The Daily Stoic - Push Through To The Finish Line | Ask Daily Stoic

Episode Date: December 23, 2022

The Cynic philosopher Diogenes was once criticized by a passerby for not taking care of himself in his old age, for being too active when he should have been taking it easy and resting. As per usual, Diogenes had the perfect rejoinder: "What, if I were running in the stadium, ought I to slacken my pace when approaching the goal?"---Ryan speaks at the EO Alchemy entrepreneurial conference about his early career and his view on interpreting the Stoics.🎓 Sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to create better habits in 2023: https://dailystoic.com/challenge✉️  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. But on Fridays, we not only read this daily meditation, but I try to answer some questions from listeners and fellow stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy, whatever it is they happen to do. Sometimes these are from talks.

Sometimes these are people who come up to talk to me on the street. Sometimes these are written in or emailed from listeners. But I hope in answering their questions, I can answer your questions, give a little more guidance on this philosophy. We're all trying to follow. [♪ Music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, 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. The cynic philosopher, Diogeny's, was once criticized by a passerby for not taking care of himself in his old age, for being too active when he should have been taking it easy and resting,

as per usual, Diogeny's had the perfect rejoinder. What if I were running in the stadium, ought I to slacken my pace when approaching the goal? His point was that we should never stop getting better, never stop the work that philosophy demands of us. Right up until the end, Diogeny's was questioning convention, reducing his wants, challenging power, and insisting on truth. The Stelox agreed with his view that old age was no excuse for coasting. In fact, we get the sense that many

of the strongest passages in meditations are written by an older Arcaserrelius, one who is still frustrated with himself for his anxiety, for his passions, for his less than flawless record when it comes to upholding his beliefs. In one passage, he says, it more or less outright. How long are you going to keep doing this? You're old and you still can't get it right. But he wasn't just kicking himself to feel better. He was trying to get himself to be better. He refused to take his foot off the gas. He was going to keep going right on through the finish line. And so should we, no matter how old we are,

no matter how long we've been at this, it's far too early to stop now to say close enough. No, we're going to give it our best effort. We're going to give it everything we have. Let's go to stillness on the little bias. Look all your stuff, and that's my fifth. Part of the reason may be, I read Stillness when we were in last year, locked away with no reception, no TV, I was with Ben over here, so it was very little conversation. So I read Stillness is the key then, and it really influenced me and it affected me.

So I loved it. How do you dig into that and tell us kind of like I said, we've got other books, we're asking you other books. What do we take away that and tell us kind of like I said, we get other books, we ask for you other books. What do we take away? What is it? What prompted this book, I know it's part of the trilogy, what prompted it, what should you be taking away from? Yeah, the premise of that book is like,

when I think about all the great moments of my life, whether it's personal happiness or professional achievement, the sort of the through line for them is how locked in I was, how focused I was, how athletes talk about everything slowed down and became clear. That experience is so profoundly important and it's where great performance comes from. And yet it's fleeting and rare and we kind of just hope that it happens on accident. So that book is about slowing down so you can charge ahead. How to do the thing you want to do better is often not by doing more of it and more things at the same time. It's about, you know, essentialism and focus

and really locking in. So it's, again, I may have confused, so I apologize just in case, but in stillness, I think you did, it's in stillness where you did kind of deep into the tiger woods. Yeah. Soga, if you would, or experience, or kind of what, it's kind of rise and or small

and talking about his upbringing. Can you speak a little bit about how you use Tiger in his story and how it calls this message? Well, there's different kinds of stillness, right? There's physical stillness, there's mental stillness, there's also spiritual stillness. I think Tiger Woods is a great example of someone who had complete mastery over his physical performance like on the golf course. It's the guy who could stop a swing, a hundred mile an hour swing like that. It's the guy who could put a tiny ball

in a specific spot, 300 yards away. That's physical stillness and mastery. Mental mastery, I mean, this is a guy who could tune out distraction, who could lock in, you know, who could play the mentally taxing game of golf. But as the Buddhist monk Tick-Nought Han says, you know, beneath the ocean, there are currents, right? So the ocean can be smooth on the surface, but underneath there can be riptides. Tiger Woods was caught in a riptide. And I tell that story in the book because, you know, it doesn't matter how much meditation you do, it doesn't matter, you know, how locked in you

