Do You Dominate The Battlespace? | What's In Your Way Is The Way

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1:58Welcome 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.

2:39Do you dominate the battle space? There's a lot of fighting for it. There's a lot of fighting in it. There's the media, there's distraction, there are devices and entertainment. There's what happened in the recent past. There's the worry of what might happen in the future. There's our intrusive thoughts. There are incorrect impressions, misinformation. There's the voices of the people around us, the judgments, the doubts, the conventions. And all of these things are vying for what military strategists today would call the battle space. Our mind is a contested bit of territory, with many people seeking control of what we call the empire between your ears and the girl who would be free.

3:16Why? Because your brain, your attention is valuable. People want you to think about certain things and not think about certain things because it's good for business, because it makes you easier to control. So you must dominate the battle space. You must assert yourself over yourself. In meditations, Marcus Aurelius talks about the need to winnow his thoughts, to not let his mind wander, so that if asked what are you thinking about, he could answer clearly and without shame. We too must grab the reins of our mind, set up boundaries against distraction, push away intrusive thoughts, tune out nonsense and noise.

3:52That's what stoicism is, as we wrote recently. It's the gladiator stepping out into the arena of the mind, dominating the battle space, controlling your own mind. Because the alternative, letting the enemy dominate, letting your mind be controlled by someone or something else, is just unthinkable.

4:19What's in your way is the way. Obstacles are a fact of life. Even the most powerful and lucky of us are not exempt from this reality. But we have a superpower at our hands through Stoic philosophy in that our purposes, our intentions, our attitudes can adapt to any conditions to find a way forward. The Stoics talk about acting with a reserve clause that allows us to reconsider and set a new course of action if needed. And Marcus Aurelius tells us that any obstacle can actually become raw material for a new purpose. So that's what you should think about today and this week. How might the obstacles you're facing reveal a new path?

5:03And this is from the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living. every week we have a sort of a daily meditation. We've got three quotes from Marcus Aurelius along these lines today. While it's true that someone can impede our actions, they can't impede our intentions or our attitudes, which have the power of being conditional and adaptable. For the mind adapts and converts any obstacle to its actions into a means of achieving it. And that which is the obstacle to action is turned to advance action. The obstacle on the path becomes the way. That's Meditations 520.

5:42Marcus also says in 835, just as nature turns to its own purpose, any obstacle or any opposition sets its place in the destined order and co-ops it so every rational person can convert any obstacle into the raw material for their own purpose. And then Meditations 832, so clearly he thinks about this a lot. He says, you must build up your life action by action and be content if each one achieves its goal as far as possible, and no one can keep you from this. But there will be some external obstacle, perhaps, he says, but no obstacle to acting with justice, self-control, and wisdom. But what if some area of my action is thwarted?

6:24Well, gladly accept the obstacle for what it is and shift your attention to what is given, and another action will immediately take its place, one that better fits the life you are building. As you know, this is what I built the obstacle is the way around these ideas. But let me read you Gregory Hayes' translation in that same line, 520, because it's obviously been so instrumental to me. And I think Hayes does it quite well also. And it's interesting, he's clearly referring Marcus to a specific kind of obstacle, difficult people. In a sense, people are our proper occupation. This is Meditations 520.

6:59Our job is to do them good and put up with them. But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us like the sun wind or animals our actions may be impeded by them but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions because we can accommodate and adapt the mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting the impediment to action advances action what stands in the way becomes the way and then let's let's look at the Robin Waterfield translation of the same line. All right, here's 520. From one point of view, nothing is more proper to me than a human being, insofar as it's my job to do people good and tolerate them.

7:44But insofar as some people threaten my proper work, I count a human being as just another indifferent, no less than the sun or the wind or a wild animal. These things may impede some of my activities, but they can't impede my impulses or my state of mind, because I have powers of reservation and adaption and adaptation. The mind can adapt and alter every impediment to action to serve its purpose. Something that might have hindered a task contributes to it instead, and something that was an obstacle on the road helps you on your way. And then here's Waterfield's note. He says, again, Marcus stresses the independence of the mind and the possibility of seeing the world in a positive light.

8:23So it doesn't matter which translation you read, the message is the same. Stuff happens, stuff gets in our way, but it presents us the opportunity to do something different. So in this sense, the obstacle is the way. It's not that, you know, life erects this wall in front of you and the way is through that wall. It's that when the door shuts, a window opens. It's that when you wanted everything to go well and then someone screws it up, now it's a chance to practice patience. Now it's a chance to practice forgiveness. Now it's a chance to start over. Now it's a chance to extricate yourself from this toxic relationship, whatever it is, right?

9:04What Marcus is saying is that everything that happens in life, every obstacle, as maddening and frustrating and as painful as they might be, they are opportunities to practice a different virtue, that virtue is always the way, and that nothing stops us from being able to do that. I just love that passage so much. If I had the time, I'd grab the Pierre Hadeau chapter on this very idea, which also helped inspire the obstacles away. He talks about sort of the art of turning obstacles upside down. To me, this is a central practice in stoicism. It's why I've got it tattooed on my arm. It's why I wrote a book about it.

9:38It's why we talk about it so much. This idea of amor fati, we accept and then we use what's happened to our advantage. That's the essence of stoicism. I hope that inspires you a little bit today. People are our proper occupation. We tolerate them. We put up with them. And all the obstacles they roll into our way, all the problems they cause us are actually not problems, but opportunities to practice the very virtues of courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. That's what we're doing here. And by the way, we do have the new leather bound edition of the Obstacles the Way, which comes with the Obstacles the Way challenge coin as well.

10:14Really proud of this thing. You can check that out at dailystoke.com slash obstacle leather.

10:44We'll see you next time.

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