The Daily Stoic - This Is What They Do | Give Thanks

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

The latter was something that the late Paul Woodruff tried to remind himself, having picked up the insight from Marcus Aurelius. The squirrels were not trying to give Paul a hard time, they did not mean any harm when they stole the birdseed he was putting out. As Paul explained in his wonderful episode on the Daily Stoic podcast before he died, he came to understand that the squirrels were simply doing what they do. They were doing what their nature demanded.Some people are thieves. Some people are exaggerators. Some people are moody. Some people are exasperatingly friendly. Kids are loud. Mosquitos bite. This is their nature. They are doing what is demanded of them, what’s been ordained for them.-And with today's meditation on the day's Daily Journal excerpt, Ryan reminds us that gratitude is something we gift ourselves by actively practicing. For the last five years, we have been doing what we call the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge—a set of 21 actionable challenges, presented one per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. 21 challenges designed to set you up to be able to say, whatever happens in 2024 and beyond, this is precisely what I trained for.. Demand more of yourself in 2024. Prepare for whatever is ahead. Head over todailystoic.com/challengeand sign up NOW!✉️ 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. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the Daily Stoic. My book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stokes with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works. This is what they do. People are people, kids are kids, mosquitoes are mosquitoes, squirrels are squirrels.

The latter was something that the late Paul Woodruff tried to remind himself of, having picked up this insight from Marcus Relius. The squirrels were not trying to give Paul a hard time, they did not mean any harm when they stole the bird seed he was putting out. As Paul explained in his wonderful episode of the Daily Stoke podcast before he died, he came to understand that the squirrels were simply doing what they do. They were doing what their nature demanded. Some people are thieves, some people are exaggerators, some people are moody,

some people are exasperatingly friendly, kids are loud, mosquitoes bite, this is their nature. They are doing what is demanded of them, what's been ordained for them. Why get angry? Why resent it? Why expect anything different? It doesn't change them, but it does change you. It makes you bitter, resentful, and tired. Accept them, adjust to them, love them. them, adjust to them, love them. I told this story before, but the first Airbnb I stayed in was 15 years ago. I was looking for places to live when I wanted to be a writer and we stayed at this house

I think outside Phoenix. And then when I bought my first house here in Austin, I would rent it out when South by Southwest or F-1 or all these events My wife and I would go out of town and we'd rent it and it helped pay for the mortgage and it supported me while I was a writer You've probably had the same experience. You stayed in an Airbnb and thought this is doable Maybe I could rent my place on Airbnb and it's really that simple You can start with a spare room or you can rent your whole place when you're away You could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it Maybe you set up a home office during the pandemic and now you don't need it

because you're back at work. Maybe you're traveling to see friends and family for the holidays. While your way, your home could be an Airbnb. Whether you could use extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home could be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. Give yourself the gift of coho and take some of the sting out of your holiday spending this season. Get instant cash back and earn up to 5% interest on your entire balance on Canada's highest rated financial app. Coho lets you earn cash back, earn high interest on your account, build your credit history, and so much more. You can also get 20 bucks off when you make your first purchase using the code daily still at 20. That's 20 bucks when you make your

first purchase using the code daily still at 20. Join over one million Canadians and sign up for your free trial now. Download the coho app today or visit www.coho.ca for more details. CA for more details. Give thanks. This is the December 29th entry in the daily stoic. In all things, we should try to make ourselves as grateful as possible. Senuka says in moral letters 81, for gratitude is a good thing for ourselves in a manner in which justice commonly held to belong to others is not gratitude pays itself back in large measure. Guess what you could say is that gratitude

is a gift you gave yourself, even though you are expressing your gratefulness to other people. But think of all the things that you could be grateful for today, that you are alive, that you live primarily in a time of peace, that you have enough health and leisure to read a book or listen to this podcast. But what are the little things, the person who smiled at you, the woman who held the

door open, the song you liked on the radio, the pleasant weather? Gratitude is infectious, its positivity is radiant. Even if today was your last day on Earth, even if you knew in advance that it was going to end in a few short hours, would there not still be plenty of things to be grateful for? How much better would your life be if you kicked off every morning like that? If you let it carry through from morning to night and touch every single part of your life? I think about gratitude. A lot of us do. There are Thanksgiving message a month ago, or talk about gratitude.

I have a gratitude journal actually, Mona Katan, the makeup artist and online influencer, sent it to me as a gift a couple of years ago. And it's, I write like one or two things that I'm grateful for a day. You know, my family, my friends, my success, you know, the obvious things, but I try on a really consistent basis to take the time to express gratitude for things that maybe on the surface, I'm not grateful for, the pandemic, political polarization, Trump, critics, problems I have with my parents, pain that I feel, an argument that I just had that I'm sick. I try to express explicitly there on those pages gratitude for things that, again, I'm

not feeling grateful for it, but in taking a moment to write why I am grateful for them, I become grateful for them. I force myself to see something good in them. I force myself to find a positive in it. I force a way to see that actually I'm quite lucky, even if this thing is itself an unlucky thing, right? In the perspective of all the ways that I am lucky, this little bit of bad luck isn't so bad.

And so forcing myself to write that down to think about is really great. My friend Pete Holmes, a comedian, talked about how when he thinks of his parents, he says to himself, I forgive them. Right, he's actively practicing like what he wants to feel even though he doesn't actually feel that.

And it becomes true over time. And I think this is an exercise we can apply to gratitude. And, you know, Marcus says, convince yourself that everything is a gift from the God. So it's all a gift. They're grateful for all of it. That it's great. Even though it doesn't always feel that way, that's the kind of gratitude we're expressing. And that's the kind of gratitude, you know, this month in the book is about death, when you go, hey, I could die at any moment or people all around me are dying at any moment, right? It does force a little bit of a different perspective where you can find some stuff to be grateful for. So that's today's message, a reminder here, two days from the end of the year, the Daily

Stoke New Year, New Year Challenge. It's just about to start. You've clearly already procrastinated quite a bit if you haven't already signed up, but I would love for you to pull the trigger on starting the year right 21 days of Stoke inspired challenges that will make you better. They are challenges. It's not gonna be easy, but that's the whole point. You know, we really push ourselves in the challenge.

It's one of my absolute favorite things to do as a participant and as a writer. We've been working hard on it the last three or four months. The Daily Stoke team has, I think, it's our best year yet, been doing it for five years now. Thousands of people all over the world have done it are going to do it together this year. All new stuff. Check out the Daily Stoke, New Year, New Challenge, DailyStoke.com slash challenge.

I'd love to see it in there. And let's blow out 2023. Let's start it with a bang. Let's start it with some gratitude. And then let's make some stuff to be grateful for with the changes and challenges we're going to accept and push for. I'll see you soon. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. 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

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