Can You Do It Even When You Don’t Want To? | Cultivate Indifference

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.

1:09In these cases, it doesn't take much discipline, but just as courage is only courage when there's a risk, when you're pushing past fear, discipline is a virtue that comes into play only when things are hard. When I was in Canada for the Daily Stoic Life Tour I just did, I was talking about physical practices, running and swimming and lifting weights and walking, anything that forces you to confront and push past the resistance of not wanting to do it. I was saying that these are mental and emotional practices. But instead of quoting from a Stoic, since she was in town, I quoted a lyric from Taylor Swift.

1:46Lights, camera, bitch, smile, even when you want to die. Can you hit your marks when you're tired, when you're sick, when your kids are sick? Can you do it when the weather is bad, when you think people are laughing at you? Can you do it even when it's hard, even when you don't want to, even when you think that maybe you can't? That's what discipline is about. That's the muscle you cultivate from a physical practice. The muscle of doing the thing, even when you don't want to do the thing, even when it's extra hard to do the thing, even when you think you can't do the thing. And obviously, this is what Discipline is Destiny is all about.

2:23You can grab a signed copy at store.dailystoic.com. Or if you want to build some more disciplined habits, I do recommend our Daily Stoic course, Habits for Success, Habits for Happiness. If you're a Daily Stoic Life membership, you get that course and all of our courses for free. So that might be a great place to start. Talk soon. I'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.

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3:38Cultivate indifference. This comes to us from this week's meditation in the Daily Stoic Journal. Some people spend their lives chasing good things, health, wealth, pleasure, achievement. Others try to avoid the bad things with equal energy, sickness, poverty, pain. And these look like two drastically different approaches, but in the end, they are the same. The Stoics continually reminded themselves that so many of the things we desire and avoid are beyond our control. Instead of chasing impossibilities, the Stoics trained to be equally prepared and equally suited to thrive in any condition. They trained to be indifferent.

4:14And this is a great power, and a cultivation of this skill is a very powerful exercise. Of all the things that are, some are good, others bad, and yet others indifferent. The good are virtues and all that share in them. The bad are vices and all that indulge them. The indifferent lie in between virtue and vice and include wealth, health, life, death, pleasure, and pain. Epictetus's Discourses. My reason choice is as indifferent to the reason choice of my neighbor and as to his breath and body. However much we've been made for cooperation, the ruling reason in each of us is a master of its own affair.

4:51If this weren't the case, the evil in someone else would become my harm, and God didn't mean for someone else to control my misfortune. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, 8.56. There are things in life which are advantageous and disadvantageous. Both are beyond our control. That's Seneca Moral Letters 92. This idea of good, bad, and then a sort of a third category is this interesting debate. I talk a little bit about this in Lives of the Stoics. You know, the early Stoics were much more cynical, and I mean, much closer to the cynics, the philosophical school, the idea that there's good and bad, there's virtue and vice, and everything is one of those categories.

5:33And there's a lot of argument about this. I think it's the later Stoics, the more practical, pragmatic Stoics that go, I mean, sure, but there's also stuff in between. There is such a thing as gray area, and it's impractical and unrealistic to assume that there's not. Seneca talks about preferred indifference, Like, is it better to be short or tall? I mean, it's not good or bad either way, but like if you're short or tall, that is what it is. But if you had a choice, you'd probably pick tall, right? You'd probably pick rich over poor. It doesn't mean that it's virtuous to be rich, but if you had a choice, you'd choose it.

6:08So that's just like a sort of an interesting side Stoic debate. But this main thing is like, look, the Stoic is good either way. It's not that the Stoics love misfortune and the Stoics don't want success or ease or happiness or any of these things. It's no, the Stokes are ready for whatever life throws at them. This sets them up to not be disappointed when life does throw adversity. And it also puts them in a position where they're not yearning for or craving something good or ease or luck or success. They're just cool with however it is. That's what Zen means, right? You're just philosophical about it.

6:42You're just chill about it. You've got an even keel. So this idea of indifference is not like nihilism. It's actually this kind of resiliency, this ability to be good with whatever happens, with whatever life throws at you. Would I have loved for parts of my childhood to be different? Would I have loved to be a little bit taller? Would I have loved to be this or that? Yeah, sure, if I had a choice, but I didn't have a choice. So I adjust and I make do. You know, Seneca talks, and I think he's quoting from Chrysippus, or maybe it's Cleanthes, but he's saying like, look, a wise man wants stuff, but it doesn't need it, right?

7:18We make do with what it is. We play the hand we're dealt. But if you're asking us what cards we want, if you're, as the cards are flipping over, is there one we would prefer? Probably. So indifference is this complicated, tricky thing in stoicism. But I think at the end of the day, it's pretty common sensical, right? You'd rather be tall, but you're cool being short. You'd rather have use of all your limbs, but if something happened, you'd keep going, right? You know, Seneca says, you'd rather see, but if you lost your eye in battle, that wouldn't be the end of it for you. You'd adjust, you'd make do.

7:49That's the power of Stoicism. We'll respond, we'll endure, we'll survive, we'll make the best of everything. And in that, we're indifferent, but we're actually quite strong and confident because of that indifference. So think about that this week. If you want to journal about it in your Daily Stoic journal, great. But try to cultivate indifference.

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