Don't Let Them Turn You Into This | Ask DS

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2:34Welcome 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.

3:13Don't let them turn you into this. In book seven of Meditations, Marcus writes to himself, according to the Gregory Hayes translation, which you can grab a special edition of here. He says, take care that you don't treat inhumanity as it treats human beings. What does that mean? What exactly does Marcus mean by inhumanity? Hurricanes are inhuman. Chat GBT is inhuman. They might be ruthless forces of nature or technology, but they're not out to get human beings. Does it matter how we treat them? So with a passage like this, it's helpful, as we've done a few times now, to look at various translations.

3:50In his great annotated edition of Meditations, Robin Waterfield translates that same passage like this. Be sure not to behave towards antisocial people as people behave towards other people. In the Hicks and Hicks translation, the Emperor's Handbook, it's don't feel for misanthropes what they feel for mankind. And the 19th century British translator George Long has it like this, take care not to feel towards the inhuman as they feel towards men. And finally, the Daily Stoic translator, Steve Hanselman, my dear friend and book agent, translates it as, see to it that you don't hold feelings towards misanthropes like they do for other people.

4:32What Marcus Aurelius is really saying is that you can't let the world, you can't let other people get you down or change you. A more colloquial and modern way to translate the essence of this quote might be, don't let the sons of bitches turn you into a son of a bitch. Don't let inhumanity affect your humanity. Whatever happens, however you're treated, do your best to remain kind and patient, helpful, understanding, generous, courage, courageous, just, and wise. Be a good Stoic, even if nobody around you is. And like I said, favorite translation of meditations is the Gregory Hayes edition. There's a really good paperback version of it for the Modern Library.

5:12We have the leather edition that we sell in the Daily Stoic store. I'll link to that in today's show notes. The Robin Waterfield edition is fantastic. I recommend that all the time. You really can't go wrong. I mean, there are better, Marcus's wisdom is Marcus's wisdom. There are better versions and not so good versions. I advise you not to cheap out, but I love doing these deep dives. Like what can we learn as we parse the different texts from all these different angles? That's how we can parse it from all these different angles. But I'll say most of the time I'm picking up my leather edition of Meditations, which sits at my bedside.

5:44And actually my wife brought a copy of it with us on vacation where I'm recording this from. And so we always have one of those close at hand. and so should you. I'll link to that in today's episode page, where you can just go to store.dailystow.com.

6:08All right, hit me. All right, so thanks for taking my question. I moved to the U.S. like 12 years ago to tour with my band. and I've been super fortunate that I've been able to tour and also hold down just a 9-to-5 job for the last 7 years and it went remote after COVID but also after COVID as you know, touring pretty much stopped and I doubled down on writing my ultimate goal in life is just to write books and write music but I have this 9-to-5 that accommodates all of that aside from that I have a couple of side businesses, e-commerce store and van rentals for other musicians. Okay. My question, to make it short, sorry.

7:02No, go ahead. These other things, the job funds my art. And at one point I wanted to leave it and all this to focus on the music. Glad I didn't because of COVID. Yeah. The other stuff funds my wealth buckets is what I call them. Sure. They take care. They take care of my parents. I was able to pay off my parents' mortgage and set them up comfortably back home. They pay for travel. They pay for music gear, et cetera, et cetera. my question is keep doing it like that even though it slows down my creative process in a way because an hour I dedicate to a side business is an hour taken from writing music or words right or just accept that and keep keep uh lighting all these different fires kind of as you were saying earlier well first off I I love it I think it's creative and inspiring and interesting and exactly the sort path that I have taken.

8:00Yes. Does there come a time where you have to sort of narrow and eliminate because it's not just, hey, an hour here takes from over here. But I think it becomes more acute than that when you ultimately make the leap, which is like, hey, it's really costing me serious opportunities, right? I'm not able to do most of what I want to do creatively. I'm having to pass on, you know, big opportunities, you know, the chance to go on this show or to do this thing or to go on this tour. I would probably, I'm not saying you want to wait until it's too late, but I would say, you know, you probably don't. I was just listening to this podcast about Saturday Night Live and the writers were talking about, you know, how does someone know when it's time to leave Saturday Night Live, right?

