BONUS | We Reap What We Sow

0:00Ryan Holiday: So I have a bunch of traveling I'm doing through the end of the year on Daily Stoic Live Tour. I just got back from San Diego. I like to stay in the places that I'm staying. I like to book places on Airbnb so I can be like a local. I not only do some of my best writing, but I learn about things that I wouldn't have known otherwise. When I was just in San Diego, I took a walk along the water. I bumped into someone who recognized me and they told me about their favorite local bookstore, which was like two blocks from where I was staying. And I never would have known about it if it wasn't for that encounter.

0:30Ryan Holiday: It was cool to me to think that I have helped facilitate that experience for many, many people coming to Austin over the years. The first house that I bought in Austin when my wife and I first moved here, we would list it on Airbnb. And it helped me make the transition from my corporate life to being a full-time writer. So if you're going to be away, you should maybe think about listing your place on Airbnb. It can be a great way to earn extra cash while you travel. It can offset the cost of your trip or maybe even go towards whatever you're doing next. If you've got travel coming up, check out Airbnb.

1:00Ryan Holiday: Your home might be worth more than you think, and you can find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

1:22October 27th, we reap what we sow. Crimes often return to their teacher. Seneca, Theastes, verse 311.

1:36Ryan Holiday: It's ironic that Seneca would have one of his characters utter this line, because as we know for many years, Seneca served as the tutor and the mentor to the emperor Nero. There is a lot of evidence that Seneca was in fact a positive moral influence on this deranged young man. But even at the time, Seneca's contemporaries found it strange that a philosopher would serve as the right hand to such an evil person. They even used the Greek word tyrano didaskalos, tyrant teacher, to describe him. And just as Shakespeare observed in Macbeth, bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor.

2:22Ryan Holiday: Seneca's collaboration with Nero ultimately ended with the student murdering the teacher. It's something to think about when you consider whom to work with and whom to do business with in life. If you show a client how to do something unethical or illegal, might they return the favor to an unsuspecting you later on? If you provide a bad example to your employees, to your associates, to your children, might they betray and hurt you down the road? What goes around comes around is the saying. Karma is a notion we have imported from the East along similar lines. Seneca paid a price for his instructions to Nero, as has been true throughout the ages, his hypocrisy, avoidable or not, was costly, and so too will be yours.

3:40Ryan Holiday: I did not think we would be here 10 years later, but here we are, and that means the world's made.