The Daily Stoic - You Are Not Seeing The Whole Picture | Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself

Episode Date: September 9, 2021

Ryan explains why legacy is for everyone else not for you, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.Blinkist is the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://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 Stood Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. 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. on music or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, and the art of living, which I wrote with my wonderful

co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the stoics from Epititus Markis 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. You're not seeing the whole picture. It can be really discouraging. Online, we see people being rude to each other. We see the signaling and the endless bragging

in the status obsession. We see people who aren't being safe or smart or conscientious during the pandemic. We see people who use their kids as props to get validation and attention or money. And in some cases, sending them away when being a parent becomes too difficult. It's everyone like this, we ask ourselves, am I doing something wrong? Am I actually the one who is crazy?

No, we have to remember, we are not seeing the whole picture. We're not seeing people who are social distancing because by definition, they're either staying indoors or far enough apart that they don't fit in the frame of an Instagram photo. You're not seeing your fellow moderates because they don't get in ridiculous arguments and they don't go around trolling people. The people who live their lives with quiet dignity, privacy, and goodness, their names and faces are never going to be plastered across the news. Marcus Aurelius tells us how we have to make sure that we're not seeing what the enemy wants us to see,

that we're only seeing what's really there. We got to remember the crazy people are the ones desperate for attention. Reckless people want you to know what they're doing. They want to gaslight you, they have to. Their cognitive dissonance demands that they must try and convince you. And the only way they know how to do that is by being louder and angrier and more competitive and

more shameless and more certain than everyone else. It's all very strange and ultimately rooted in their own issues. It has nothing to do with you. The important thing is to understand how much this can distort our picture of reality. It'll mess with your compass if you let it. You have to see through the noise, through that distortion field. You have to use objective judgment and essential stoic skill to account for the biases and the outliers. When you do, when you have honed that timeless discipline of perception, you will realize you're not actually alone.

Stoicism just doesn't photograph well. It's not viral, it's quiet, it's private, it's self-sufficient. But don't let you think that you're the only one sticking to those core virtues of courage and moderation and justice and wisdom in a time of excess and stupidity, selfishness and paranoia. As they say on arrest to development, there are dozens of us.

Dozens! Nothing to fear, but fear itself. But there is no reason to live and no limit to our miseries, if we let our fears predominate. That's Seneca's moral letters, 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 and 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 cellist. It's just more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the

bestseller. It's just an awesome experience. But I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoke.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading. In the early days of what would become known as the Great Depression, a new president named Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn in and gave his first inaugural address. As the last president to hold the office before the 20th Amendment was ratified, FDR wasn't able to take office until March, meaning that the country had been

without strong leadership for months. Panic was in the air, banks were failing and people were scared. You've probably heard the nothing to fear, but fear itself sound bite that FDR gave in that famous speech. But the full line is worth reading because it applies to so many difficult things we face in life. He says, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,

nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. The Stoics knew that fear was to be feared because of the miseries it creates. The things we fear, pale in comparison to the damage we do to ourselves and others when we unthinkingly scramble to avoid them. An economic depression is bad, but a panic is worse. And a tough situation isn't helped by terror, it only makes things harder. And that's why we must resist it and reject it if we want to turn this thing around. I'll do a little surprise for you because obviously I wrote the Daily Stoke quite some time ago, but as it happens,

I retooled this story and I forgot that I told it in the Daily Stoke, but I retell part of the story in my new book, Courage is Calling, which you can actually preorder right now. There's a bunch of bonuses. You can go to DailyStoke.com slash preorder, but I'll read you some riffing from this chapter because I'm very proud of it.

And let me see if I have it here. All right, so this is from, I think the third or fourth chapter in the book and it says the important thing is to not be afraid. It's easy to be scared, especially lately. Events can escalate at any moment. There is uncertainty. You could lose your job, then your house, and your car. Something could even happen to your kids. Of course we're going to feel something when things are shaky like that. How could we not?

Even the ancient Stokes, supposedly the masters of all emotion, conceded that will have involuntary reactions to loud noises, to uncertainty, to being attacked. They had a word for these immediate, precognitive impressions of things. Phantasyia, they were not to be trusted. Do you know what is the most repeated phrase in the Bible? It's be not afraid. Over and over again, these words appear a warning not to let first impressions rule the day.

And then I quote some of the parts from the Bible where they talk about this. It's actually stunning how much it appears. And I reference a Hebrew prayer that dates back to the 1800s. It says, the world is a narrow bridge and the important thing is not to be afraid. The wisdom of this expression I write has sustained the Jewish people through incredible adversity and terrible tragedies. It was even turned into a popular song in the Yam Kapoor War. It's a reminder, yes, things are dicey, and it's easy to be scared if you look down

instead of forward, but fear will not help. And when the markets crashed in October 1929, America faced a horrendous economic crisis that lasted 10 years. Banks failed. Investors were wiped out and employment was some 20%. Franklin Delano Roosevelt succeeded a president who had tried and failed for three and a half years to make a dent in the problem. Was he scared? Of course he was. I could not have been. Everyone was scared. But what FDR canceled on that now,

legendary inaugural address in 1933 was that fear was a choice. Fear was the real enemy because it only made things worse. It would destroy the remaining banks. It would turn people against each other. It would prevent the implementation of cooperative solutions. Who does good work when they're afraid? Who can see clearly when they're afraid? Who can help others? How can you love when you're afraid? How can you do anything when you're afraid? The receiver can't catch the football if they flinch an anticipation of the hit. The artist can't deliver the performance

if they tremble at the ready pens of the critics and the politician will rarely make the decision if they worry about the consequences at the polls. The family will never get started if all the couple can think about is how hard it's going to be and an army that lets a retreat turn into a route will be slaughtered. There is no room for fear not with what we want to do. This life we're living, this world we inhabit, it is a scary place. If you peer over the side of a narrow bridge you can lose your heart to continue,

you freeze up, you sit down, you don't make good decisions, you don't see or think clearly. So the important thing is to not be afraid. Anyway, that is like the first riff I have given at all about courage is calling, I got a little excited, I'm here recording it like 10 o'clock at night after the kids are asleep and I thought I'd throw up this little teaser. I do hope you pre-order the book There's a bunch of amazing bonuses. You can do that at dailystoke.com slash pre-order if you've liked the podcast If you want to support daily stoke in any way that would be it. It means a whole bunch to me I love this book. You're gonna love it. It comes out at the end of September But if you could pre-order it now, it would be so helpful. Thank you.

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. Hey, there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies

to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together they discuss their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big

challenges and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wonder yet. podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wonder yet.