The Daily Stoic - This Is The Secret | 6 Stoic Examples Of Living A Great Life

Episode Date: May 2, 2023

It seems obvious. If you want to be better at your job, work more. If you want to be more successful, focus on it entirely. Yet history doesn’t actually bear this out.Overwork. A lack of balance…it ends in ruin. It’s why Marcus Aurelius tried to remind himself to “not be all about business.” It’s why Seneca advocated wandering walks and lots of time reading and thinking. It’s why middle Stoics like Antipater spoke of the importance of cultivating a happy and healthy family–not just worldly accomplishments.---And in today's Daily Stoic video excerpt, Ryan outlines six Stoic-inspired changes that you can make in your life in order to turn your words into actions, to show the deeds of a philosopher. ✉️ 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.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. 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. This is the secret. It seems obvious if you want to be better at your job, you should work more. If you want to be more successful, you should focus on it entirely. Yet history doesn't actually bear this out. Overwork, a lack of balance, it ends in ruin. And it's why Marx really has tried to remind

himself not to be all about business. It's why Seneca advocated wandering walks and lots of time reading and thinking. It's why Middle still looks like Antipater spoke of the importance of cultivating a happy and healthy family, not just worldly accomplishments. As they set up a new administration in the White House in 1977, one of Jimmy Carter's advisors tried to caution the ambitious young staff along these very lines. None of us, he said, would be any good to the president if we worked 14 hours a day and if our wives were unhappy.

Carter said the same thing. We are going to be here a long time, he said, and all of you will be more valuable to me in the country with rest and a stable home life. This is more than just happy wife, happy life. It's a message about temperance, about balance, about self-discipline and moderation. You can't be all about business. There are diminishing

returns to working and working and working. It's a false dichotomy to think that you can just squeeze more and more out of yourself. You're no good to yourself and to the people in your family, whatever form they come in. If you put your professional obligations and advancements above everything else. Step back, don't over commit, learn your limits. And remember, work is temporary, but family is forever. If you want some advice in this regard, I think discipline is destiny is a book where I talk about this. And then I also talk a lot about it in the new book,

The Daily Dad, 365 lessons on parenting love Parenting Love and Raising Great Kids. Talk about all these themes because it's important to be good at what you do. It's also important to be good at being a family person. It's also, as I have found in my experience, the more balanced you are at home, the better you are at work. So if you want some lessons on that, check out the new book, which you can pick up anywhere books or sold, including signed copies here at the Painted Porch. Barnes and Noble has a special edition of the book, and people are loving it, so do check

it out. The Daily Dad and Discipline is destiny available everywhere, books are sold. It's funny, I talked to lots of people, and a good chunk of those people haven't been readers for a long time. They've just gotten back into it. It's funny, I talk to lots of people and a good chunk of those people haven't been readers for a long time, they've just gotten back into it. And I always love hearing that and they tell me how they fall in love with reading, they're reading more than ever, and I go, let me guess, you listen audio books, don't you? And it's true, and almost invariably, they listen to them on Audible.

That's because Audible offers an incredible selection of audio books across every genre from bestsellers and new releases to celebrity memoirs. And of course, ancient philosophy, all my books are available on audio, read by me for the most part. Audible lets you enjoy all your audio entertainment in one app. You'll always find the best of what you love, or something new to discover, and as an audible member you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog, including the latest bestsellers and new releases.

You'll discover thousands of titles from popular favorites, exclusive new series, exciting new voices in audio. You can check out Stillness is the key. The daily dad I just recorded. So that's up on Audible now. Coming up on the 10 year anniversary of the obstacle is the way audio books. So all those are available and new members can try Audible for free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500 500 that's audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500 500 One of the best stories in all of stosism comes at the founding of stosism Zeno, he's this successful merchant who comes from a long family of merchants and he suffers a shipwreck and he loses everything. He washes up an Athens, he has nothing. And there he discovers philosophy.

That's how stoicism starts. And so reflecting on this journey, this thing that he never would have wished happening, changing the entire course of his life. And now history, we wouldn't be talking had he not gone through this. He says, I made a prosperous voyage when I suffered a shipwreck.

