The Daily Stoic - We Can Get This Expensive Thing Cheap | The Long Way Around

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

The rarest thing in the world is wisdom. The most expensive thing in the world is experience. How many truly wise people have you met? How many of them would take the time to download to you all that they know? And of the small amount of wisdom you have accumulated in your life, how much painful trial and error did it take to get it?There is really only one shortcut or hack around this. It is the theme we have returned to here many times: reading.---And in today's excerpt from The Daily Stoic, Ryan examines what the Stoics say about choosing to stop taking the long way around to getting what you want, and the benefits that immediately follow.If you want to become a great reader, the Stoics can help. We built out their best insights into our Read to Lead: A Daily Stoic Reading Challenge. Since it first launched in 2019, Read to Lead has been our most popular challenge, taken on by almost ten thousand participants. Sign up today!✉️ 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. 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 a literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, I will 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 to works.

We get this expensive thing cheap. The rarest thing in the world is wisdom. The most expensive thing in the world is experience. How many truly wise people have you met? How many of them would take the time to download to you all that they know? And of the small amount of wisdom you have accumulated in your life, how much painful trial and error did it take to get it? There's really only one shortcut or hack around this and it's a theme we have returned to many times here. It's reading. By spending a few dollars for a book, the great Admiral Rickover once said, the thoughts and life's work of a great man is available to us.

Or as Senika put it by reading and studying philosophy, a person is able to annex every age to their own. All the harvest of the past is added to their story, he said, and it's this beautiful quote that is the epigraph to the Daily Stoke. Consider how many Marcus Reliuses there have been, how many Rick overs, how many stockdails, consider how much pain and struggle went into their becoming who they were. And now for a few dollars, their thoughts and life's work is available to you. Only an in great, Sena Kuhwud say, would fail to see this as the incredible gift that it is. Only a fool would not take this amazing deal.

And take it right now. One of the things you learn when you talk to really great readers, really great thinkers, and really great leaders is that they have a specific practice for reading, for turning those words into works, as Seneca said, turning insights into action. And so what we're going to do in this course is break down that process, how I take a book like the 48 Laws of Power, this biography of John Boy, this biography of John D. Rockefeller, a novel like Invisible Man, and how I turn that into actionable insights in my life, how I break that down, how I organize the information, how I apply it in my life and in my writing.

And we're gonna learn how people like Marcus Aurelius, Ensenica, and Epictetus, and Cato, and James Stockdale did this in their own life at the highest levels. There are so many insights from these people and that's what we've built this course around. You'll get more than a dozen specific, daily delivered exercises and practices about reading. We have a workbook for you to follow.

We have a huge list of recommended books. We have videos for me every day breaking down these strategies from these great thinkers. We have thousands for me every day breaking down these strategies from these great thinkers. We have thousands of words of original content. There's a community you can be a part of. There's proven things that I promise you will take from this challenge and apply. Not just that life. Life can get you down. I'm no stranger to that. When I find things that are piling up, I'm struggling to deal with something.

Obviously, I use my journal, obviously, I turn to stochism, but I also turn to my therapist, which I've had for a long time and has helped me through a bunch of stuff. And because I'm so busy and I live out in the country, I do therapy remote, so I don't have to drive somewhere. And that's where today's sponsor comes in. Tox space makes it easy to find a therapist that you like. It's convenient, it's affordable. By doing everything online, Tox space makes getting the help

you want easy and affordable, so why wait? And Tox space can help with any specific challenge you might be facing. That's why it's the number one online therapy platform with license therapists. And over 40 specialties, it's secure and private and in network with most major insurers. As a listener of this podcast, you can get 80 bucks off your first month with ToxBase when you go to ToxBase.com slash stoic. To match with a license therapist today, go to ToxBase.com slash stoic to get 80 bucks off

your first month and show your support for the daily stoic, that's ToxBase.com slash stoic to get 80 bucks off your first month and show your support for the daily stoic, that's toxbase.com slash stoic. The long way around, this is today's entry in the daily stoic. You could enjoy this very moment, all the things you are praying to reach by taking the long way around. If you'd stop depriving yourself of them, Marx really is Meditations 12-1. Ask most people what they're working towards and you'll get an answer. I'm trying to become insert professional or they'll tell you they're trying to get appointed to some impressive committee or position to become a millionaire to get discovered to become famous whatever

