Avoid This Form Of Insanity | Take A Walk

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1:27Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

2:07Avoid this form of insanity. The definition of insanity, they say, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Yet that's exactly what we do. On Ramit Sethi's podcast about couples and their financial issues, he talks about a common course of insanity, budgets. We tell ourselves that we should keep a budget. This will solve my financial problems, we tell ourselves, as so many guests on the podcast do. It's a cliche piece of advice that runs almost invariably into the fact that while it may be easy to write a budget, almost no one manages to keep one. Yet here we are beating ourselves up about not keeping a budget for a period of time, and then we try a budget again, and the cycle repeats.

2:47As Ramit recently instructed one couple, if something doesn't work for you, stop beating yourself up. Find a different way to achieve the goal. How many times have you tried to do a budget? Many times, and it doesn't work. So what was your reaction to that? What did you tell yourself? You said, we're bad, we're irresponsible. We need to buckle down and try harder. And none of that feels good. So the number one lesson is, if something doesn't work, stop beating yourself up and find a different way to achieve the same goal. Marcus Aurelius talks about how crazy it is that we just go on staying the same person we've always been, trying the same things we've always tried.

3:23Roussonius Rufus said that many of our problems are a result of following wretched habits. In this fight against wretched habits, Epictetus would say, try the opposite. The goal of being on top of your finances is a good one. But as the expression goes, there are many ways to skin a cat. In life, just hoping we will magically change is a dead end. And so is throwing more and more willpower at a problem. As Marcus Aurelius says in meditations, if there are brambles in the path, just go around.

4:03Take a walk. Seneca believed that we should take frequent wandering walks because constant work will fracture our minds. As a writer, he would have agreed with the novelist Helen Dunmore. A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk. So take some good time this week to take some walks and watch the dullness and feebleness depart. Enjoy the scenery. Enjoy being away from your work. Make them part of your morning and evening writing routine. Return with a stimulated mind that's ready to journal about and follow the philosophy you know. You think that it's taking a break, but really you end up smarter and clearer than you were when you left.

4:48And that's from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal. 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living by me, Ryan Holiday, which you can pick up signed versions of in the Daily Stoic store. And as Seneca says, we should take wandering walks so that the mind might be nourished and refreshed by the open air and deep breathing. That's in his essay On Tranquility of Mind. But Marcus Aurelius says, Pass through this brief patch of time in harmony with nature, and come to your final resting place gracefully, just as a ripened olive might drop, praising the earth that nourished it and grateful to the tree that gave it growth.

5:26That's Meditations 448. And then Seneca again in On Tranquility of Mind. The mind must be given relaxation. It will rise improved and sharper after a good break, just as rich fields must not be forced for they will quickly lose their fertility if never given a break so constant work on the anvil will fracture the force of the mind but it regains its powers if it is set free and relaxed for a while constant work gives rise to a certain kind of dullness and feebleness in the rational soul i actually just posted this the other day i was saying there's no problem so bad that taking a walk can't at least help you solve a little bit of it.

6:06And I also feel like I've never regretted deciding to get up and take a walk. My morning routine is built around it. As I've said before, I don't touch my phone in the morning, strap my kids in the stroller and we go for a walk. It's about a mile and a half to the mailboxes at the end of the road, little PO boxes for everyone there. And we've done this hundreds and hundreds of times now. It occurred to me that since my kids were born, I've probably walked, ridden, or run several thousand miles with them. And this distance we covered, it's not just good for health. It's not just getting out and getting sunlight, but it's refreshing.

6:47It's quality time together. It's time not spent struggling with some work thing. And yet I almost invariably return with something to write down, with something I remembered I need to do during the day, with some sense of purpose and energy for the day. And during the pandemic, we got so into these walks, not only do I do the one in the morning, then I sometimes do walks on phone calls during the day around the Daily Stoic offices and the Painted Porch bookstore here in Bastrop, Texas. I love walking through these little southern towns. It's always beautiful and shady because they planted the trees so long ago.

7:25But then we usually go for a walk after dinner. Sometimes our kids take a popsicle or, you know, my wife and I have a piece of chocolate. During April and May, we like to pick blackberries on the walk, but we just, we walk around. Sometimes we watch the sun come down. You know, we watch the deer run or we look at the cows or pet the donkeys. Sometimes we bring the donkeys carrots, although most of the time our kids eat the carrots before we get there. But the point is, this time outside is wonderful, and it's philosophical, and it's refreshing, and it's one of the most important things that I do.

8:01So I hope you will take some walks today. It's one of the best exercises you can do. It's also one of the best forms of exercise for your mind. So take a walk. The Stoics demand it.

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