The Daily Stoic - This Is Nothing To Brag About | Judge Yourself Not Others

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Oh, you’ve read the works of Heidegger? You finished all of Infinite Jest? You made it through all of Jordan Peterson’s Maps of Meaning, all of Faulkner’s lesser works, Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses?You must be pretty proud of yourself.✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook See 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 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. on music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic

intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about whatever it is you're happy to be doing. So let's get into it. This is nothing to brag about. This is nothing to brag about. Oh, you've read the works of Heidegger. Oh, you finished all of Infinite Gest. You made it through Jordan Peterson's maps of meaning. All of Faulkner's lesser works, Finnegan's wake, and Ulysses. You must be pretty proud of yourself. Epic Titus once spoke with a student who's pretty proud of themselves for the same reasons.

They had managed to make their way through a particularly dense work by the Stoic philosopher Cresipus. They expected Epic Titus to be proud. Instead, he looked at them and said, you know, if Cresipus had been a better writer, you'd have less to brag about. And this is an important Stoic lesson for two reasons. One, it reminds us that the stoke's valued, clear, straightforward writing and thinking. It's not impressive to use big words or complicated sentences that go over the reader's heads. In fact, it's a failure.

But two, it's a reminder to us as readers. There's nothing impressive about grunting our way through this bad writing. Life is short, we can quit bad books, we can spend our time and money on writers who respect their audience, and who know how to communicate effectively. To the stokes, it wasn't that we read. It's what we read. And we should seek out books that make a difference in our lives, not the ones that win prizes or impress people. What matters is what we think

of the books, not what others think. What's impressive is what we get out of them, not how they look on our shelves or how they might impress certain types of company. So read widely, read aggressively, don't be a glutton for punishment. And look, I think every great reader has a reading practice a set of rules, a way of thinking about books that makes them a better reader. They don't just read what everyone else is reading because as the quote goes, then they'll only think the things that other people are thinking. That's what we built the read to lead challenge around.

It's also based on that quote from Truman about how not all readers are leaders, but all leaders have to be readers. And this, this course has been taken by over 10,000 people now. We just wrapped up our first live cohort of it in June, which exceeded our expectation. So we're making it widely available to all the people who missed that, and you get all the interviews that they missed. So now you get hours and hours of Q&A's, of deep dives into these topics, plus a bunch of other awesome stuff. It's two emails a week for five weeks plus some other really cool stuff. You can sign up at dailystowic.com slash read to lead

or you can check it out at store.dailystowic.com. Under the courses tab, I hope you check this out and if you're thinking about joining the dailystowic life, now is a good time to do that because you get this course and all our other courses for free. If you join, you can sign up there at dailystoiclife.com. Judge yourself, not others. And this is from this week's entry in the daily still eternal

366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, and there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand, write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them. You can check out the Daily Stalk Journal, anywhere books are sold, and also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoke

Store at store.dailystoke.com. There is nothing less philosophical than being a know-it-all. This is especially true of those who use their knowledge to scold others for their mistakes, while claiming the superiority of their knowledge or insight. The Stoics taught that behaving this way was to miss the entire purpose of philosophy as a tool for self-correction, medicine for our own souls, not a weapon for putting down others. Seneca's letters, twice employ the metaphor of scrubbing down or scraping off our faults. We need to see ourselves as in the care of

philosophy's principles," he says, or as Epictetus put it later, when referring to the philosopher's lecture hall. We need to see it as a hospital for our own therapy. So try not to write down a single complaint or problem of another person in your journal this week, focus on what ails you. We have two quotes from Seneca's moral letters and one from the discourses. When philosophy is wielded with arrogance and stubbornly, it is the cause for the ruin of many. Let philosophy scrape off your own faults rather than be a way to rail against the faults of others. That's Seneca letter 103. Some people with exceptional minds quickly grasp virtue or produce it within themselves,

but other dim and lazy types hindered by bad habits must have their rusty souls constantly scrubbed down. The weaker sorts will be helped and lifted from their bad opinions if we put them in the care of philosophy's principles. That's Epictetus's moral letters 95. And then Epictetus's discourse is 323 men. The philosopher's lecture hall is a hospital. You shouldn't walk out of it feeling pleasure but pain for you weren't well when you entered it. I think this is a tension here and I've seen it. Some people maybe get it wrong probably in bad faith when they replied at stuff I've posted or written, you know, who are you, you know, to criticize,

