The Daily Stoic - The Beautiful Language Of Marcus’s Philosophy | Ask DS

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

There are so many beautiful passages in Meditations.“The way loaves of bread split open on top in the oven,” Marcus Aurelius writes in Book 3, “the ridges are just by-products of the baking, and yet pleasing, somehow: they rouse our appetite without our knowing why.” His poetic observation of the way stalks of wheat bend under their own weight. His reflection on the way things in life are often made beautiful by their imperfections.---And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan speaks and answers questions on zooming out for better perspective when annualizing our cuurent society opposed to the past, and turning trials into opportunities with over 1,600 Agents from Keller Williams in attendance. 📕 You can learn more about the tragedy and triumphs of Marcus Aurelius’ life as well as those of Cicero’s in Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius.✉️ 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.

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from listeners in 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 there happen to be someone there recording.

But thank you for listening. And we hope this is of use to you. The beautiful language of Marcus' philosophy. There are so many beautiful passages in meditations. The way loaves of bread split open at the top of the oven, Marcus writes in book three. The ridges are just a byproduct of baking, he says, and yet pleasing somehow, they rouse our appetite without our knowing why. His poetic observation on the way stocks of wheat bend over under their own weight,

his reflection on the way things in life are often made beautiful by their imperfections. It's also crazy to think he was writing in his non-native tongue to himself never expecting anyone would see it. In Rome, the Romans spoke Latin, but Greek was the language of philosophy.

Gregory Hayes tells us in his introduction of his translation of meditations. So in Meditations, Marcus was writing to himself in Greek. There he was in his private journal, challenging himself to write in a more difficult language, and doing so in such a beautiful way that it endures all these centuries later. It's a simple reminder we want you to spend some time with this week, as we said before,

if you're going to do something, do it beautifully. And I still have, I was going through it just the other day for a talk I was doing, I still have my edition of meditations that I bought in 2006 from Amazon, the Gregory Hayes translation. And it's beautiful to me, but it's certainly showing the wastes and where of time. It's scotch tape together. So one of the things we did last year is we reached out to Gregory Hayes. We acquired the rights to it, and we made our own beautiful edition of it.

It's leather, it's a school box, it's got gilt edge pages, made our own beautiful edition of it. It's leather, it has a school box, it's got gilt edge pages, it's got a ribbon in it. I tweak the font size a little bit. I added a cool biography of Marcus in the back. A bunch of awesome stuff. We print it in the UK and we print it in this old factory in the UK and it comes with a school box. A bunch of awesome stuff. It makes a great gift. Also, is now the edition I have on my nightstand, so I don't ruin the old one. But if you haven't read Meditations, the Hayes translation is my favorite, as I've said

many times. And this is my favorite of the Hayes translations. And you can grab it in the Daily Stoic store. I'll link to it in today's show notes, where you can just go to dailystoic.com slash meditations. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Steal podcast. In today's episode, bring you those Q&As every day where people ask me questions about stoicism. This was one I did back in February at the Anaheim Convention Center. The nice folks at Keller Williams had me do a talk, so I was talking about a bunch of real estate agents,

people in the real estate industry. I'm pretty sure this was on stage. It was kind of a weird talk, Gary Keller, who's an awesome dude, and it's been very nice to me. He and J. Papazen and someone else from their group, they sat on the stage the whole time I gave the talk. I don't know if that was a glitch or a part of pressuring you to really step up and perform, but I could see it, sort of see them in my periphery the whole time I was giving them

the speech. Then as soon as I stopped, we went right into a Q&A. So I will bring you that now talking, writing, journaling, stoicism, and overcoming obstacles. I was lucky enough I did another talk with Keller Williams here at ACL Live. Just more recently, I'll bring you the Q&A and the, uh, the audio of that at some point, but in the meantime, thanks again to Keller Williams for having me out. And, uh, I hope you can enjoy this Q&A. Um, I started thinking about obstacles that we've all been through. Sure.

In this industry. And strangely, they all started to die. Like we had an infectious disease, right? Yes. We had a world we had an insurrection, we had invasion from, and you know, Russia, to the other. We had an ice form here in Texas.

Now we have an inferno in Texas. Yes, yes. I'm not liking this. Well, me, you're assuming a history, right? Is it my imagination, or has every generation said, no one's ever had it so bad? What is, it is funny, right? I'm sure we've all heard this over the last couple years

and people will, when are things going to go back to normal? But I think anyone that has studied history knows that this is very, very normal. I mean, we had an infection. We had an influenza epidemic exactly 100 years before COVID, right? So these things have happened before, and I think it's worth remembering that things that have never

happened before also happened all the time, right? And so history is, you think of the things that happened in someone like Queen Elizabeth's life. There was no normal. There was world wars, and there was depressions, and there was declines and falls, there was good times, bad times. That's what life is. So I think if we zoom out, we get some perspective in our own lives and in history. And then also, if we, one of the things I've tried to remind myself a couple of years is like,

this is what living through history feels like, right? We look back on history, we talked to our grandparents, and we kind of think that it was all fun or easy, or there's just this footnote, but it's like, they didn't know when the Great Depression would end, right? They didn't know when World War II would end. They were living in the present in the past, and that that's where we're in now, but we also have the benefit of looking at the past and going, okay, none of these things last forever. There do tend to be cycles. And so, I think that perspective is really key.

