The Daily Stoic - This Is Always There | Ask DS

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

Every retail business knows about shrinkage–the percentage of goods shoplifted or stolen off the floor. Every manufacturer knows how to calculate their defect rate–because no production run is perfect. Every shipping company knows there will be an error rate, a delivery failure rate, even a disappeared-into-thin-air rate. Every credit card processor knows about fraudulent purchase rates and disputed charges. And the bigger the businesses, the larger these numbers are, certainly in terms of cost.It’s frustrating. It’s expensive. It’s also a fact of life.---And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions about why he chose to study Stoicism, tricks that the Stoics had for being still, his strategies for helping athletes understand that an inflated ego is the enemy, and more as part of a Q&A session after a speech he gave to execs at a Tennessee Athletics retreat.✉️ 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.

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 there happen to be someone there recording. But thank you for listening. And we hope this is of use to you. This is always there. Every retail business knows about shrinkage, the percentage of goods shoplifted are stolen off the floor. Every manufacturer knows how to calculate their defect rate, because no production run is perfect. Every shipping company knows there will be an error rate, a delivery failure rate, even a disappeared into thin error rate. Every credit card processor knows about fraudulent purchase rates and disputed charges. And the bigger the business, the larger these numbers are, certainly in terms of cost. It's frustrating, it's expensive, it's also a fact of life.

Market's a realist writes that a world without obnoxious people is impossible, and a patient and wise person comes to understand that when they meet someone obnoxious, they are simply a percentage of the whole. And so it goes in business. The entrepreneur, the leader, the accountant comes to accept that a certain amount of goods will be stolen. A certain amount will break, a certain amount will be lost. Just like we do at Daily Stoke with the products that we make and sell, you try to minimize the losses as best you can, but you will never get it

to zero. Mistakes, theft, random acts of God, these are taxes and tolls, operating expenses. And as Seneca said, we must learn to pay these taxes and pay them a Seneca said of all the taxes in life, gladly and without complaint. It's madness to sweat every screw up, to get angry at every incurred fee or replacement, to take any of it personally. It's to torture yourself and the people who work for you. You have to accept it.

You have to practice what the stokes call the art of acquiescence for a reasonable amount of it. You have to focus on growing the business as a whole. In fact, understanding that as you grow the business, the shrinkage, and defect, and failure, and fraud increases alongside it, such is life Wondery'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. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to a Q&A episode of The Daily Sock Podcast. This was back in May.

I was flying, trying to get to Knoxville, Tennessee. I was supposed to land in Nashville and drive a couple hours to Knoxville. It ended up being crazy weather. We circled for like an hour. It ended up landing in Memphis. Then we were supposed to wait a bunch of time to then get on a flight. And I was like, you know what? I don't trust it. I don't think it's going to happen.

I called my speaking agent. I said, just give me a rental car. I'm going to drive. I drove like six hours in the same storm and made it at like two in the morning to Knoxville. And then I got up early that day. I went for run and then I went over and I talked to the entire Tennessee athletic department about the connection between stoicism and sports. I'll bring you the whole talk in a little while. But in today's episode, I wanted to do the Q&A that I had with some of the coaches.

There were tennis coaches there that had football. Coach was there, swimming coach was there, admissions officers, a whole bunch of people in the athletics department were all there as part of a coach's retreat. And they asked some really interesting questions, which I wanted to bring to you in today's episode. So enjoy.

We're time for some questions. Run to some questions, or? So you mentioned all of the things, so cynicism, and obviously, that you've lived your life after. When you were looking at a different philosophy, what ultimately said you did that, and almost if any other one was concerned? Yeah, I mean, I think you take from any school, any tradition, any way of thinking,

if it makes you better, right? They're all dead. They don't have any claim to how it has to be. It's not a dogma. Sennaka talks about, he says, really like a spy in the enemy's camp. He says, I'll quote a bad author if the line is good. So I try to take from any and all school,

from any and all traditions. What I like about stoicism is that, I think again, a lot of philosophy is about up here. And if you live up here, that's great. But if you have a job that's down here in the real world, I want to rely on a philosophy that has been proven on the battlefield, in the arena, in life. And what I find fascinating and cool about the Stoics is that they were real people who were doing real things in real life, and the philosophy was helping

them in that. So I think that's why I get excited about it, and why it's interesting to me is, you know, they would say act a nonverba, deeds not words. Like how does it actually work in practice? What are the lives of these people look like, and I think Stoicism passes that test pretty well. Yes? So still this is the way, yeah, I gave it that, but do you have tricks for when your mind

is doing the answer to this? Yes. Actually, that's your strategy skill. Yes, definitely. Just counting your breath is such a great way to do it. You know, it forces you. You can't do anything else as you just Count the the the the inhales and the exhales. That's obviously a good one Usually I find I think hobbies are a great way to do if I'm super distracted if I'm I need to get out of my head

