The Daily Stoic - You Need To Police Your Side of the Street | Silence Is Strength

Episode Date: August 5, 2021

“There’s no question that there are extremists on both sides of any meaningful divide. That there are liars and frauds on both sides. That there are abuses on both sides. That both sides are preposterously wrong about things that are glaringly obvious to you, and frustratingly right about things that are not. This is true wherever you live, whatever issues you’re talking about. ”Ryan explains why you should worry about your own problems before you worry about others, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow 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 Wondery'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 Epipetus 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 need to police your own side of the street. There's no question that there are extremists on both sides of any meaningful divide. That there are liars and frauds on both sides. That there are abuses on both sides. That both sides are preposterously wrong about things that are glaringly obvious to you and frustratingly right about things that are not. This is true wherever you live, whatever issues you're talking about. It is also true and has been true for thousands of years that there is only one solution to

this, and it's not screaming and yelling at them. A while back when we had Mike Duncan on the podcast, whose fantastic book The Storm Before the Storm is a must read for anyone that's trying to understand what's happening in the world today, he said that by looking at the events of the 100 years leading up to the rise of Julius Caesar, we can understand not just what went wrong in Rome, but what's going wrong today in so many modern nations. In ancient Rome, then, there were egregious abuses by many parties, factions as they became known. One side would do something wrong and then in response,

justifiably in many cases, the other side would respond. And the tit for tat that ensued would escalate things into chaos and ultimately destruction. When we asked Mike how a country or a culture escapes from this trap, he responded quite clearly. You police your own side of the street. Meaning no party or faction is ever going to have much success rooting out extremists or bad policies or bad faith from the opposition. What they can do, however, is focus on those things within their own group. Forget someone else's hypocrisy,

just try to minimize your own. This is also a basic stoic principle as it happens. Focus on what you control. Focus on holding yourself to a high standard. Leave other people's mistakes to their makers, as Marcus really has said. It's easy to get distracted with what other people do and say,

but what matters is what you do and say. It matters what injustices you refuse to tolerate, what lies you refuse to propagate, what compromises and concessions you're willing to offer, how much patience and good faith you're willing to bring, what kind of dispassionate analysis and data that you offer. That's what you control. That's where you can have an impact. That's where we all can make a difference, whatever party or faction we belong to. Silence is strength. Silence is a lesson learned from the many sufferings of life. Seneca, the Estes 309. This is from today's entry in the daily Stoic 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance in the art of living, which features new translations of Seneca, epictetus, and Marx's

release by yours truly, Ryan, holiday, and get this anywhere. Books are sold and we even have a leather edition in the Daily Stoke store, and you can even get that signed personalized by me if you want one to carry with you always. But let's get into today's entry. Recall the last time you said a really bone-headed thing, something that came back to bite you. Why did you say it? Chances are you didn't need to, but you thought doing so would make you look smart or cool, part of a group.

The more you say, Robert Green is written, the more likely you are to say something foolish. To that, we add, the more you say, the more likely you are to blow past opportunities, ignore feedback and cause yourself suffering. The experienced and fearful talk to reassure themselves, the ability to listen, to deliberately keep out of a conversation, and to subsist without validation is rare. Silence is a way to build strength and self-sufficiency. I remember when I was writing this little meditation, I was thinking about a moment when I was working in Hollywood right after college and I was in this meeting with

a bunch of older people and a bunch of big sort of executives at this talent management agency and they were talking about something and I sort of loosely knew about it and I remember inserting myself and going, oh I know him, he said, X, Y, Z and everyone was really nice and you know, nodded and then moved on with the conversation and later my mentor said, took me aside and said, Ryan, why did you say that in the meeting? He said, did it really need to be said, or did you just want to have something to say? And that really shook me because he was right. I just felt awkward sitting there and not saying anything. And I just said something.

But there's all sorts of great expressions about this, right? It's better to be silent and thought of fooled and to open your mouth and remove all that. I just shown that I was insecure and weak and didn't really have that much to add. Robert Greens has always say less than necessary. I think that's a great line. I think it was Zeno or Kato said better to trip with the feet than with the tongue, right? Or two ears, one mouth, right? Talk less than you listen and then also that you know, you can never unsay what has been said.

So silence is is a virtue. We all talk more than we need to. Talk, talk, talk. We talk. This is what social media does, right? Social media tries to get us to say things that we don't really need to be said, because why? Because it benefits the social media company, right? I see this all the time with the sports teams that I've been lucky enough to work with.

Some guy goes into locker room and then just vents or vomits out on Twitter and it causes weeks of drama. But if you just kept it to himself or he'd only said it to a coach, you know, he would have been better off. And there's one more line I think about. I think I talk about this and he goes the enemy, but William to come to Sherman, he said, you know, never give a reason for why you believe something or what you're doing.

Don't go on the record about it. He said, because you might change your mind. So again, being a tad more reserved, keeping yourself in check, not rushing out, not blurting out every thought or emotion or belief that you have, being able to be a tad more confident, be willing to be thought a little bit foolish, or at least taciturn and withdrawn, they're way more advantages to saying less than there are advantages to saying more.

Even if that's not true in the moment, over time, paper trail is used against you. I think we're seeing this with politicians and also young people trying to get jobs. You didn't need to say all that stuff on social media. And now, years later, when you don't even care about it, when you don't even mean it, when you're appalled by it, well, you did say it and it's there.

So keep yourself in check today, put some buffers between you and blurting stuff out, always say less than necessary. It is a lot of power for reason people. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. You just go to dailystoke.com slash email. So check it out at dailystoke.com slash email. So check it out at dailystoke.com slash email.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily stoke 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. 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 discussed 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

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