The Daily Stoic - The Secret To Happiness | How To Let Go And Stop Worrying (10 Stoic Tips)
Episode Date: August 8, 2023What is the secret to happiness?It’s not an easy question to answer. And it might seem like the Stoics wouldn’t have a good answer either. Because it might seem like they didn’t have mu...ch fun, or experience much happiness. After all, they wrote repeatedly about the emptiness of chasing money or celebrity. They reminded themselves that fine wine is just rotten old grapes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean their lives were empty and joyless. By one definition of happiness, in fact, the Stoics were some of the happiest people to ever live.---And in today's Daily Stoic video excerpt, Ryan shares Stoic methods for relieving and eliminating one of the destructive forces that our minds can conjure: worry. You can watch the video on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel.🎧 Check out Ryan's interview with Gretchen Rubin here.✉️ 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.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom
designed to help you in your everyday life.
On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual
lives.
Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy. The secret to happiness. What is the secret to happiness? It's not an easy question to answer,
and it might seem like the Stoics wouldn't have a good answer either, because it might seem like
they didn't have much fun or experience much happiness. After all, they wrote repeatedly about the emptiness of chasing money or celebrity.
They reminded themselves that fine wine is just like rotten old grapes. But that doesn't
necessarily mean that their lives were empty and joyless. By one definition of happiness,
in fact, the stills were some of the happiest people to ever live. On a recent episode of the Daily Stoke podcast, we interviewed Gretchen Rubin, one of the
most thought-provoking and influential experts on happiness.
She talked about one of the things that she learned from her former boss, the Supreme
Court's first female justice, Sandra Day O'Connor.
Shortly after Gretchen published the Happiness Project, she asked O'Connor, who she'd clerked
for.
What was the secret to happiness? O'Connor replied,
the secret to happiness is work worth doing.
Perfect.
The Stoics didn't see happiness. They sought purpose.
They were of service to others. They worked on art and made scientific breakthroughs and changed people's lives.
They fought for causes. They held public office. They represented clients in court.
They dedicated themselves to their children. They did their duty. They did work worth doing.
The byproduct of which was happiness and joy and contentment and pride and satisfaction.
And all of those things.
As we talked about the best things in life are an accidental byproduct.
And so it goes for happiness.
It cannot be pursued. It ensues from work worth doing. And do check out my interview with Gretchen.
It's awesome. You can also see a YouTube version of it if you just Google Gretchen Ruben Daily Stoke
Podcast, and we'll of course link to it in today's show notes. You can watch it or listen to it anywhere you get your podcasts wherever you're listening to this one
right now and of course read all of Gretchen's many great books. She's awesome.
Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wonder E's podcast business wars. And in our new season,
two of the world's leading hotel brands, Hilton and Marriott, stare down family drama and financial disasters.
Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.
We should never forget Fortune's habit of behaving exactly as she pleases,
Sonny Kassons.
And I don't think he meant that she behaves
in ways that we always like. I think what he was talking about was the same thing Epoch Titus
talked about, which is that the vast majority of what happens in the world is outside of our
control, that the world is largely indifferent to what we want and need. But understanding that
doesn't exactly stop you from worrying about it. In fact, it may exacerbate those very worries because it's so much as outside of our control
can feel like there's an endless amount of things to be scared about, to be worried about,
to be uncertain about.
Three stoic one-liners that will help you beat anxiety.
Number one, Epic Titus says,
it's not things that upset us. It's our opinion about things. It's what we think about them
that's upsetting not the things themselves. Number two, Seneca says, he who suffers before it is necessary
suffers more than is necessary. He says, we suffer more in imagination than in reality.
What he means is we anticipate what could happen,
what might happen, we torture ourselves
about it in advance.
That's what anxiety is.
And then three, this is Marcus really is beating anxiety.
He writes in meditations,
today I escaped my anxiety.
Then he says, wait, no, no, no.
Actually, I discarded it because it was within me.
