The Daily Stoic - This Is Why You Should Stick Around | Ask Daily Stoic

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

There are moments where things are so bad it can seem like they’ll never get better. Perhaps we’re young and being bullied. Or we’re in the midst of some massive rush of negative publicity–maybe we’re being canceled, or as the Stoics often were, exiled. Or the political situation seems to deteriorate each day. Or we’re just so sick or in pain that we can’t get out of bed.If you or someone you know is in a mental health crisis and you live in the United States, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988. You can also contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741. For resources outside the United States please click here.📕 Ryan Holiday's new book "Discipline Is Destiny" is available for pre-order now! We’ve put together a bunch of cool preorder bonuses—among them is a signed and numbered page from the original manuscript of the book. You can learn more about those and how to receive them over at Dailystoic.com/preorder. ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail📱 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 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. But on Fridays, we not only read this daily meditation, but I try to answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy, whatever it is they happen to do. Sometimes these are from talks. Sometimes these are people who come up to talk to me on the street.

Sometimes these are written in or emailed from listeners. But I hope in answering their questions, I can answer your questions, give a little more guidance on this philosophy we're all trying to follow. 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.

This is why you should stick around. There are moments when things are so bad that it seems like they'll never get better. Perhaps we're young and being bullied or we're in the midst of some massive rush of negative publicity. Maybe we're being canceled or as the stills often were exiled. Or the political situation seems to deteriorate each day, or just so sick or in pain that we can't get out of bed. This is a problem as timeless as it is modern. The comedian Gary Goldman, who has long battled clinical depression

and seriously considered suicide on multiple occasions, once referenced Ambrose Bears' classic short story in occurrence at Al Creek Bridge. As it happens, Ambrose Beers was a lifelong stoic whose father was actually named Marcus Aurelius Beers. Sometimes it feels like that Coleman explains that the life he's led since those dark moments, like that I'm living all this while falling from the gallows. I'm pinching myself all the time because I think they're showing me

what I missed out on by killing myself at the worst of it. What do you think Cato would have actually thought of the years that came after his tragic suicide if he could have flashed forward and seen them? Yes, the Republic fell, but Caesar did, too, not long after, at the hands of Cato's daughter and his son-in-law. What if Cato had been there to guide them? Could history have gone differently? What if you could have met his grandchildren?

What if you retreated into writing and met all the people whose lives he changed? The list goes on and on. Marcus really said it could be helpful to imagine our own impending death. But then, like the character in Beers' famous story, we should get a reprieve. Can we take what is left and live it properly?

Could we sober up? Could we get serious? Could we get help? That's the question. But you have to stick around to give an answer. And look, if you or someone you know is in a mental health crisis, in the U.S., please call the National Suicide Prevention

Lifeline that's 1-800-273-8255-800273-8255. You can also just text the line by texting home to 7-417-41 and we'll link to all this or just go to find a helpline.com. Stick around, seriously, we want you here. Hi, so I guess my question's more on the implementation of like stoses in your daily life and stuff like that. Okay. And how to like hold yourself a townable innocence. Sure.

Like virtue and whatnot. Uh, so like say like an abnormal work place or something like that, you find yourself getting angry with like a workplace or something like that, you find yourself getting angry with a customer or something like that. Say your response at the beginning isn't what you would consider very stoic, but afterwards you kind of have the realization of what you should have done and you feel more peaceful for the way and you wish that you could have done the opposite way. You know, like a more stoic way. Is that still on the white right track?

Yeah. Yeah. Of course. So I think first off, this conversation you're having with yourself, like you did an action and then you're reviewing the action, that is what the philosophy is, right? This is what meditations is. This is what Sennaka, right? This is what meditations is. This is what Sena Kuzlettr's happened to be. Sena Kuzlettr even writes a letter

about how every day he puts the day up for review and says, you know, where did I fall short? Where could I have done better? Where did I lose my temper? Where did I make progress? So I think a big part of stoicism is, is having that sort of ongoing observational dialogue with oneself. Now, obviously, nothing you can do can change the fact that you are rude to this person or shut them down in some

way or close yourself off to them in some way. Of course, you can apologize and perhaps move in forward. Part of that is apologizing. So, you know, you're articulating out loud what you're trying to do differently. But I think the primary thing here is catching yourself, trying to evaluate how that unfolded, and so the next go around you're doing it a little bit differently. And cognitive behavioral therapy is a little bit like this. It's sort of, okay, what are the patterns that I get into? What are the signs that this pattern is beginning? And then how can I interrupt that pattern and replace it with a different pattern that I find to be more productive, healthy, kind, etc. Okay, well, thank you. I appreciate it.

Yeah, Nora. I was wondering about sharing stoicism with other people. I find I am not very clear and I find it's better just to not say anything and just be. Yes. I would agree. I would say first and foremost, we teach stoicism by example. I forget which Pope it is, but there's a Pope who said, you know, sort of preach all the time, use words when necessary. And I think that's a great way to think about it. So how does one sort of live the ideas, rather than speak about them? Now, obviously my job is

to speak about DOSism and to write about it and talk about it, but obviously on the individual level, I think about, you know, one of my actions, say. But when I think about sort of bringing people on board, I try to, I think if you go, here's this big ancient philosophy with all these ideas and these names you can't pronounce. I think that's when you lose people.

