Don’t Forget To Practice This

0:00I'm recording this on a Monday, and Monday is our grocery store day in our family. I usually pick my kids up from school and we go over to Whole Foods, get all our groceries for the week. Although here very shortly, we're going to go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at$149 a pound if you have Prime with organic birds at$299 a pound. And they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials, whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends.

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1:20Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

1:59hey it's ryan welcome to another sunday episode of the daily stoic podcast uh i hope you had a great thanksgiving one of the things i'm working on in my life is i'm just trying to be more generous and like it is something you can work on aristotle talked about virtue not as this thing that you have or were, but it's something you did. And he actually talks about generosity specifically in this regard. He says, it's like playing the flute or being a carpenter. Like you get good at it by doing it more. And so I've been working on that. And one of the ways I started a couple of years ago, I just, I don't know.

2:38I just don't like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I really don't like them. I don't have a problem that the other stores on Main Street here in this little town have black friday sales i get it it just never sat right with me doing that for something like daily stoic and so a couple years ago i just said well how if i'm not going to take advantage of black friday or save money maybe there's an opportunity to flip it on its head to do like something generous so we just decided to use that space one of the most valuable sort of marketing slots of the year for all businesses like just sales of everything spiked on those days i thought well, what if we used that platform for good?

3:15What if we raised money instead of tried to make money? And so we started doing this fundraising drive for Feeding America, which is the big national food bank here in the United States, like not national, and that's run by the government, just this big sort of organization that works with these smaller food bank chapters all of the US. There's one like, a couple blocks over from from where the painted porch is, I go buy it on my walks most days. They're super, super efficient, like every dollar you give to Feeding America provides at least 10 meals. So when we did the first Feeding America thing like three or four years ago, I think we raised enough money for a million meals.

3:48Then we upped it to two. Last year, we were shooting for three. I don't know if we quite got it, but still we provided cumulatively. Like we, I mean, the Daily Soak community, all of you have provided meals for literally millions of families. Like millions of people have benefited from this. I love that. If you think of generosity as a habit, you get better at it and you get stronger at it. And then I have a chapter about this in Right Thing Right Now, which I'm going to play for you in a second. But in the meantime, I would love for you to participate. We're trying to raise$300 ,000 this year.

4:20I'm going to put up the first$30 ,000. Then we're going to use some Daily Stoic slots here to try to push people to do it. You can donate at dailystoic.com slash feed. Literally, just put in a dollar and you have provided 10 meals. Just pay forward the delightful Thanksgiving you had or just pay forward any bit of generosity you've experienced in your life. This is just an awesome time to do that. As I said, dailystoic.com slash feed. I'll link to that in today's show notes. But this chapter, give, give, give in Right Thing Right Now is about this idea of generosity as a habit. I tell this delightful story about this guy who built it as part of his writing practice.

4:53I just love this. So today we're gonna talk about generosity as a practice and I'm giving you a chance to practice. And all you have to do is go to dailystoic.com slash feed, donate a dollar, donate$10. I'm putting up$30 ,000. If you beat me, well, I'd be very impressed. but literally any dollar counts. Let's make this a selfless day, a generous day, rather than a selfish day and a materialistic day. You can do that dailystoke.com slash feed and enjoy this chapter from Right Thing Right Now.

5:23Give, give, give. When Rabbi Harold Kushner sat down to write a book, he tried not to procrastinate. He tried to get right into it. No hesitation, no overthinking. No. he allowed only one small ritual to precede his act of daily discipline. Before his pen touched the page or the notepad, it went first to his checkbook, where Kushner scrawled out a small donation to one of the charities that he and his wife supported. In the way that the ancients might have prepared for battle with a sacrifice to the gods or the muses, the rabbi waged the war of art by first striking with an act of kindness. He warmed up for a day of good writing by writing down some numbers he knew would do some good.

6:11Generosity is something we admire. It's something many of us wish we could be better at. As it happens, there's only one way to get there, to do that. And it's the same way one gets better at writing or any other craft, by doing it. Not later when we're better off, not only when someone really needs it, not in one or two big or flashy moments, but consistently, regularly, as a matter of course, so it becomes part of who we are, so it becomes kind of a North Star in and of itself. Anne Frank's motto, which she learned from her parents, was that no one ever became poor by giving. It's true, charity is edifying and profoundly rewarding.