Things don't make us anxious,
as Epic Titus was saying, we
make ourselves anxious, we have control over it, which means we can solve for it.
Toysism is really, really simple. It's that while we don't control what happens to us,
we control how we respond to what happens to us. The Stokes would say, yes, stuff goes
wrong, stuff goes sideways, but we always have this opportunity to practice the
Four Virtues courage, temperance, justice, wisdom.
Except that there's nothing bad in the world, there's nothing frustrating in the world,
there's not stuff we wouldn't want to happen. But when it does happen, it is nevertheless an opportunity to step up with courage,
to be self-discipline, to do something for other people to practice, to learn, to experience
wisdom. That's the idea of stoicism. We don't control what happens. We control how we respond
to what happens.
Pemisha Drone talks about the babysitters. Yeah. These things that we do to distract us from the
thinking mind. That's why one of the reasons why I think meditation mindfulness is so important so that you can start to control the thinking mind. So you're not just taken
by it. So you can have a process for anxiety or the inner critic or the racing mind. Start
to calm that environment. Then you don't need these things that these places of refuge that
have a cost as much. If you can manage what you focus on, what you pay attention to, if you
have you hone the skill to be able to bypass what you pay attention to, if you hone the
skill to be able to bypass, you know, things that stress you out or whatever, you know,
when you start to manage the mind, then it's all possible. Productivity, you know,
ceasing procrastination, anxiety, insomnia, all these things, and I'm speaking from experience.
How we see things, of course, matters.
The way we see things, the story we tell ourselves about things, that's the first and in some
ways the most important stuff.
The idea is that the world is objective.
There really is no such thing as good or bad.
Shakespeare says, neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.
Events are objective.
We tell ourselves what they mean. We make but thinking makes it so. Events are objective. We tell ourselves
what they mean. We make up a story about them. There's no such thing as a bear market or
a bull market, good weather or bad weather. There's just weather. There's just the market.
Our job as humans is to respond to that. Now of course we put names on these things. So
we have a helpful way of seeing them. But we have to understand that the way we see them in the story
We tell ourselves about them determines what we're going to be able to do about them
So if you focus on the fact that something is unfair, that something is not your fault, that something sucks, that something is
Impossible insurmountable. These words have a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy to them
These words have a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy to them. So when I was in London, I took like an hour cab ride from Heathrow to Chartwell, which
is where Winston Churchill lived.
It was incredible to see this house where he kept that sort of routine of his where he'd
feed the goldfish, he'd recite poetry, but you could see where having something out in the country,
having a routine, having ritual, having nature,
he would go swimming, and then most importantly,
you saw the studio where he did his painting.
You just realized like the power of hobbies,
and he wrote this amazing book called Painting as a Pastime,
where he said like the most important thing
that a public person can do is have one or two
good hobby. You know, markets are really as we know what
Borhuntain, Sennaka likes to point out all the hobbies that
people had. And I mean, for Hannah, it was clearly right.
It's he liked to point out that Socrates liked to play a
flute, and he also used to like to play games with neighborhood
children, Kato liked to drink wine and talk philosophy in the evening.
The power of hobbies is immense.
And when Senaqa talks about how it's easy to fracture
an overworked mind by having a hobby,
you work different parts of your mind
and then cause like rest through that.
So for me, this farm that we're on is a big one.
I'm just pussing around.
I had a nice work day and then this is extra.
It's good to have something to be responsible for
to think about, but that forces you to rest to your mind.
What I'm not doing is sitting at the computer, right?
I'm not responding to phone calls.
I don't get cell service out here, you know.
The Ember of Rome would have had beautiful palaces,
markets from a rich family would have had access
to country estates and beautiful houses,
and you could afford the finest resorts or retreats.
And he reminds himself though that people who try
to get away from it all are chasing something that doesn't
exist.
He would have liked that Buddhist idea that wherever you go,
there you are. He says,
you can retreat into yourself anytime you want. He says you can find replenishment and rest in relaxation inside your own soul.
