The Daily Stoic - You Can Keep It To Yourself | Ask DS

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

One of the criticisms of the Stoics is that they left certain things unaddressed. Nowhere in Seneca’s writings, for instance, does he directly address Nero or criticize him by name. Even after he left Nero’s service, as the man spiraled out of control, Seneca stuck with the code that General Mattis would stick with centuries later–keeping their opinions about the administration they once served to themselves. Marcus Aurelius, most scholars deduce, was not a fan of Seneca’s actions while serving Nero–yet deduction is all we’re able to do, because nowhere does Marcus criticize Seneca. All we’re left with is a conspicuous absence in Meditations.---And in today's Ask DS, Ryan presents part two of his Q&A sessions with a team of doctors about his morning routine, how the study of history can be both grounding and elevating, his feelings about modern life and technology, and more.✉️  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 where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics. We're trying to apply this philosophy just as you are.

Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with daily stoic life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happen to be someone there recording. Thank you for listening and we hope this is of use to you. [♪ Music playing in background,

playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background,

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playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background,

playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background No where in Seneca's writings, for instance, does he directly address Nero or criticize him by name? Even after he left Nero's service as the man's spiral doubt of control, Seneca stuck with the code that General Mattis would stick to centuries later, keeping one's opinions about the administration they served themselves. Marcus Aurelius, most scholars deduce, was not a fan of Seneca's actions while serving Nero, and yet deduction is all we're able to do because nowhere does Marcus criticize Seneca. All we're left with is a conspicuous absence in meditations. Now, perhaps you disagree

and think Seneca should have been more vocal. Maybe Marcus was holding back and he shouldn't have. But what if the stokes were just practicing the boundaries, the restraint that we talked about here recently? Patty Davis, the writer as well as the daughter of President Ronald Reagan, has come to appreciate this concept with the passage of time. In her earlier writings, she was unvarnished in revelatory,

mostly about herself and her famous family. It helped the book sell, but did it help her long term? Years ago, she said, someone asked me what I would say to my younger self if I could. Without hesitating, I answered, that's easy. I'd have said, be quiet. had said, be quiet. Not forever, but until I could stand back and look at things through a wider lens until I understood that words have consequences, and they last for a really long time. She was passing on this advice to Prince Harry, whose controversial memoir is not only breaking sales records,

but centuries of royal tradition. But it's advice that we can appreciate too, even if we're not writers or royalty. We don't have to share every thought, we don't have to voice every frustration, we don't have to put every objection on the record. We can wait. We can look at things through a wider lens. We can let our silence speak volumes. 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

and connectivity features. Enjoy unmatched productivity and connectivity with incredible savings on our best tech. Get free shipping and special financing with Dell Business Credit. Dell Technologies recommends Windows 11 Pro for business. Find the right tech for your needs by calling a Dell Technologies Advisor at 877 Ask Dell. That's 877 Ask Dell, offered to business customers by Web Bank who determines qualifications for in terms of credit. Josh Dines says, I'm a big fan of your work. You started with a great band, you had about the intro struggle to stay comfortable and bad

versus getting out of bed and do what you're meant to do. As a follow up, would you mind describing your morning routine that you used to set the tone for today? Yeah, obviously today's a bit unusual because I have this in the morning and then I'm flying out at night. But for me, my routine is I try to get up early. I've got two young kids,

so I don't really have a choice in the matter to begin with. But I get up early. One of my rules is yeah, no using the phone in the morning. Once it's light out, the kids and I, we live out in the country. So we go for a walk. We go outside, we, you know, watch the sun come up. We're active. I like starting the day with something active. Usually I'll journal in the morning, sometimes I'll journal at night, but I like to do a little journaling that's part of that sort of morning routine. And then my other rule is, I guess, I don't really eat breakfast. I'm more of a sort of an intermittent fasting person. So I like, I'm waking up, I've taken a break from the phone, I've taken a break from stuffing food in my mouth until like 10 or 11. And then my rule or my practice as a creative or a writer is that I do the hard thing first, which is usually writing.

Like, what is the task that requires the most concentration, the most focus that needs the most uninterrupted time. I don't leave that until three in the afternoon when I'm tired, frustrated, you know, a million things have happened. I do that stuff in the morning. I really like Cal Newport's work, deep work, digital minimalism. But I think his point is that, it's those moments of uninterrupted concentration, whether that's study, whether that's practice,

whether that's the act of your job itself. I think you do that in the morning. I'm what I don't wanna do is a bunch of phone calls, a bunch of administrative, I don't wanna do the is a bunch of phone calls, a bunch of administrators. I don't want to do the kind of soul sucking stuff, you know, first, and then come to the task, which I think requires a certain amount of presence and reverence even.

