The Daily Stoic - Winning Isn’t As Fun As It Seems | Find Yourself a Cato

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

There’s an old joke: When the Gods wish to punish us, they give us everything we’ve ever wanted. Look at most people who win the lottery. Look at most famous people. Look at most world leaders. To borrow an expression from one particularly unhappy world leader, what do they look like? They look like they’re tired of winning. Because winning isn’t actually as fun as it seemed like it would be...and most of what we want to win turns out to not really be worth it.This was Marcus Aurelius’ point.--And in today's Daily Stoic excerpt reading, Ryan discusses the importance of having a great and noble person in our minds at all times to help guide our actions by examining this quote from Seneca's Moral Letters: "We can remove most sins if we have a witness standing by as we are about to go wrong. The soul should have someone it can respect by whose example it can make its inner sanctum more inviolable. Happy is the person who can improve others, not only when present, but even when in their thoughts."📔 You can check out How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life at the Painted Porch.✉️ 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 Heart 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 into works. There's an old joke when the gods wish to punish us that give us everything we've ever wanted. Look at most people who win the lottery. Look at most famous people. Look at most world leaders to borrow an expression from one particularly unhappy world leader. What do they look like? They look like they're tired of winning because winning isn't actually as fun as it seemed like it would be and most of what we want turns out to not really be worth it. This was markets are really at this point. When we look at history and other people, it's hard not to see how trivial the things we want so passionately are. But what if you don't realize that yourself?

Or rather, what if you don't realize that the presidency or a billion dollars isn't that meaningful until after you've given up everything to get it? After you've traded your marriage or your principles or your youth to accomplish it. Now your free of illusions says a character in Ralph Ellison's invisible man, how does it feel to be free of one's illusions? The protagonist can only answer painful and empty, painful and empty. In this way, we are almost lucky not to get everything we want, not to be allowed our trivial, passionate yearnings, because we are allowed to continue in ignorance.

We don't have to do the hard work on ourselves and really look in the mirror. But of course, this is what a philosopher does all the time. Instead of hiding behind luck's protection, or instead of continuing to lie to ourselves that more and more and more will make us happy, they actually probe it. They question their desires. They look into the future and ask, what would happen if all my dreams come true?

Why would I suddenly be happy then? Why can't I be happy now instead? The Dell Technologies Black Friday in July event is on with limited quantity deals on top business PCs with Windows 11 Pro. Save on select Vostro laptops with built-in OS recovery fingerprint readers and antivirus protections. Plus, you can save on select latitude laptops with a wide range of built-in privacy collaboration

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Find yourself a Cato. Today's entry from the Daily Stoic March 12th. We can remove most sins if we have a witness standing by as we are about to go wrong. The soul should have someone it can respect by whose example it can make its inner sanctum more invaluable. Happy is the person who can improve others, not only when present, but even when in their thoughts. Saqas, moral letters, 11-9. Cato the younger a Roman politician best known for his self-discipline and his heroic defense

of the Republic against Julius Caesar appears constantly throughout the Stoic literature, which is interesting because he didn't write anything down. He taught no classes, he gave no interviews. It was his bold and brave example that made him such a commonly cited and quoted philosopher. Seneca tells us that we should each have our own Kato, a great and noble person we can allow into our minds and use to guide our actions, even when they're not physically present. The economist Adam Smith had a similar concept, which he called the impartial spectator.

It doesn't have to be an actual person, just someone who, like Seneca said, can stand by and witness our behavior. Someone who can quietly admonish us if we are considering doing something lazy, dishonest, or selfish. And if we do it right and live our lives in such a way, perhaps we too can later serve as someone else's cater or a spectator when someone else needs it. The line from Adam Smith is in the wonderful book by my friend Russ Roberts, which you should check out. It's called Adam Smith can change your life, we carried it at the painting porch. It's a must mustard. But it's like, you know, in the cartoons, there's the angel on the shoulder and the devil on the shoulder,

and who you're going to listen to. Or if you remember those bracelets, what would Jesus do, right? The idea is to have that person in your mind, whether it's Kato or Marcus Aurelius or your grandfather or Abraham Lincoln or Harriet Tubman or whoever it is for you, who is your hero, and what decisions would they make in those situations? Because when I interviewed Andy Duke for the leadership challenge, she was talking about like getting to the outside of a problem, right? When you're in it, when it's you, you can get tied up and what you want to do or what your impulses say or what's easiest, but you want to get to the outside of the problem.

And this idea of the spectator or the cato or the hero, it allows you to think about it from someone else's perspective. So not like what would you allow yourself to get away with, but what would so and so expect of you in this situation? The other version you can think about this is like, what would you do if your kids were watching if they understood? John Wooden was fond of a poem and the line said, a little fellow follows you. And there's a similar idea, right? What would

you do if your kids were watching? What would you do if anyone was watching? But allowing those standards to hold you to a higher standards than you might otherwise let yourself get away with. But then I think this is really the important part, this last sentence about, if we do it right, if we live our lives right, perhaps we could be that way. So remember, Stoicism is about putting your own spin on it, it's about being the ideas. I think getting to a place where you yourself have lived your life in such a way,

produced work in such a way, made brave or virtuous decisions in such a way that you yourself can serve as a model for other people. Right, so maybe even using that as your own standard, who do I want to be? Right, who am I want to be? Who am I aspiring to be? And what would that person do in this situation?

Would they take the shortcut? They phone it in. Would they do the expedient thing? Would they do the short term thing? You know, what would they do? And pushing yourself to be that person, that's to me what stoicism is about. And I think, again, the example of Kato is so inspiring because for literally hundreds

of years, Kato was that example. Kato was that for Thrasia and for Senica. For countless stillyx on down, Kato was the inspiring example. When I had Tom Rick's on the podcast, whose another great book, I highly recommend First Principles, which we also sell in the bookstore, Cato was Washington's Cato. Cato was Washington built his whole life around living up to the example of Cato.

And he didn't always get there, but he pushed himself to get there. And so again, try to find that towering example. That's the first part. And let them guide your behavior, let them call you, hold you accountable to what you're capable of being. And then strive to be that in such a way that you yourself

for your children, for your colleagues, for your neighbor, for whomever, you yourself can serve as a kind of example for them. 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. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on Page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellissi.

And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the build up, 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 Brittany and Jamie Lin spears. When Brittany's fans formed the free Brittany movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lin'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 Wondery app.