The Daily Stoic - How You Endure It Matters Most | Ask DS

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

No one knows what the future holds, but if it’s anything like the present or the past, it will not be easy. Things will not go our way. Tragedies will happen. Injustices will be inflicted upon us. Institutions will crumble. People will behave abominably. Mistakes will be made. Disasters will strike.When, where, why? No one can say.But in a sense, the answers to those questions don’t really matter.---And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions from employees at a talent acquisition recruiting company called Gem who he gave a talk to upon the recommendation of an old friend. The topics he covers include how to prioritize only what is essential in life, daily practices to prevent self-doubt from creeping into your mind, how having kids humbles you, and more.💪 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.

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I doubt that very much. From doing what the law can't. And we have to do this about way. You have to. I don't. Bosch Legacy. Watch the new season now streaming exclusively on FreeV. Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom

designed to help you in your everyday life. Well on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow stoics. We're trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with daily stoic life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street

when there happened to be someone there recording. But thank you for listening. And we hope this is of use to you. How you endure it matters most. No one knows what the future holds, but if it's anything like the present or the past, it will not be easy. Things will not go our way. Tragedies will happen.

Injustices will be inflicted upon us. Institutions will crumble. People will behave awfully. Mistakes will be made. Disasters will strike. When and where and why no one can say, but in a sense, the answers to those questions don't really matter. Dean Aikus in the Secretary of State under President Harriest Truman saw much of this in his own life, war and recessions and scandals and unfair personal attacks

living through the Spanish flu. The last 30 years of his life were defined by the looming possibility of nuclear war. I am something of a stoic by nature and inheritance, you once said, explaining how we got through it all. I have learned from the example of my father that the manner in which one endure is more important than the thing that must be endured. What the future brings to stoic doesn't know, but how they must bear this future of the Stoic has total clarity with courage, and self-discipline, and justice, and wisdom, with kindness, with grace, with dignity, and determination.

It's a simple prescription, but not an easy one. So you best start practicing now. 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. Which 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. 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 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. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to a Thursday episode of the Daily Steak podcast. This is going way way back not. Actually that long after I was first introduced to Stoicism, I was writing for the UCR Highlander,

which is the college newspaper at the University of California Riverside. And there was a guy there, he wasn't a student anymore, his name was Joe Totten. He had been a student, he had written for the newspaper, and then he got a job. Basically, it was like, sort of a cushy little transition job. The people we knew would take after college where you got to manage the sort of business

side of the paper having graduated. And Joe was someone I became friends with. I looked up to. I remember when I dropped out of college, a lot of the people I knew sort of thought was a crazy idea. And Joe sort of really rooted for me. It was just a super sweet nice guy who I've stayed friends with for now, I can't believe, almost 20 years since. And he asked if I would

speak to his company, the company he was working at, I think he just recently left, called Gem, which is a sort of talent acquisition recruiting company. He worked there for a long time. Some of the executives had been fans and they they'd sort of dispatched Joe and said, hey, Joe, I think you know Ryan, we you we see if he'll do a virtual talk for us. So I did this virtual talk from a hotel room in Cancun, I think. I had to fly down there to do an in-person talk, and then I had just a few minutes before I had to run to the airport, and say it was a very tight schedule,

but it was an honor to do this Q&A. It was a kickoff back in March for their employees. I talked about obstacles away, and then I answered a bunch of questions, and that's what you are gonna listen to now. You can go to gem.com to see more about gem as far as recruiting and software company, but here is me, talking to gem about stoicism,

and thanks to my friend Joe, he was supposed to come down here, we're gonna spend a couple days together, and then his kids got sick. So that's to be rescheduled soon and I haven't seen him in a little while, but I'm looking forward to seeing him. In the meantime, you can hear Joe and I talking

in this Q&A about stoicism and life. Enjoy. Thanks so much for being here. Yeah. Big fanboy. I was I follow you on Instagram and watch, watch these daily snippets quite often. But I just wrote a question in chat, but as a high-achieving person, like like yourself and a world where access creates so many things that you could respond to, do you have any advice or or recommending reading on how to prioritize that which matters most?

Yeah, one of my favorite quotes from Marcus, he says, in everything you do and say we should ask ourselves, is this essential? Right? And it says because most of what we do and say isn't essential. And he says, when you eliminate the inner central things, you get the double benefit of doing the

essential things better. Right? I think that's a great encapsulation of so claustrophilic but also just a life philosophy. Actually, it's a great book. It's not based on this quote at all, though it could be called the centralism, which I really like. But the idea of like,

well, what are the things that only you can do? There's another book I like actually by Gary Keller, the founder of Keller, whether it's a real estate agency called the One Thing. What is your One Thing? What's the thing that you do like your main competitive advantage, right? Is a fundamental law of economics

that I did learn in the One Economist class. I took it, you see Riverside, which is the law of comparative advantage, right? If I pick Apple is better than you and you pick oranges better than me, we should specialize in what we do and trade with each other, right? But I think we have a problem trying to do everything. We have trouble delegating.

