Do You Make Time For this? | Ask DS

0:00My family owns a 2023 Toyota 4Runner and honestly it's my favorite vehicle I've ever owned. Around town, it's smooth and reliable, but where it really shines is on our trips into the backcountry. We've taken it on backpacking adventures to Colorado and New Mexico, loaded it up with gear, and never had to think twice about whether it could handle the terrain. That's what Toyota trucks are built for. Off-road confidence, rugged durability, and the freedom to explore. Toyota has a long history with the outdoor community, and they're committed to helping more people get out there and experience what nature has to offer.

0:29From remote trails to scenic byways, Toyota Trucks empowers you to take the detour, roam freely, and discover places that still feel wild and untouched. And they're not just making great trucks, they're working to expand access to adventure so more people can connect with the outdoors and pass that passion on to the next generation. Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. That's toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. The world is full of tours. But you don't choose a Toyota truck to follow the beaten path. You choose it to find the places in between.

1:09The detours, where each adventure pulls you toward the next. And wrong turns turn out right. So why would you ever take a tour when you could take a detour? Toyota Trucks.

1:29Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well, on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics. We're trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording. But thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

2:11Do you make time for this? Even when he was president, Jimmy Carter tried to carve out space for reflection and study. Just a few days after being sworn in, he was already asking his aides to push his meetings back. I need more alone time in the morning, he wrote to his team. He wanted an hour of reading and thinking and prayer. The Stoics protected this time too. Marcus Aurelius writes, even though it was a struggle, about greeting the dawn. And this was likely when he penned his meditations. We talked about Hugh Jackman a while back, who talked about getting up in the mornings and reading Stillness is the Key aloud to his wife.

2:47But what about us? We're sucked into the phone first thing, or we're waking up well into mid-morning and we're already behind. When Carter was pushing back those meetings, it wasn't to gossip or get distracted. It was that having spent his whole boyhood getting up an hour before daylight, he was still getting to his morning meetings at around 8.30. We asked recently, what do you give the most important part of your day to? Well, the mornings are such a time. How are you spending them? How are you protecting them?

3:19I got an amazing night's sleep last night. One, because my six-year-old fell asleep in the car at like six o 'clock, and he transferred him from the car seat to the bed, and it stuck, which is just magic. So he's in bed way earlier than normal. But I sleep really well every night because I have a 8 Sleep Pod 5 Ultra, which is 8 Sleep's best product. I've used 8 Sleep for many years now. And it's just totally transformed how I sleep, made me sleep better, made my wife sleep better. It's amazing. So basically, 8 Sleep is this topper that goes over your mattress. It can heat and cool both sides separately.

3:58It can raise and lower each side separately. So it helps you fall asleep faster, stay asleep, and then wake up better. Eight Sleep buzzes me to wake gently every morning as opposed to some loud blaring alarm. And then I can check the app and it tells me my sleep score. It even helps me optimize my day based on how I slept. If you want to survive the holidays like a pro and just generally sleep better, Head over to 8sleep.com slash Daily Stoic and use code Daily Stoic to get$350 off your very own Pod 5 Ultra. The best part is you still get 30 days to try it at home and return it if you don't like it.

4:38But I know you will. Trust me, your body will thank you for this investment in better sleep, shipping to many countries worldwide. See details at 8sleep.com slash Daily Stoic.

4:53my question for today is um when you're accepting this new information do you uh when you when you learn a new school of thought these revelations that you get from what you're reading um does that become your new belief without like we it because i heard you i heard you mention that one of your podcasts you're like i wish when i was younger i i would have thought about what i said that I just read. Sure. No, to go back to your point about anger, I've got to imagine that as an actor, you have some experience getting inside an angry person. And you can see, not that anger is a choice, but you can see that it's sort of like a habit or a character that one inhabits.

5:44I'm fascinated in sports. like when a coach gets angry on purpose to send a message, either to like the team or to the refs, obviously a coach who's not in control of themselves is not good. But a coach who can get angry to send a message is good. So I would, I would think that being an actor would be really good practice for sort of understanding your emotions and being able to use them when they're of use to you and say, no, I'm not going to do that when they're not to use of you. So, so, so I think that's interesting, but yeah, look, there's even a quote from Epictetus where he says, you know, when you start to make progress, when you, when you, when you learn something, he says, don't put on errors about it.

6:30Like, don't go on bragging about all the things that you've learned, all the progress you've made. Don't just regurgitate the things that you just learned. is just like sort of that's when you get in trouble. And when I think about, you know, maybe things that I've, when I look back at things that I read and maybe I, or sorry, that I've written that maybe make me cringe a little bit, what I can feel is maybe some artifice, right? Like I can feel that like, I didn't really know this. I just heard it and it sounded good. You know what I mean? Or it wasn't, I hadn't really done the work, right? I might still be correct, but I think back and I go, I was correct, but for the wrong reasons, or I was correct and I was presenting it in the wrong way.

7:19And so that's sort of what I think about. Mackenzie. Hi. I was truly not expecting that. I was like, there's so many people with their hands raised. So my question actually has to do with this idea of reading books and kind of, And I love the line you had on the podcast about meeting information kind of like in the middle of the field that you might not agree with. And I think one of the biggest challenges I have, and maybe it might just be kind of my own little bubble. But when you're reading those challenging things, removing your ego long enough to say, all right, I'm going to read a Jordan Peterson.

