The Daily Stoic - No Man Ever Reads The Same Book Twice | The Sphere of Choice

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

Ryan talks about the importance of re-reading the greats, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.For a limited time, the Daily Stoic ebook is $1.99 in the US and UK this week only. We have a premium leather bound version available at dailystoic.com/leather. GiveWell is the best site for figuring out how and where to donate your money to have the greatest impact. Go to Givewell.org to read more about their research or donate to any of their recommended charities. Enter Daily Stoic at checkout so they know we sent you.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://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 the Daily Stoic podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics illustrative stories from history, current events and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it. Marcus really says at the beginning of meditations that one of the things he's most proud of is that anytime anyone needed anything, he was in a position to be charitable, to be generous.

Generosity, giving back, serving the common good, this is a core idea and stoicism, and it is a core idea behind one of my favorite organizations in the world I'm talking about give well. Give well spends 20,000 hours each year researching charitable organizations and recommending only a few of the highest impact evidence back charities they found for you to donate to. Over 50,000 donors, including myself, have used give well to donate more than $750 million. Rigorous evidence suggests that these donations will save tens of thousands of lives. Go to givewell.org to read more about the research donate to any of the recommended charities I like against malaria, for instance.

That's givewell.org, enter Daily Stoke and check out so they know we sent you, check it out. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. Check it out. hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Codopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together they discuss their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how

I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondering. No one ever reads the same book twice. Think of a book that's changed your life. How long ago was that? How long ago was it written? Now think of all the things that have changed since that reading in the world, in you.

Perhaps even our understanding of science or history or the biography of the person who wrote it has changed. All of that is why you have to go pick up that book, indeed many of the books that have influenced you. Read them again. Books remain the same, the beloved writer Italo Colvino once said, but we certainly have changed. And this later encounter is therefore completely new. Or as that favorite poet of Marcus Aurelius, Heraclitus said, no man ever steps in the same river twice for it is not the same river. And he is not the same man. As we change and our contexts change, what we discover

and get out of a book changes to this is why Marcus was reading epictetus was when he was in line for the throne, and when he was emperor. That book that he read at 25 was with him always, and each time he picked it up, it was different. This is why Stockdale read Epic Titus when he was training to become a fighter pilot, and why he returned to it after he was released as a prisoner of war, even writing his own book about it, Courage Under Fire. This is why General Mattis carried Marcus Aurelius with him on every campaign.

And this is why we too must return again and again to our favorite books and writers. You will benefit a new from every encounter. Look, if you've read the Daily Stoke, if you go through it every day, I've got some good news. As an ebook, it's for sale for $1.99 on Amazon right now. That's like as cheap as it will be. If there's someone you might want to give the book to, if you just wanted it in another format, this is as cheap as it'll get, and I just wanted to pass that along.

I hope you can pick it up and support it. It's $1.99 on Amazon in the US. I think I books too. Also discounted in the UK and whatever markets they have the rights to. Or if you've reread it and you want something a tad more durable, the cloth bound, lay flat, hard cover that we published.

You can get signed copies of that in the Daily Stoke store. But if you didn't know, there's also a leather edition. Now that we're five years into the book, I wanted to make sure it could stand the test of time. It could put up with the stresses that people put on it. And if you want to pick up one of those, you can pick that up at dailystoke.com slash leather or you can get it on Amazon as well.

But I hope you pick up and reread the Daily Stoke this year. I'm gonna be rereading Marcus Aurelius as I do every year and a bunch of the stills because every time I step into there, I bring something back out and I reread a bunch of books last year including some of my favorite novels that I took a lot out of as well. So I hope you're reading and rereading this year and do check out this discounted edition of the Daily Stalk. The sphere of choice. If the first step is to discern what is or isn't in our control, the second step in Stalk philosophy is to focus the energy on the things we have a choice about. The Stalks viewed the soul as a sphere that when well-tuned, well-directed,

was an invincible fortress against any trial or circumstance. Protected by our reason, this spear of choice was like a sacred temple, and it is the only thing we truly possess in this life. We are the product of our choices, so it is essential that we choose well. This week, consider and reflect on the choices you have about your emotions, your actions, your beliefs, and your priorities. Keep this thought at the ready at daybreak, and through the day and night, there is only one path to happiness, and that is in giving up all that is outside your sphere of choice regarding nothing else is your possession, surrendering all else to God, and fortune.