We have trouble building up teams around us. And then we end up doing a bunch of essential things that we're not great at that has the double cost then of making us less good at the things that we actually are really good at. Thank you. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Hey Ryan, how's it going? I'm gonna jump in with anybody

as any of their questions. Good morning. Awesome. Well, I have this thing about mindset, right? And everything in time I read your book, it's all about like my personal mindset, but I can't help that. There's always parts of your life, seasons of your life

where your mind starts to creep into this space. So maybe I can't do this or this is too hard. I'm not capable, but I'm wondering what specific self practices that you have, and maybe an anecdote, when you've caught yourself in those moments, and what did you do to make sure that your mind doesn't creep too far into that zone, because as you know, it can spiral at any given time. Yeah, I mean, first, I think just appreciating that, not only do you do that, but everyone does that, even people who are really great at what they do, do that. And understanding that it can spiral,

and that your job isn't to not have that feeling, your job is to try to arrest that spiral before it gets too serious, right? When the stokes, I don't think the stokes are, in English, the word stoke tends to mean to people like has no emotions. I don't think the stout's had no emotions. I think they just tried not to make decisions out of those emotions. So we can make a distinction between getting angry and then doing something out of anger,

right? Or having doubts, which is natural, and then quitting because you doubt yourself, right? And so understanding that we sort of have the emotion, that it makes that it's reasonable that we have the emotion, but the emotion itself might not be reasonable. And we want to sort of take a second and put it up to the test. Ask ourselves, like, is this actually true? What would it mean if I took decisions based on this? You know, what would it mean if I took decisions based on this? You know, what would it mean if at what would it, we'll look like if everyone did this, right?

And just sort of taking that, that sort of feeling and where that, that habit and whatever it is and just kind of seeing what they've been putting that up to the test. To me, that's kind of the essence of how you apply the philosophy. I'm a big believer in routine. And so one of the ways that I sort of prevent those things from getting out of control is like, I have my practices. Like this is the time I wake up. This is when I try to exercise.

This is when I try to do my work. And so having this thing that I come back to also prevents me from, I think COVID was obviously really disruptive to people's routines in a lot of ways because suddenly they weren't commuting at a certain time, going to a certain place. But I think those of us who adjusted well figured out like, oh, when the world isn't dictating what we do, we have to make those decisions and build those practices in our lives. Or else we're going to become totally unmoored and spin off the planet. So I do think having the structure that I have in my life

prevents me from getting too carried away with some of that stuff. Awesome. Thanks for sharing. So it sounds like to take away from me there is create the structure, seek the structure, and as long as like when I'm finding myself creeping into those areas, it kind of come back to my center place, so it shows the structure that I built. Thank you. Hey Ryan. Thanks so much for spending time with us today. I think all of what you shared is so relevant to what we're going through, but also just what so many tech companies are going through right now with with the macro environment.

what so many tech companies are going through right now with with Dyn macro environment. You just briefly mentioned routines and structure. Could you expand on that and maybe share some more examples and go deeper into your routines and your structure in which of those things have been more most impactful to you? Sure, yeah, I've been couple of months ago. So I have young kids, so I get up early by choice, but also not by choice. They decide. But one of the first things I do when we go by the couple is the number one is I don't check my phone for the first 30 minutes to one hour that I'm awake. Right? I don't want to get sucked into the phone first thing.

I definitely don't want to get sucked in for social media or email, right? Like I want to take a minute. And then so what we do is we, you know, sort of weather permitting. It was easier when they were small enough and I could just strap them into something and they didn't have a choice. But we go for a walk and we start the day

by going through a walk. So we get outside, we watch the sun come up, we look at the animals, we talk, we think about what we want to do for the day. So that's how I start the day. I try to start the day with something really intentional, really healthy, really not work related, like really not screen related. And then I try to do a little journaling, and then my other rule is I do like whatever the hard task for the day is first, right? Like I try to, it's usually writing. So like, you know, if you put

it off to the afternoon, you're bringing your worst self to that thing, right? I try to do it in the morning when I'm fresh, when I'm not frustrated, and so I try to tackle that hard thing first. And then, it could be like 11, 11, 30, and I've already had a pretty good day. Awesome, very cool, thank you. First, first. Hey, Rob, I'm gonna jump in.

