The Daily Stoic - The Better You Get, The Less You Care…

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

“Whether it’s a great athlete or a great comedian, the truth is the same. The better they get, the less they care about results. That’s not to say they don’t care about winning, or about success—of course they do—it’s that the longer you do something, the closer you get to mastery, the less external results matter in terms of measuring progress.”Ryan discusses why you should strive to measure progress internally, rather than externally, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wondery'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. music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Daily Stoic. For each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystowach.com.

The better you get, the less you care. Whether it's a great athlete or a great comedian, the truth is the same, the better they get the less they care about results. Let's not just say they don't care about winning or about success. Of course, they do. It's that the longer you do something, the closer you get to mastery, the less they care about results. That's not to say they don't care about winning or about success. Of course they do. It's that the longer you do something, the closer you get to mastery, the less external results matter in terms of measuring progress. The comedian Dave Chappelle has talked about how he hardly even cares about the crowd anymore,

and definitely not the money. What matters to him is doing the thing at getting closer to perfecting his craft, even if it's in ways that the audience can't even notice. Early on in a career because we don't know much about it or ourselves, we use proxies to measure ourselves. We care about the critics or we care about stats or we care about getting this honor or that one. But the better we get, the more it becomes clear to us how little control we have over those things.

The more experience we get, the more it is evident how little our best work actually correlates with getting those external achievements. As Marcus Aurelius writes, ambition means time, your well-being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to things that happen to you. But real success, real mastery, real sanity, that he says comes only by tying it to your own actions. The better you get, the more you are able to tie your identity to the only thing that matters according to the Stoics, your own choices, your own work,

your own judgment, and everything else, the better you get, the less it matters. Hey, it's Ryan. Look, our new year, new new challenge is on sale now. It starts January 1st, which means you have to sign up now to join it. You can't put this off. Marcus really says, you could be good today instead you choose tomorrow. People put these things off, so let's stop procrastinating.

Let's do this challenge together. You get a whole bunch of awesome stuff. You get 21 custom challenges, almost a book's worth a new content. Weekly checking calls with me, daily audio message for me, a principal 21 day calendar with illustrations, a group Slack channel for accountability. All sorts of awesome stuff. We'd love to have you. You can sign up now at dailystoak.com slash challenge. You'll be doing it alongside me and thousands of other stoics. It's our best thing we do every year. People love it. We can't wait to have you sign up at dailystoic.com slash challenge, but there's not much time left don't delay. It starts on January 1st. You can't do it after that. No exceptions.

I'll see you on the other side. Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoke early and add free on Amazon music, download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and add 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 Lynn Spears. When Brittany's fans form the free Brittany movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn'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 Disenthal wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on Amazon Music or the Wondering App.