Do You Have That Dog In You? | Ask Daily Stoic

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.

0:56Do you have that dog in you? The Stoics spoke about kindness. They tried not to get upset. They tried to avoid arguments. But you know what? sometimes somebody just needed to say something, and sometimes the truth hurts. The Stoics were inspired and shaped by the example of Diogenes, the dog of Sinnoh. Diogenes was known for his brutal takedowns of hypocrites, of fools, and of the powerful. And it was his example that Zeno was following when he eviscerated a pompous student named Aristo after years of tolerating his interruptions and disagreements. It was Diogenes that Agrippinus channeled when he responded to exile with a shrug and a dismissal, saying, OK, we'll take our lunch on the road.

1:46And it was Diogenes who Epictetus admired and looked up to, perhaps more than any of the other Stoics. While they never sought to hurt anyone's feelings, they didn't indulge people's pleasant fictions either. They spoke up, they defended themselves, They protected what was important. They had that dog in them, a game one at that. And what about you? Does political correctness have you cowed? Are you too differential? Are you easily fooled by appearances and status? Do you say what truth needs to be said? Because sometimes philosophy isn't polite. It's powerful. And the truth? Well, it bites. which is why we created Stoicism 101, Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life.

2:35It's a 14-day course that delivers the core principles of Stoicism in a way you can actually apply it every day the same way the Stoics practice themselves. It's one of our most popular courses. We've been running it for years. There's going to be a private discussion board, all the previously recorded office hours from the other times we've run Stoicism 101 along with a bunch of other awesome stuff. And to join us, you have to sign up by Monday, November 10th. That's when it starts. I'll link to that in today's show notes, or you can just go to dailystoic.com slash 101 to join us.

3:15We 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? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence.

3:50My 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.

4:27Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events. Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County. I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house.

5:09It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in. We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course, because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour.

5:53And of course, this is stoicism, too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you. Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours.

6:20Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Doing a Q &A today. As you know, I get to travel all over the world giving talks. In the last year or two alone, I've been to Dubai and Brazil and Hawaii and Australia and Europe and Canada. But most of the talks that I give are not available to the public, right? I'm usually talking to companies or groups or conferences. But back in September, I spoke here in Austin, Westlake, to about a thousand people. And many of you came, and that was awesome, and it was great to see you. Afterwards, I answered a bunch of questions, and I'm going to bring you a chunk of that today.

6:57And if you want to come see me talk and ask me some questions while I'm going to be in Seattle on December 3rd, San Diego on February 5th, and Phoenix on February 27th, all of those tickets are available at Daily Stoic Live. I'm excited to see you and we'll talk very soon.

7:20I guess my question is it's very interesting you being a clearly more left-leaning person in this self-help space that it's not inherently political but I feel like these days more and more there's sort of a stigma around it like it being more right-leaning like the grind set mentality I guess, if you know what I mean And I'm just curious, like, how does that impact your work and how does that impact the way that you try to present yourself, I guess? Yeah, I don't think that much about it. I just try to say what I think and do what I think is right. I have tried not to be radicalized by what's happening in the world and also not radicalized by what I read and see on the Internet.

8:10I feel like I haven't changed that much, except for maybe the way that stoicism slowly works on you. I think I came to stoicism for the reason that a lot of young men come to it. Maybe you came to it about how it can make you stronger, faster, smarter, whatever, all of that. But there is, as I said, a strong ethical component. Its ethical core is this idea of justice, this idea of the common good, this idea that we're made for each other. This idea that if it's bad for the world, it's bad for us and vice versa. And how do we think about this? I don't have a good answer for why that is left coded these days.

8:51It seems pretty basic, like a basic part of just being a not shitty person. But I don't see myself as a particularly political person. I think most of what I talk about has to do with like basic social contract stuff. like just what our obligations are to our fellow human beings, what our basic constitutional rights and freedoms are. That's kind of where I think about it. I'm not like we should vote for this law and that law and this policy. That's not usually what I talk about. Sometimes I do if I'm talking to my friends or whatever, but for the most part I'm talking about these at I think the high level are philosophical obligations.

9:30That's kind of how I think about it. But thank you. stoicism seems to explore the mind and body connection so i'm curious when you're speaking do you make a distinction between when you're speaking from your head and your heart that's a good question i don't know i guess i wouldn't know exactly what the difference is i don't think about it that much so maybe uh maybe that means i'm in my body not in my head i do think that when you are in a flow state when you are locked in you know that's where good performance comes from. It's not a super conscious deliberate thing, but it is also the result of the deliberate practice and training that precedes it.