Epic Titus discourses 4-4. Who then is invincible, the one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice? Epic Titus discourses 1-18. The soul is a sphere true to itself, and neither projects itself towards any external thing, nor does it collapse on itself, but instead radiates a light which it shows itself, the truth of all things, and truth in and of itself, Marcus Aurelius' meditations, 1112. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Steuert Journal, 366 days of writing and

reflection on the art of living by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Steve Enhancelman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, and there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand, write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them. You can check out the Daily Stalk Journal, anywhere a book's or sold,

you can also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stalk store, at store.dailystalk.com. Well, here we are. We were talking about this last week, you know, you only have so many energy points. You only have so much, so many resources. How are you gonna spend them? Are you gonna spend them on what's up to you?

Are you gonna spend them on what's not up to you? Are you gonna emote about things and pretend that that makes a difference? Or are you going to spend your energy trying to do something about this thing that you've found so upsetting? Right? So I think people think that stoicism is about resignation. It's not. It's about allocation, right?

It's resigned to the things that make no difference, where you can make no difference, but it's very focused, intensely focused, on the areas that you can make a difference, right? So you could despair about the larger, you know, political trends in your country because you're one person and you're, you know, at odds with the majority, but maybe you can make a difference with your family with your community. You could run for school board or mayor or something like that.

Right. What can you do as the individual? That's not to say the stokes aren't interested in collective action. I'm just saying, I'm going to focus my energy where it's going to make difference, and as a stokes, they be indifferent to the things where I can make no difference. Where can you make a difference? It's tempting as a writer, because our jobs are writers that have opinions about things. That's a really dangerous way to go through your life, thinking that the world gives a shit about your opinion,

and that having the opinion is the thing that matters and that it doesn't matter, right? What matters is what you do, what are the actions, right? We ended the year with the idea from the Stokes about turning words into works. Well, what are you providing? Where are you putting your resources? And are you putting them towards where they have input, where they have, where they have input, where they have efficacy. So Estilic is resigned in some sense to, look, I'm not gonna get involved in that nonsense, I'm not gonna waste time regretting the past either. What I'm gonna try to do is move forward.

What I'm gonna try to do is move ahead. What I'm gonna try to do to make some change, where I can make some change in. And yeah, I'm gonna be indifferent to the things where that's not true. And that's what we're talking about here, right? That's what the sphere of choice is about. And it's an easy thing to forget.

And that's why Epipetitus is saying, keep it ready in the morning, think about it throughout the day and think about it at night. He's saying there's one path to happiness. It's giving up the things that are outside your sphere of choice, focusing on what else is in your possession, surrendering everything off. So it's being zen about the things that are not up to you.

But there's a kind of invincibility in that zen, right? Because if it wasn't, if I didn't make the call, I didn't do it. If it wasn't something that was up to me, I'm not gonna get upset by it. Remember, Mark, you don't have to have an opinion about this. You don't have to get upset. But you should be upset about your own choices. Why did I do that?

Why didn't I do that? Why did I make this mistake? Why did I do this thing again? I told myself I was going to stop doing focus on you focus on your choices make good choices That's how you exert control over the world something. I you know, I remind myself You see what's going on the world and you can despair you can feel sad or you can go look I've got two little kids in my house who I'm responsible for The biggest multi-generational impact I can have is in raising them well.

Then I go, and this is something Seneca failed. It's like Seneca spent all these years beating his head against the wall trying to change Nero. He's affected far more people, had far more impact in his writing, which he did control. So I go, okay, and look, I'm not going to yell at some person I know on social media for being silly and have the impact on one person, but I am going to sit down and write about this or talk about this on the podcast in a way that can reach a lot of people. Right? Let's stay in our lanes, let's do what we can do, let's try to make a difference where we can.

And if we all do that, humanively, that is collective action and that does have a big impact. So this is a short lesson today. It's a straightforward one, but it's so hard and that's why Sena Kassanga got to remind yourself constantly throughout the day, I'm gonna focus on what's in my sphere of choice. That's where I have impact. I'm gonna focus on allocating my energy properly,

not gonna waste it on regret, not gonna waste it on bitterness, on resentment, on anger, on fear, on worry, on hope. I'm going to focus on what I control, I'm going to make a difference there. So that's what Stoke does. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke podcast. Again, if you don't prime members, you can listen to the daily Stoke early and add free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondering Plus in Apple podcasts. And you can listen to the daily Stoke. And you can listen to the daily Stoke. And you can listen to the daily Stoke.

And you can listen to the daily Stoke. And you can listen to the daily App today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident

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