The Daily Stoic - Nothing Is Possible Without This | A Hard Winter Training

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

Ryan explains why the virtue of courage is essential no matter what you do, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.Pre-orders are available for Ryan Holiday’s new book Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave - check it out at https://dailystoic.com/preorderBlinkist is the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too.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 Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music download the app today Welcome to the Daily Stoke podcast each day. We bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes Illustrated with 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. 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. Nothing is possible without this. As you know, the Stoics revere for virtues, courage, temperance, justice, wisdom. These were extraordinary things, according to Marx's Realists, that key stones to a good life. In fact, even their name, the Cardinal Virtues, references their pivotal nature, Cardinal, as we've said, doesn't refer to a religious position, but instead comes

from the Latin Cardos, meaning hinge. But of course not all these virtues are created equal. Courage comes first for a reason. As C.S. Lewis would write, Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testin point. There is no justice, no self-discipline, no wisdom, without courage. And the point is not that the Stoics were courageous, though they were, but rather that there is no stoicism without courage. How could Cato have chosen to be so transgressively self-discipline, wherein no fancy clothes, no perfumes, attending no tempting feasts, if he was afraid to be seen as something different?

Think of the courage required for Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a translator of Epictetus, to serve at the head of a black regiment for the Union Army in the American Civil War, a righteous and just cause if there ever was one. You think it wasn't scary for Xeno to found a new philosophical school from nothing? To more or less hang a shingle out in the middle of the agora one morning out of nowhere, dedicating his life to wisdom, even though it pitted him against considerable resistance and attacks from rival schools. Nothing great in this life is possible without physical and moral courage. You can't be afraid. You have to be brave, and you have to answer the

call. Because if you don't, as the famous question poses, who will? Where would we be if nobody stepped up if everyone took counsel of their fears? Certainly we would not have stoicism nor would we have any of the wonderful accomplishments you are capable of achieving if only you were brave enough to stand up, to sit down, to risk, to speak out, to try. Courage is calling. Answer it. And look, if you've gotten anything out of this podcast over the years, if you enjoy my writing at all, I'd so love for you to consider picking up my new book Courage is Calling. I'm confident that it's my best to date, and I think the blurbs and early reviews pay testament to that. General James Mattis says that it's

a superb book for crafting a purposeful life. Matthew McConaughey called it an urgent call the arms for each and all of us. My dear friend George Ravling said Courage Is Calling dresses us with the proper garments of Courage, something we need now more than ever. If you want a signed copy from me, first edition, if you want, actually, you can get signed copies of the manuscript pages that I used while creating the book. You can do that by going to dailystalec.com slash preorder

and get all the details for how to preorder a copy of Courage is Calling. Fortune favors the bold. My new book out at the end of September. I do hope you check it out. I appreciate the support. I think you're going to like this one. Courage is calling.

Go to dailystealock.com. Sash pre-order. A hard winter training. A Hard Winter Training The art of living has three levels of discipline, study, practice, and hard training. Reading the Stoics are listening to them, that's study. Trying out the lessons and reflecting on them in a journal, the friend, that's practice. What's left, though, is hard training. Epic Titus liked to use the analogy of the Roman army's practice of training hard in the off months of winter,

so that they could be prepared to meet any challenge when they returned to battle in the spring. Senica would spend time each month exposing himself to tougher than usual conditions. He too used a military analogy, pointing to the way that soldiers are tasked with hard jobs so they could be strong when the enemy eventually came. So what are you doing in your life to push yourself beyond mere study and practice? And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Steal of Journal 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman.

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 are sold, you can also get a signed personalized copy for me in the Daily Stoke store,

at store.dailystoke.com. This idea of keeping the thoughts at hand really ties into this week's entry, we've got two quotes from Epictetus and one from Seneca. We must undergo a hard winter training and not rush into things for which we haven't prepared. That's Epictetus in his discourses. Here's Senka in moral letters 18.

Here's a lesson to test your mind's metal. Take part of the week in which you have only the most meager and cheap food. Dress scantily and shabby clothes and ask yourself, this is really the worst you feared. It is when times are good that you should gird yourself for tougher times ahead. For when fortune is kind, the soul can build up defenses against her ravages. So it is that the soldiers practice maneuvers in peacetime, erecting bunkers with no enemies in sight and exhausting themselves under no attack so that when it comes, they won't

grow tired. And then finally, Epictetus says, when a challenge confronts you, remember that God is matching you with a younger sparring partner as would a physical trainer. Why? Because becoming an Olympian takes sweat. I think that no one has a better challenge than yours. If only you would use it like an athlete would use a younger sparring partner. So a couple of things here. One, I sometimes get this question, should I seek out adversity? If adversity is such a good teacher, should I seek it out? I say, look, for the most part, life is going to give us most of the training we need. Life's going to throw most of the adversity we need at

us. So you don't need to go like getting yourself into troubles, you can know what a prison cell feels like, right? I don't think that's really what it is. As Epictetus is saying, look, instead of bemoaning the adversity when you do feel it, go like, hey, this is good. This is training I need and I'm going to use this. So I think about that way. The pandemic obviously being a great example of this. The other part is how are you though actively engaged in training that makes you stronger, meant more mentally tough, more physically tough. So to me, this is where like a strong physical practice comes in.

It's also where getting up early, maybe intermittent fasting, maybe cold showers, but mostly working out, because I love working out, but still every time I have to convince myself to do it, right? I love running, it's almost painful not to run, but there's still lots of days when I don't want to do it, right? I love running, it's almost painful not to run, but there's still lots of days when I don't want to do it and still be easier to go slower. I have to push myself every single time, but every time I do it, I get better at pushing myself, right? I usually do some sort of weight training about four days a week as well. And so that is much less fun for me,

and I really do have to push myself to do it. And that training though, the act of pushing myself to do something that I'm uncomfortable with, that's not fun, that challenges me, this doesn't just make me stronger and more fit and better at chasing my kids around the house. What it really does is make me better

at overriding that impulse that I don't want to do something because it's hard or that I'm afraid or that's going to be exhausting. Again, I'm in the middle of a book right now. And you think I don't wake up so many days and I don't feel it, I don't want to do it, it's hard. What if I phone it in today? Is anyone really watching? will anyone know? Well I've trained for exactly that kind of insidious opponent. As Stephen Pressfield talks about, I know the resistance well. I have built up a lot of muscles that make me stronger than the resistance and that's where this training comes in. And I think that's a metaphor for all forms of adversity, difficulty, resistance, weakness

in life. And so I hope you have some sort of active practice. Use the adversity, train against it when it's there, but also build some active daily practices or weekly practices in your life as well. 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. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page six or Du Moir or in court.

I'm Matt Bellasai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud. From the build-up, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lin spears. When Brittany's fans formed the free Brittany movement dedicated to fring her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lin's lack of public support, it angered some fans,

a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondry App.