's not going to happen. It's this horizon that you never quite meet. It's always a little bit out of view. Marcus is saying that we try to get our stuff to a long way, the hard way. At the end of this long war, at the end of this long journey, right? It's after I become rich and successful, after I make it after I win a Super Bowl, blah,

blah, blah, blah, then I'll feel good. Then I'll be able to spend time with my family. Then I can be at peace, whatever. And you can have that right now. I have this chapter in Stillness is the key about enough. Actually, it's funny, I was, my wife just did this triathlon in Austin and as I was walking our kids back to the car

after watching this lady stop me and she said, oh, I saw this viral video you did about that story of Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller. And she said, could you tell that again? And she made me tell it in front of her. But it's one of my favorite stories. Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, they're at this party, this rich person.

Again, just like I was just telling you that I've experienced myself. And Kervonigit is sort of teasing Joseph heller. And he says, you know, this guy made more money than your books will ever make in your life. And Joseph heller says, yeah, but I have something that he doesn't have. And Vonigit says, what could that possibly be? And And Joseph he says, I have enough. I have what I need. And that's what Marcus

is saying to you could have it right now. It's already yours. It's already there and the things that you control. Having the other stuff is nice. And you can still get it, right? I feel like I have enough. I feel like there's nothing I'm really trying to prove, but I still doing interesting things that have got this new cool project I'm working on. I'm about to start another book. I'm trying to do it from a place of enoughness and fullness, not a place of emptiness, right? Not a place of having to prove myself of getting more and more and more, of doing it because I actually enjoy it.

And knowing that if I don't finish, if I don't make it all the way there, if just the time that I spent working on it today was all I got, that was enough. That itself was enjoyable. And to me, that's just a much healthier place to live and be and operate from. And I hope you can give yourself that gift, give yourself the gift of enough because you are enough. You know, the Stoics in real life met at what was called the Stoa, the Stoa, Poquile, the Painted Porch in ancient Athens. Obviously, we can all get together in one place, because

this community is like hundreds of thousands of people, and we couldn't fit in one space. But we have made a special digital version of the stove. We're calling it Daily Stoic Life. It's an awesome community you could talk about like today's episode, you could talk about the emails, ask questions. That's one of my favorite parts is interacting with all these people

who are using stoicism to be better in their actual real lives. You get more daily stoic meditations over the weekend, just for the daily stoke life members, quarterly Q&As with me, clothbound edition of our best of meditations, plus a whole bunch of other stuff including discounts, and this is the best part. All our daily stoke courses and challenges totally for free, hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our new year, new U challenge. We'd love to have you join us. There's a two-week trial totally for free. Check it out at DailyStokeLife.com.

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