The Daily Stoic - Worry About This And Forget The Rest
Episode Date: January 15, 2025What’s up to us is that we do our best, what’s up to us is that we are the best we’re capable of being.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Dad email: DailyDad.com🎙️ Listen to Th...e Daily Dad Podcast on Apple Podcast and Spotify 📔 Get a signed leatherbound edition of The Daily Dad here: dailydad.com/leather🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow 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.
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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to The Daily Stoic early and ad free right now.
Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcast. and wisdom, everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some
of history's greatest men and women.
For more, you can visit us, dailystow.com.
Worry about this and forget the rest.
There was once a young, promising Greek politician whose rise threatened
some established leaders. As a way to blunt his potential, they promoted him to a—and promote
there as in quotes—to a job overseeing the city's sewers and water. It was supposed to be a
humiliation or at the very least a dead-end job. Instead, he did such a good job, he endeared himself to the population.
And with discipline and earnestness,
Plutarch writes that he proceeded to transform
that insignificant office into a great and respected honor,
even though previously it had involved nothing more
than overseeing the clearing of dung
and the diverting of water from the streets.
Whatever we do, if we do it well, is noble.
We told a related story in the Daily Dad email recently.
Email and a podcast we do every day, like the Daily Stoic.
You can just add it into your Spotify or Apple subscriptions and just get an extra short
message every single day.
But the point is, we told this story from Toni Morrison.
She came home one day complaining about her job cleaning someone's house to her father and she expected
her dad to get angry on her behalf or to pity her and instead he just said, listen, you don't live
there, you live here with your people. Go to work, get your money and come on home. What he was
teaching her, Morrison later wrote, became a set of principles she based her life around. Whatever the work, do it well.
Not for the boss, but for yourself.
You make the job.
It doesn't make you.
Your real life is with us, your family.
You are not the work you do.
You are the person you are.
What's in our control is how we do the job.
What's in our control is who we are while we do the job.
Whether it's appreciated, whether it's an impressive or lowly job,
whether the project succeeds or fails, that is not up to us.
What's up to us is that we do our best.
What's up to us is that we are the best we are capable of being.
The rest, the Stoics say, is not even worth worrying about.
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