are at your professional thing if you're the best in the world. If you're personal life and your spiritual life and your, you know, if you're emotions and your heart are all messed up and wound up tight, your success is going to be, you know, shaky to say the least. And so, you know, you watched entire woods, that idea that a house divided against itself can't stand. And eventually, the demons of his personal life overwhelm and destroy his professional life. And it's been a long, hard slog up the way back. And as admirable as that is and impressive as it is, it's also tragic to think of the

greatness that was lost in those, I mean, who lost the best years of his life as a golfer, for what? You're right. And it's interesting, I think, and again, I may have a little bit, but I think you go deep in this, up to you, it's relationship with his father

and his mother, and what I find especially interesting is to observe him now, at least through the internet or through G.B. with his own son. We have a lot of parents in the room or soon to be parents or in the future, or be parents. Any lessons there, like I know he's father, he says both of them at the same time,

a big pre-message was, any, like of them at the same time, a big pre-message once. Any, like, the rolling in the right direction is for some challenges, the result of that I hope are up to. Yeah, I don't know if anyone in the room has read David Epstein's book, Range, which I actually think is a parenting book in disguise. Tiger Woods is the sort of the classic example

of focus, mastery, do one thing from an early age, do only that thing, greatness and soos. But it made Tiger Woods so, so fragile. And I mean, I think in retrospect, if you saw someone doing the Tiger, if you did or you saw a friend's parent doing a know, doing a kid's parent doing to them what Tiger Woods' father did, damn, you'd see it as abuse. I mean, even that story, he was like, the story of Tiger Woods learns to golf because he would put him in a high chair in the garage and then play, you know, hit golf balls against a sheet for hours and hours and hours.

And Tiger just grew up watching this. It's like my two-year-old will sit in a high chair for like 15 minutes before they start screaming and yelling and wanting to do literally anything other. Like, how long would my kid watch me play golf? Like eight seconds, you know? So, so you as as interesting as that science experiment was, right? Like Tiger Woods' life is basically a psychological experiment. Like how much can a person take before they break? And as interesting as it was and as, you know, talented a golfer as it made, it also made it inevitable that that golfer would not only likely explode at some point, but it made it impossible for them to enjoy the success as they had it as well. Like when you read about Tiger Woods before his self-destruction,

I mean, I don't get the sense that he was having a good time. I get this, you know, he sounds like a tortured set like you end up in your crash in your SUV and your garage and your wife is chasing you with a golf club like that's not winning. Yeah, and it goes back to tell all you're saying the ocean in the car. Yeah, there was noise there for sure. Okay, well, vivid. The last book I want to talk about you mentioned daily story. Yeah behind you there. You read your own daily stomach book on daily dishes? Of course. That would be weird if I didn't. No, I have it because sometimes people ask me to read parts from it or observe it or whatever, but the premise of that book is actually, I mean, it's supposed to be an entry point to stoic philosophy, but there's a great line from Santa Cahe's,

Santa Cahe would write these letters to his friend Lucilius, which is also a great book if you've ever read letters from a stoic. But Santa Cahe is saying like, look, the path the wisdom is long. He says, but the way to do it is just, just, he says acquire one thing every day. You know, he says one thing every day that makes you stronger, wiser, protects you from, you know, misfortune or difficulty. It's just one thing every day. And that his that's actually what these letters he was, he and the friend were like, I'll give you one thing, you give me one thing and we'll do this every day. And so really the premise of the book is,

don't sit down and go, I'm an amastros to a philosophy. It's like, how do you do that? You have to break a difficult task down into component parts. So the premise there is I just gonna give you one, you know, one page a day. And then I also I do a free email every day about Stoke Philosophy as well at dailystoke.com.

But the idea is like actually a lot of these things are, you know, it's not a book, it's not about reading a book one time or going to a conference one time or you know, watching a documentary one time, then you magically mastered it. It has to be an ongoing process, like a dialogue. That's how it works.

Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode 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. Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders

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