Sometimes you've got to zoom way in. Sometimes you zoom way out. But the point is to not be too consumed, too overwhelmed by the moment that you're in. Love it. I feel like if it were an absurdly, like the session of things, like you bring in stoicism back to the world with perfect timing. Like I know timing counts you in some way. Sure. The world did need this on some level.

Yeah, but I think, you know, Marcus are really just writing during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire is writing during. Like people have always turned, when things are good, when things are easy, right? People are just like, oh, we ain't gonna all be fine. But it's when things go sideways that we go, hmm. If only someone had thought about this or been through this,

can I learn from them? And so it's obviously been exciting and interesting to watch the sort of books of this popular, when I trade it, what I trade for this is the trade worthwhile certainly not but You know, I do like the idea that you know when things fall apart people turn to these sort of tried and true ideas You mentioned you actually just to put us did it here Elon Musk and Queen Elizabeth sure and it occurred to me like like this is a business before. Yeah.

And you have Elon Musk that doesn't appear to be living all of these virtues all the time. Sure. But that doesn't stop them from being wildly successful. So when, so it's not conditional success, it's not conditional on adopting this, but what you get in exchange for adopting this. Yeah, I think when I think about this with ego, right?

So I go, ego's the enemy. It's not that egotistical people are never successful. And egotistical people are successful all the time. It's that when you get up close and personal with these folks, you go, oh, I don't know if that was worth it. I don't know if I would trade with that person, right? And so when I look at someone like Elon, I don't go, oh, look at what a loser this guy is.

Look at how he's never done anything. I mean, he's an incredible entrepreneur, a brilliant guy. Incredibly successful. Does it seem like he's having a good time? No, to me, it seems it looks like more like a compulsion, right? And it looks like someone who's sort of shooting themselves in the foot or worse quite often.

And then I go, and what is the cost of that? Not just to his family, to his friends, to his employees, but where is that holding him back? Right, we only, even someone who's really efficient, really hard working, there's only so many hours in the day, you only have so much energy. You know, if you are being needlessly deposed in multiple lawsuits, that's not a good use of your time,

even if you end up being vindicated in these lawsuits, right? So I think, you know, people who are disciplined manage to avoid trouble, you know, they manage to avoid needless conflict because they're secure in themselves and they are in command of themselves. And they go, that looks like trouble. I'm gonna go over here.

They avoid the kind of spirals that a lot of people get in. Yes. When troubles, we're not gonna avoid trouble any of us. But how we respond to it will allow us not to magnify it and make it worse. Yeah, it's that expression like don't go borrowing trouble. Like you got enough on your plate already,

you're seeking out things, you know, and by the way, anyone who spent much time on Twitter, you never feel good getting in these arguments with random strangers, right? You feel worse, you're, you know, your hormones spike, like you're stressing, you're, you get this fight or flight reflex without the benefit of, you know, like training and fighting, you know, it's just this sort of needless excretion of adrenaline that I think wears you down and it's just not excretion of adrenaline that I think wears you down and it's just not Success should not be the freedom to get in a lot of stuff Yes, you don't need to get it's what exactly. Yes, so

Make it practical. I know it had this. This is a new crowd make it practical if I if I want to have a better command Yes, I want to not be Captured to my fears. I don't want to be captive to my emotions We all are entitled to them, but how we actually respond. Sure. What's the first step? How do you think you're holding the journal there?

I think journals are a great place to work some of this stuff out, right? There's the moment you're overwhelmed by it, you're frustrated by it, you're scared by it, and then instead of just dumping that out in an email or freaking out or hitting the eject button, you work through it on paper. This is why pros and cons lists are so great. But also, we talked about the physical practice.

I think walks are magical. It's the ability to step back and go, here's what I think I should do. But should I actually do that? Here's what everyone else wants me to do. Here's what I normally do. And to go, I'm going to take a beat, I'm going to think, this is what Tim, I think, was talking about,

is you get knocked down. You have this impulse to immediately jump back up. That is a positive character trait that is great. But you might also just get punched in the face again for no reason, right? If you go, hey, if I back up here or how can I do it differently, how can I rest for two seconds, right? But I think people are in great command of themselves.

They use these opportunities to think and reflect and practice and to just be sort of conscious of what you're doing. And we're going a little bit at time. Yes. Taking a beat is the word you said. It said, whether it's 20 seconds or 30 seconds, I had a yield doctor over my thesis advisor. He saw me smoking and he said,

I quit smoking. Every time I wanted a cigarette, I just watched the second hand on my watch. And 30 seconds later, I didn't need a cigarette. I loved that. So a little bit of time, whether it's a journal, whatever, get up, walk around, and maybe we don't have to respond to the world.

And I think when I look back at mistakes I've made or the things I regret, get up, walk around, and maybe we don't get, have to respond to the world. And I think when I look back at mistakes I've made or the things I regret, in retrospect, I had more time to think about it than I allowed myself. And that it, it, look, there's the things you do that look like they should have worked, you planned it out, and it just didn't go your way. And then there's the things where, I'm sure you guys see this with your clients all the time, right? It's like, we got to respond tonight and it's like well what is the

contract says you have 24 hours like why don't you use all 23 hours and 59 minutes of that. 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 with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it. And it sounds like a renewable natural gas bus replacing conventional fleets. We're bridging to a sustainable energy future, working today to ensure tomorrow is on. Enbridge, life takes energy.