BONUS | 7 Stoic Lessons on Wisdom

0:05Welcome 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.

1:09suddenly hit you. No, it's a day-to-day thing, right? Wisdom takes work. I love that phrase. Maybe someone should write a book about it. And of course, that's exactly what I did. Seneca says that no man is wise by chance, takes a lot of work. And it's that day-to-day showing up, getting a little here, getting a little there, cumulatively, we get closer to where we want to be. So the new book, Wisdom Takes Work, is out in less than 30 days. It's out on October 21st. You can pre-order it anywhere books are sold. But if you go to dailystoic.com slash wisdom, there's a bunch of awesome pre-order bonuses, including a few more of the signed and numbered first editions.

1:49We almost certainly will sell out of them. So if you want one, grab them. But this idea of day-to-dayness, the acquiring one thing a day. As part of the launch, we've been doing 30 days of wisdom on social media. I'm just riffing on one topic, one idea from the book, from the ancients, as Seneca says to do. And I put seven of them together for this bonus episode. Here are seven days of wisdom, the first week of the lessons that you can listen to. I hope it is of value to you. And I hope you can take a moment to pre-order the new book. As I said, dailystoic.com wisdom to pre-order the signed and numbered first editions.

2:29Get a bunch of awesome bonuses. It would mean a lot to me if you could support the book. If you've liked this podcast over the years, Yeah, it would mean a lot to me if you could grab it. DailyStoic.com slash wisdom. And here are seven days of wisdom.

2:49Day one of 30 days of wisdom. If you want to get better, the most important thing you can do is surround yourself with better people. It is very rare that someone does not become better when they are surrounded by great people. Socially, professionally, spiritually. I would argue it's also very common that potentially great people are ruined by not so great influences. Epictetus talked about this. He said, if you live with a lame man, you will learn how to limp. The Stoics say you want to associate with people who are likely to improve you. There was even a famous group of Stoics in ancient Rome known as the Scipionic Circle that was generals and writers, philosophers and politicians who got together.

3:29They talked about philosophy. They talked about ideas. They challenged each other. They read each other's work. They asked each other questions. They recommended things to each other. That's what you need. You want to find a group that challenges you, that inspires you, that understands you, that exposes you to new ideas, that holds you accountable, that shows you what it is possible to do, that shows you that your limitations are just that, limitations.

3:57This is day two of 30 Days of Wisdom. Do you know what the Greek word for idiot means? It's actually, as Plutarch tells us, it's the word for someone who hasn't held public office, who doesn't have real life experience working for the people. Basically, the Greeks were saying just sitting around and reading things all day is not how you learn. You have to put yourself out there. You have to step into the arena. You have to try things. The purpose of knowledge is action, but action is also how we get knowledge. Marcus Aurelius is famous for dragging his philosophy teacher, Rusticus, out of the classroom into the political realm.

4:32It was said that he wasn't content to leave him as a pen and ink philosopher. And you shouldn't be content to be that either. You have to go out, you have to get real world experience, real world reps, expose yourself to different kinds of people, different kinds of ideas, different kinds of problems. And that's how you prevent yourself from being an idiot.

4:53Day three of 30 Days of Wisdom. You must read. Read something new. Read something old. Read something you've already read. Read a few pages of this one or that one. Linger when a passage strikes you. Read something critical. Read something beautiful. Read something dark. Read something you disagree with. Reflect. Read more. Repeat. Talk to the dead until you die.

5:28Thanks 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.

6:13We 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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8:33Day four of 30 days of wisdom. People think that being a leader is having all the answers that it's knowing. It isn't. Being wise is knowing how to find the answer. It's knowing how to solve problems. You have to be able to figure stuff out. You have to be able to try things. Abraham Lincoln, who's one of the main characters in Wisdom Takes Work, is a great example of this. When he decides to begin his campaign against slavery, what does he do? He goes to the statehouse in Illinois and begins to look at every primary document he can find about what the founders thought about slavery. No leader is going to have all the answers.

9:16And in fact, a leader that thinks they have all the answers is a dangerous one, one you want to be worried about. No, you want a leader who's good at figuring stuff out, who's good at learning, who's hungry to learn. Right. That's what Lincoln did. He figured it out day by day. He surrounded himself with different people. he got different opinions. Some people he agreed with, some he didn't. He was fine to humble himself. He was willing to say, I don't know. He sought the answer wherever he could find it. And if you want to know more exactly about how he did this, because it's one of the most incredible examples of leadership in American history, check out the new book, Wisdom Takes Work, which you can pre-order now.

9:54It comes out on October 21st.

9:59day five of wisdom look learning isn't this thing you just do when you're young when you're starting out and it's certainly not a thing that's limited to school one of my favorite stories about marcus really sees the emperor of rome he's the most powerful man in the world and he's well into his life at this point and he's seen leaving the palace in rome and a friend stops him and asks where he's going and he says i'm off to see sextus the philosopher to learn that which i do not yet know. And the friend is amazed. He says, here we have the wisest king of the Romans still taking up his tablets and going to school.

10:32Not only is Marcus willing to learn, but he's willing to be a student. He's not even sending for the teacher to come to him. He's willing to do the work. He's willing to put himself out there. He wants to keep learning. It would have been easy for him to be like, I'm smart. I'm old. People think I'm wise. That's enough. But no, he's still hungry to learn. And more specifically, he's still hungry to learn that which he does not yet know.

11:00Day six of 30 days of wisdom. Show me who you spend time with and I will show you who you are. It's a great expression. It's this idea that we become like the people we spend the most time with. But I think it's true not just for people, but for information. What is your information diet look like? Who are you spending time with? Who are you giving access to your brain? In meditations, Mark Cirilli says, our soul is dyed by the color of our thoughts. You know, we're colored, we're dyed by the inputs, by the things that we allow access to. So if you're spending all your time on social media, if you're following nothing but breaking political news and opinion, if you're dwelling on things that are inconsequential or superficial or materialistic, you're going to become died and changed by that.

11:44But if you spend time with the wisest and smartest people who ever lived, if you look backwards to history, you surround yourself with great books and great ideas and great people. You can become like that too.

12:01Day seven of 30 days of wisdom. You need a mentor. We all do. Admiral Michelle Howard, the first female four-star admiral in American history, she once described mentorship as the transference of wisdom. And I think that's very well said. Sure, you can learn a lot by experience, but isn't it better to learn from the experiences of others, to learn from people who have been where you have been, who are further along, who are where you want to go in the future? That's what my mentor Robert Greene has been for me. He showed me not just so many work habits and so many secrets and tricks of the trade.

12:42Not only has he taught me so many important ideas and introduced me to so many books, but he showed me so many personal things as well. He's a model for how I want to live my life. He's a person I ask for advice about all sorts of things from. You need to find that person in your life. I think one of the things people get wrong about mentorships is they think that you just call someone up and say, hey, will you be my mentor? No, it's a relationship that evolves over time. And it's not a one-way thing either. You give as well as get in a mentor-mentee relationship, but you have to find when almost no one becomes great without someone ahead of them, showing them the ropes, showing them the tricks of the trade, transferring that wisdom to them.

13:49Thank you.

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