Do You Have Double What It Takes? | The Source Of Your Anxiety

0:00Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

0:14Do you have double what it takes? It would be nice if things were easier. It would be nice if they were fair. It would be nice if they were simply what they were advertised. But we all know that they are not. And for most of history, they have not been, for some of us more than others. There was an old expression, true for women, for minorities and other groups, that in order to succeed, they had to be twice as good. meaning they were held to higher standards, put through more of a ringer, subjected to extra scrutiny. It wasn't right, but it was a fact. In a way, this is how life goes for everyone, it should be said, even the relatively privileged.

0:53We think we know what we need to do. We're told the rules. We're told the difficulty. And then, you know what? Turns out to be much, much harder. People are going to change those rules at the last minute. The circumstances are going to move the goalposts. There are hidden fees. There are unexpected delays. obstacles, adversaries, pitfalls, and bad luck. It's going to be there. It's going to happen. That's life, the Stoics say. It isn't fair. Some gatekeeper is going to grade you harder than everyone else, and you'll have to deal with it. You'll have to reach down and draw from your reserves. You'll have to be that much better.

1:29You'll have to do that much more. You can complain, you can quit, or you can understand, as Epictetus did, someone who was certainly persecuted and victimized by fate, that life is pairing you with a strong sparring partner, that is to say, adversity. And in fighting on and in beating them, you'll become that much better, twice as good.

1:57So we have a little place down in Florida that we go. I do some writing there. We go there for spring break sometimes or Christmas. It's one of my favorite places to be. We just did some remodeling and refurnishing. And part of that, we needed all new mattresses. And now I am seeing why people love their Helix mattresses. We got all new mattresses for the house and they are amazing. It did not disappoint. Ordering shipping was super easy. Basically, you fill out this Helix sleep quiz that matches you with the perfect mattress based on your personal preferences. and sleep needs. I think we ended up going with the midnight mattress.

2:36It's got medium firmness, not too firm, not too soft. And I can tell you why it is their top selling mattress. And I can tell you why Helix is the most awarded mattress brand. Their stuff has been tested and reviewed by experts from Forbes to Wired. They've got free shipping and seamless delivery. The whole process is super simple. Helix delivers the mattress right to your door with free shipping in the U.S. And then there's the Happy with Helix guarantee that ensures seamless returns and exchanges. It's a risk-free, customer-first experience designed to ensure you're completely satisfied with your new mattresses, including a 120-night sleep trial and a limited lifetime warranty.

3:15Just go to helix.com slash stoic for 27 % off. That's helixsleep.com slash stoic for 27 % off. Make sure you enter our show name at checkout so they know we sent you a helixsleep.com slash stoic. We've got an employee here at Daily Stoke. I won't say who because it's kind of private, but they've been using Monarch, today's sponsor, to track their progress as they try to pay off their student loan debts. I'm a college dropout, so I don't have any debt, thankfully, but I can only imagine how overwhelming it would be to have this thing hanging over you. And she's been using the app to budget and save, and it's bringing her a little bit closer every day to being debt-free, which I can only imagine would be a huge relief.

4:00Monarch shows you exactly where your money is going. It helps you redirect it towards what matters. With automated tracking and clear projections, you can actually see yourself getting closer to being debt-free or hitting your savings milestone instead of just hoping it happens. Unlike most other personal finance apps, Monarch is built to help make you proactive and not just reactive. And Monarch help users save over$200 per month on average after joining. You can set yourself up for financial success in 2026 with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes proactive money management simple all year long.

4:35And you can use code stoic at monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50 % off your first year at monarch.com code stoic.

4:49the source of your anxiety this is the february 3rd entry from the daily stoic which i'm holding the cloth bound version here we've got a leather bound in the daily stoic store as well if you didn't know that and our quote today comes from epictetus discourses 213 when i see an anxious person, I ask myself, what do they want? For if a person wasn't wanting something outside of their control, why would they be stricken by anxiety? And then the meditation for today is the anxious father worried about his children. What does he want? A world that is always safe. A frenzied traveler. What do they want?

5:29For the weather to hold and the traffic to part so that she can make her flight. A nervous investor that the market will turn around and that the investment pays off. All these scenarios have the same thing in common. As Epictetus says, it's wanting something outside of our control. Getting worked up, getting excited, nervously pacing. These intense pain and anxious moments show us at our most futile and servile. Staring at the clock, at the ticker, at the next checkout lane, over at the sky. It's as if we belong to a religious cult that believes the gods of fate will only give us what we want if we first sacrifice our peace of mind.

6:09Today, when you find yourself getting anxious, ask yourself, why are my insides twisted into knots? Am I in control here or is my anxiety, and most important, is my anxiety doing me any good? I make up that Marcus Aurelius was a pretty anxious person. You can't read meditations and not get some sense that he was trying to talk himself out of a spiral, out of a catastrophizing, out of a sort of a natural inclination to worry. He makes a great point, similar to what Epictetus is saying. He says, you know, today I escaped my anxiety. He says, actually, no, I discarded it. He says, because it was within me.

6:52Epictetus is saying that the anxiety is in you, but not as this distinct thing. it's an outgrowth of you wanting needing expecting hoping dreading that things will or won't go a certain way right that we're not willing to go with the flow to be flexible to adjust to take whatever comes as it comes i was just going through this i have this thing with my passport and then you know then i drove all the way to houston to get it renewed and they said okay hey, you made the deadline, you did everything you were supposed to, come back tomorrow. I got up at four in the morning, I drove three hours here, I waited in line, I gotta go home and do this again tomorrow.

7:36And then I ended up, actually, you could send someone, so I paid someone to do it, and they were like, and we'll call you if there's any problems. And I sort of tried to say consciously to myself, look, this is in the bag or it isn't, right? It's done. It's not up to me whether it happens or not. And so am I going to have the gift of the next 12 to 36 hours or am I going to be torturing myself along the way, right? I want this thing. Of course, I would prefer to get my passport and not have to cancel this trip and, you know, mess up this event I agreed to go to. I would prefer it more than I would not prefer it.

8:11But at the same time, I don't want it at the expense of my happiness, of the present moment, of the way I want to treat people. So I kind of just had to step back and let go and think about it as the Stoics say, a preferred indifferent. I don't think it's that you don't want anything, right? Of course, the parent wants their children to be safe and healthy, right? The frenzied traveler wants to make the trip. The nervous investor wants the market to go up. You have to want it, but not so much that it ruins things for you, that you must have it, right? When the Stoics talk about a preferred indifferent, they mean like it's better to get it than not get it, but it's not going to break you if you don't get it.

8:56You won't stand in dread or breathless anticipation in the meantime, but you'll ride it out. You'll take a deep breath. You'll be present, right? Right. You'll ask yourself, do I need to twist myself into knots? Am I actually being rewarded? Or is anyone noticing how much I'm beating myself up over the fact that I let the passport expire? And then I tried to do like nobody cares. It is what it is. Step back. Let it be what it's going to be. Be who you need to be inside of that, which is to say not anxious, not annoying and not torturing yourself.

9:53Thank you.

10:04You