8:53And they were basically saying it's better to go too late than too early, right? Like it's better to overstay your welcome a little bit than it is to leap to think you've, you've got it and it's all going to be easy street from here, you know? And so I might say like, you're right to be concerned about it and monitoring it, but I think it will be much clearer than you think when it is time to start making those decisions. And so would you say continue aside from the job, which I know I shouldn't, but continue the side businesses that kind of feed or fund the wealth buckets? I think so. And then maybe it's not a process of dropping everything all at once, but it's a scaling down or you find a way to exit one of them or bring on...

9:42Maybe it's a process of how do you automate those businesses or they become less efficient and less profitable, but they take up less of your time, right? Right. And so how do you how do you scale or automate or, you know, delegate on those things so you can buy back more of your own time, as I saw someone put in the questions. But great, great question. Yeah. Can you hear me, brother? I can hear you. Great. Cool. I think it kind of stems off the question I was just asked. Since your corporate job and until now. Yes. Has been your ratio of like that systematic reasoning Cal was talking about. and he's just great at, that's his strength.

10:23And then that creative workflow, Robert Greene talks about just understanding everything as a whole, that obviously comes from, you know, accumulating all the information over time. But do you start to add that over time or has that ratio changed? Yeah, I think the thing about ratios is that they can change, right? And so different times in my life, It's been more focused over here and less focused over here. And it's about sort of constantly adjusting and then also learning, right? Like you learn, hey, I've overcommitted or, hey, I do too much over here or, hey, this is the busy season for me.

11:07And so, yeah, I think like to speak of to speak of Robert Greene, you know, the last law in the 48 laws of power is assume formlessness. And his point is that as you become great at what you do and successful at what you do, you actually become less rigid and more flexible and adaptable and adjustable. And this is built around your experience, both learned and firsthand with all the different variables in what you're doing. But great question. Hi, Ryan. Hi. It's been so great. I'm just so honored to be here. My question. Oh, my pleasure. Yeah. My question is about as a creative that you are, How do you strike a balance with consuming other people's creative content versus creating your own?

11:58Because that's something I've been struggling with a lot recently. Yes. I think it's really important that you consume lots and lots of stuff. I tend to find that time I spend consuming work from my peers or contemporary work is much less valuable over the long term than even the most esoteric and strange of stuff that's sort of older and more classic, right? So as you're trying to sort of step outside trends or the moment and really root yourself in stuff that's timelessly good and great, right? Because you're trying to create timeless and great work, right? And so I think you want to consume a lot, but I'll just notice like, hey, I'm reading lots of articles and not enough books, right?

12:57Or I'm watching, you know, whatever the TV show of the moment is, but like, there's so many classic movies that I haven't seen. Right. And so I just, I just try to root myself in consuming and immersing myself in really great stuff, or that's really different than what I do. Like I was just talking about this SNL podcast I was listening to. It's called Fly on the Wall, I think. I like to listen to stuff that's very different. Or like if I am going to consume contemporary stuff, I want to watch like a comedy special or I want to watch a documentary. I want to watch someone who does a very different thing than I do.

13:41One, because I'm less likely to compare myself to that thing, right? Like, hey, how did they get this? Should I be doing this? And, you know, I'm more likely to be inspired and discover something new that, like, make a new connection or have a new idea that maybe I wouldn't have had otherwise. That's so awesome. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, great question, though. Hi, Ryan. How are you? Hi, good to see you again. Great. Yeah, I love being part of these. Yeah. My question, first off, I want to say thanks. I just had my first article published. Oh, congrats. That's awesome. Yeah, it's published in the Air Force Journal of Character and Leadership Development.

14:25So that's fantastic. Excited about that. You're quoted in it. And that's what my question was. Okay. I pulled a tweet from yours several years ago for the abstract where you talk about perfecting the personal regularly leads to success as a professional, but rarely the other way around. Correct. When it comes to accruing wealth and time, are you better to invest in yourself as a person or are you better to invest in the trade and the skill? Where's the balance there? No, that's a great question. Yeah. And I do think it applies here. What Cal is saying is say, Getting clarity about what you want to do, what you're trying to save for, what you're trying to make, what kind of life you want, an hour spent on that is probably preferable to, say, an hour reading index fund prospectuses, right?

15:19But I think if we're talking about sort of investing in yourself as a human being versus investing in yourself professionally, obviously there's a tension or a balance here. But I do tend to find that when I'm more aligned, when I'm in a good headspace, when I'm happier, when I'm more secure in who I am, what I'm trying to do, what's important to me, I'm less likely to be distracted by things that don't matter. And I'm also bringing a better headspace, a better focus, you know, a better mindset to the work itself, right? So if my marriage is not going well, it's very unlikely that I'm all, I'm coming home every day, also crushing it as a writer, right?

