The Daily Stoic - When You Don’t Like What You See | Looking Out For Each Other

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

Marcus Aurelius, like all of us, would catch glimpses of himself in the mirror. As we talked about recently, Marcus would have checked himself in the mirror in the morning, he would have seen his reflection as he passed through a hallway, from one room to the next.--And in today's excerpt from The Daily Stoic, Ryan explains why its so beneficial to watch other people around us succeed, and why we should show our friends and loved ones affection while celebrating their advancements as if it were or own.✉️ 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.

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We'll take you on Zayn's journey from Shilad from Bradford to being in the world's biggest boy band and explore why when he reached the top, he decided to walk away. Follow terribly famous wherever you get your podcasts. It's terribly famous. 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 Heart of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, it 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 into works. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

... ... ... When you don't like what you see, Marcus Aurelius, like all of us, would catch glimpses of himself in the mirror. As we talked about recently, Marcus would have checked himself in the mirror in the morning. He would have seen his reflection as he passed through a hallway from one room to the next. Did he like what he saw? We can guess from meditations that the answer to this was not always yes. Marcus was not a perfect man. He had a temper. He had temptations.

There must have been times when he would have related to that Bruce Springsteen verse. We can all relate to this, actually, because few of us are fully actualized. Few of us are totally on track. Few of us are living according to the philosophy that we purport to believe. Does that mean that we should feel like crap, that we should curse the person looking back at us in the mirror? No, not at all. In fact, Marcus gives himself a reminder that we can all use.

Celebrate behaving like a human. He writes, pick yourself back up when you fail. Try to take that step forward and catch yourself before taking any more steps backwards. Be a good friend to yourself, Asanaka said, which means both encouragement and accountability. Keep going, keep working. Make progress when and where you can.

Looking out for each other. This is the October 6th entry in the Daily Stoic. It is in keeping with nature to show our friends affection and to celebrate their advancement as if it was our own. For if we don't do this, virtue which is strengthened only by exercising our perceptions will no longer endure us. Seneca's moral letters, 109. Watching other people succeed is one of the toughest things to do, especially when we are not doing well ourselves.

And our hunter-gatherer minds, we suspect that life is a zero-sum game, that for someone to have more means that we might end up with less. But like all parts of philosophy, empathy and selflessness are a matter of practice. As Seneca observed, it's possible to learn to rejoice in all their successes and be moved, but they're very failure. This is what a virtuous person does. They teach themselves to actively cheer for other people even in cases where it might come, might have come at their own expense to put aside jealousy and possessiveness. You can do that too. I was actually just talking to someone,

I work with, we were talking about the sort of pettingness of writers groups. And I said, they're all kind of frenemies, right? They see it as a zero sound game. And I said, there's a joke I heard about academia that the reason the knives are so sharp is because the pie is so small. If you think of the pie as finite, if you think about life as zero sum,

it inherently makes everyone your enemy, right? It means you're having to get what's yours, which means you're having to get it from them or get it before them, as opposed to seeing that how it actually is, how the Stokes want us to see it, which is a collective, a whole, an infinite game. I've had to do work, especially as a competitive person, to understand that the success of another writer has nothing to do with me. It doesn't come at my expense. It helps me. More people reading is good, right? More people talking about stoicism is good. I'm sure there are people that see my,

the success of my books as being somehow limiting to them or unfair or undeserved. Meanwhile, they're benefiting from the rising tide that's lifting all the boats, right? You gotta think about how you look at it. You have to practice this. Robert Green in his book, The Laws of Human Nature, he talks about the difference between

Shodden Freud, like wishing bad things with other people in Mitten Freud, probably pronouncing least horribly wrong. This is also a day we broke out in the Daily Laws, which I was lucky enough to work on if you haven't read, you should. We carried them in the Pena porch. I think we even have some signed copies.

Anyways, again, I don't that there's another awesome daily laws, a daily book out there. Like, I remember Rob are going, is that going to be a problem with your book? And I was like, no, this is amazing. More people reading something every day is good for the world and probably good for the category too. Anyways, there's also a section of this in the Daily Laws. But, Mitten Freud is the active wishing of success or goodwill towards people. I heard love once defined as willing the good of the other,

like wanting good for the other, wishing them happiness, wishing them success. As an author, wishing you the biggest first week sales, you could possibly have. I want that for you. It doesn't come at my expense. And even if it did, who am I to root against you? I'm gonna do my best. I'm gonna put out my best work.

I'm gonna go into this already knowing that I'm playing with house money that I've succeeded beyond my wildest dreams and expectations that I've written something I'm proud of that I think deserves to be read that I have faith in the long term will do what it needs to do. So there's no pettiness in me. There's no need for you to do poorly. I just wish everyone success. Are there moments where I get caught in with a pan of jealousy where I might say something that, you know, if I played it back to myself later, I'd be like, oh, that's not a good look. Of course, this is something you have to work on. It's like ego. In fact, it's rooted in ego. So it's something you have to constantly

sweep away and push away. But it gets you to a place where you are happier and you are better. It's not just by wishing other people good, you're making them happy. Theatre Roosevelt is right. Comparison is the thief of joy. Joseph Epstein is right when he said that, that of all the deadly sins, envy is the only one that's no fun. Living that way sucks.

It punishes you most of all. Meanwhile not being petty, not wanting to hold other people back, being happy, generally celebrating all the good things that are happening to other people and not seeing them as somehow bad for you. Well, this is a much happier and much more wonderful way to live.

And I wish that for you. I wish that for you. But what I control is whether I try to live and act that way myself. You can have which discipline is destiny, the power of self control. If you haven't picked it up, you can pick it up at dailystoke.com slash preorder. We're honoring the preorder bonuses, sign copies, etc. I hope you can check that out. Or you can pick it up anywhere, books are sold, including there's an audio book version, which I read. There's an ebook version, physical versions, everywhere, support your local bookstores, come get it at the painted

porch if you're in central Texas, but otherwise thank you all and I hope you enjoyed the book. I'm really, really proud of it. 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. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it, and it sounds like a wind farm powering homes across the country. We're bridging to a sustainable energy future, working today to ensure tomorrow is on. And bridge, life takes energy.