I do something that I have to lock into whether that's go for run or a swim or a bike ride or whatever The other thing for me is I just try to remind myself, like, is this helping or not, right? And I think so often, like, we're having this huge conversation in our head about this thing that might or may not happen or we're worried about this and going, like, the other people are not thinking about this at all. This is like a one way thing.

I'm inflicting this on myself. And is the anxiety making the plane come faster or slower? Is it going to change the course of the storm? You know, I think so often we're kind of borrowing suffering or borrowing trouble by, you know, thinking about things that they're just going to happen or not, right? Politics, right? It's like somebody will get selected as the nominee and then you'll have a choice in November, right?

I'm not saying the politics don't matter, but I'm saying like, are you going to vote in November of next year? Yes, great. Okay, then you don't need necessarily to be watching CNN every single minute and scrolling to it. Like, cross that bridge when you come to it, watching it or following it in real time or, you know, emoting about it every, you know, this isn't helping you and it's not helping the situation. And in fact, there are a bunch of things that you probably could do that would make a difference

that could be socially constructive and you're choosing not to do those because it's not only easier, but it's like you're addicted to watching, on whatever side you're on, watching it unfold on television or social media or whatever. Yeah. I love what you said, he goes to Ami,

but he's in college athletic right now with wherever going. Yeah, I see a place of the opposite. What is on the fact that for things which they are athletes that help them understand that? Yeah, I mean, look, Ego is obviously a timeless problem.

All the Greek plays and the Shakespearean tragedies. At the core of them, it's all hubris and ego and entitlement and selfishness that leads to us. So it's always been a problem. And then I think social media and culture and collapse, let's say, of some of the old values. It just exacerbates it, makes it better.

But I think what I try to do is what I try to do in the books, what I try to do in my own life is that the reason we study these kind of cautionary tales is that the reason that the plays and the literature and the movies are about it is to warn us, like, hey, you're going down a bad road. So I think studying those things is really important. And sometimes, you can tell people, hey, don't do that, that's bad. They're not going to listen. And writing the rule is like, show, don't tell. And I try to not only just model the stuff in my own life

But then like when I am trying to convince someone or convey the importance of a point I try to pick salient examples that demonstrate that ideal that just sort of plant a seed. Oh, hey I'm being like so-and-so in this situation. That's probably how I would think about it. But I think generally, you know, it's easy in the short term often in an organization, in a team, or whatever, to make exceptions or allowances for ego because it's getting results in the short term, right? A non-sports example, Uber, was a great example of this.

One of the fastest growing companiesrowing companies in history. They recruited exclusively what they called rock stars. The bad asses, the people that were the best at what they did, even though those people were often problematic, or jerks, or assholes, or worse. In the short term, it made them grow very quickly, but it was setting up future lawsuits, setting up future embarrassing, setting up future embarrassing scandals. It also made it very hard.

It's like, you know, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Those people were only good in a certain type of economic environment or a certain growth trajectory of the company. And then when the company needed something else, those people didn't have that toolkit. And so I think the important part for a leader, for a coach, for an organization is go like, what are the values? Who are we?

What do we stand for? What do we allow? What do we not allow? And then you have to have the strength, you have to have the sort of fortitude to be like, we don't make exceptions for that, even when everyone else wants this person. Sometimes we don't know what we want,

so we just want what other people want. And when someone comes on the market, or when there's some trend, even when it's in contradiction to what we know is best for the long term prospects of the culture that make exception, it very rarely works out. Or it seems cheap now,

but the bill comes to later. Thank you all very much. Appreciate it. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoic 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. 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 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 we turn three career goals into eleven and add a 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. 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 Wondering app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to sports explains the world early and ad-free on Wondering Plus.