The Daily Stoic - Turn It Into Something | The Enemy of Happiness

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

Ryan talks about how you can turn your trials into triumph, about how everything we do for others comes back to us, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day.We have some exciting news to share with you all — for some reason, The Obstacle is the Way ebook is just $1.99 everywhere you get your ebooks. We’re not sure how long the price drop will last, but if you haven’t already read The Obstacle Is The Way, this is probably the cheapest it will ever be. Or if you’re like us and prefer physical books, we have hardcopies and our premium leather-bound edition available over in the Daily Stoic store, where you can get them signed and personalized.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and 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 another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epititus Markis, really a Seneca, then some analysis for me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works. 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. Turn it into something. Life batters us. It does. We find out that we've lost our job or someone we love.

We find out that some ruling has come down against us or that a bad review has been written. We fall and hurt ourselves. We get a diagnosis. We are mistreated or attacked. We get hit. Heart. But there is a beautiful metaphor and a realki poem that we can take heart in. He said, let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell.

As you ring what batters you becomes your strength, move back and forth into the change. Instead of seeing ourselves as the victims, we can turn around what happens to us. By turning ourselves into the bell, we make music out of the hits we take. And that's what the Stoics meant when they talked about how the obstacle is the way. This is what Marcus meant when he talked about how a fire turns everything into heat and brightness. We absorb the energy and use it. We are rattled, sure, but we make something out of that rattle,

something that can help or inform or be enjoyed by others. It'd be wonderful, of course, if it were never dark. If we never got hit, but to avoid such fate to sidestep the normal paces of life is quite unlikely. For human existence is a cycle of light and dark, born of a series of cosmic collisions. Darkness and difficulty aren't just a part of life, they are life. So let's stop trying to deny the undeniable or avoid the unavoidable.

Instead, let's get to work on what we control, which is how we respond to those things we cannot. Let's see what we can make of them. Exciting news. I was just told by my publisher that my book, The Obstacle, is the way the timeless art of turning trials into triumph is $199 everywhere you get your e-books. I'm not sure how long the price drop will last, but now is the cheapest the book will probably ever be. If you haven't read it, if you want to give it as a gift, if you also want a digital

copy, whatever, it's pretty awesome. $199, you know, this is a book that sold now well over a million copies in 40 languages. It's been used by Super Bowl winning teams, Special Forces operators, members of Congress, world leaders, and it's less than two bucks. If you want to get the obstacle, is the way as an e-book. I think it's only in the U.S. but check the link here in the show notes or just go to Amazon or just go to Amazon or wherever you get your e-books. Also related news, if you have more than two dollars. We have a leather bound edition

of the obstacle is the way which you can check out in the Daily Stoke store. Just go to store.dailystoke.com. It's a premium edition. It should last a little bit longer than the hard cover. Go to dailystoke.com slash store and you can also get me to sign your leather bound edition or any of your editions of the book. And of course, oh yes, some other cool. Opsicle is the way merch. Check it out. Opsicle is the way as an ebook. It's just 1.99 for a very limited time only. Check it out. The enemy of happiness. And I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoic 366 Meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living by yours

truly, my co-author and translator, Steve Enhancelman, you can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoic store, over a million copies of the Daily Stoic in print now. It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. It's been more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the best though it's just an awesome experience. But I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoke.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading. It's quite impossible to unite happiness with a yearning for

that which we don't have. Happiness has all that it wants and resembles the well-fed. There wouldn't be hunger or thirst. That's epictetus's discourse is 324. I'll be happy when I graduate, we tell ourselves, I'll be happy when I get this promotion, when this diet pays off. When I have the money that my parents never had, conditional happiness is what psychologists call this kind of thinking. Like the horizon you could walk for miles and miles and miles and never reach it. You'll never get any closer.

Eagerly anticipating some future event, passionately imagining something you desire, looking forward to some happy scenario, as pleasurable as these activities might seem that they ruin your chances at happiness here and now So locate that yearning for more for better for someday and see it for what it is The enemy of your contentment choose it or your happiness as Epic teetah says to or not compatible That's a heavy one, I think. The idea that

yearning is the enemy of happiness. Sometimes I'll talk to really successful people who have a lot of money and be like, what are you doing? Why don't you just relax or whatever? be like, what are you doing? Like, why don't you just relax or whatever? And they, I'm always, I always find it fascinating when you hear that they have a number. So maybe they have a million dollars, but their number is 10 million dollars. Maybe they have 10 million dollars or their number is a hundred million dollars. They've told themselves that when they get X, then they'll be okay, then they'll be good. But they never get there. There's, from a different Xeno, there's this Xeno's paradox, the idea of like, if you're like walking from here to the other side of the room, and you go halfway there, and then halfway

there, and then halfway there, and then halfway there, they'll never actually arrive, right? Because it's always half, there's always more, there's always some half left of the distance. But I think that's kind of what yearning is. We tell ourselves, oh, when I get this, when I get this, when I get this, but we never get there either because it's not actually something that a person can possess or because we move the goalposts.

Like all I wanna do is win a championship and then you do it and then you're, oh, all I want to do is win back-to-back championships to prove it wasn't a flake, a fluke. And it's like, oh, but now I want to win it on a different team to prove that it wasn't a fluke there either. Whatever it is, right? We move the goalposts. That's the tricky thing about yearning. Is it

never gets there? I think it's still this is the key, but there's a quote I love from Stefan's Waiik, the novelist. And he says, in the history of conquerors, no conqueror has ever been surfated by conquests. Alexander the great said, aren't we going to conquer the world together? And his men said, no, we want to go home. And the truth was he always would have found something new, something beyond it, always would have kept pushing. And the result of that was he not only lost his life, but I think he lost a lot of happiness as well. So contentment, and I've read a study many years ago that said like young people associate happiness with accomplishment, older people with contentment. I think they've

learned something along the way. It's a hard one lesson, I'm sure. But we can, even if we can't fully internalize it or understand it or accept it now, we can try to approximate it. We can try to incorporate some of it. We can fake it till we make it, which is that we don't need anything. We can be happy now. That doesn't mean that we don't keep trying.

Of course we keep trying. Of course, we keep trying. Of course, we keep doing. But we try to do those things from a place of fullness, from a place of, that'll be a nice extra as opposed to a place of yearning, that I'll be happy if this, once this, after that, doesn't happen, man, to myth. It's a shimmer, it's a mirage. You'll get there, and you will realize it was a figment of your imagination, or at worst your mind will fool you so much.

You won't even realize you're there. It just feels like, I just got to go a little bit further, a little bit further, a little bit further, and you never arrive, and the cost comes your life, and your happiness. and you never arrive and the cost comes your life and your happiness. But for people who don't want to do things, this is not a particularly important or tricky subject. For those of us who are ambitious, those of us who are driven, those of us who are talented, it's something we really have to wrestle with. So I'm wishing you the best you're enough as you are. You're in it. It is the enemy of your happiness.

Remember that. And be safe, be well, everyone will touch in. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. You just go to dailystoke.com slash email. So check it out. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic 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 gonna end up on Page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wondery's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions.

What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Brittany's fans form the free Brittany movement dedicated to fraying 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 podcast. You can listen ad free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondering app.