Meaning the worst thing that ever happened to him was actually the best thing that ever happened to him. And that's what ASTOIC says, that we don't control what happens. Bad stuff is going to happen, but we control how we respond to it, we control, we turn it into, and whatever it is, whatever metaphorical shipwreck

you're going through, you can make it a prosperous voyage if you think about it that way. ASTOICs have this line to go like, if you don't know what port you're sailing towards, no wind is favorable. You have to know where you want to go. And this is really true, even for successful people.

If you don't know where your stopping point is, what you want your life to look like, now of a sudden, you're in this wonderful, fortunate position where people are like, hey, you want to do this. You want to do this. They're offering you this. Do you want to take this amount of money to do this, or more money to do this. And, you know, if you don't know, like, what's important to you, what kind of work you want

to do, what you want your life to look like, you end up defaulting to one of two things. What pays most, or what are other people doing? Those are not the worst proxies in the world, like, it's better than no proxy, but you can end up very far from what you actually want, and you'll only know that when you get there. So you have to have a very clear sense of where you're trying to go, or these things, these opportunities are,

you know, really chances to get super off track. [♪ Music playing, piano and piano music playing, you gotta blow your own nose. To me, that's the core idea of stoicism. Nobody's coming to save you. Nobody can handle this for you. You're not magically going to get better on your own. Your problems are going to solve themselves on their own.

You've got to do it. You've got to make the changes. If you want to be beautiful epitome, it says, make beautiful choices. Work on getting better. Focus on getting better. Focus on what you can do today. That's how you solve your problem. Step by step action by action. As Mark has really said, that's how we improve. Day by day, by making the little choices, the little actions, not by waiting for other people to save us, but by blowing our own nose, getting active in our own rescue. You have to be strict with yourself, but tolerant of others.

Marcus really struggles with this, his whole life, it's why he writes about it in meditation. He has these exacting high standards. He thinks that the right thing is not just everything, it's the only thing, and yet he works really hard to remind himself that it's called self-discipline for a reason. It's not a thing you get to project on other people. You don't get to go around insisting other people follow your standards, your work out. And this is something that discipline people have struggled with for all the time. It was even a saying in the ancient Rome, we can't all be Catoes. Coby Bryant went through the same thing, he couldn't wrap his head around the fact that not everyone else was Coby Bryant. So this idea that we can be as strict with ourselves as we want to be, but we have to be tolerant and accepting and encouraging and forgiving of other people because they don't have the gifts we have, they don't have the

drive that we have most importantly, they never agreed to sign up to the code for standards that we have set for ourselves. There's an amazing story about Marcus Realis. He didn't want to be emperor. In fact, when he's given the news, he's to be adopted by the emperor, Hadron. He weeps because he thinks of all the bad kings of history. So Marcus was scared. Maybe he had a little bit of imposter syndrome like you and I have.

But the night before he's to ascend the throne, Marcus really has a dream. And in the dream, he feels that his shoulders are made of ivory. And that's how he knows. He knows he's strong enough to bear the weight. He can carry the load. He can do this.

And you have to know, you have shoulders of ivory too. you're stronger than you know, you're stronger than people think, you've got this, you can do it. You have shoulders made of ivory. We all do because we've done the work because we've been training because we've been watching videos. We've been working up to this moment and now it's here and we're ready to do it. us moment and now it's here and we're ready to do it. Work is really straight to himself. It's his fight to be the person philosophy wants you to be. And I just love that so much. It's that Stoicism has this ideal for you to be someone who's resilient, someone who's strong, someone who's virtuous, someone who's kind, who cares about the common good, someone who isn't easily rattled, someone who's committed to bettering themselves. That's what Stoicism wants for you. That's what the Stoets have been writing about for centuries. That's what we do in these videos in the Daily Stoets email. That's the ideal.

But the question is, are you fighting for yourself? Are you fighting to be that thing? Are you striving today to get a little bit closer to that perfect ideal? Are you fighting for yourself? The Stoics can't make you be or do anything. They can just lay out the formula, but it's ultimately on you to follow it, to step up and actually be it. That's what I want you to think about today. That's what I want you to think about today. 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 do moa or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. 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 Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fring 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 Dissentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondering App.