Are You Bringing The Words To Life? | This Is Why You're Anxious.

0:00I'm recording this on a Monday, and Monday is our grocery store day in our family. I usually pick my kids up from school and we go over to Whole Foods, get all our groceries for the week. Although here very shortly, we're going to go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at$1.49 a pound if you have Prime with organic birds at$2.99 a pound. And they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials, whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends.

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1:21Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com.

2:11Are you bringing the words to life? When Shaka Smart recruits players, he gives them a 26-page culture document that outlines exactly what his program stands for and who they are striving to be as a team. It details what will be expected of them, how they'll train, how they'll treat their teammates, how they'll carry themselves on and off the court. It is detailed. It is specific. It's non-negotiable. We say that culture is simply how we act, interact, and respond. That's it, Shaka. Smart explains. So you can stuff it up on the wall, you can have a culture doc, but if it's just words on paper, it doesn't really matter.

2:53Our job is to bring it to life. This, as Epictetus said, is actually the job of the philosopher too. When the standards have been set, the work of philosophy is just this, to examine and uphold the standards. But the work of a truly good person, Epictetus says, is using those standards when we know them. So yeah, look, it's great that we read meditations or letters from a Stoic and discourses or even the Daily Stoic or these emails. It's great that we do our journaling. It's great that we underline passages, that we take notes, that we save quotes. It's great that you're listening to this podcast.

3:31But if it's just words on paper or a screen or in our earbuds, it doesn't really matter. We have to bring it to life. Epictetus also said that we don't explain our philosophy, we embody it. He was saying, don't talk about it, be about it. The whole point of Stoicism is what you do. It's about who you are. It's the act of virtue, not the act of talking about virtue. If you want to do a deep dive into Epictetus, we're spending the whole month of July trying to give Epictetus the attention he deserved. doing a deep dive into his life, his lessons, and the legacy of this incredible teacher. Well, we'd love to have you join us.

4:12We're just calling it How to Read Epictetus, and it's going to be a practical companion where you can do a deep dive into his books. You can have some discussions with our fellow Daily Stoic members, thousands of Stoics all over the world. And on July 26, we're going to do a live Q &A about it, sort of a group reading discussion, which I'm really excited about it. Plus, we have discounted copies of the Penguin Classics edition of Epictetus, which you can bundle with the course. That and more at dailystoic.com slash epictetuscourse. I'd love to see in there. You got to sign up before July 26th.

4:45I'm really excited to do this with you. We're going to have a bunch more Epictetus stuff the coming weeks, but I wanted to tell you about it. And I wanted to remind you, if you're thinking about joining Daily Stoic Life and you haven't yet, you can get this course and all the courses for free, dailystoiclife.com. I hope to see you in there and I hope you join us as we explore the fascinating life of Epictetus.

5:14I'm pretty good with my money. I don't live outside my means, but I have one very expensive habit. A habit that if I'm not careful will cost me everything. What I'm talking about is anxiety and nothing in my life costs me more than it. Nothing has taken me out of more moments. Nothing has caused more fights. Nothing has stressed me out more. Seneca says he who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary. That's why I say anxiety has cost me so much. It has caused me so much unnecessary suffering. And in today's video, I wanna share the best stoic advice to confront and then discard your anxiety so you can live a life of clarity and peace and purpose.

6:00One thing that's never changed about the world is how much of it's out of our control. 2 ,000 years ago, it was largely out of the control of all the Stoics. Even Marcus Reilius, the most powerful man in the world, most things are not in his control. When we have a way we'd like things to go, we know they might not go that way. What does that create? That creates anxiety. And so for thousands of years, the Stoics have been dealing with this thing that you and i are still dealing with today we get nervous we worry we have anxiety we have fears and dread mark surrealist in meditations talks about how he had a good day because he escaped anxiety and then he actually corrects himself because actually no i didn't escape it i discarded it because it was within me he's he's realizing that he is the common variable in all the situations that cause him anxiety just as you are anxiety is within us so we want to work on it and think about it so it doesn't rule our lives or ruin our lives this is my little reminder here This is an anxiety coin I carry.

6:54It's a little fidget. And it's got some stoic reminders on it. And that's because even now, even after all these years of studying philosophy, I still deal with anxiety.

