The Daily Stoic - Stop Waiting To Demand The Best For Yourself | Taking The Bite Out Of It

Episode Date: December 30, 2021

Ryan talks about how people tend to put off making changes and improving their lives, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.→ We hope you join us in the 2022 New Year New You Challenge. It kicks off in a little over a week. It’s 3 weeks of actionable challenges, presented in an email per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Just go to https://dailystoic.com/challenge to sign up before sign ups end on January 1st!Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://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 another episode of the Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epipetus Markus, really a Seneca, then some analysis for me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works. 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. Stop waiting to demand the best for yourself. Look guys, two days left to sign up for the Daily Stoic, New Year, New Year Challenge. Stop putting it off. If you're going to do it, let's do it.

I can't wait to see you sign up at dailystoic.com slash challenge. But anyways, here's today's message. This is that weird time of. The promises we make to ourselves about what we're going to do in the next 12 months. The habits we're going to quit, the skills we're going to learn, the standards we're going to hold ourselves to. Now, on the one hand, it's a wonderful thing to do. We're going to do a lot of things. We're going to do a lot of things. We're going to do a lot of things. We're going to do a lot of things.

We're going to do a lot of things. We're going to do a lot of things. We're going to do a lot of things. We're going to do in the next 12 months. The habits we're going to quit, the skills we're going to learn, the standards we're going to hold ourselves to. Now, on the one hand, it's so wonderful and inspiring bit of reflection that the whole world comes together to do this at the same time. It's excellent that everyone has finally decided to get in shape to stop smoking, to try to give back more, to commit, to being a better friend or relative, or to read a certain number of books. But it's also strange that everyone puts it off for so long. We treat our self-improvement like it's a school project we hope might just complete itself, praying that maybe our

teachers or parents will handle it for us. Well, they won't. Epic Titus asked, why is it that we wait to demand the best for ourselves? It's crazy. And here you are today staring down the barrel of 2022. And while the best time to demand the best for and of yourself was years ago, second best time is now, right now. Put the missed opportunity behind you and repeat this passage from Epictetus. From now on, then resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress and make whatever you think the best law is that you never set aside.

And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now. You are at the Olympic Games. You cannot wait any longer in that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. Can you do that? Can you start right now? Stop putting stuff off. No more, I'll start on Monday.

No more in the future. I'll do better and expect better. Oh, demand the best for yourself now. That's what a grown-up does. And look for the last four years we've been doing this, the new year, new U Challenge year at Daily Stoke, 21 actionable challenges presented one per day built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoke philosophy. If you're serious about wanting to get the best out of yourself, this challenge has done that for

literally thousands of people over the last four years all over the world in all different walks of life. Three weeks of actionable challenges presented in an email per day. From me, I do the challenges right alongside you. You'll see me in the Discord chat. You'll see me on the weekly calls we do together. But look, there's just two more days left to register. We always watch people wait, they always put it off, and then they don't come around to it. So don't wait, sign up for the Daily Stoke, New Year, New Year Challenge to start 2022 off, right? You can do that at dailystoke.com slash challenge. We'd love to have you. And remember, Daily Stoke Life Members get this challenge,

and all the other challenges we have planned for next year for free, plus our really popular past ones. So we'd love to have you there to sign up at dailystoke.com slash challenge. Taking the bite out of it. And I'm reading to you today from the daily Stoke, 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living by yours truly.

And my co-author and translator, Steve Enhancelman, you can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoke store, over a million copies of the Daily Stoke and print now. It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. It's been more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the best cellist. It's just an awesome experience. But I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoke.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading.

