The Daily Stoic - Regulation First, Happiness Second | Ask DS

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

We talked recently about a piece of advice from the therapist and children expert Dr. Becky Kennedy (she has a great book called Good Inside and was an awesome recent guest on the Daily Stoic podcast). She was saying that the key to raising happy children is to focus on emotional regulation first. By helping them name and manage their emotions, she explains, we are creating room for happiness. “Regulation first,” she writes, “happiness second.”-And In today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan talks discipline is destiny, how businesses use the same form of stoicism, and creating work that is timeless to 150 Entrepreneurs from all over the world + diverse range of industries (Tech, Hospitality, Service, Ecommerce, NYT Best-Selling Authors, etc)✉️ 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.

I remember very specifically, I rented an Airbnb in Santa Barbara. I was driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I just sold my first book and I've been working on it and I just needed a break, I needed to get away and I needed to have some quiet time to write. And that was one of the first Airbnb's I ever started with. And then when the book came out and did well, I bought my first house, I would rent that house out during South by Southwest and F1 and other events in Austin. Maybe you've been in a similar place. You've stayed in an Airbnb and you thought yourself, this actually seems pretty doable.

Maybe my place could be an Airbnb. You could rent a spare bedroom, you could rent your whole place when you're away. Maybe you're planning a ski getaway this winter or you're planning on going somewhere warmer while you're away, you could Airbnb your home and make some extra money towards the trip. Whether you use the extra money to cover some bills

or for something a little more fun, your home could be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca-host. [♪ Music playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, 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 they're happened to be someone they're recording, but thank you for listening and we hope this is of use to you. Regulation First Happiness Second Marcus really might not seem like he's a happy guy in the pages of meditations. He dwells on some of the darker parts of life he talks a lot about managing his temper, talks about all the sources of frustration and disappointment out there.

The inevitability of death and what it means is ever present in meditations. Where is the happiness? Where is the joy? Where is the laughter and the fun? Well, actually it's there in his life, not just in the book. And these two things are related. In fact, one is not possible without the other. We talked recently about a piece of advice from the therapist and child expert, Dr. Becky Kennedy. She has this great book called Good Inside. She was on the podcast also. She was saying that the key to raising happy children is to focus on emotional regulation first. By helping them name and manage their emotions, she explains we are creating room for happiness.

Regulation first, she writes, happy in a second. Effectively, this is what Marcus Re Marcus Realis is doing in meditations. You have to remember, he was not writing this book for you, he was writing it for himself. Meditations is the journal where Marcus Realis was regulating his emotions, dealing with his fears and frustrations so that they didn't overwhelm his life, so that they didn't quote happiness, enjoy a life. they didn't quote happiness, enjoy and life. By processing his temper, his envy, his tendency for despair,

he was actually cultivating happiness. And that's what stoicism is, that's why we journal, that's why we run through these exercises, that's why we read these books. It can be a little dark, but it also creates the opportunity for life. And actually, you know, January's a great time to start a journaling habit. I'm just starting the, I guess, eighth year of the One Line of Day journal I do.

I'm on the sixth year on the Daily Stoke Journal. Got my swapped out a new edition, I guess in November. I put it in the leather cover that we've got in the Daily Stoke store. And as soon as I finish this, as it's nighttime, I'm going to go sit in my bed and do my evening journaling in the Daily Stoke Journal and in my other journals, because it's just a wonderful habit. And maybe if you pick up the same habit, you can flip through your edition of the Daily Stoke and the Daily Stoke Journal.

You can check all that out at store.dailystoic.com. I'm F.W.H.E. I'm Peter Fragerpan. And in our new podcast Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we delve into the life of Pablo Picasso. The ultimate giant of modern art,

everyone has heard of or seen a Picasso work. All the Picasso brand on something. But a man with a complicated, difficult, personal side too that makes us look at his art in a different way. He was a genius and he was very problematic. Follow Legacy Now, wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge entire seasons of Legacy Add Free genius and he was very problematic. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of The Daily Stone Clockcast. If you listen to my Sunday episode back in the fall, I had this crazy couple of days where I flew down to LA, I interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I drove up to Ohio, California. I had dinner with a former podcast guest and friend, the comedian Pete Holmes. Then I did a talk for this amazing group called Mastermind Talks, Jason Gander and his wife, Candace. I have known them since they started Mastermind Talks. I went before my book, Rose Hacker marketing came out for the first time. I went the second time when Opsko is coming out. I've been many times over the years.

