Everything Is A Kind Of Dying | A Little Better Every Day

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2:50going to be doing. So let's get into it.

2:59Everything is a kind of dying. It may seem dark to think about it this way, but it's true. We are constantly dying, dying every day, as Seneca said. Life is a one-way street. Time marches in only one direction. Things are always ending, always coming to a close or getting closer to one. Marcus Aurelius knew this, but he didn't let it get him down. In fact, he found some reassurance in it. When we cease from activity or follow a thought to its conclusion, he observed, it is a kind of death. But this doesn't harm us, he pointed out. In fact, we look forward to many of these cessations and conclusions.

3:32Think about your life, he said, childhood, boyhood, youth, old age, every transformation, a kind of dying. Was that so terrible? Of course not. It's just how life is. From one end comes another beginning. Nothing lasts forever, nor will we want it otherwise. Instead, we have to accept change, if not embrace it. We have to accept that none of us maintain anything or any form forever. Instead, we are transitioning always, some quickly, some more slowly. Everything is tinged with a kind of dying. Everything is a phase, including the life we're lucky enough to live right now.

4:24You probably heard the headlines about all the different cuts to foreign aid and food benefits. This is having a profound impact on the world's poorest people and the world's poorest communities. But, you know, just hearing about that, that's not what stoicism is about. But stoicism is, to me, what you're going to do about it. And that's where GiveWell comes in. GiveWell is trusted by tens of thousands of donors each year because they provide free and independent research that helps you understand how to have a big impact. GiveWell has spent the last 18 years researching global health and poverty alleviation, and they direct funding to the highest impact opportunities.

5:03Over 150 ,000 donors have already trusted GiveWell to give more than$2.5 billion over the last several years. And research suggests that these donations will save over 300 ,000 lives. I myself am one of those donors. I donate to GiveWell every year. It means a lot to me. And you can find all their research and recommendations on their site for free. And thanks to the donors that sponsor this research, GiveWell doesn't take a cut from your tax-deductible donation to their recommended funds. And if this is your first gift through GiveWell, you can have your donation matched up to$100 before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last.

5:39To claim your match, go to GiveWell.org and pick Daily Stoic from the drop-down menu under podcast. That's how they know that you heard about GiveWell from the Daily Stoic and you'll get your donation matched. That's GiveWell.org. Code the Daily Stoic to donate or find out more.

6:03Like I said, I've got this new cool leather cover, which you can check out at store.dailystoic.com. I think it just spruces it up. Hopefully, it helps sort of is the continuity, the thread between each year of using the journal. This is my fifth year, I think. This is the fifth journal I've gone through. So it's got a little spot here for my note cards. It's got the Daily Stoic logo on it. It says from Seneca, I examine my day and go back over what I've done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by. That's what we're doing as we journal. Check that out at store.dailystoic.com. But today, or this week's entry is, the Stoics saw their lives as works in progress.

6:44They didn't believe they were born perfect, but they believed that with work and dedication, they could get a little better every day. There is real delight in this progress, as Epictetus quoted by Way of Socrates. Marcus Aurelius avidly pursued his own education and improvement, eagerly looking for advice for mentors and historical examples. Well, let's follow that example this week and see how you get a little better as each day passes. We must keep constant watch over ourselves and, as Seneca phrased it, put each day up for review. Looking back on our day helps us to better understand where we may have fallen short and gives us tangible feedback for how to improve and grow.

7:28Only what you measure and record can be monitored. Only what you put up for reflection can be learned from. And our first quote is from Seneca's Moral Letters. I will keep constant watch over myself and most usefully will put each day up for review. For this is what makes us evil, that none of us looks back upon our own lives. We reflect upon only that which we are about to do. and yet our plans for the future descend from the past. Marcus Aurelius from Rusticus, he said, I learned from Rusticus to read carefully and to not be satisfied with a rough understanding of the whole and not to agree too quickly with those who have a lot to say about something.

8:07And then Epictetus says, but what does Socrates say? Just as one delights in improving his farm and another his horse, so I delight in attending to my own improvement day to day. This is Epictetus's Discourses 3.5. as I think about the decade and a half now I've spent studying stoicism, I sometimes marvel at who I was when these ideas first hit me and how far I've come. Some ways I look at how not far I've come and how I still find myself making the same mistakes over and over again, which Marcus remarks about in meditations. He goes, look, you're still an old man and yet here you are, you're afraid of death, you're losing your temper, you're prizing the wrong things.

8:49but the truth is he had come very very far and I feel like I have come far I'm not perfect I'm not where I want to be but I can't deny that I have made progress and so that's what stoicism is it's progress what does that progress look like well my favorite observations from Seneca says how do I know I'm making progress as a stoic says I'm a better friend to myself are you? I don't know when you first came into understanding these ideas, what you first read, but it's wonderful in those moments where you catch yourself and go, this really would have rocked me before. This really would have sent me off before.

9:28I really wouldn't have caught myself before. I think about this even with my marriage with my wife. We were talking about something the other night and it's like, yeah, we've been together for 15 odd years and we're just coming around to realizing that when you do this, I do this, or that I do this. And so on the one hand, it's like, man, things would have been easier if we figured this out earlier. And yet, it's also wonderful that we're figuring it out now. And the time it's going to save us and the frustrations it's going to save us and the heartache it's going to save us. You delight in your improvement day to day.

10:06You make little bits of progress. We have a TikTok that I posted about this, but one of the most interesting things I read about Tom Brady is that it's not that Tom Brady is obsessed with winning. People think that's what it is. He's obsessed with getting better. And that's how you get great. It can be a curse, certainly, right? It can be taken too far. If you only look at what you can do better, if you only look at where you fell short, if Seneca's sort of putting herself up for the review every day becomes a kind of torture, that's not the idea. The idea is that we, push ourselves to get better.

10:40We notice where we've made improvement. I interviewed Michael Dell on the podcast, I guess it was last year, and he had this great acronym. He says, pleased but never satisfied. That's how the company celebrates the success it's had, how he celebrates the success he's had or the improvements he's made. But that doesn't mean you rest on your laurels. That doesn't mean you call it. No, you're always trying to get better. right and the person who focuses on where you can get better who is pleased but not satisfied that's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy that's how we get better that's how we push ourselves that's the idea so if you think of stoicism then as a day-to-day journey a week-to-week journey a year-to-year journey right it's not a magical transformation it's something you work as they say in sobriety circles it works if you work it the ideas if you work it if you make small improvements, if you try to apply them here and now a little bit every day, it adds up, adds up.

11:41Well-being is realized by small steps, Zito said, but it's no small thing. So the little tweaks, little breakthroughs, little conversations, all the things that have happened for me over the years, they're not major. Not any one of them is probably worth writing home about. That's why I don't tend to put myself in the books. But cumulatively, it's changed the course, the bearings, the direction of my life in a really, really big way. And I know that's true for lots of you. And here we are at the beginning of the year. Let's set out to make some small improvements day to day over the next 12 months and think about who you would be if you made a 1 % improvement every day for the next year, every week for the next year, every month for the next year, every year for the rest of your life, right?

12:28That adds up. It adds up. Small steps, but it's no small thing. That's the message from the Daily Stoic Journal, which of course you can pick up everywhere and check out the new leather cover. I think it's really sick. store.dailystoic.com.

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