7:05Whenever Epictetus saw someone who was in the throes of anxiety, he tried to think about what they were after. He said, if a person isn't wanting something outside of their control, they'd have no reason to be upset, no reason to worry. I think that's an interesting way of thinking about anxiety. The cause is never the thing itself. It's our desire, our expectation, our concern that things need to go a certain way or we're not going to be okay. As a parent, what do you want? You want the world to always be okay and nothing to ever go wrong for your kids. Which, of course, is not something you can ever possibly make happen.

7:38When you're traveling, what do you want? You want to get there on time. You want nothing to go wrong. But again, not only is that not possible, we know that things go wrong and most flights are delayed. For a nervous investor, you only want positive returns. You want things to go well, and that's not going to happen either. The market goes up and down. Having goals is fine. Having standards is fine. But getting worked up, getting excited, biting your nails, torturing yourself because you need it to go that way is a recipe for misery. If you can cut free of the impressions that cling to the mind, Marcus Aurelius writes in meditations, free of the future and the past, you can make yourself, he says, like a sphere rejoicing in its perfect stillness.

8:19Now, that's an ideal. I don't get there all that often. But when I am there, when I've stopped trying to make things go a certain way, when I can practice acceptance, I am happier. I am more at peace.

8:36Seneca was famous for practicing poverty. He would wear his worst clothes, eat simple foods, starve himself a little bit. He'd really like slum it for a day or two, supposedly as often as once a month. Now, why was he doing this? On one hand, it was to toughen himself up, but really it was a psychological exercise. He wanted to, as a wealthy, successful person who had a lot, he wanted to familiarize himself with losing all of it. He wanted to be able to stare poverty in the face and say, is this what you were so afraid of? Because that's what can happen in life. The things we possess become the new status quo, and then we're worried and anxious that we're going to lose them.

9:12And so the thought exercise of going, okay, what would it actually be like to not have them? There's a Zen story about a cup, and the Zen master is saying to himself over and over again, the cup is already broken, the cup is already broken. So he doesn't become so attached to it that he fears losing it, and thus doesn't actually enjoy it while he has it, because he's so petrified of something happening to it. And this is the sort of relentless anxiety that a lot of successful people have. You'd think they'd be comfortable and feel awesome and feel like they have enough, but in fact, they're just petrified of losing it.

9:40Seneca says, slavery lives beneath marble and gold. inside the palace that looks so wonderful and appealing on the outside. It's actually a lot of anxiety and stress. So he's trying to familiarize himself with losing it so it would lose its power over him.

9:58There's a great Latin expression. Basically it means it is solved by walking. Things rough at home, go for a walk. Your kids having a tough time, take them for a walk. struggling with a big decision, go for a walk. Feeling antsy or anxious, go for a walk. As a parent, walks are magic in relationships. Walks are magic. If you're a creative, walks are magic. Whatever you're dealing with, whatever you're going through, walks are magic. Seneca said the mind must be given over to long wandering walks or it'll break the way that that hammer eventually breaks against the anvil. We go for walks, we get outside, we get moving, and we're amazed at the problems it solves.

10:48There's a tension in Stoicism. So on the one hand, Seneca says we should imagine all the things that could possibly happen. This is premeditatio malorum. It says the unexpected blow lands heaviest. If you're just naively going through the world expecting everything to be wonderful, never considering that this might happen or that might happen, you're going to be caught off guard and it's going to rattle you and hurt you worse than if you had some ability to anticipate this. At the same time, he says, he who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary. He was talking about the way that we can sort of spiral and catastrophize.

11:16So it's important when we think about this premeditation malorum, the stoic idea of anticipating and considering what happened, it's not to torture ourselves. It's not just to go down this spiral of negativity and dumerism. It's to think proactively. I'll give you an example. Napoleon man said that three times a day a general should say to themselves what if the enemy appeared over here what if the enemy appeared over here what if the enemy appeared over here he wasn't saying that he just wanted his generals to be really anxious and worried all the time he was having them run through thought exercises if this happens I'll do this if this happens I'll do this if this happens I'll do this so when we think about this stoic practice it's not just for generalized anxiety or worry it's constructive okay if this happens here's what I'm going to do if this happens here's what I'm going to do it's focusing on how we might respond to this so it should actually be empowering in some way as opposed to disempowering and scary and alarming.