If you ask them a couple more questions such as why are you doing that or what are you hoping it'll be like when you get it And you'll find that at the very core of it people want freedom. They want happiness They want the respect of their peers Astolic looks at this and shakes their head at the immense effort and expense we put into chasing things that are simple and straightforward to acquire. It's as if we'd prefer to spend years building a complicated, roobe goldberg machine instead of just reaching out and picking up what we want. It's like looking all over for your sunglasses and realizing they were on your head the whole time.

Freedom, that's easy. It's in your choices, stoics would say. Happiness, that's easy. It's in your choices, Stokes would say. Happiness, that's easy. It's in your choices, Stokes would say. Respect your peers. That too is in the choices you make. All of that is in front of you. No need to take the long way to get there.

It's actually like a viral email chain. You've probably seen it before about the fishermen and Thailand or something in the Western businessmen, CISM, and he says, oh, you've got this little boat. What if you got another boat and another boat, you scaled this operation, you could make all this money, and the guy says, well, then what? And it's like, well, then you could retire and live on a beach somewhere. I said, but that's what I do now. And actually, this story dates back to like the 14th century. It's about a king who's advised by his advisor or to conquer this territory, this territory, this territory, this territory. Why? Why? Why? Why? Well, at the end of it, you can live in peace. Although he lives in peace now.

I've experienced my own version of this as an author. It's been funny. I mean, these really successful people who do the things that I sometimes wish I could do. They play professional sports, they have huge audiences, they've made all this money, they have all this stuff and you know, you catch yourself being a little jealous and they invite you over to their fancy houses and you sit there and you go, man, what'd it be so cool to live this life. And then I find out the real reason they invited me over is that they wanna learn how to write books, right? Like I'm jealous of their life,

they're jealous of my life, right? And I think this is what Marcus is saying is that you can have what you want right now. And more importantly, the thing that you think will bring you something peace, contentment, happiness, whatever. It's not gonna happen. It's this horizon that you never quite meet. It's always a little bit out of view. Mark is just saying that we try to get our stuff the long way, the hard way, at the end of this long war, at the end of this long journey. at the end of this long journey, right? It's after I become rich and successful,

after I make it after I win a Super Bowl, blah, blah, blah, blah, then I'll feel good. Then I'll be able to spend time with my family, then I can be at peace, whatever. And you can have that right now. I have this chapter and still this is the key about enough. Actually, it's funny, my wife just did this triathlon in Austin and as I was walking our

kids back to the car after watching this lady stop me and she said, oh, I saw this viral video you did about that story of Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller and she said, could you tell that again and she made me tell it in front of her? But it's one of my favorite stories. Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller,ller there at this party, this rich person. Again, just like I was just telling you that I've experienced myself and Curvonigate is sort of teasing Joseph heller and he says, you know, this guy made more money than your books will ever make in your life.

And Joseph heller says, yeah, but I have something that he doesn't have. And heller gets this, what could that possibly be? And Joseph heller says, I have enough. I have what I need. And that's what Marcus is saying, too. You could have it right now. It's already yours. It's already there and the things that you control.

Having the other stuff is nice, and you can still get it, right? I feel like I have enough. I feel like there's nothing I'm really trying to prove, but I still doing interesting things. I've got this new cool project I'm working on. I'm about to start another book. I'm trying to do it from a place of enoughness and fullness, not a place of emptiness, right? Not a place of having to prove myself, of getting more and more and more, of doing it because I actually enjoy it, and knowing that if I don't finish, if I don't make it all the way there, if just the time that I spent working on it today was all I got, that was enough.

That itself was enjoyable. And to me, that's just a much healthier place to live and be and operate from. And I hope you can give yourself that gift, give yourself the gift of enough because you are enough. 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 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 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 form the free Britney 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 podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondering app.