The Daily Stoic - You Must Attack The Day | Stillness Is The Key Summarized In 5 Minutes

Episode Date: July 12, 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 the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy. I hope you enjoy. I hope you enjoy. Hi, I'm David Brown,

the host of Wunderree'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. You must attack the day. In Meg Mason's hilarious and moving novel, Sorrow and Bliss, and I interviewed her recently on the Daily Stove Podcast, Patrick tries to convince his wife Martha, who struggles with depression to get out and have some fun. We have to attack the day he tells her, which was a reference to a podcast they had listened to, and in it the guests had explained the need to attack the day so it doesn't attack you.

This becomes a helpful though somewhat contentious mantra between the two characters, as it was in its own way for Marcus to release. Isn't that what Marcus to release is doing at the opening of book five of meditations, trying to convince himself that he has to get up and do what his nature demands, that he has to attack the dawn to get what he can from life. And yet this was also quite difficult for Marcus, due to his very real struggles with insomnia. Of course, in the ancient world, they had no understanding of these things, be they depression or insomnia. They thought it was all simply a matter of willpower, which it certainly is not. In the novel, Patrick thinks he can simply cheer or encourage his

wife into getting it together, when in fact it's so much more complicated than that. As Made Mason explained in her interview on the Daily Stove podcast, for a person suffering from depression, even the thought of refilling an ice tray in the freezer might be too much. All of which is to say yes, we must attack the day, but we must also understand that some people are being attacked by the day. It's not their fault. It might not even be visible.

It may well be incomprehensible, but they're having a hard time. It's not their fault. And we need to be patient and empathetic with them. We need to support them, and we need to protect them. I still remember where I was when I had the idea for stillness as the key. I was walking with my family in Bastrop State Park. And you know, you just sort of get a hit. You don't know where ideas come from or why,

why the news is visit them upon you. But I have found that almost every book I have ever written is a book I desperately needed. It was something I needed to explore and in exploring it learned a lot myself. As Seneca says, we learn as we teach, I've learned so much writing my books and stillness being, I think an important reset and important philosophy

shift in my own life that shifted who I am, how I think about things, how I live my life, and certainly set me up to think I was writing stillness as the key in 2018. It came out in the fall of 2019 and then to go into the pandemic, this sort of moment of forced stillness for so many of us, I don't know if I would have been in a position to survive and thrive.

I don't think I would describe that that the last few years have thrived in that sense. I don't think I would have been in a position to do that had I not gone through the experience of writing still this is the key. But what is that idea? I mean, what is stillness? What is it the key to?

That's what I want to talk about in today's episode. I'm going to summarize stillness is the key in five minutes because I think stillness is the most important force in the world. I think it's certainly the source of not just my best work, but my happiest moments. And I'll give you this quote from Sena, that I think captures it. He says, you may be sure that you are at peace with yourself when no noise reaches you when no word shakes you out of yourself, whether it be flattery or a threat or merely an empty sound buzzing about you with unmeaning din. In this episode, I'm going to summarize that book, number one, New York Times best selling book,

Stillness is the key, that took me years to write, and just a few minutes for you. So enjoy it. You can check out the book at anywhere books are sold. There's an audiobook version, e-book version, we have signed copies in the Daily Soak Store, and of course, at thepainterpourch.com. It hit me a couple of years ago

that of all my happiest moments, all my most successful moments when I did my best work, they all had one thing in common, this idea of stillness. Even though I was active, even though I was often doing things, that everything kind of had slowed down. Everything was clearer. I was operating on a different plant. Now there's a lot of words for this called

flow state, Caldrupal, Caldrupal, Caldrupal. Deep work. The stoic concept is stillness. Mark Srami's talks about being like the rock that the waves crash over and eventually even the raging sea falls still around. And so that's the idea in my book Stillness is the key. It's a book that debuted in number one on the New York Times Missile List. I've talked about it everywhere from Google to NBA teams. I think you'll really like it, but I'm going to give you this book in five minutes. Hopefully you'll have time to read it. But if not, I just want you to leave with the ideas of why stillness is so important and what it can do for you. The first part of the book is the domain of the mind, mental stillness.

I open the book with this story of Seneca, Seneca is trying to write in Rome, and there's all this crazy noise around him. He's in this apartment you can hear yelling on the street below. By the way, also his life is falling apart. And Seneca writes, I have toughened my nerves against this kind of thing. He says, I force myself to concentrate. All outdoors may be bedlam, provided there's no disturbance within. And he says, you will know that you have stillness

when no noise reaches you, when nothing shakes you. But that's like the hardest thing to do in the world. Blaze Pascal said, all of the ills of humanity come from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone. And so in the first part of the book, I talk about managing your inputs. Who do you let in? What information sources are you getting?

Talk about journaling. And Frank talks about how paper is more patient than people. This is really important. Talk about emptying the mind. I talk about cultivating silence. You need quiet. You also need wisdom. You need study.

You need to read. And then finally, I talk about letting go. At a certain point, you have to make your decision if to do your best, then understand the results are not up to you. And then the next discipline, which is the spirit, the emotion. And I tell the story of Tiger Woods, who was brilliant,

but spiritually was not just bankrupt, but utterly out of control and eventually ruins himself. His father used to refer to enough as the eward. Imagine how much that would screw you up. And so really the second part of the book is about this stuff. Our emotions, our urges, our desires, right? You could be locked in and focused, but if you crave unlimited amounts of money or fame,

you're also not gonna be focused and do good work. You wanna do great work from a place of fullness, not emptiness, not a place of desire and temptation, but a place of, I'm good enough, I'm doing my best. That is enough. And then the last thing I talk about in this section of the book is really just appreciating beauty and the wonder of the world around us.

Going out in nature, it stills you, it calms you down because you realize how small you are in comparison to the immensity of the universe. The final domain in the pursuit of stillness is the physical domain. So in the third part of the book, I talk about Winston Churchill, who is ambitious, who was a striver, who was always pushing,

and yet was a remarkable creature of habit in routine. He fell in love with painting, painting saves Churchill's life. How do we have a routine? How do we have hobbies? How do we have physical practices that by keeping his active actually slow down and still the mind?

A key part of the physical domain for me is, what do you say no to so you can say yes to the things that matter? So you can say yes to stillness. And then we have too much stuff. And wonder why we don't have stillness were being encroached by all of our possessions. The stuff we own ends up owning us. But look, all the philosophies of the ancient world,

from the Stoics to the Christians, Confucians, the Buddhists, they spoke of stillness as this powerful force, philosophies of the ancient world, from the Stoics to the Christians, Confusions, the Buddhists. They spoke of stillness as this powerful force, one of the most powerful forces on the earth. You know, it's the ability to slow down, clarify your thinking, to center your soul, to direct your effort, to be steady while the world spins. So stillness to me is the secret to elite performance. It's the peace that makes room for happiness.

It's the key to everything that matters. The best things in my life have come from stillness. The best work in my life has come from stillness. The question is the idea in the book and I do hope you check it out is how can you find it? What would you be capable of doing if you had that stillness? Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoog podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple

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in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans form the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship. Jamie Lynn'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.

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