I don't want to do that when I'm fried. We got, I think it's sometimes challenging as food will be due, because we're in a pretty early going to the operating room going to work. And the animal King certainly helps a lot. Hello, Zyra, Rodriguez, one of our joint patient surveys here says I love your point.

And I'll add to his questions first, is what is about the study of history? What is it about the study of history that is both grounding and elevating? Yeah, I mean, the follow-up, the follow-up, I just say, I think, how did you get interested in this in this course of study? I mean, I think what you take from history first and foremost is how nothing changes. People are people we've been doing the exact same things for thousands of years, you know, you know, reading Marcus Real is that the outset of the pandemic, you go,

oh, he wasn't just being figurative. He was being literal. Like he has this great line in, in Meditations where he says, and speaking again, I thought he was being figurative until we had our own pandemic, but he said, there's two types of plagues. He says, there's the one that destroys your life. And then he's like, there's the one that destroys your character. And I think we saw this during COVID, right? Obviously, COVID was devastating and deadly. Although for most people, it was not too bad, thankfully, gracefully.

But then there was this other thing that a lot of people caught, which seems way worse than COVID, right? We're talking conspiratorial thinking, selfishness, callousness, you know, sort of a rejection of science or, you know, logic or facts in any way. I think what you learn when you study history is you get a distilled look at human nature and the human experience in a way that is not biased by current events.

So I think reading or watching the news as it is breaking is probably the worst way to actually understand the humans in front of you and what's happening and what's going on and you'd be far better off turning to something a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago because it gives you a deeper understanding without the recency bias and without you know having you know you without being distracted by the names or places or whatever, I think it gives you a deeper understanding of it. And so, yeah, I've always loved history, I've always loved biography. And I think it's just, you know, it's just sort of riveting and

fascinating. And I think we all have duty as professionals as well as, you know, citizens in a democracy to be informed. I just think sometimes we assume that watching Fox or MSNBC or refreshing your Twitter feed is how one becomes an informed and educated person and that's probably the worst possible way to do it. So Ian Kelly, my same last thing that related, she says wonderful talk, the challenges to cognitively thoughts and story sees her favorite present small price. She chooses tranquility at penis. It's disgusting.

We all can improve judging the importance of things. Yeah, just a quick line from Epictetus, Epictetus says, it's not things that upset us. It's our judgment about things. So I think part of the Stoic practice is the idea that events are objective. A virus doesn't care about you, the market, whether it's going up or down, doesn't care about you. And in fact, you know, there is no such thing as a bear market or a bull market.

These are just words that we've made up to describe things, right? The event, the world life is objective, the Stoics would say, and then we upset ourselves by having opinions about whether this should or shouldn't be whose fault it is, whether it's fair or unfair, like it just is, and I think the Stoic practice is sort of accepting that and then finding the good in it or finding the good you can do through it. I think it would have everyone more and then we'll have to wrap it up. Dr. Felice asked the question with all of the importance of being present, what are your feelings about modern life and our enslavement by self-owning other technologies and how do

we address this? Yeah, there's a great line from Sennaka. He's saying like, he's like, show me a person who isn't a slave. He's like, someone's a slave to their mistress. Someone's a slave to their ambition. Someone's a slave to their enormous estate. He says, which is ironic because it's tended by slaves, you know, back in ancient Rome and Greece.

His point was that like we should be alarmed by anything that exerts a certain amount of control or power over us, you know, this device being a great example of it. I recommended the book earlier, but wait, no, this is the world without email. The Caldoubois book, where is it? Digital minimalism is it was definitely influential to me. To me, the question I like to ask is, am I using the device or is the device using me? And I try to create systems or structures where I get the value out of the thing as opposed to being the value for the thing, right? They say like if you're not paying for it,

you're the product that's being sold and realizing that that's mostly what these social networks do. So, I try to create a system where I have some space from it, where I've limited the number of apps that are on it, where I limit the number of alerts that I have on it, and in trying to do that, I'm trying to create the space for the equanimity or the tranquility or the focus,

because I'm just, I'm never on social media, and then afterwards think like, I'm so glad I did that. I'm normally like, how, where did an hour go? How did I just lose an hour scrolling these videos, right? And so I'm not perfect at it. I don't think any of us are.

I think the smartest people in the world have spent a lot of time trying to make us helplessly dependent on these things, but even understanding that. Like when you go into a casino, you know that it's rigged and it's designed to disorient and to ultimately extract from you. And I think even just having that understanding of the digital world, your email inbox, your social media apps, the phone itself, it's designed to increase use time. And if you can have a more adversarial relationship with it,

then you're at least operating from a position of awareness as opposed to enslavement. So Ryan, as we all, it's great, this is amazing talk. I really appreciate you taking the time. It's the person that introduced me to stoicism. I'm going to let Todd and I have the last word. So thank you very much. It was really amazing.

Opportunity is meant to play with you. Now is a total honor. I really appreciate 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. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast

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