The Daily Stoic - If You Had The World Enough and Time… | Ask DS

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

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I'm Alice Levine and I'm Matt Ford and we're the presenters of British Scandal. And in our latest series, Hitler's Angel, we tell the story of scandalous beauty Diana Mosley, British aristocrat, Mitford sister and fascist sympathiser. Like so many great British stories, it starts at a lavish garden party. Diana meets the dashing fascist Oswald Mosley. She's captivated by his politics, but also by his very good looks. It's not a classic rom-com story,

but when she falls in love with Mosley, she's on a collision course with her family, her friends, and her whole country. There is some romance, though. The couple tied the knot in a ceremony organised by a great, uncelebrated wedding planner, Adolf Hitler. So it's less Notting Hill, more Nuremberg.

When Britain took on the Nazis, Diana had to choose between love or betrayal. This is the story of Diana Mosley on her journey from glamorous socialite to political prisoner. Listen to British Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Emily, one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. Some of them hit the big time overnight, some had to plug away for years.

But in our latest series, we're talking about a man who was world famous before he was even born. A life of extreme privilege that was mapped out from the start, but left him struggling to find his true purpose. A man who, compared to his big brother, felt a bit, you know, spare. Yes, it's Prince Harry. You might think you know everything about him, but trust me, there's even more. We follow Harry and the obsessive, all-consuming relationship of his life, not with Meghan,

but the British tabloid press. Hounded and harassed, Harry is taking on an institution almost every bit as powerful as his own royal family. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wandery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wandery app. 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 who are 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. If you had the world enough and time.

Look, maybe if things were different, maybe then you could afford to get in pointless arguments with strangers. Maybe then you could afford to think that things would always go your way. Maybe then you could follow every urge and impulse. Maybe you could put off getting better, put off making better choices until tomorrow. But the thing is, things are the way they are.

Life is short. Fortune is unpredictable. Consequences are real. If you had the world enough in time, perhaps you unpredictable, consequences are real. If you had the world enough in time, perhaps you could afford to be irresponsible. You could be lazy, you could be entitled, you could give yourself over to your passions. You do not. Death hangs over you, Marx really said. Fortune behaves exactly as she pleases, Seneca said.

Tomorrow is not promised. Nothing is certain. Nothing can be taken for granted. Nothing is worth choosing more than the right thing. Not later, but now. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic podcast.

I'm actually in the morning, I'm heading out to do a talk in Houston where I throw on the little mic, do my chat and then answer questions. And I try to record those and bring those to you because it's one thing to just sort of talk at you about so as in, but I try to, I wish it could be more of it's one thing to just sort of talk at you about stoicism, but I try to, I wish it could be more of a back and forth.

We could chat a bit more. I could answer your questions. And I try to do that when I get in front of groups. It's one of my favorite things to do. I was in Arizona a couple months back. I gave this talk to Live Nation and I was talking about music and stoicism, talking about my favorite band, Iron Maiden,

among many other things. I think you will like this little snippet of that conversation. We had a, like, I think a 60 minute Q and A there, something pretty substantial. So I had broken it up into parts and it was really fun. And I think you're going to enjoy it. And thanks to Live Nation for having me out

to talk stoicism and music. Hi, I'm here in the tour marketing department. I'm also an author of Bring Out the Boss in You as a guide for entrepreneurs. And thank you. Question for you, what do you, or where do you find your motivation to keep going when you have like long work days and you feel like your to-do list is never ending or it's just created by other people? What do you find your, you know,

your inspiration and your motivation to kind of keep going? I, there's a great writing rule that someone told me they said just two crappy pages a day. That's all you have to do. And so I talked about sort of boiling it down to its essence is like what are the what is like the least amount you can do to call it a win and so I have that and that kind of creates momentum for me. So it's like I just try to make a positive contribution to the work every day and almost always I do a lot more than that, but it creates like a minimum for me that allows me to sort of never have that fully taken away.

