The Daily Stoic - Will You Dance or Throw A Tantrum? | No Time For Theories, Just Results

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

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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, Steve Enhancelman.

And so today we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epictetus Marks, Relius, 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.

Adversity is the worst, right? Experiencing fortunes habit as Sennaka put it of behaving however she pleases is brutal, right? Exiles, illnesses, financial setback, shipwrecks, floods, and famines, these types of reverses are bad, right? They don't have to be. Zeno shipwreck led to the founding of stoicism, Sennaka's exiles informed some of his greatest writing. It's because Marcus really did not receive the good fortune that he deserved, as the ancient

historians noted, that we so admire him. Without the plague and the floods and the wars, he would have been an ordinary man, even forgettable. Epic Titus was shaped and informed, yes, ultimately improved by the terrible crucible of those years in slavery, just as Vice Admiral James Stockdale was by his time in the Hanover Hillton during the Vietnam War. Since their lives proved that we can imagine the stills would have wiped the line from Don Draper in Mad Men.

Let's also say that change is neither good nor bad, he says, it simply is. It can be greeted with terror or joy, a tantrum that says, I want it the way it was, or a dance that says, look something new. But the Stoics knew that it was more than just a game of perception. It's what you do about it. It's how you respond. You choose to see the events of life, neither good nor bad, just objective, just reality. Yes, that's part one, but part two is the most important. It's the making them good. It's seeing it not just as new, but as a new opportunity and then making good on it. As Stockdale said, making it something that in retrospect, you never have traded away.

I don't know if you can hear that, but that is my Amor Fati pendant, which I carry with me. And when I'm not carrying it, it sits on my desk. We also have a cool pendant version of it as well. This still an idea of Amor Fati, a love of fate. That's what he's saying. It's don't see it as something bad or unfair or annoying,

but see it as something good, something great, something that specifically chosen for you. That's what Amor Fati was. Don't see it as something bad or unfair or annoying, but see it as something good, something great, something specifically chosen for you. That's what Amor Fati was. I was introduced to this concept by the great Robert Green who helped me make these cool pendants. You can check that out at the Daily Stoic store, just search Amor Fati or click the link in today's episode. or click the link in today's episode. No time for theories, just results. And I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoic 366 Meditations on Wisdom Perseverance in 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 Stoke store, over a million copies of the Daily Stoke 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 cell. It's just an awesome experience. But I'll be checking out.

We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoke.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading. When the problem arose for us, whether habit or theory was better for getting virtue, if by theory is meant what teaches us correct conduct and by habit we mean being accustomed to acting, according to this theory, Musonius thought habit to be more effective.

That's an excerpt related to us from Musonius Rufus, which as the Sitton's Lectures, but I prefer the quote from Hamlet. There are more things in heaven and earth for ratio than are dreamt of in your philosophy. There is no time to chop logic over whether our theories are correct. We are dealing with the real world here.

What matters is how you're gonna deal with the situation in front of you, whether you're gonna be able to move past it and on to the next one. That's not saying that anything goes, but we can't forget that although the theories are clean and simple, the situations rarely are. Mark Serelyz says a version of this,

waste no more time arguing what a good man should be be one. He says, don't go around expecting Plato's Republic. You don't live there, right? We live in reality. And I talk about this a lot on the podcast so often. Philosophers ask these abstract questions. I just talked about this in my episode with Paul Bloom, which is coming up. He talks about how, you know, we discuss the trolley problem or do we live in a computer simulation? We talk about these ideas.

When in reality, it's much more practical life and stoicism. You get accidentally cc'd on an email and one of your co-workers says something not nice about you. Are you going to let that go or are you going to blow it up? Your order is messed up at a restaurant. Are you going to try to think about the person who did that, what their life is like, or are you gonna go full-caron, right? You're tired and exhausted,

and your kids are being a nightmare. How do you respond, right? That's what stoicism is to me. There is an element of physics to the stoics, and there's logic, too. But the stoics tried to apply the philosophy to what they actually did to their lives as people, which is what we're trying to do.

I've talked about this before too. You know, you watch what's happening in the news and you go, oh, why can't this politician, you know, why isn't this person voting this way? They're just trying to keep their job blah, blah, blah. And then it's like, when was the last time you ever risked your job, right? How often do you do things that are

in your financial best interest, but maybe not in the interests of the world? It's there that stoicism is supposed to be applied, right? Stoicism is not a standard we hold other people to. It's not a game, it's not a lens through which we debate things. This is not like a sports show where they go, who's the best? Is it LeBron James or is it this? Could he's Kevin Durant? Good, because he only won a championship with Golden State and hasn't anywhere else. No, it's how are you as a teammate, right? Are you achieving and doing your

best? Are you a team player, right? It's about you. It's you can spend all your time thinking and debating and questioning. You can you can waste your whole life doing that, but who cares you have enough problems, your whole life, you have things you should be dealing with. That, to me, is what stoicism is, right? That's what we're trying to do. That's what I want this podcast to be about. That's why I pick up meditations by my side of my bed. Oh, yeah, I was doing that today.

I don't want to do that anymore. That's what I flipped the repetitions. That's what I'm writing. I'm not only writing to accomplish that, hopefully for other people, but that's what I'm the repetitions. That's what I'm writing. I'm not only writing to accomplish that, hopefully for other people, but that's what I'm looking for as a writer. That's what I'm trying to do. I hope that's what you take from this podcast too.

No time for theories, just results. Is habit or theory better? Habit is better, man. Habit. Make the stuff a habit. That's what we're trying to do. Make it a practice, build it into the muscle memory, make it part of who you are. Try to get to a point, ideally, where nobody even knows that you study philosophy, but when they look at your actions ago, that

lines up, right? That lines up with the code. And I think if you look at Marcus really, his life, you don't have to know he studied philosophy to get the sense he was a philosophical guy that he lived according to those for-fruit shoes. That's the most powerful thing he said about courage, tempered justice, wisdom, was how he lived. And so it goes for you. And so I tried to make it go for me. None of us are perfect at it. The theory is much more interesting. The theory is much more interesting. The theory is easy. But the end of the day doesn't matter. One bit compared to the actions.

Being able to control your anger is a difficult but worthwhile goal. It will take time and effort. It won't be free. But by changing your perspective and developing techniques to control your temper, we'll ultimately be achievable in life-changing. So take the first step on the path to a calmer and more fulfilling future. Check out You can just go to dailystilic.com slash anger. 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 to the Daily Stoke, early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today,

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