The Daily Stoic - What Will It Bring Out Of You? | What Can Go Wrong… Might

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

Ryan talks about how our character is exposed in themes extreme circumstances, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal.Go Macro is a family-owned maker of some of the finest protein bars around. They're vegan, non-GMO, and they come in a bunch of delicious flavors. Visit gomacro.com and use promo code STOIC for 30% off your order plus free shipping on all orders over $50.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://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 podcasts early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic's illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoke, intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. into it. what will it bring out of you? The history of humankind is the history of responding to adversity, storms, famines, economic collapses, wars, these things happen,

and human beings have to respond to them. Suddenly all our excuses, our idleness, our entitlements disappear. We have to step up. We have to show what we're made of, to become the person we're capable of being. Writing between the world wars, Charles De Gaulle reflected that when events become grave, the peril pressing, a sort of tidal wave pushes men of character into the front rank.

So it went with De Gaulle when surrender broke out in France in 1940, leaving only him standing, only him willing to fight. And so, story I tell, more fully and courage is calling. But so it also went with Marcus Arelius as the Antonine plague and flooding and war collided with Rome, which you can see in lives of the Stokes. So it went with Ulysses S. Grant, whose troubles with drinking were suddenly made inconsequential contrast to the character, the commitment, the fearlessness he displayed in the early days of the Civil War. And this is also what we're seeing in Ukraine now, which has been invaded by a delusional and murderous dictator.

For months, this slow-moving crisis was managed by Western leaders. For months, pundits speculated and doubted the capacity of Ukraine's president, Velotimir Zelinsky, a former comedian and actor. But then the bullets in the bombs began to fly, and suddenly a man of grim determination and resilience emerged, suddenly the character of the Ukrainian people was pushed to the front. Literally. May each of us be so lucky as to dodge, so serious, and so deadly a crisis. There will be no escaping adversity.

It is our fate as human beings. Events will become grave, peril will press. Will you step up? What kind of character will be revealed? Will you become the person you are capable of being? We train now for precisely that moment. We get ourselves ready for our time on the front because it is coming.

What can go wrong might? And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Steve Enhancelman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, and there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand, write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself, and others about them.

You can check out the Daily Stoke Journal, anywhere books are sold, you can also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoke Store. It's store.dailystoke.com. We call people who dwell on what might go wrong pessimists. Some even think that bad thoughts attract bad events. The Stokes found this all to be nonsense. In fact, they had a practice, pre-medit-Malorum, pre-Meditation of evils, that specifically encouraged musing on the so-called worst-case scenario. Marcus would begin his day thinking about all the ugliness he would see on display in

court, not for the purpose of working himself up, but precisely the opposite, to calm and focus himself, to be prepared to act in the proper way rather than just to react. Seneca 2 practiced meditating in advance, not only on what normally happens but on what could happen. Epic Titus went as far as to imagine losing a loved one every time he would kiss them. The Stokes believed that all we have is on loan from fortune, and that negative visualization helps increase our awareness of the unexpected. So don't shy away from this in your thoughts. Then we have two quotes today from Marcus Aurelius and from Seneca.

When you arise in the morning, tell yourself I will encounter busy bodies, ingrates, egomaniacs, liars, the jealous and cranks. They are all stricken with these afflictions because they don't know the difference between good and evil. Because I have understood the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, I know that the wrong doers are still akin to me and that none can do me harm or implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I be angry at my relatives and hate them, for we are made for cooperation. Before I get to the Senate, I would say that

the many first times I read this quote, especially when I read it young, I focused on that first part where you list just how awful and frustrating everyone will be. I think that's sort of the rudimentary understanding. He's like, look, don't go into the world all rosy-eyed and bushy-tailed or you're going to get your heart stomped on. You've got to be aware, you've got to be prepared, you can't be, no, you've marked through this, just don't go expecting

Plato's Republic. But it's really the second part of that that's hit me more, right? Why is he doing that exercise? It's so when he's hit by it, when he's hit by a cheat or a liar or a person who is, you know, messing around on their spouse or, you know, when, when he sees somebody do something wrong, he's not surprised by it. It doesn't make him bitter and it doesn't make him right off all of humanity as a whole. You know, he says, because I know better, I know that the wrong doers are still akin to me. And he says, and none can do me harder, implicate me in ugliness

nor can I be angry at my relatives or hate them. That's something I've been working on. It's like I was just dealing with someone who I really care about and they're just, you know, being, you know, not safe or smarter or who I know them to be. And I wanted to unload on them and I had to go, no, I care about this person. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to let, I should have prepared for this. I shouldn't have built them up in my head. They're human being. They have flaws. They do the

wrong thing sometimes. I'm not going to I'm not going to cast them out of my heart or out of my life for what they've done. And then this goes into the second cent of the quote, being unexpected adds to the weight of a disaster and being a surprise has never failed to increase a person's pain. For that reason, nothing should ever be unexpected by us. Our mind should be sent out in advance to all the things, and we shouldn't just consider the normal course of things, but what could actually happen? For is there anything in life that fortune won't knock off its high horse if it pleases her? You know, I have the pre-mentasio malorum coin here here on my desk. I just look at it and I go, look, look.

Murphy's Law is real man. Things can go sideways fast. I mean, imagine where you were the first week of March 2020. Did you see the next 12 months coming? Very, very few people did. But we would have been better had we been more prepared, had we been more realistic, had we been less in our own fantasy world? You know, Senaqa says, the only unforgivable thing for a general to say is I did not think

it would happen. So of course, positive visualization is thinking of all the good things that can happen. You can succeed, you can break through, you can make it. If it's humanly possible, no, you can do it, Marcus says. The same time, the law of attraction is not real. If you think about negative things, you don't attract negative things. You actually make yourself more prepared to wrestle with and deal with and conquer those difficult things. And that is why we do

our pre-meditashium alarm. That is why we think of all the things that can happen. That's why we meditate on the people we're likely to meet, so that they can't drag us down. They can't implicate us in ugliness and they can't make us unhappy. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day, check it out at dailystoke.com slash email. 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 Plus in Apple Podcasts.

Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking,

oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. be a less alone.