And I think that's what he's doing in meditations. That's what he's doing in books. That's what he's doing when he would go on walks.
When he would look at the world politically, he realized that he didn't have to flee to some exotic location.
All the things he needed and wanted were right there.
And they were external things at all.
They were inside of him just as they are inside all of us.
The secret to improving in life,
according to the Stokes is one thing.
It's being okay with being seen as silly or foolish.
Epictetus is if you wanna improve,
be content to be seen as stupid or foolish
or ignorant about some things.
When I started making these videos,
when I started making videos in general,
it was so awkward, it was so uncomfortable.
But to get better, I had to have reps being bad,
same with writing.
If I look at my first published writing,
it's so cringeworthy,
but you have to be willing
to be bad at something, to get good at something.
You have to be willing to be seen as stupid
when you're raising your hand and asking a question
to learn the answer.
If you're not comfortable being vulnerable,
if you're not comfortable putting yourself out there,
if you're not comfortable ever being seen as foolish
or ignorant or awkward,
you're never gonna get any better.
So the secret to improving is what? it's being seen is not great.
In meditation, the Marxist Realist talks about being the rock that the waves crash over
and eventually the raging sea falls still around.
That idea of stillness, of being present, of locking in, to me it's everything, that's happiness,
it's also great work, where that flow state comes from, it's where joy comes from, it's where connection comes from,
it's where gratitude comes from. So just locking, comb down, it doesn't matter what's happening in the outside world,
slow down, lock in, let the waves crash around you, and eventually everything will quiet down, and you will do what you need to do in this very moment.
You see, it wasn't bad when the stoics were alive.
Senaqa is there when Nero is emperor.
Marcus really sees the decline in fall of the Roman Empire.
So the idea that it wasn't stressful, that it wasn't depressing, the idea that it wasn't
alarming, worrying, the things that were happening in the world.
None of this is new. This has always been the case. Epic fetus says that every situation has two handles.
You can despair or you can say this is an opportunity. This is a moment in time when I can step up,
when I can make a difference, when I can be the change that I want to see in the world.
I cannot be implicated in the ugliness of the times of that I happen to be alive and I can try to make things better.
So that's the choice.
Are you going to despair?
Are you going to be excited?
Are you going to give up?
Are you going to keep going?
Are you going to do what you need to do?
I don't know who needs to hear this, but Marcus Aurelis' reminder is a life-changing
one. He says, you don't need to have an opinion about that.
He says, you always have the power of having no opinion.
If it's pointless gossip, if it's trivia, if it's something that doesn't concern you,
if it's something you have zero control or influence over, just let it be.
Don't have an opinion. You don't have to say it's positive or negative.
Epic Titus says, you know, it's not things that upset us.
It's our opinions about those things. It's our judgment about those things. So we have the power to not think
about it, to tune it out, to focus on what really matters, to try to put our energy and
our intention on where we can make a difference, on where we do have control. And if other
people want to be concerned with them, if other people want to be riled up or have opinions
about them, if it's their job to do it, leave it to them. Meanwhile, you let it float on by like the clouds and you stick with what's up to you.
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.
When we think of sports stories, we tend to think of tales of epic on the field glory.
But the new podcast Sports Explains the World brings you some of the wildest and most surprising
sports stories you've never heard, like the teenager who wrote a fake Wikipedia page
for a young athlete and then watched as a real team fell for his prank.
Diving into his Wikipedia page will be turned three career goals into eleven, added twenty
new assists for good measure.
Figures that nobody would, should, have believed.
And the mysterious secret of a US Olympic superstar killed at the peak of his career.
Was it an accident? Did the police screw up the investigation?
It was also nebulous.
Each week, Sports Explains the World goes beyond leagues and stats to share stories that will redefine
your understanding of sports and their impact on the world.
Listen to sports explains the world.
On the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts,
you can listen to sports explains the world early and ad-free on Wondery Plus.