He's been awesome to me. So I did a long Q&A there, which is what I'm going to bring you a chunk of today. Then I went back down, did an event with Robert Green, flew home for the night, then flew to Seattle to do another event with Robert Green, flew home for the night, then flew to Seattle to do another event with Robert Green. So I told that whole story about how you sort of stay stoic and calm amidst a crazy overwhelming travel schedule. So that was me talking about it. If you want to hear me in the middle of that craziness, that's where I am in today's

episode. I did about an hour, hour and a half Q&A with a bunch of these interesting entrepreneurs from all over the world. Some are authors, some are in e-commerce, some are influencers, some are fitness people, some are some run call centers. They're just all sorts of interesting entrepreneurs, really nice folks. And if you haven't been to Mastermind Talks, you should. I think they're taking a break this year, but I'm sure you can get on the wait list for next year, everything

about coming. Thanks to Jason for sending over the audio of this. And thanks to everyone in the audience who asked some very interesting questions. I'll be bringing pieces of that over the next couple months, but I'll give you a chunk of some stoic themed questions right now. I'm about to start what will be the fourth book in the Virtue series I'm doing. So I did Courage, Discipline, Justice, basically went into publisher last week, and then I'll have to start sometime in the next couple months actually, really working on what

will be the fourth one. So right now, that's just a box. One of those boxes, 100% filled with no cards in no particular order. So the first thing, and I have a standing desk, I just have a big table in my office, like a conference table that goes up and down. I sort of raise that up to chest level,

and I just start going through the cards and I am looking for like patterns or things that go together and so eventually some kind of order starts to emerge just organically and then from that then I go you know oh actually I'm going to move this and then actually I need more of this like this is the German actually, I need more of this. Like, this is the German-impaired idea, but I need more of this. So it just starts to kind of accumulate.

So when I was writing that note to myself about just going through the cards, it was like, there is this period. It's usually like a month where I'm taking all the stuff I've brainstormed. And I'm at the excitement of starting the book. And you immediately hit what Paul Graham calls the trough of despair.

Where you're like, there is nothing here. There's no, but I've done it enough times now that I know if I just keep eventually patterns start to emerge and I go, oh, you know who would be perfect for this, this person and the sort of characters start to come up and then that sends me to sort of a second round of research. That's kind of how that system goes. And thank you for everything you're writing. I just love it.

What is your process in terms of writing? To say, every day, I'm going to read between those hours and those hours. And what is also your process when you say 50 piece of content a day? You say, like, every first three days of the month, I'm going to record and then have the team dealing with it? OK.

So as far as my process, I try to write in the morning. So I drop my kids off at school, and then I usually have between one and three hours before I have anything scheduled. And that's my sort of writing time. And if I'm working on a book, the book is going to take up the bulk of that writing time. If I'm not working on a book, then it's usually

the first things would be like articles or the Daily Stoic emails, which is the biggest, the Daily Stoic and the Daily Data. So I do two emails every single day, 365 days a year, and I have now for eight years. So it's a lot. It's a lot. Just that is a lot. But with Daily Stoic, I have a managing editor who sort of takes all the stuff and puts it into where it goes. She told me last week that I don't have to write any Daily Stoic emails for the rest of the year. That's how far ahead I am.

So I'm just always making stuff. And then I have people on the team who help me take that stuff and find out where it goes, manage it, give me, hey, if you write another Daily Stoke email today, it's just going to sit for three months. But by the way, you have seven days of Daily Day emails until we run out. So I'm kind of thinking about like that.

