Every Day Is A Day To Give Thanks | Ask DS

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1:18Welcome 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 who are 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. Thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

1:59Every day is a day of thanks. The Stoics saw gratitude as a kind of medicine, that saying thank you for every experience was the key to mental health. Convince yourself that everything is a gift of the gods, that's how Marcus Aurelius put it, that things are good and always will be. And it didn't just mean you should do this on special days like Thanksgiving, which the U.S. is celebrating today, but on all days. Yes, it's great to be thankful for the usual candidates, for our families, for our health, to be thankful for the food that is laid out in front of us. But we should also find a way to say thank you for the less obvious things, for the setbacks, for the people who wronged us, for having our life disrupted by the pandemic, for the loss of a job or whatever difficulties we might be experiencing.

2:53That nagging pain in your leg? Thank you. It's making me take things slow. That troublesome client? Thank you. It's helping me develop better boundaries. That mistake you made? Thank you for reminding me to be more careful, for teaching me a lesson. That damage from the storm? Thank you. The damage exposed a more serious problem that I'm now solving. And on and on and on. When Epictetus talks about how every situation has two handles, this is what he means. You can decide to grab onto anger or appreciation. You can pick the handle of resentment or of gratitude. You can look at the obstacle or get a little closer and see the opportunity.

3:36So as you gather around your family and friends this Thanksgiving or Christmas or any other celebration you might partake in, of course, appreciate it and give thanks for all the obvious and bountiful gifts that this moment presents. Just make sure that when the moment passes, as you go back to your everyday ordinary life, that you make gratitude and thanks a regular part of it. Again, not simply for what is easy and immediately pleasing, but for all of it, for every day and everything.

4:12Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I have traveled all over the world, been to lots of cool places, lots of places that most people haven't been. But for someone who grew up in California and has now lived in Texas for many years, I think it was kind of unusual that I'd never been to Cancun. I'd been to a bunch of places in Mexico, but for some reason, never Cancun. It wasn't until March of 2023 that I got to go. I was invited by a bunch of senior leaders at PepsiCo Mexico to give this talk. I was only there very briefly, got a bunch of snacks from PepsiCo for my kids.

4:49So that was fun. And I sat down, PepsiCo Mexico's president, Robert Martinez, did this awesome job moderating a Q &A. And if you are looking for how stoicism can help you as a leader, I think this Q &A will help. And if you want to even deeper dive Q &A and some more thoughts on stoicism and leadership, check out the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge. It's a nine-week course built around Mark Surrealis' leadership philosophy. It also involves me asking a bunch of leaders, leaders in similar positions as someone like Roberto, who, you know, heads of sports teams, generals, entrepreneurs, leadership experts.

5:30I got to do some Q &As with them, and then people got to do some Q &As with me. I think it's one of the best things we've done. You can check out that Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge in the show notes. I'll link to that. Remember, if you sign up for Daily Stoic Life, you get that challenge for free, plus a bunch of other awesome stuff. But in the meantime, here's me talking to some senior leaders in Mexico for PepsiCo. Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Basko 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.

6:11What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It 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.

6:53Toyota 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. And 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. So you were mentioning about having evidence on something that you're, you know, put at.

7:33How do you distinguish? Yeah, it's a tricky thing. It's a tricky thing. But, you know, I think it's important. Like every company has a board of advisors. You know, who's on your individual board of advisors, right? Who do you show the stuff that you're working on to? Who are your colleagues? Who are your peers? Who are your mentors? so you know like let's say when i was deciding to become a writer i wasn't just like i'd never published anything before i'd never showed up like i i had great writers who i'd showed my work to who i met over the years like i had i had evidence outside myself right that that gave me some sense that i wasn't you know fooling myself right and i think you know having having a sounding board that you run your stuff by.

8:23It's really important, whether you're in business or, you know, you're creative. It's like one of the ways to make sure it's not your ego is to get an impartial observer to give you, you know, the honest feedback. You're a very successful writer, bestseller. You give all these conferences. How do you ground yourself? How do you not have an ego? I mean, you talked about your day, but that's more around how you plan your day. Maybe it's part of that. but then what else do you do and oh i cannot have this conference of website going up the greatest because they hired me and stuff how do you look about that well i think it's important everyone has an ego and if you don't think you have one that's like the most egotistical thing you could do right um but i find that like doing the task is inherently humbling right so if you're focused on like how you can get better as opposed to look at how awesome i am look at what i've done you're going to naturally, I think, be humbler.

9:20So like what I try to do is whenever I finish a book, I start the next one. Because when I start the next one, you're starting with page zero or page one. And it's blank and it's intimidating and it's not going to be good for a long time. So like by throwing myself into the next project, I feel like I'm not only protecting myself against the ego of like, look how great the last one is selling. Look at all the cool things that I've done. Look how proud I am of what I've published. But I'm also insulating myself against the failure too, right? Like, so I've had books that have done really well out of the gate and I've had other books that took a long time to take off.

10:04And I really didn't sweat either one because I had this other thing that was kicking my ass every day and that was taking up the most of my focus. And so Amazon has this slogan of like, it's always day one, right? And you're always starting anew and fresh. And part of that is not being sort of rigid and set in their ways and complacent. But I think it's also always reminding yourself that you're starting at the beginning and to not get too full of yourself. Right. Amazing. You talk in the book about, and you talk today about, a little bit about the Patriots, and then we heard about the Spurs. You talk a little bit about Bill Belichick and how he started, and he was like the guy, you know, doing the job that nobody wanted to do.

10:52You probably now know him as, you know, the six-time Super Bowl winning coach, and probably Brady was there also. So how do they remain eagleness in a multi-billion dollar business with all the hype they get around, et cetera, et cetera? How do they ground themselves? Well, I think it's a similar thing. In football, the team that wins the Super Bowl not only plays the longest season, but then they have the most trouble retaining talent and coaches. they have uh the worst draft picks the next year right and so they're starting that next season behind april right everyone else got knocked out earlier and has been thinking about how they're going to do the next year right and so realizing that actually your success you could get you could take this too far and become paranoid and never happen but if you realize that your success it's actually putting you in a position of disadvantage now you've got the most competition people are the most familiar with what you just did right um you're the person they're trying to be you know you've got a target on their back you realize i think really quickly like there is the margin for error is so small that if you introduce ego or complacency or entitlement you're gonna get You're asking.

12:16I mean, I was looking at, I spoke to the Los Angeles Rams a couple years ago, and they ended up winning the Super Bowl last year. And then this year, they didn't even make the playoffs, right? And I'm not saying that's out of ego. It was a team that got ravished by injuries, but it's realizing that, hey, like, just because you were successful before, it is not to be taken for granted that you will continue to be successful. You have to stay hungry. You have to focus on ceaselessly solving problems. And you have to look at what you're doing next. Right. And I think that's that's a way to just be so locked in that you don't have you could you could look at how awesome your career was after you retire.

13:01You know, but if you're looking at it in the moment, you take it in the eye off the ball.

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