I don't know, anti-vaxxers or who are you to say that have this political opinion or to say that this is right or wrong, you're not perfect, of course, right? Of course, I'm not perfect. Of course, Asteoic is primarily focused on their own edification, their own improvement, they're trying to look in the mirror, they're trying to scrub off their own faults. That doesn't mean that we turn a blind eye to what's happening in the world. That doesn't mean we indulge in accept and encourage ridiculousness or injustices by other people. I mean, some of the best stoic lines or equips or criticisms of other people, right?

The stoics were also teachers. Zeno, Seneca, Musoneus, Rufus, Epicetus. They were writers and thinkers. They were responsible for teaching philosophy to people. Of course, we have to make judgments. I think what the stoics are really talking about is not being a Monday morning quarterback at the expense of your performance on Sunday, right?

When I study history, obviously part of my job is to make judgments and communicate these ideas to you and to people and to myself. And that really is what I'm doing. And I have a chapter in courage is calling about why we don't judge another person's courage, right? We don't fully understand everything that's going on with them, but in another sense, we do judge their courage, but instead of criticizing them, instead of feeling better than them because they made this mistake.

We try to look at them as cautionary tales, almost like we would in a Greek tragedy or a Roman play, a Shakespearean play, and try to apply those lessons to our own lives. So, a Shakespearean play and try to apply those lessons to our own lives. So the point is when you see someone else doing something wrong, when you see something you don't like, when you see someone debasing themselves, when you see someone advocating a preposterous or dangerous opinion, you can criticize it, you can call it out for what it is. But don't feel superior for it, try to learn from it. Try to apply lessons from that to your own life. That's the journey that we're on here

Obviously as a writer and a speaker I have to draw on examples my my work would be Not very compelling if I didn't do that. So I have to walk a slightly Different Razors edge and and I mean look that's what's so funny, right? This though, it's saying don't criticize other people. And yet even in this quote from from Seneca, moral letters 95, he's saying, look, some people get this naturally, but there are other dim and lazy types hindered by bad habits. And they must have their rusty souls constantly scrubbed. So that does exist, right? And somebody has to do that job and perhaps that's your job with a friend or a family member. Just remember that

your real job is scrubbing down your own rusty soul. And if you ever think that it is not rusty, well, that is a compelling sign right there that it is. Just a funny note, I get this all the time because if ego is the enemy, people go, what do I do about my boss is ego? What do you do about all the egos in our organization? Baa, ba, ba, ba, ba. But much less often do I get the question, I have an ego. What do I do about my ego? Right? The question we often are gravitating towards solving other people's issues, focusing on other people's flaws. But as they say in the Bible, don't worry about the splinter in your neighbor's eye and you have a log in your own.

So that's what philosophy is about. You are not well. Treat yourself first. But of course, you may recognize similar symptoms in other people. If you need to point them out, go right ahead. You know, the Stoics in real life met at what was called the Stoa, the Stoa Pocula, the Painted Porch in ancient Athens. Obviously, we can all get together in one place, because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people, and we couldn't fit in one space. But we have made a special digital version of the Stoa

we're calling it Daily Stoic Life. It's an awesome community you can talk about, like today's episode, you can talk about the emails, ask questions. That's one of my favorite parts is interacting with all these people who are using stoicism to be better in their actual real lives. You get more daily stoke meditations over the weekend, just for the daily stoke life members,

quarterly Q&As with me, cloth bound addition of our best of meditations, plus a whole bunch of other stuff including discounts, and this is the best part, all our daily stoke courses and challenges totally for free, hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our new year, new you challenge. We'd love to have you join us. There's a two-week trial totally for free. Check it out at dailystokelife.com 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 add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the

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