And then I do probably once or twice a week. I'll specifically sit down and make sort of like social media kind of like videos. And that's usually someone on my team taking stuff from the books or from articles stuff I've written and sort of re going like, hey, take this thing you were talking about here and give me 30 seconds or 60 seconds. So I'm not, when I'm doing all that content a day,

it's not the thing about it. So there's LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. So like, if you're just doing one a day on each of those things, that's almost 10 right there, right? So I'm making stuff, knowing that it can be used on multiple different platforms. And I try to think about like, what is the base unit of, so if I sit down and I write a 6,000-word article, that's good for places that take 6,000-word articles, which is not that many. If I sit down and

I go, what would be a really good way to take this stoic idea and do it in 60 seconds. I can do that on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn. I can do a YouTube short. I can combine it into a, like, I can do that in multiple places. So my team kind of helps me take the ideas or the things I want to talk about and translate it into all these different mediums. The idea being that these algorithms are the most powerful, basically,

in discovery engines in the world. And when you make stuff for them, they surface your things to people. So it's kind of created this flywheel where people are being, I first heard about you here. I first heard about you here. It's just generating all this stuff that is surfacing the work to different people who prefer different kinds of content, of different lifestyles, you know, they're in different silos and I'm just making, I'm trying to take the core thing which is what I care about which is, you know, philosophy and books and make it accessible in all these different ways. When I was writing by them builds, I read Pernielseller twice. And it really gave me the approach that I needed

and the right mindset to create what became the definitive work in the space in which I wrote. The book is OK, but Garrett Gunderson actually gave his name to it, so it launched Fibercily. It's awesome. Yeah, thank you. But my question is this, it was sort of like when I write, it's frustratingly difficult.

And I guess I'm just wondering as someone who has written 10 books or whatever of the last 10 years, like does it get easier? In other words, when you are trying to write something that is so deep and so good that it can define a space, I find that I'll write a chapter, it takes me like a month, and then I have to rewrite that same chapter

like seven times, and so now it takes me like four years to write a fucking book, and I'm just like, how do I, how do I like do this, how do I get deeper faster? Well, one thing I try to tell myself is that if it was easy, everyone would do it, right?

And so it's good that it's hard, right? Like that's what keeps the riff raff out. Can it get easier for you as you do it more? I, to a degree, but you're still trying to do an incredibly difficult thing, which is take something in your head that makes sense to you and not only make it make sense to other people, but make it interesting to other people, and then, you know, ideally make it shareable or a value. You're trying to do a really hard thing, right? And so I'm more confident as I go,

because I know what to expect. I know where the dips are, and I know how long it's supposed to take. And I have recall of certain things. I have that, but it's still fundamentally, you're starting with a bl- like I am dreading what I'm gonna have to start

in the next couple months because I know what to expect, which is why it's gonna be hard. You know what I mean? How many times do you rewrite a chapter? Are you still organized going in? You're like nailed it. I mean, you definitely want to in all facets of your life avoid moments where you're like, I don't figure it out on the fly, right? Because sometimes you do, but a lot of times you don't. And so when I hear people they're like, oh, you know, I cut 50,000 words out of this manuscript, or, you know, I'm like, okay, that's, that's a sign of poor planning.

But I do, you do editing is really important and refined. So like, the, the justice book, which I just finished, I spent the month of July and L.A. When I, I remember just because I was talking about it, it is like the book was 78,000 words. When I did it done, but going into doing an edit around of edits, 78,000 words. And by the time I left a month later, it was 72,000 words, but that's only counting words

that no longer exist, not words that were done and re-done and read. So there is this process of going over and over and over again and that's where it gets better. Sometimes you get it right the first time and there's something special about it and a lot of times you don't. So I don't think there are very few people

that spit out perfect first drafts of anything. And the whole idea of the stream of consciousness album, idea, movie, whatever. It's just, it's more a myth than a reality. 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 we'll see you next episode.

Music 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. Welcome to the happiest place on earth. For your happy is everywhere. And you, you're the happiest of them all. because this place has all the happy you never knew could exist So you're a new kind of happy every time you visit Welcome to your happiest place on earth only at the Disneyland resort in California

Visit Disneyland.ca for important details subject to availability and change without notice park admission and reservation required for park entry the notice park admission and reservation required for park entry.