The Daily Stoic - This Is Your Job As A Citizen | Why You Should Do Something Scary Every Day

Episode Date: November 8, 2022

The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we have control over and what we don’t. Epictetus said,“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…”✉️ 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 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. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree'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 your job as a citizen. The single most important practice in Stoke philosophy is differentiating between what we have control over and what we don't. Epictetus said, the chief task in life is simply this, to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil not to uncontrollable externals but within myself to the choices that are my own.

Well, today, we are calling on you to perform your chief task in life. You don't control the dark money that is flooded politics. You don't control the mediocre or awful candidates out there. You don't control that more than 50% of the population doesn't bother voting. You don't control the gerrymandering and the voter suppression. You don't control who ultimately gets elected. But the act of casting a ballot is in your control. You control whether you engage in the democratic process.

And the Stoics are explicit on this point. The philosopher, they say, is obligated to contribute to the polis, to participate in politics. And this is actually the essential difference between the Epicurians and the Stoics. Senaqa says that Epicurus would say that a wise man will not engage in public affairs except in an emergency,

whereas Zeno says he will engage in public affairs unless something prevents him. While it's hard to argue with the statistics that any individual's vote makes a difference, think about how dangerous it would be when that logic is extrapolated out. Almost no difference is made by the individual who decides to do the right thing, to do an act of kindness, to insist on the truth when a falsehood is easier, to be a good parent, to care about the quality of their work. Is

that a reason to be a liar, a cheat, an asshole, a bad parent, or a poor craftsman? Of course not. And imagine what the world would look like if everyone insisted it was. A better world is built action by action, Marcus really has said, vote by vote. We vote, we do good things, not because it has a noticeable or significant impact on the world, but because it is our duty.

We make our tiny contribution to the common good today in the next election. In every election, we perform our chief task in life today, tomorrow, and every day. I voted here in my small rural county in Texas. I voted in Texas as like an early voting period. So I voted a week before the election. I didn't love all the candidates. I voted independent for some and not for and and a Democrat for others. I didn't vote for one specific party and won't until it purges from its ranks insurrectionism and certain anti-democratic lines of thinking. But look, I'm not telling you to vote for this party or that party. I'm just telling you to participate in the process. The system is what it is. It's as bad as it is,

because people don't. Most people are reasonable. Most people want the same things. Here in Texas, for instance, which is overwhelmingly a Republican state, the people who vote in the Republican primary, just 3% of the population determined basically are entire elected officials. It's the opposite of democracy in that sense, not because the system is broken, but because people are not participating in the system. And you've got to participate. It's a very small contribution you're making.

But as we said, what would it look like if everyone failed to do their duty? You've got to do your job as a citizen. you've got to do your job as a stoic. As Zeno says, we engage in public affairs unless something prevents us. Nothing should prevent you from doing this. And the fact that people might want to prevent you from doing it is a reason you should stick with it and push through and do it. Take the time. Protect your children's interests, your interests, the interests of our future.

And just encouraging you all to vote. And hopefully we'll get through this strange, terrible period of American history. And we're gonna do it, I think, by voting, and by voting for people who are not crazy fascists. And I'll leave you to decide who and what that means for you. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I got this new cold plunge. I think I talked about this, the folks at plunge sent me one. And I've been using it like all the time.

Four or five times a week, I usually try to go for my run and then I do that and then do the cold punch and then I go home. So instead of like needing like a coffee or a pick me up or something in the evening, as I'm going home for my second shift, if you will, I use the cold punch and I just feel super invigorated after. And I'm liking this sort of challenge of pushing myself to do an uncomfortable thing for longer and longer. I started with a minute. I'm up to about three, three and a half minutes. It lets me adjust the temperature and stuff too. It's been awesome. And I was just, I just did a talk in San Diego and I was talking about the muscle that you're developing, whether

it's in the cold plunge or the like I was using the metaphor of cranking it in the shower, I was talking about the strong, the muscle there is the muscle of cranking the shower knob, which is then transferable to all other facets of your life, which actually ties into what today's episode is about. It's why you should try to do something scary every day. And in fact, we have to build into our life the practice of doing something hard, scary, intimidating, uncomfortable, difficult, unpleasant, every single day, which is actually a stoic practice, as you will see in today's episode. Enjoy! There's a great sports illustrated article by Greg Bishop about Los Angeles Rams on their on their way to the Super Bowl this year. And he was talking about

Les Sneed who I've gotten to know. I've interviewed him on the Daily Stove podcast. He's the practitioner and fanastosism. And I was talking about lessons habit of doing a cold plunge in the Pacific Ocean each morning. So when the Rams made it to the Super Bowl in 2018, they made it all the way to the top of their game. And then they fell short. They had to not rebuild,

but they had to make a lot of difficult decisions to get back to where they wanted to be. And the big part of the RAM strategy is that most teams hoard draft picks, thinking that draft picks are going to help them find undervalued talent. With a RAM strategy is different. He makes big moves in the season, goes after big free agents, makes short term deals for players, that he thinks can get him where he wants to go.