Even if travel was crazy, I'm stuck at the airport, I can do one thing, right? Or, you know, my kids are sick, I can figure out how to do one thing. I try to sort of narrow it down, but I do try to, you've gotta protect whatever that main thing is. I said, you know, it's kind of interesting. You write books and then people want you to speak

or consult or advise or then they invite you to stuff. It's all wonderful, but it's really important that you, if you know why you're doing your thing and what that non-negotiable is for me. I just had to be very clear like the reward for succeeding as an author cannot be that I don't get to write. Like the whole point is writing. That's the thing that I control that I like that inspires me and fulfills me. So I just have to protect that thing and if you you don't, it can become very easy

to just be flooded with or overwhelmed with all the potential distractions and opportunities that are out there. I did do a plant. Is Ryan Erickson in the room? Oh, we need a fun one. Or did he drink too much? Yeah, none of your questions are fun. Okay, um no we're I want to talk about Iron Maiden. Okay. Oh well I have

many but probably the clairvoyant yeah or yeah maybe Ace is High. So there's like long Iron Maiden songs and short Iron Maiden songs. I could talk way too long. I probably shouldn't. Yeah, but I want to know. We have this thing called Big Looks, right? We're trying to launch a tour out there. We're trying to get, you know, markets to respond to it. So what would your idea for a big look for Iron Maiden be? You know, beyond the I got to do my digital placement. I got to work with these radio partners. Well, not radio partners because they don't get that mainstream airplay, but what would your big look be for Iron Maiden if you had to put on your marketing brain?

Ooh, I don't know. That's hard. We fly an airplane and land it in the middle of a main street or something? Yeah, I mean, I think, obviously, there's fans and there's super fans. And Iron Maiden's super fan stuff is not, like I remember I went to one and they had like a VIP thing. I went to it and it was kind of like, here's a bag of, you know, schwag that was not great.

And I think like comedians do this well, it was like meet and greets before show. I think their next level stuff hasn't been that much. Maybe they don't have like soup it's not like a super corporate band that typically gets that stuff but I did I did find like like it wasn't there wasn't like if you wanted to do more there wasn't that many opportunities to do more and the jet is the cool thing. I'd like to fly. I'd like to... Yeah, that or just like unveiling the next Eddie. Yeah. We know

it's gonna be new, like what it looks like. Nobody sees the artwork and then we just like make a statue of it somewhere. Yeah, there we go Ryan. Next time. Yeah, I don't think that like there should be like one like in the hallway of the thing that you take pictures with and stuff, you know. We have like the backstage artwork so we get that. But yeah, facing their knees or something fun. It's inflatable now, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Sorry. It's okay. We nerded out on Iron Maiden. Hello. Hi. Name is Dion. I have a question, which is, you know, we're in a business of supporting, helping build

up, amplify artists' personal expression. I'm curious if you have any thoughts or insights or guidance on how to maintain personal, like for our own self-expression, while dealing with ego at the same time because you know we are in the business of amplifying other people's. What do you mean by personal expression? Oh that's a good question. I guess your own just your your expression of your own individuality. Like your identity, the identity of seeing trinity, the identity. Of you? Of you as a, yeah, you as a human, as an individual human, your personal expression, while supporting, amplifying, and building up.

Yeah. I mean, this is why I think it's so wonderful to have hobbies that challenge and inspire you, that that's the sort of canvas that you have. And I think part of the reason sometimes maybe people get a little egotistical and stuff is that, it's like work is the only place that they get sort of filled up or validation or get to sort of express those things and to have things that you're learning that there's fruits of that labor. But you know, I think, you know, work is always

going to be ups and downs, right? Because sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes people are assholes, sometimes, you know. And so if you have something apart from that, where you're getting wins, like, that are totally based on you and your effort, I think that's just so important and such a good safe harbor that allows you to then, you know, ride out the other stuff.

