Can You Subject Yourself To This? | A Week Without Complaining

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.

1:09be forgetting things terribly wrong, and a Stoic must fight it. This is why Seneca tried to read books from rival schools, why Marcus Aurelius said he appreciated people who disagreed with him or even corrected him. Certainly a rare thing for an emperor in those days. When we had the writer Wright Thompson on the Daily Stoic podcast, which you can listen to, you can even watch the episode, it's great, I'll link to it on YouTube, he talked about something he did for his book, which I loved. It's called The Barn, The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi. Using a cybersecurity term, he talked about the importance of red teaming your beliefs to guard against preconceived notions or incorrect assumptions.

1:52It's like when you're writing, the detail you love, you need to triple check. So my researcher and fact checker on this book is a woman named Katie King. And there are a couple of things in there that were so crazy that I started trying to, I was like, man, could this possibly be? So there were a couple of things I sent to her and I was like, I love this so much. I need you to like red team the shit. I need you to try to argue. And so like we did that. We had a fact check where I rented a house and we moved into this house for like a week. And all we did was tear it apart because I got to the point where page after page of details that are so ominous and menacing and crazy that I started to think almost the opposite of the cognitive.

2:42I started to think this can't be true. Yeah, but that's a really important skill that you have to build. And a lot of people not only don't build it, they build the opposite of it because it's sort of hard work. Well, it's also as opposed to building. I think the natural state of being is cognitive dissonance. You have to go out of your way to sort of even come up with an intellectual framework to start trying to chip away at it. You have to interrogate the thoughts, the beliefs, the views that you're most attached to, not to prove you're right, but to ensure you're not wrong. And Marcus really talked about this.

3:20He said, if anyone can refute me, I'll gladly change. It's the truth I'm after, he said, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance. You must understand that flip-flopping on your beliefs is not a sign of weakness. It's a source of strength. Neither is admitting error or even quitting. In fact, it's something that needs to be stopped. We must constantly test what we think we know. We must red team our assumptions. We must seek out people who can refute us. We must go out of our way to go after the truth. wherever it leads us.

4:05We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at The Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that. But I do control how I respond, right? Right. That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a bestselling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence.

4:40My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for Good Inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It Over the Holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr.

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7:05A week without complaining. Epictetus spoke often to his students about the need to give up blaming and complaining. In fact, he saw it as one of the primary measuring sticks of progress in the art of living. How much of life is wasted? Pointed fingers. Has complaining ever solved a single problem? Marcus Aurelius would say, blame yourself or no one. This week, try constructive feedback over complaining and responsibility over blame. And if something goes wrong, spend some time reflecting on what the true causes were. don't waste a minute with complaints in your journal or out loud. This is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 days of writing on reflection in the art of living by me, Ryan Holiday, and my co-author, Stephen Hanselman.

7:54You can get this anywhere books are sold, although we also have signed copies in the Daily Stoic store and, of course, at my bookstore, The Painted Porch here in Bastrop, Texas. But we have three quotes from Epictetus today about complaints. He says, you must stop blaming God and not blame any person. You must completely control your desire and shift your avoidance to what lies within your reasoned choice. You must no longer feel anger, resentment, envy, or regret. That's the Discourses 322. For nothing outside my reasoned choice, he says, can hinder or harm it. My reasoned choice alone can do this to itself.

8:28If we would lean this way whenever we fail and would blame only ourselves and remember that nothing but opinion is the cause of a troubled mind and uneasiness, then by God, I swear we would be making progress. That's Discourses 3.19. And then he also says in Coridian 1.3, But if you deem as your own only what is yours, and what belongs to others is truly not yours, then no one will ever be able to coerce or stop you, and you will find no one to blame or accuse, you will do nothing against your will, and you will have no enemy, and no one will harm you because no harm can affect you. It's funny, just as I was sitting here, I was thinking to myself, man, it's so hot.

9:10It's hot in my office. I have to turn off the AC when I record. But one of my favorite quotes from Marcus Reelis about complaining, which I actually also have in sort of fictionalized in The Boy Who Would Be King. He says, don't be heard complaining at court, not even to yourself, right? There are so many parts of Marx to realize his job that we get the sense that he didn't really like. He's kind of an introverted person. He's a good person. He wants to do what's right. He's not an ambitious person in the sense he doesn't want to dominate or win everything. And so it must have been so frustrating to be around these obnoxious, annoying, you know, dishonest people, these professional politicians, basically.

9:51But he catches himself. He's like, it's not even enough not to complain publicly. And of course, everyone would have indulged his complaints. He's emperor. But he says, don't even complain in your own mind. And that is some higher level shit right there, isn't it? Right. To not only be able to stop yourself from complaining. I think it was Will Bowen. He had the no complaint challenge. Every time, you know, you say a complaint, you have to move the bracelet from one wrist to the other. And the idea is, can you leave it on one wrist for 30 days? Can you get it in one spot for 30 days? No complaints.

10:24But imagine how most of us would fail if even thinking about a complaint, not even verbalizing it, disqualified us. But that's the challenge of the Stoics. And I think Epictetus, though, is more honest when he talks about just progress. The less blame, the less complaining, the more responsibility you're taking, the more constructive you are. That's what matters. Are you making a little bit of progress every day? Are you moving forward? are you complaining less, right? I think that's a fair way to think about it. So I thought the complaint, but I didn't say it. That's progress. But maybe next time I can just go, the temperature is what the temperature is.

11:06If I want to do this thing, that's what I have to put up with. So that's what it is. Thinking about it doesn't help me. It doesn't make me any cooler, right? It just makes me frustrated. And that's why we try not to complain. So don't be heard complaining today, not even to yourself. That's the standard we're ascribing to. But could we just make some progress? We just blame only ourselves or ideally no one. That's progress. Let's do it. Let's work for it. Let's make ourselves a little bit stronger as a result.

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