I like to start with quotes or core concepts that are really relevant in specific situations. So this why we do videos is why we have tic-tocs, why we have Instagram, that's why we do the email. I try to try to distill the idea down to a really simple, straightforward thing that solves a specific problem for a person. And then if interested, they may then explore that rabbit hole further. Let's do train wise. Hey, Ryan. Hi. Hi, man.

So, first of all, I'm super, super grateful to be here and I'm honored. And I know that you're a humble man, but you've changed my life and I appreciate it was Audrey Marcus where you said someone approached you and they said they've read your book seven times, it was like 70 hours. Yeah. I'm kind of that person. So all right. Please, please, you know, it would mean with my animation. Okay. So what you've done, I'm great, great descent. And you've kind of pulled me in to my ethnic origin.

And I tried to dismiss it many years, but you pulled pulled me back and I found out that I do live a stoic lifestyle. I just never realized what I was doing but there's some things that need refining. Now for this year I know it's COVID and I'm going to try and go Greece and I booked a philosophy tour as well with my children and we're going to be going to like the first place of Plato. and we're going to be going to like the first place of Plato. What I wanted to ask you is, is there any places that you know of that were stoic, in the beginning of stoicism? There's Rome and other countries as well. So I just want to go.

So I have not been to Greece. I was supposed to go sort of what ended up being the pandemic. So I haven't been, I've been to Rome several times. You know, I like to go sort of anywhere that's old and I like to just sort of take a minute to just think about all the countless generations of people who stood where I've stood and what they were thinking about

and what they were worried about. And then I sort of think as Marcus talks about in Meditations like where are they now? What happens to them right where did that all go? So I think you can do that anywhere I'm but I'm quite jealous of the tour that you're going on. You can visit the Stoepoqa, which is where Stoicism started. So I would look that up. That's the painted porch famously. That was in the newsletter today, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. So you can check that out. You know, in Rome, you can see on the Appian way, there's a sort of a big pile of stones in what they think was Seneca's tomb.

So you can visit that. Obviously you can see lots of different sites. You know, in lives of the Stoics, we have like a map of like the places and there's a key that sort of describes. Actually, wait, this is also in the boy who would be king. We pick some sort of big moments in Stoicism. One of the ones, the last cool ones that I did,

this was in, I think November of 2019. In Budapest, there's a Roman set of ruins called the Quincombe, which is where Marcus lived for an extended period of time towards the end of his life. And they think that he wrote chunks of meditations there. So you can walk through this little town and you can kind of think of Marcus sitting in one of these buildings writing meditations. There's a Roman bath there that you can actually go to. It's the same spring that when Marcus talks about bathing and washing off the dust of life, it might have been in this very thing that 2000 years later,

you're experiencing. So there's lots of cool stuff like that. But yes, your tour sounds awesome. So I'm jealous. Before I go, sorry, yeah, train wise. So my name is George, the train wise, my business team, but then I'll, and I take a long ago, and I'd like to like, again, reaffirm, I'm so glad that I'm alive at the same time as you. Oh, I appreciate that. Thank you so much for what you've given. I'm, I'm getting emotional.

I got, ah, well, I appreciate it. Well, look, let's do what, let's do one more question. So let's do, Ah, well, I appreciate it. Well, look, let's do one more question. So let's do, oh, Lance, because we tried you earlier and you froze. What do you got for us, Lance? Yeah, my question has to do with justice. And trying to separate out the concept of like, how we think of it, nowadays, in court,

range, and things like that, is served to you when you've done something wrong. I can't imagine that that's what the Stoics had imagined it being. Definitely not. And it probably says something about where we are as a society that when we think justice, we think, is it legal or not legal? Like, will I be punished by the court for this, right? So I told you I'm doing my next book series, I'm doing one book on each of the four virtues. So I'm, I don't, not I want to spoil it, but I'm still working on what I think about this virtue, as I begin to research for that books. I've written the first one, starting

the second one, Justice will be the third one, but maybe one quick definition of justice to the Stelx was sort of treating people as they deserve to be treated. So something akin to fairness, right? Something akin to fairness, something akin to dignity, respect, honesty, markets would say, you know, justice's just this is doing the right thing, right? So just because something is legally allowed, does it mean that it's just or that the Stokes would say you should do it? I think for the Stokes, justice is sort of integrated into their sense of right and wrong.

Okay. Awesome, guys. into their sense of right and wrong. Okay. Awesome guys, this is great. The last question someone here is asking to the best translation of Marcus. So I would, this is my favorites. This is the Gregory Hayes translation for the modern library. I don't know if there's an ebook or an audio book version.

So I would check this out. It's my absolute favorite. But as I said, there is a neat look. I just read the annotated edition from Robin Waterfield, which I thought was quite good. And then I did a two hour set of interviews with him on the podcast.

So if you're looking to do a deep dive into meditations or a translation of meditations, that would be a great place to start. You know, the Stoics in real life met at what was called the Stoa. The Stoa, Poquile, the Painted Porch, and 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 stoe 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.

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