It's good to see you, Matt. Thanks so much for being here. Hey, man, yeah, I wanna hear what jump in. It's good to see you, man. Thanks so much for being here. Hey, man, yeah, I want to hear what this thing was talking about. Well, we had conspired a little bit. I might try to ask you some like inside thing or put you on the spot or something, but I'm going to take a different direction.

So we got to catch up last spring. I got to see you and Sam and the boys. And it was my first time like seeing you in person as a parent and you know, you mentioned the stuff that goes with that. And by the way, it was so like cool to just see you as like this great dad, like so engaged with the boys. But you know, one of the things on this idea of, you know, let's focus on what we can control.

Let's choose how we're going to react to things. Like the best example that I can think of for that is trying to explain that to a three or older older a six year old Like hey, you're gonna have a better time here if you just think about how you want to react to this or how you could React to this versus just react so we all have parents at jam and I'm curious what your journey has been on that front Yeah, I actually have a parenting look coming out of May I so I like the day is still I can do 16 and then in May I'm doing the daily dad, which is for all parents is it's just, I mean, that's why it's called the daily dad, which

is sort of one piece of kind of time was parenting advice every day. But yeah, like my kids do not care at all about any of the stoics or people sort of roll their eyes when they hear their names, even though I did these two kids books about the stills also. But I just try to sort of teach the ideas in that really simple ideas like look like your brother hit you, that sucks.

You decide to hit him back, that causes consequences for you, right? And it's funny to watch a kid struggle with it. And then you can't get too upset because you realize like you have the same problem, right? Right? And it's funny to watch a kid struggle with it. And then you can't get too upset because you realize like you have the same problem, right?

Like we all like stuff happens. And then we have the reaction. We get upset. We get frustrated. We struggle. You know, we're still dealing with the same things that a toddler is dealing with just at higher stakes. And our brains not that much more advanced,

which is both, I think, humbling to come to terms with, and then also it sort of simplifies things. But yeah, I think, you know, having kids has been, we were talking about routines earlier, or routine earlier, I think one of the things I've had to adjust to is like, creating some resiliency in my personal life in the sense that, like, if you're someone you're like, this is the way that I address to is like, creating some resiliency in my personal life in the sense that, like, if you're someone you're like,

this is the way that I like to do things. These are the times that I like to do things. You know, kids really humble you in their ability to say, but that's not how it's gonna go today, right? And realizing that actually maybe like routines plural is a better way to think about it, or like rituals or practices is a better way to think about it or like rituals or practices is a better way to think about it instead of going like, hey, this is how my day is from beginning to end.

It's more like these are the things that I like to do in the course of a successful day and being willing to shuffle them around and adjust. There's a great quote I heard it's in it's in daily dad. Somebody had a kid and he got a note from a friend and he said, welcome to the world of uncontrollable reality, right? And his point was that, you're supposed to get somewhere at two and you're driving and then your two year old falls asleep at 155 as you're pulling into the parking lot. We're not going to get there at two anymore, right? Like, you're gonna get there when they decide

that they're waking up, because you know you're not gonna screw the nap. Just the idea that, if for instance, you get to accept a lot of things and come to terms with a lot of things and adjust around things, is probably a good macro lesson to learn to apply the professional world first year.

Right on. Well thanks again for being here Ryan and I'll just echo a Leslie sentiment. Like you you're dropping into today and and you know thank you for spending the time with us. I think I know your work and I know you I need to hear what you had to say today. I think a lot of us here did too. Yeah. So Ryan actually, so sorry I didn't mean to interrupt, but that's actually why I find the daily stoic so helpful, which I'll say I didn't have this morning and I think I've got, you know, three or four takeaways from this conversation. One, that I need to get back into my running routine in the morning, and I need to do it first thing because I'll be much better for everybody else after that. And that, you know, the, just why we do what we do,

it's all in the kind of how we see where we are, what are the actions we take in the moment, and then, you know, just to remember, who we're doing it for, the purpose of why we're doing it. And for me, you've really brought that kind of back, back into focus, and I so much appreciated. I hope everybody else enjoyed. We, we unfortunately can't go on. So this is going to be the end of our time with you. But I think you've got a lot of fans. Everybody's very interested in your parenting books. I know I am because I actually,

or your children's books too, I actually want to read your children's books because I think they probably distill it way down. And we could all benefit from that. So such appreciation for your time and super excited we had the chance to have you join us this morning. My pleasure. Thank you guys so much. Take care of Joe for me. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon

Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery 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. Enbridge. Life takes energy.