12:05You're thinking, here are the constructive things I can do about these hypotheticals. I believe that I have agency and power to solve this scenario if it were to happen.

12:22Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County. I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

13:07We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course, because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism, too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you.

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15:24Later, you'll laugh about this. Later, you'll see it with some perspective. Later, it'll make a good story. Later, you'll see how it was good for you. Later, you'll see how it got you where you are now. The problem is now you're upset about it. You're torturing yourself about it. you're worried about it. And that's why Mark's really said that you don't have to let this upset you. You don't have to turn it into something. You can just let it be what it is. You can just let it happen. You don't have to add this sort of injury on top, this stress that you're feeling in the moment, working yourself up about it.

15:56You can just let it be, just deal with it, just go with it.

16:04Don't seek for things to happen the way you want them to happen, but want them to happen the way that they have happened, wish for them to have happened the way that they did. That's Epictetus. He obviously precedes Nietzsche by a couple thousand years, but Nietzsche had this idea of amor fati, right? Amor fati translates to a love of fate. So instead of needing things to be a certain way, instead of simply accepting them as they are, Nietzsche and Epictetus say that human greatness, human happiness is in loving things as they actually are, saying this is the way that it's supposed to be. This is wonderful that it is that way.

16:40It was chosen for me. And this isn't even necessarily to say that you just accept the world as awful and unjust and you never try to change it. But you say, no, no, it was set up this way so I could be who I am capable of being inside of it. That's what this reminder of it means to me. Marcus really talks about how what you throw on top of a fire is fuel for the fire that turns it all into flame and brightness. that's what we're talking about. Amor fati means that you embrace life as it is. You embrace situations as they are instead of fighting them, instead of running from them, instead of resenting them, even instead of just tolerating them, you love them.

17:15That is the path to happiness and to greatness.

17:22Rome would have been a dirty place, a dark place. Rome was a violent place, smelled terribly. It's noisy. But for all that, we can imagine Marcus Aurelius. We could imagine Seneca. We could imagine Epictetus enjoying that special, wonderful time of day we now call golden hour. That few minutes in the morning, in the evening, when the sun is at just the right angle, when everything baths in a rosy goldness. And we can imagine that whatever was happening in the world, whatever was happening in their life, however frustrated or annoyed or depressed they might have been, catching a glint of that and smiling.

18:04Seneca said the whole world is a temple of the gods. I always feel that at golden hour. Mark Shrews talked about how when you stare at the stars and you imagine yourself up alongside them, that it was enough to kind of wash away the dust of life. I think golden hour does that. Everything shines for a brief moment. Everything is beautiful and soft. The sun's rays are at just the right angle. It doesn't matter what's happening in your life. It doesn't matter what's happening in the world. Golden hour is something special and we should appreciate it. And there's nothing in stoicism that precludes us from enjoying the beauty of that.

18:39Mark Sturz actually talks about this in meditations. He says, what doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness. But to get out in nature to enjoy golden hour is a way to bathe yourself in light, to cleanse yourself, to experience the world as Seneca tried to, as a temple of the gods. And to not see that, to not enjoy it, to not appreciate it despite everything that's happening in the world is a very dark existence indeed.

19:11It may be reasonable that you're concerned about this thing. It would cause trouble if it happened. Again, so when the Stokes talk about how some things are in our control, some things are not in our control. What they're saying is, well, focus on what you control about this situation. Reminding yourself that, hey, just feeling anxiety, emoting about the problem, biting your nails about it, talking about it incessantly to people. It's not making it any more or less likely to happen. So try to put that energy to constructive use. Try to think about, okay, here's what I'm going to do. Here's what I can do.

19:40here are ways that i can influence this situation or at least prepare myself to be resilient or endure or or bounce back from it if it does happen put yourself to constructive use put yourself working on something that makes a difference just make sure you're not confusing spending mental bandwidth and energy and torturing yourself emotionally don't confuse that with making a positive difference.