7:59I'm going to read a challenging book and not sit here the whole time going, you idiot. Instead, like being really like actually open, not that line you say in ego is the enemy where you're like, I'm so humble, but you don't actually mean it. No, no, it's it's true. I mean, I think because we have so little time to read and and we love reading that generally we want to spend time reading things that make us feel good or that that are are down a rabbit hole or a line of thinking that we agree with. The problem is reading should also be challenging us. And if you're only it's like like what I would think what I try to think back on.

8:40And I don't think my own answer is good enough. But it's like how many books what was the last book you read that you disagreed with? Right. And I think there's two problems with that. It's not just that we aren't reading challenging enough stuff. it's probably also that we're not digging deep enough in a topic that we're even getting more than one point of view. Right. So it's not like you should just go read the most incendiary, offensive, awful things, but it's just like, hey, like in any school, like, like, look, there's some, you know, classicists who think that the Stoics are brilliant. And there's some classicists who think that they're very overrated.

9:19This is a book I read a few months ago called How to Be an Epicurean, which is, you know, obviously to write a book on Epicureanism, you're sort of diametrically opposed to the Stoics in some way. I didn't really love this book. Like there's a bunch I disagreed with it, but that's sort of the point. Like you want to be reading things at least on a semi-regular basis that you disagree with, right? And so I think that's how I want to think about. So it's not just reading the Jordan Petersons, but it's also just reading deep enough in a topic that you're getting a diverse set of views. Even if you're reading in, I don't know, critical race theory, there's obviously disagreements inside critical race theory, just as there's disagreements inside libertarianism and conservatism and liberalism.

10:11Where are the disagreements? Because that's, I think, where you're forced to examine your own assumptions. But as far as the more controversial views too, it doesn't have to be a book, but one of the things I learned from Peter Thiel when I wrote my book about him, he was talking about how often we deal with straw men. So when we argue against someone, we have only the most superficial understanding of what they say or think because we've never actually engaged with their point of view in any way. I think that's like when Jordan Peterson gets on these interviews and he sort of ends up making the person look foolish.

10:53I think that often happens because they seriously underestimated him. They saw him as this like moronic caricature instead of a guy who was like a Harvard professor for many years and clearly intelligent and articulate. So like, Like, let's say he's totally wrong about everything. You would be well served to really go understand where he's coming from and what he's saying so that when you try to argue against it or when you hold a countervailing view that you don't end up looking like an idiot because, you know, all you've read is like five tweets. That is incredibly helpful. Thank you. Oh, and I just have to say my mother wanted me, if I ever had the opportunity to thank you.

11:36She had my grandmother was a woman that we used to joke, used to speak and teach about death and living life every moment. And so when my mom and I learned the concept of memento mori, my mom was like, my very religious mother was a stoic and people didn't even realize that she wasn't weird. She was just teaching a four year old to have a concept of the world. That's beautiful. I love that. Well, thank you. OK, thanks so much. Yeah. So I guess I'm kind of working through some career stuff right now, but I think this kind of applies to anything, you know, and I like this idea of where you are is where you need to practice your philosophy, right?

12:15You can just do that anywhere, right? So how do you kind of keep that, hold that idea and then hold the other end of the idea that now I'm looking for something else or I'm either aspiring or striving elsewhere? Yeah, I was actually just writing a Daily Stoke email about this. There's this letter between Marcus Aurelius and his rhetoric teacher, Cornelius Franto. And Franto says, look, against your will, you must put on the purple cloak of the emperor instead of the coarse cape of the philosopher. Meaning, like, life chose you to do this. And that's where you're going to have to sort of shine.

12:53And I like the idea that for all of Marcus's sort of freedom and power, he's constrained by this, you know, opportunity, but also obligation that is sort of foist upon him. Now, in the ancient world, obviously, there was a lot less mobility sort of socially, economically, culturally. You know, there were literally ranks of classes and the idea of like, well, just because my dad was a blacksmith doesn't mean I want to be a blacksmith. Right. That that that didn't exist. So we it's not a perfect analog that that, you know, because we do exist in a time with sort of mobility and and some agency that would have been incomprehensible to a Marcus Aurelius.

13:41So I don't know if there's like a clear cut answer of when you should stick, when you should quit. But I think his idea that whatever it is that you're doing is a chance to be philosophical, is a chance to practice the philosophy. I think I was asking someone about this recently who'd like sort of transitioned jobs or careers or something. And I said, you know, how do you know that you're not leaving because you're scared or intimidated? And he said he said the test was is the thing you're going to do harder or riskier than the thing you're than the thing you're leaving. Right. So it's like if Marcus Aurelius was was turning down being the emperor because he just wanted to study books and philosophy quietly alone in his room.

14:31that's kind of a cop-out. Do you know what I mean? Conversely, if he's studying books alone in his room and he gets this opportunity to be emperor, that's a bigger opportunity, a better opportunity. It's a more challenging thing. And I think that's why he accepts it. So that might be a decent litmus test to think about. Yeah, I guess just ultimately looking at using your philosophy to understand your own motivations. Sure. Got it. Cool. Thanks.

15:19Look, 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 a 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.

16:07No interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for. And 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.