Yeah, I feel like I've had connections with everybody in this room, not because I tell them what my favorite artist is, it's because it's like, hey, we harvested 63 beats today, you know, in our garden. And then people remembered that. And it's the hobby components. Maybe we all ask each other, what are your hobbies in the next year, instead of what shows you're excited for? Because we get all that stimulation all the time from our friends and family and strangers.

When you tell them what you do. Well, it's easy to be all about business and all about work, but it's not sustainable. Right. And it's easy to be consumed in our position because our jobs are really fucking cool. Yeah. And look, if your people are burning out or quitting or, you know, it's not worth it. Like, that's expensive too. And so it feels like, hey, why am I encouraging all these extracurricular activities? Well they're not really.

They might be extracurricular but they have benefits back towards the business and that helps with retention and it helps with sustainability and all these other things. Definitely. Thank you so much for being here. Of course. This is awesome. I just want to ask, who markets your books?

And how do you feel about what they do? I mean I'm sure my publisher would say that they do. But I do. And that's one of the things that I found. So I wrote this book, The Daily Stoic, in 2016. And you know, if it had been a traditionally published book, that would have been the end of it. I would have written a book it would come out and it would do what it does. It's one page a day of Stoic philosophy. But the whole reason I wrote it and the whole plan when I wrote it was that it was

going to become like a universe or an ecosystem after I finished. And so every single day for the subsequent seven, now eight years, I've done an email version of it every day. So I've written, I guess this is seven other books that I've given away for free piece by piece over the, you know, on a daily basis since then. And that is what's, you know, that started with a few thousand people when I announced it. And, you know, it's almost 800,000 people every day that get that email. So that's what sells the books, right?

Is the fact that I put out so much work and then, you know, there's Instagram content every day and TikTok content every day and YouTube content every day. So yeah, there's a podcast version of it every day. So it's really by just giving away so much stuff. And then some of it is then the people are really into that by the books when they come out. That's really what's created sort of

the flywheel that drives all the all the stuff. And to have the like, when it comes time to say, Hey, I have a new book, or I'm doing these events, do you want to come or we have these products or merch or whatever. It's not like I'm like, what's an excuse to tell people that I have this? Like I said, like I've said, like, so basically, Daily Stoic creates inventory in that, like, there's an email that goes out every day with a spot in it. And that inventory that that inventory moves inventory. And so the ability to have an ongoing conversation

with the fans makes a lot of marketing not necessary because it itself is a form of permission marketing. So that's really what drives the books at this point. And then word of mouth, which is what all things are driven by at the end of the day. Yeah, looks like we have time for one more question. Hi. So like you said, we all have different forms

of practicing stillness and finding ways of acceptance with egos. How would you recommend though, as far as any strategies to keep in mind as a team, bringing our practices together to strengthen our teams, strengthen our work internally with other departments, or working externally with media partners and clients. Yeah, I mean, there's a reason companies do off-sites. As you get out, you do stuff together,

and connections, relationships develop that allow you to do this stuff better. But I think, you know, understanding each person as an individual with strengths and weaknesses, what they're like, if you think about what great sports teams do, they know this person needs this to be successful and this person needs this to be successful and they treat them as that individual. And look, the idea of taking someone like Kyrie Irving, who's just basically destroyed every team he's ever been on. The impulse there is a good one, which is true in sports,

which is an athlete who was not successful on one team or in one organization with the right resources, with the right relationships and connections can be successful. And that's what happens when you create a good culture and the leaders invest in and cultivate those things. So I think understanding what makes each of these people tick and what they need and then being clear about what you need

and what you expect is I think what creates an environment that facilitates or brings out the best in people. Awesome. All right, guys. I think that's it. Thank you so much, Ryan. 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 Plus in Apple podcasts. Do you want to hear about the $100 wedding dress that just saved Abercrombie? Or the tech acquisition that was just like Game of Thrones.

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