To bear trials with a calm mind, Rob's misfortune of its strength in burden. That's from Seneca's play Hercules. The people you admire, the ones who seem to be able to so successfully handle and deal with adversity and difficulty What is it that they all have in common? their sense of equilibrium They're orderly discipline on the one-yard line in the midst of criticism after a heartbreaking tragedy

during a stressful period They keep going Not because they're better than you, not because they're smarter, but because they learned a little secret. You can take the bite out of a tough situation by bringing a calm mind to it, by considering it and meditating on it in advance. And this is true, not just for our day-to-day adversities, but for the greatest and most unavoidable trial of it all, our own eventual death. Could come tomorrow, it could come in 40 years, it could be quick and painless, or it could

be excruciating. Our greatest asset in the ordeal will not be religion, will not be the wise words of philosophers, it will be simply our calm and reasoned mind. You know, I was just writing about this. I'm writing the temperance book right now. And there's a quote from Anne Hall of Merkel that she has on her desk. I won't try to do the German pronunciation. She's saying there is strength in calm. Try to think about a situation that you've ever made better by freaking out. Try to make, try to think of a situation where you're glad you're anxious, you're glad you are worried. It doesn't help things. Stresses you out,

stresses the people around you out. It tires you out. Right? It messes with your decision-making abilities. And so the reason the Stoics think about the worst case scenario, we do the pre-metatoshio malorum. The reason the Stoics aren't looking at the world through rose-colored glasses is that, you know, they don't want to be saying, as Seneca said, I didn't think that could happen, right? You want to be able to say instead, as Epictetus said, ah, this is what I trained for. This is what I've prepared for. I recognize this. I know what I'm supposed to do here, right? That's what philosophy is about. That's what stoicism is about for the big and little adversities of life. It's a tool. It's a way to prepare. It's a way to take the bite out of them

in advance. And most of all, this, the big elephant in the room, the thing this is directed at, which the whole sort of final month of the Daily Stoke is directed at, is that idea of death or mortality. Cicero, Montaine, they're all riff on this idea that to philosophize is to learn how to die. That ultimately, that's the thing that we're all preparing for. It's the one thing that we're all going to do. And so we think about that in advance, too.

I don't like dwell on death. It doesn't depress me, but I do think about it often. I mean, look, here's my memento mori coin. I've got a reminder of like a piece of a tombstone. I've said this before on my bathroom counter. I've got a bunch of different little reminders of mortality for a reason, right? Because I don't want it to be a looming thing.

I want it to be something that's there that I'm familiar with, that I'm intimate with, that I understand. And then that shapes how I act in the present. It makes me quicker to apologize. It makes me quicker to move on. It makes me quicker to apologize. It makes me quicker to move on. It makes me quicker to accept. Also makes me quicker to feel gratitude and joy and happiness, because I don't know how long I have. None of us do, right? So we prepared to philosophize this to learn how to

die. That's also to philosophize this to learn how to live, how to live with the reality of this predicament, this fact that we were all all born with a terminal diagnosis. The prognosis was fatal from birth. So we study it, we get up close and personal with it. Just as the prognosis was difficulty, adversity, Murphy's Law, it's always there. It's always there. But to be calm, right? To be calm is to be strong. To prepare for them in advance, robs them of some of their power, makes us stronger, better, braver, calm. So here we are almost wrapping up the year. I hope you can, I hope Memento Mori has been a part of your practice, but I hope it maintain, I hope

you, if it hasn't been, I hope you make it part of your practice. It's been a totally life-changing for me, and I wish you all the best. I hope to see you in the Daily Stoke, New Year, New Year's Challenge that we're doing. And it's really my honor and pleasure to be able to produce this podcast, to make this stuff for you guys, to be supported in my pursuit of this philosophy, to be made better.

Sena says that we learn as we teach. I feel like I got the best job in the world. I appreciate all the support. It's been wonderful meeting many of you at the painted porch this year. It's been wonderful hearing from you the way that stoicism has changed your life, the impact that it's had that keeps me going.

I feel the same way. And wishing you a happy new year, and we'll talk soon. The man, more of yourself in 2022. And one of the ways you can do that is by joining us in the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge. All you have to do is go to dailystoic.com slash challenge to sign up. Remember, Daily Stoic Life Members

get this challenge and all our challenges for free, but sign up seriously. Think about what one positive change, one good new habit is worth to you. Think about what could be possible if you handed yourself over to a little bit of a program. We all pushed ourselves together. That's what we're going to do in the challenge. I'm going to be doing it. I do the challenges. All of them alongside everyone else. I'm looking forward to connecting with everyone in the Discord challenge, all the other bonuses. Anyways, check it out, new year, new you,

the Daily Stoke Challenge, sign up at dailystoke.com slash challenge. ... Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen 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. Ah, the Bahamas.

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