6:56And as it happens, the Hebrew word for charity actually means justice. Of course, there's some part of us that knows that giving money away is a good way to go broke. Plus, we hustled and sweated and earned what we have. We know how money might compound and grow if properly invested. And we can't help but think of the fun things we could do with it or some moment in the distant future when we might badly need it. Yet aren't all these reasons to be generous with it? We worked hard because it was our job, because we wanted to realize our potential. The financial compensation is something we're glad to get, but also understand on some level is extra.

7:36We earned it once, we can earn it again. And what kind of person values their fun or redundant security over the alleviation of someone else's suffering? If you've been blessed, be a blessing. And it should be said, there are many ways to do this. We can be generous with our time, as Florence Nightingale was, dedicating her life to service instead of high society. We can be generous with credit, generous with praise. We can be the kind of person whom people come to for help, the kind of person whose door is always open, the kind of person who smiles at strangers, who fixes friends up, who checks on people who are lonely, who is there when you need them with a nice word.

8:18We can use our power and influence to fight for people who have little, as Theodore Roosevelt did. We can be generous with our access and advice. Kindness is a form of generosity we can always afford. It doesn't matter how much money you have, how much power you have, or how little. Nothing is stopping you from being generous in some form or some way. How are you doing? Do you need anything? Great job. I appreciate you. These are expressions of generosity that don't cost a thing.

8:56We 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.

9:31My 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.

10:08Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And 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.

10:29Nothing is stopping you from being generous right now. The immensity of the problems or the needs of the world do not absolve you or prevent you from making a small step towards solving them, doing something for someone who is suffering from them. During the Depression, wanderers and hobos would often stop at the Carter house, which was not far from the railroad tracks. Carter's mother would always fix them something to eat. One neighbor noted how thankful she was that there were never any of these people hanging around her house. Later, Jimmy Carter would learn that the community of homeless people during the Depression had a series of symbols to communicate which houses were decent and kind and which were heartless and cruel and to be avoided.

11:12This kind of mark of earning it from those in need stayed with Carter all his life. It's why into his 90s he was still donating his time and money to help others, even building houses for those who could not afford their own. It's funny, Ralph Waldo Emerson is famous for his essays on self-reliance, but in reality he was an incredibly generous man, not just with his money, but with his time and his encouragement. The scene he cultivated in Massachusetts has no parallel in history. People all over New England knew they were welcomed at Emerson's home, where unofficial meetings naturally began to form what later historians came to call the Transcendental Club.

11:51He mentored and helped forge the careers of countless artists and intellectuals. It was, after all, on Emerson's land at Walden Pond that Thoreau was allowed to live and build his cabin. He supported his family members financially. Emerson was an unstoppable champion of education, a vocal and financial supporter of public libraries and access to knowledge. Great, Emerson later said, is the person who confers the most benefits. The more successful you are, the more self-reliant you are, the more left over you have to help others become the same. To whom much is given, much is expected. And we've all been given so much, each of us, all of us, what will we do with it?

12:34Who will we help? What will we give? And answer? Enough that it hurts. Enough that it challenges you. Enough that there is sacrifice in it. Why should we get to keep it all to ourselves anyway? It's not really ours to begin with. Who owns the patent on your vaccine, Jonas Salt was asked on television as he rolled out the first protections against the scourge of polio. Well, the people, I would say, he answered. aware as he was that his research had been funded by charitable donations and built on the backs of so many other scientific breakthroughs. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun, he said?

13:14Marcus Aurelius, reflecting on the whole of his life, would write that he felt lucky to have never needed to ask for money, but luckier still that whenever anyone else needed it, he was never in a position to say that he couldn't afford to help. It's not only the right and fair thing to do, but it makes us great. So we must make a start of it, a habit of it. The point is not how or how much, it's that we are a blessing to others in whatever form we can be, in whatever way is possible.

13:49Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and would really help the show. We appreciate it, I'll see you next episode.

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