The Daily Stoic - Life is Not a Victory March | Everlasting Good Health

Episode Date: December 16, 2021

Ryan explains why a Stoic never stops moving forward and getting better, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.LMNT is the maker of electrolyte drink mixes that help you stay active at home, work, the gym, or anywhere else. Electrolytes are a key part of a happy, healthy body. As a listener of this show, you can receive a free LMNT Sample Pack for only $5 for shipping. To claim this exclusive deal you must go to drinkLMNT.com/dailystoic. If you don’t love it, they will refund your $5 no questions asked.→ We hope you join us in the 2022 New Year New You Challenge. It kicks off in a little over a week. It’s 3 weeks of actionable challenges, presented in an email per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. It’s 3 weeks that will reorient your relationship with time and space. It will help you snap out of the trance and make 2022 your best year yet. Just go to https://dailystoic.com/challenge to sign up before sign ups end on January 1st!Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee 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 Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epititus Markis, really a 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. Life is not a victory march. It would be wonderful if life were easy. It'd be wonderful if things went our way every time. If people we loved didn't die.

If plans didn't fail. If evil didn't exist. If plans didn't crash. And pandemics and wildfires didn't rage. Marcus Aurelius described life as warfare and a journey far from home. Leonard Cohen was speaking about love, but also life when he said that it was not a victory march, but a cold and a broken hallelujah. A stoic is resilient because they have to be.

Life is not a soft affair. It challenges us. It rolls obstacles in our path. While there may be victory marches in our future, there will also be inevitably defeats and retreats, failures and foibles and funeral processions. We will suffer, we will grieve, we will screw up and be screwed over. But we keep going because that is our fate, because it's our only option. We move forward. We move with growing confidence in ourselves and our ability to adapt and to grow and to survive.

How? Well, we've been there before because of what we've been through, we are tougher as a result, more experienced as a result, we are tougher as a result, more experienced as a result, and wiser as a result. Is this thing all? Check one, two, one, two. Hey y'all, I'm Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur, and a Virgo, just the name of you.

Now, I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovingly nicknamed me, Kiki Keepabag Palmer. And trust me, I keep a bad glove. But if you ask me, I'm just getting started. And there's so much I still want to do. So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the baby Mrs. Kiki Palmer podcast. I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest experts in the hot seat to ask

them the questions that have been burning in my mind. What will former child stars be if they weren't actors? What happened to sitcoms? It's only fans, only bad. I want to know. So I asked my mom about it. These are the questions that keep me up at night. But I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you. Because on Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits. Follow Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, whatever you get your podcast. Hey, prime members, you can listen early and app-free on Amazon Music.

Download the Amazon Music app today. Everlasting good health. And I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoke, 366 Meditations on Wisdom Perseverance in 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 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 cellist. 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. I tell you you have only to learn to live like the healthy person does, living with complete confidence. What confidence? The only one worth holding and what is trustworthy, unhindered, cannot be taken away our own reasoned choice. That's

epictetus's discourses 326. As the Stoics say repeatedly, it's dangerous to have faith in what you do not control, but your own reasoned choice. Well, for now, that is in your control. Therefore, it is one of the few things you can have confidence in. It's the one area of health that can't be suddenly given a terminal diagnosis. It's after the one day that we're all born. It's the only one that remains pristine and never wears down. And it's only the user who quits it.

Never will it quit the user. In this passage, Epictetus points out that slaves and workers and philosophers alike can all live this way. Socrates, Diogenes, and Clientes lived this way even while they had families, even while they were struggling students. And so could you. You know, I did this piece a while ago that said, like, I don't have confidence in myself. I don't have faith in myself. I have confidence. I was making this distinction between sort of faith, which is based on something outside you, which is based on something irrational, and evidence, which is like proof. I think what Epictetus is really saying here is that if your confidence is based on the fact that

you're really, really successful, or that you have a really good reputation or that you're generally well-liked or, you know, this, that, or the other, you're vulnerable because, although you might have a lot of those things, there are extreme events that can take them away. But if your confidence is based on the fact that you're a hard worker, if your confidence is based on the fact that you don't quit, if your confidence is based on the fact that you don't quit, if your confidence is based on the fact that you make good choices, that's a much stronger source of confidence, because it's up to you always. It's about your actions. And so when we think about a confident person,

it shouldn't be that it's just walking around because they know that they're popular or because they know that they're really, really strong. These things that aren't fully up to them, we want the confidence to be based ideally, not on anything exterior at all, but something totally internal, like who we are. The ultimate thing to have confidence in, it would be character, right? Or reason and choice for the Stokes again is like our mind, the command center, the way we process things, this philosophy that we've integrated into our lives. So the idea of how to always be healthy, how to always be secure, how not to have to worry about anything is rooted in there in our own choices.

This takes us back all the way to the very first entry in the book. As Epictetus says, the chief task in life is simply this, to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself, which are externals not under my control control and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own, right, to my own reasoned choice, right, to myself. That's where we have confidence. That is what is up to us. That's the source of our health. As Epictetus says again, we'll get to this maybe later in the year, but flashing forward to January and 10th. The essence of good is a certain kind of reasoned choice, right? Reason

choices everything in our mind and our thoughts, our character and our actions. And here we are wrapping up the year. I hope you're winding down. I hope you're taking a little time for reflection, for reading, for connection with family. Of course, that's what I'm doing. And just trying to think about how I want next year to go. And I'm really excited about the New Year New Year challenge, which will be coming your way.

It's on sale now at dailystowth.com slash challenge. I'm really excited for this thing to kick off in January. I'd love to have you join us. You are welcome to. And we'll work on expanding and growing our reasoned choice, building it up so we can be confident and secure in it. And I'll see you there. You can sign up at dailystoke.com slash challenge. Of course, remember, if you're daily stoke life member, it's

free. It should be at the bottom of your email explaining how. And if you're not a daily stoke life member, well, now's a good chance. Alright guys, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.