10:09And I think that's true both like on a basic performance level, we're talking about writing or playing music or, you know, shooting a basketball. But I think it's also true for these ideas of virtue too. Like what do you do in the moment? You don't sit down and weigh all the options. Like that was what I was curious when I was talking to Kyle, how much thinking went in to the decision to jump on a grenade? And the answer usually is not much at all, because he's not just trained for it literally, but there's a spiritual tradition and an idea and a mindset that they learn about and hear about and come deeply to believe in.

10:55And the idea is that in the moment you do the thing. Epictetus said like the whole point of philosophy is so that whatever happens in life, you can go, this is what I trained for. But I think it's actually not even that. That's like afterwards you go, oh, I trained for that. But in the moment you do what the training says you should do. In your opening, when you're talking about courage, one of the things that you raised was the need to be our authentic selves. Yes. Even if it comes to us at a cost, and you gave example of the person standing up to Nero, I forgot his name already. How does that apply?

11:34What is your perspective on establishing close personal relationships? Sure. Is that a different standard? I don't know how close a personal relationship can be if it's not based on your authentic self. right? If you're pretending to be someone for someone else's sake, that's probably not a good foundation of a relationship. But, you know, it's funny in the UK, a few years ago, there was this guy who was just kind of a jerk. He didn't bathe. He didn't take care of himself. He was rude to his coworkers. He said inappropriate things at the office. And then finally he was fired and he sued. And in his lawsuit, he said, you know, he's being discriminated against for his religion, which was Stoicism, and he was just indifferent to all these things.

12:25Although the Stoics do have a bit of the cynic tradition in them, sort of not caring about certain conventions or superficial things, the Stoics were functioning members of society, and being in a functional relationship, I don't think you always say everything that pops into your head, especially because this is, I think, a big part of stoicism. It's not that you don't think it. It's that you think it in this moment because you're upset, because you're worried, you're frustrated, you're reacting. And I think stoicism is this idea of like, I can have the opinion, the impression, the initial thought, but I don't have to do it.

13:05And maybe I'm not going to do it if it's not actually important and it's going to needlessly hurt someone's feelings. So I think the Stoics are functioning members of society, which means empathy and compassion and connection and wearing clothes and things like that. Hi, Ryan. Hi. What do you feel the difference is between wisdom and intelligence? Yeah, I think that's kind of the ultimate question. There are obviously lots of really smart people who are good at one thing or good at a handful of things. And then I don't know if we would classify them as wise. There are obviously also ways in which wise and smart people can do very stupid things.

13:51And one of the ideas in the book is like, okay, here's all the ways that we acquire and move towards wisdom. And then the middle part of the book is all about how we acquire or move towards stupidity. All the ways that we make ourselves foolish by the information that we consume, things like ego, things like not taking care of ourself. It doesn't matter how smart and studied you are. If you're not sleeping, at some point you're cognitively equivalent to a drunk person. If you are burning yourself out, you're obviously not going to be wise. Our mind is our friend. It's how we get wisdom. And then our mind is also riddled with cognitive biases that we have to be aware of.

14:35And then, of course, there's this idea of self-awareness also. You can be aware of a lot of things, but if you don't have self-awareness, that's a big problem. That's what was inscribed at the Temple of Apollo, right? This idea of knowing myself. So how many people can you say you've ever met in your life who you would define as truly self-aware? It's kind of a rare, elusive thing. So to me, intelligence is important. It's very necessary. And then wisdom has to be somewhere beyond that. Just like, you know, all the virtues I think exist on kind of a spectrum, as Aristotle would say. So just as maybe there's a distinction between bravery and courage and heroism, right, spectrum.

15:16I think wisdom, we want to say, is the end of the spectrum and it's the hardest and rarest of them.

15:26Just to let you know, I'm going to be doing three more live dates in the coming months. I'd love to see you in Seattle, Washington on December 3rd, San Diego on February 5th, and Phoenix, Arizona on February 27th. The Talk in Austin sold out. My tour last year sold out. So grab these tickets while you can. I did a wonderful talk back in Seattle with Robert Green, which was one of my favorites. So I'm going to be there. You can ask me questions and I'll be talking stoicism and the ideas in the new book. Just go to DailyStoicLive.com.

16:24the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.

16:38Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist. That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like The Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show but not listen to ads, well, we have partnered with Supercast to bring you an ad-free version of Daily Stoic. We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with Premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast completely ad-free, no interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for.

17:32And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into Stoicism and support the work we do here? Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium, and we are offering a limited time discount of 20 % off your first year. Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show descriptions to make those ads go away.