16:08And so the decision to go, hey, I'm going to invest or do some work over here to get this stuff back on track. And I'm going to have the faith and the confidence that almost certainly that's going to translate over professionally, but let's say it doesn't, I'd still probably make that trade. Right. Like if, if like, you know, people were talked about this with Tiger Woods, like did Tiger Woods going to sex rehab and getting his life together, kicking his various addictions, did it make him a worse golfer? Maybe, uh, maybe it did, but if it did, that's probably a good trade. You know what I mean?

16:49That's probably a good trade. So the nice part about it is that it works separate. It's worth doing separate from whether it has a financial or professional payoff also. Great question. And I love the Daily Dad book, read it every night. I appreciate that. My son broke his hand and had hand surgery on Monday. So trying to take some advice from that book to try to be there for him and a lot of what we do his athletics yeah part of me now so trying to find a way to fill that space productively i know that might sound egocentric but no i i totally get it yeah so i'm trying to use some of the advice that i read from you to help him kind of get through this injury and um be better for it so thank you for all you do love it and love being part of these things um so i have a question just about i have a kind of a weird job right and i do like live streaming stuff on social media and my income is like very donation based so and i go live every night for a couple hours but i'm trying to like remove like my value as a creator and and or entertainer from like the amount of money i'm making yes and said night so if i'm having a bad night i want to do that and still be able to do my job yeah how i want to no i i totally agree uh i have had to, as a creator over time, insulate myself from the numbers.

18:16So I don't see them right. As a creator, I have to make just like, I built my brand. I have my audience because of my taste, because of what I know, because of what's important to me. And this is also what motivates me, right? Like I didn't, I didn't sign up to be anyone's monkey. Right. And so if, if, um, if I only do what the audience wants, then I don't own the audience. The audience owns me. Right. So I think about that a lot. Right. So, um, part of the way that I, but at the same time, if you don't care about the audience, if you are totally ignorant or ignore what's working and what's not working, you can end up very far from not only what the audience wants, but what's economically sustainable, right?

19:05So I try to create a buffer space between me and the stuff. So I'll give you an example. When Daily Stoic started, anyone could reply to the Daily Stoic email and be like, I loved the email, or I hate you, you're a garbage person, you should stop doing this. And one of the shifts I had to make was away from, so I could write what I thought was important and what people needed to hear on a given day, not what people told me they wanted to hear. Because what I was finding is that I would say something that I thought was important or good. And then so many people would say something negative about it, that it would make me gun shy later when I felt like I had to do the same thing.

19:54So I've created buffers, right? Somebody else checks the emails and they tell me if anything important comes through. And by the way, almost nothing ever important comes through, right? Or stats, right? My team gives me a social report at the end of the month. Are we growing the accounts? What's working? What's not working? I get a similar report for YouTube, right? My accountant gives me a similar report on financially what's working. the sales for the painted porch. They're on my wife's phone, right? So I can't check it as my, I don't even have the login for Shopify for Daily Stoic because I don't want to be thinking about, I want to think, I have this card here that says, am I being a good steward of stoicism?

20:37I want to judge my decisions on whether I think I'm doing the right thing for the community, for the philosophy, for what I'm interested in. I don't want to be thinking about dollars and cents all the time. I get enough of the information on a monthly or weekly basis that I'm not going to run out of money. I'm not going to get in some unrecoverable downward spiral, but I'm also not checking it on a consistent basis in a way that it looms large in my mind. Because if you are thinking about money all the time, you are probably not rich. The whole point about being successful or wealthy is that you should get, we use the word post-economic earlier, the whole point is that you should have to think less about money.

21:27People go, I've made so much money, I don't have to think about money anymore, right? Now, there's lots of ways to get there that don't involve winning the lottery. And I think one of the ways to do that is just to set up systems that allow you to be aware, but not constantly aware in real time of the numbers. Because the stats from social media, the stats from, you know, your PayPal account, all these things, it's more information than a creative should have access to in the moment if they want to be centered and sane and do good work. Right. It's insane. I appreciate that. I appreciate that advice.

22:07Thank you. Great, great question. This was really awesome. And I will talk to you guys in the next one of these. And we'll do the same thing where we do some questions after because I I had a good time doing this. So thanks everyone. A lot of great stuff for the course coming and there will be an archive of this. We'll send it out. So stay tuned. Appreciate it.

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