20:07There's a story about Cleanthes, one of the ancient Stokes, and he's walking through Athens one day and he sees this man talking to himself. You know, the way that we all do it. Like, what's wrong with you? You idiot. How could you be so stupid? You know, that sort of negative self-talk that sometimes when we get so frustrated, so disappointed in ourselves, we can't help but break out into. And Cleanthes stops and he interrupts the man and he says, hey, I just want you to know you're not talking to a bad person. What an amazing interruption. What a great kindness to do a stranger. I think we can imagine somebody doing that for us.

20:40The next time we get really riled up, the next time we get really upset with ourselves, just to remind ourselves, you're not talking to a bad person. You're talking to you. You're not talking to a bad person.

20:55Life is difficult enough. It's hard enough. You shouldn't suffer imagined troubles. Seneca says. That means don't borrow suffering. Don't get scared, worried, annoyed, anxious in advance of something that may or may not happen. That doesn't mean you're naive, you think everything's gonna go your way. You do have a plan for the worst-case scenario, but that's different than torturing yourself in anticipation of something that perhaps the odds are only 50-50 of actually even happening.

21:25what people say what people do the things that happen these things can't upset you only your opinion about those things can upset you the events are objective it's what we make up about them it's the story we tell ourselves about them it's that we say we've been insulted or offended or transgressed against or harmed that's the problem it's not things that upset us Epictetus said it's our opinion about things look it's a bad use of your creativity the time you're spending imagining what might happen the conversations you're making up in your head the things that you think people are thinking about you this is a bad way to deploy your creativity you're using it to make yourself miserable you're imagining these terrible scenarios notice you're never imagining things going well, people liking you.

22:18You're putting your imagination to work on your anxiety, on your self-consciousness, on your doubt, and it's just not a good use of it. The Stoics would say our mind is this incredibly powerful thing. How are you going to deploy it? How are you going to use it? Are you going to use it to torture yourself or are you going to use it to to move yourself forward to solve problems or create them.

22:43No amount of philosophy, Seneca says, takes away our natural feelings or inclinations. I still get nervous before almost any talk. I have anxiety, I have nerves. One of the things I've been doing lately, I have this cool stoic coin, in that it's kind of a fidget and I just spin it. I like to touch, it's got a hole in the middle, and you just touch it like this. It has this quote from Epictetus on the front. Is this in my control or is this not in my control? Is this up to me or not up to me? That's the essence of Stoic philosophy. Marx really says that we have to remember the thing is not causing us anxiety.

23:13We are causing the anxiety in ourselves. It's within us, which means that we can let it go. We don't have to give ourselves over to it. And so that's just one of the little things I remind myself. We have to remember Stoic philosophy isn't this magical thing that removes all the flaws and problems and urges and temptations we have inside of us. No, it's framework for working through them. it's a set of tools for dealing with them. That's how I think about anxiety and that's why I carry this with me.

23:43Look things are gonna go sideways, people are gonna say things, people are gonna do things. There are definitely gonna be problems in life. Things that you don't want to happen are going to happen. That is how it goes. But remember the Stoics say it can only harm you if it harms your character. If it changes who you are, if it makes you vindictive or resentful or lazy or entitled, if it makes you worse as a person, then you have been harmed. But people don't have the power to make us worse as human beings. That's something we control. That's within us. So who we are in response to what happens, that's where the harm can come from, but it's also where the benefit can come from.

24:22It can only harm you if it harms your character. That's the essence of Stoic philosophy. It can only harm you if it harms your character and we decide whether this thing degrades us or improves us. We decide if we harm our character in response to what has happened to us.

24:43You're being crazy letting them determine whether you did a good job or not, whether you're happy or not, whether you're a success or not. Marksworth says ambition is tying your happiness to what people do and say and think. Sanity, he says, is tying it to your own actions. Like when I work on my books, the writing of the book is up to me. How it does on the bestseller list, what people think about it, what the reviews say, that isn't up to me. So my definition of success is an internal one. I'm focused on the parts of it I control. Do I want other people to like it and care about it? Sure, I guess it's nice to have, but it's extra.

25:18It's not why I do it because to need it is to be insane and of course incredibly vulnerable. Every day I send out one Stoic inspired email totally for free, almost a million people all over the world. If you want to take your Stoicism journey to the next level, I would love for you to subscribe. It's totally for free. You can unsubscribe at any time. There's no spam. Just go to dailystoic.com slash email. Love to see you there.

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