The Daily Stoic - Make Them Do Their Own Stuff | Ask DS

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

There is a great story about a young Spartan woman, Gorgo, who would one day become queen. Despite her royal status, like all Spartans she was raised to be self-sufficient, with no frills or needless luxury. So imagine Gorgo’s surprise when she witnessed a distinguished visitor to Sparta have his shoes put on by a servant. “Look, Father,” she said innocently to her father, King Leonidas, “the stranger has no hands!” Sadly, for some of us, it could just as easily be deduced that our kids have no hands. And no brains. We put on their clothes for them. We make their decisions. We clear the road in front like a snowplow. We hover like a helicopter, just in case something goes wrong. We do everything for them. Then we wonder why they are helpless.---And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions from a virtual audience as part of a Stoicism Q&A session. Topics covered include the concept of the Passions, how to read the classics, the representation of the Virtues in The Gladiator, and more.✉️ 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.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. 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 happen to be someone there recording. But thank you for listening. And we hope this is of use to you.

["Make Them Do Their Own Stuff"] Make Them Do Their Own Stuff. There is a great story about a young Spartan women, Gorgo, who would one day become queen. Despite her royal status like all Spartans, she was raised to be self-sufficient, with no frills or needless luxury. So imagine Gorgos' surprise when she witnessed a distinguished visitor to Sparta have his shoes put on by a servant. Look, Father, she said innocently to her father, the King Leonidas, that stranger has no hands. Sadly, for some of us, it could just as easily be

deduced that our kids have no hands and no brains. We put their clothes on for them. We make their decisions. We clear the road in front like a snow pile. We hover like a helicopter. Just in case something goes wrong, we do everything for them. And then we wonder why they're helpless. We wonder why they have trouble with anxiety or low self-esteem. Confidence is something you earn. It comes from self-sufficiency. It comes from experience. And when we coddle and baby them, when we take away their hands,

we deprive them of these critical assets. And it's not right, and it's not fair. It's funny, I talked to lots of people, and a good chunk of those people haven't been readers for a long time. They've just gotten back into it. And I always love hearing that, and they tell me how they fall in love with reading. They're reading more than ever, and I go, let me guess, you listen, audiobooks, don't you? And it's true, and almost invariably, they listen to them on Audible. That's because Audible offers an incredible selection of audio books across every genre

from bestsellers and new releases to celebrity memoirs. And of course, ancient philosophy, all my books are available on audio, read by me for the most part. Audible lets you enjoy all your audio entertainment in one app. You'll always find the best of what you love or something new to discover. And as an Audible member, you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog, including the latest best sellers and new releases. You'll discover thousands of titles from popular favorites, exclusive new series, exciting new voices in audio. You can check out stillness.

The key, the daily dad, I just recorded so that's up on Audible now. Coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the obstacle is the way audio books So all those are available and new members can try Audible for free for 30 days visit audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500 500 that's audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500 500 I'm kind of new to stosism, so I don't know all the Latin phrases and all that, but I still kind of get stuck on the passions aspect. Sure. And I'm wondering if it's close to the Greeks and the agents they define passions as different

because I understand the lust and anger and desire, keeping them in the balance, but kind of finding your flow and what you're really engaged in wanting to do. I find that as a passion, too. So, where if you could talk about that or or put something in the chat of where I can learn more about that. Yeah, if you look at the Wikipedia page for the passions, let's pull it up here. In philosophy and religion, the passions are the instinctive, emotional, primitive drives in human beings, including, for example, lust, anger, aggression, and jealousy, which is human being, which restrain channel, develop, and sublimate in order to be possessed by wisdom.

So I think that's a good definition, because it's not just saying you are sublimate, is that just saying you suppress them? In some cases, it's about channeling them or developing them properly, right? So obviously, passion, as we speak about it in the modern world, is sort of the, you know, the idea of like loving what you do, being committed to it, having a calling or something. I don't think the Stoics would be instinctively, you know, instinctively object to that, but there's a great, you know, there's a great chapter in Cal Newport's book, which I know we talked about in last time, but you know, I was just talking about

this. And his book, So Good, You Can't Ignore It They can't ignore you. He talks about, I think it's a woman who is really unhappy with her job and her passion was yoga. So she quits her job in a sort of a fit of inspiration and opens a yoga studio, which of course, she has no experience or qualifications or money to do. So basically, her passions, her passion, which is a good thing, it's good to want to master something,

blind her to the reality of the situation at hand. So I think Cal's point was like, don't do it. I would say maybe the middle ground is, sure, you can pursue this passion for yoga, but it has to be developed and sublimated and channeled so you can effectively exploit it and utilize it rather than be used by it in the way that, you know, you get some feeling of lust or anger