Now, this is anathema to almost all the wisdom and conventional practices of the NFL. Every time he does it, he gets attacked, he gets criticized, he gets doubted. And when they lost in the Super Bowl, and then the two-year period where they were really struggling, people piled on, they said, you don't know what you're doing. This is not gonna work.

You're mortgaging the future of the franchise. So it's so cool to see this Sports Illustrator article by Greg Bishop, he's saying that inspired by Seneca, less decides to do this plunge into the ocean each morning. And then when you see where it gets them, it gets them to a place where he could make huge off season and mid-season moves that again, everyone doubted that God am where he needed to be,

that helped them win the Super Bowl this year. And it's an incredible achievement, but it starts by doing that scary thing to build up a habit and a tolerance for doing scary things. There's a story about the Austrian writer, Stefan's Wig. And he had this fascinating habit as he would travel. He would sometimes show up in a new city and pretend that he just kind of washed up there.

He would go look for a job. He might even apply for a job or interview for a job, even though he came from family money, even though his books had been very successful. He wanted to imagine what it would be like to start over in a new place. Could he do it? Was it possible? This is kind of like Seneca's practice of practicing poverty, of getting comfortable with that discomfort. Seneca said that as he would practice poverty,

the idea was to look around at the mattress on the floor he's sleeping on or the rough cloak that he's wearing and be able to say, this is what you're afraid of, you can handle this. And you think about this Wig, the idea that he could rebuild his life that he could move to a new place and get a new job and build new relationships and support himself. And he does have to do this World War I and World War II both send his Wig out as a refugee. And he has to rebuild his life, not quite as dramatically as he'd practiced, but the point was, you knew he could handle it because he practiced handling. One of the reasons that scary things scare us is that we exaggerate them in our mind. We make them bigger than they

actually are. We extrapolate out all the way to the end. You know, Mark Sures, don't let your life be crushed by your imagination. Don't get too far ahead of yourself. You know, Mark's realises don't let your life be crushed by your imagination. Don't get too far ahead of yourself. You say stick with the situation and hand. It's not nearly as unbearable as you think it is. And so I think one of the ways we can handle scary things, like a life of scary things,

is by practicing these little scary things. Jerry Seinfeld has this joke that the number one fear for people is public speaking, and like the number two fears death. He's saying that that means that out of funeral someone would rather be in the tasket than delivering the eulogy. Cato, the famous stoke would wear unusual clothes, he walked around bare headed and barefoot, he knew people were judging him. You have to cultivate this ability inside yourself to be indifferent to what other people were judging him, you have to cultivate this ability inside yourself to be indifferent to what other people say or do

or think about what you're doing. That skill of like getting up in front of an audience, making a video, you have to cultivate that indifference to what other people think about you. If you're looking for something scary to do, look for something public, go up and talk to a stranger, wear something that's gonna draw a little attention to you, right? Cultivate that not being afraid of how this is going to look to other people

or what might go wrong or the awkwardness or the vulnerability of that. Because that's a super powerful asset to have. But look, the idea that you should do something every day that scares you is what was the point of all this. I realized that it's a bit tautological, that you should do something that scares you. What is the point of all this? I realize that it's a bit talk to logical, that you should do something that scares you because it scares you, but that's the point. You're trying to get up close and personal. You're trying to get comfortable with it.

You're trying to get to a place where when something's scary, you have the power to say, I don't care I'm doing it anyway. We're treating the body rigorously as sentencing. When we have doubts, when people are criticizing us, when something seems unpleasant, we want to cultivate the willpower, the strength that allows us to push through it,

that almost looks forward to it. So when I crank that knob in the shower, I'm not doing it for the health benefits, although I hope they're there. I'm doing it because I want to be the kind of person that pushes through what I'm afraid of. In fact, that does the things that I am afraid of. And that's why you need this practice in your life too.

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I'm just the name of you. Now, I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovingly nicknamed me Kiki Kiki Pabag Palmer. And trust me, I keep a bad glove. But if you ask me, I'm just getting started. And there's so much I still want to do. So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the baby this is Kiki Palmer podcast. I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest

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