and it carries you over and it makes you do something that almost immediately after you have a lot of regret about. Gotcha, Okay, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks for that clarification. Well, Matt, appreciate it. Yeah, of course. Lance. Hey, Ryan. My question is related to the, I guess more than mechanics of actually reading the source material. Okay. I've only started reading that I've got the discourses that's my first foray into the actual material. Okay. And my impression is that it's not the same as reading fiction where you're not going to plow through 40 pages all at once. Right. How do you read it? How do you digest it? Like mechanically. Sure. So it's always important to, and this is why the intros of the books are

really important, but whenever I read an ancient text of philosophy, I also go and I read the Wikipedia page, I try to read some articles about it, I try to read the Wikipedia page of the author, I try to get some understanding of the context in which this was creative. For Epic Titus, this is a great example. So Epic Titus did not write the book that you're holding, right? But you could tell this from the title, because it's called Discourses, but it's not even his version of the Discourses. What happened is 2000 years ago, Epic Titus is giving some lectures, and one of his students, Aryan, is there writing it down.

So this is like, if you, this would be like, if it turns out that one of your college professors is there writing it down. So this is like, if you, this would be like, if it turns out that one of your college professors is considered in retrospect one of the wisest people that ever lived, and I went through a box of stuff in your basement and I found your notes from that class, right? Like it would be kind of a snapshot of a snapshot of a snapshot.

We don't know why Epictetus was talking about this. We don't even know if these are exact quotes or not. So it's important that you understand the context in which Epictetus is talking about, which is really kind of lecturing to a group. And then those notes are kind of of transcribed back to us. So I think epictetus is good to read in chunks to really like you know to read a few paragraphs at a time. I like I mentioned some of the the Princeton University press editions of like specific collections where it's sort of organized by themes. There's also an even more accessible edition of epictetus.

It's so accessible that some people sort of object to the translations, but Sharon Lebel did a book called The Art of Living. But you can read, it might be good to read these two side by side, the painted porch, or sorry, the art of living and the discourses. But that would be a good way to think about think about Epic Titus that you're kind of reading them

in chunks, but that you're also reading the lecture notes of a student. And so it's not designed to be super readable. Awesome, thank you. Yes. What else? Hi. Hi. Hey, Ryan, you inspired me to watch Gladiator. Oh, and so I'm watching it. I'm going well shit

He got annihilated while he was practicing the virtues. So So my question to you is How many times do you go down before you say fuck the virtues? I'm going to annihilate someone back. I guess when I watch that movie, I don't see a commonist as winning. You know what I mean? And this is a really important stoke idea, which is that in the short term, there might be certain advantages. You may be giving up certain advantages by deciding to live by a code, but the alternative is far more terrifying

and unimaginable. And then, I mean, look in the end, communist does lose and Rome is sort of restored. It's a fictional movie, of course, but, you know, does, does, you know, does, does, does communist sort of have more fun from time to time? Does he get to indulge in sort of vices that that Maximus would never allow himself? Of course, but I think Comitus is a great example of the real cost of doing that, which is it comes at the cost of your soul and your humanity. Let's do Wilmi, is that how you pronounce that?

Yes. Hi. Hi Ryan. Well, thank you so much. It's it's it's an honor. It's an honor. Thank you. I've been following you for a couple of years at least and in I admire a lot your work. I even like it's an inspiration for me. My question for you is something that, about Microsoft Reviews, that life isn't just about business. I am the kind of person that I'm an execution person. I like to be busy, I like to do a bunch of things, I like to plan a lot. to be busy. I like to do a bunch of things. I like to plan a lot. And it's almost like I slavery for me. Yes. I know that feeling very well.

Yeah, like I see you with your farm, with your journal. And I realized that I need to make time for meditating, for my journaling, for things like that. But in the end, I, well, I think you've got me, right? No, I totally do. So my wife catches me doing this pretty often. And she goes like, this is not an item for your to-do list, right? You can't just put this on here and just go from thing to thing to thing. This is not how one lives life.

And so I think that's what Marcus is saying to himself. So don't be all about business. Don't turn everything into a job. Don't make everything a process or a system to be optimized. That's just ultimately not just a recipe for misery, but it strips out the meaning and the ability to experience the moment that you're in. So you mentioned my farm. I had to make some decisions a few years ago about sort of how I wanted to set up my life to sort of counterbalance those impulses or urges. So like if I'm living in New York City, I have more trouble controlling

that impulse than I do out in rural Texas. So I'm not saying that everyone should or could do that. I'm just saying like you kind of got to figure out what makes you tick and what parts of those you want to encourage and then sort of how you counterbalance those things. So it might just be how you set up your life, how you set up your day, what sort of, you know, whether it's, hey, you know, if I have my phone in hand, I'm gonna be working. So when I come home, I put my phone in a drawer and I don't touch it for an hour, right?

That sort of, like sort of, I might think about stuff like that. Thank you, thank you, Ryan. Yeah, that's great. And I'm trying to figure out, you know, how to associate some of these things like the journal in the meditations to some feel like executing something.

Yeah, and look, I think the morning before you get sucked into other stuff is the best time to do that. I see. 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. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the

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