Go Out And Do This Today | A Strong Soul Is Better Than Good Luck

0:05Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

0:56Labor Day was first proposed by Matthew McGuire, a labor union secretary, in 1882 in New York. It is, he said, a tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country, and the idea that they deserved a rest for that work. The Stoics were hard-driving, no-excuses, disciplined folks who, despite their acceptance of slavery in the ancient world, would still have appreciated this idea. The mind must be given relaxation. It will rise improved and sharper after a good break, Seneca wrote. He used the analogy of farming. A field that isn't given a break, where crops are not rotated, will quickly lose its fertility.

1:36and so too will a mind and a body that's overworked. So by all means, take your much-deserved break today. We are human beings, after all, not human doings. Life will be long if you're lucky and you have much great work in front of you. If you break down early, wear yourself out before your time, where will that leave you? Where will that leave us? In a way, overwork is selfish, no matter how much the workaholic claims they are doing it for other people, because it deprives them in the world of that later fertility. It causes needless breakdown and injury. As Seneca observed, constant work gives rise to a certain kind of dullness and feebleness in the rational soul.

2:15Nobody likes a person who is all business all the time. So go out today and live today. Rest from your labor. Come back better for it. Come back improved and sharper for it. That's the idea. This is your holiday. Take it.

2:38Human, your body has a performance superhighway. 60 ,000 miles of blood vessels that deliver oxygen and nutrients to every cell. This, of course, is your cardiovascular system. It's the foundational system that powers everything we do. Both elite athletes and longevity experts invest directly in the cardiovascular system because supporting healthy blood flow is critical for energy, recovery, mental clarity, and overall performance. That's where human comes in. That's human with two N's. They started out of research at the University of Texas near where I live and have 15 years of experience making award-winning supplements for nitric oxide production and healthy blood flow now used by over 160 pro and college sports teams.

3:26Human Cardiovascular Health Daily is a plant-based and made from clinically studied ingredients like grapeseed and seed kelp extract. It supports nitric oxide production for healthy blood flow and energy while also supporting blood pressure and helping support the delicate interlining of your blood vessels. Just two capsules each morning will power energy and recovery while also playing the long game by supporting long-term vascular health and healthy aging. Human has an exclusive offer for our listeners. You can visit human.com slash stoic for an extra 15 % off your first purchase. That's enter code S-T-O-I-C stoic at checkout.

4:01That's human with two N's dot com slash stoic for an extra 15 % off with code stoic at checkout. 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. What 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.

4:40There 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. Toyota 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.

5:18And 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.

5:43A strong soul is better than good luck. Here I am reading today's September 1st entry from The Daily Stoic. The rational soul is stronger than any kind of fortune, Seneca writes in Moral Letters 98. From its own share, it guides its affairs here or there, and is itself the cause of a happy or miserable life. Cato the Younger had enough money to dress in fine clothing, yet he often walked around Rome barefoot, indifferent to assumptions people made about him as he passed. He could have indulged in the finest food. He chose instead to eat simple fare. Whether it was raining or intensely hot, he went bareheaded by choice.

6:22Why not indulge in some easy relief? Because Cato was training his soul to be strong and resilient. Specifically, he was learning indifference, an attitude of let come what may, that would serve him well in the trenches with the army, in the forum, in the senate, and in his life as a father and a statesman. His training prepared him for any conditions, any kind of luck, and if we undergo our own training and preparations, we might find ourselves similarly strengthened, right? The Stoics undergo a hard winter training, to borrow Epictetus's phrase. And the point of that training, whether it's the physical training that Cato is doing, whether it's dressing awkwardly in your worst clothes, as Seneca was talking about, you're trying to cultivate an inner citadel, a strength, a fortitude, a sense of preparedness, so that you can, as Epictetus would later say, meet whatever situation happens and go, ah, this is what I've trained for.

7:18I got this. I know I'm capable of withstanding this. We've talked a lot about physical training here and that practice for me, the working out, getting up off the couch when I don't want to, jumping in the cold water when I don't want to, lifting the weights when I don't want to, running a little bit further when I'd rather be home, taking the longer way on the run than the shorter way, trying to speed up a little bit, trying to get up the hill faster, whatever it is. This is cultivating that strength so that when things are difficult, you got it. You've trained for that. But it's, of course, not just the physical training.

7:54I think about my philosophical training and my maturity as a human. I was like, this is going to be training for whatever else happens in life, right? And also, this is precisely what I've studied history for, what I studied stoicism for, what my wife and I have worked on together, what I've worked on in therapy, what I've worked on every place in my life, it was for something like this, and also the sense that this itself would be training for future adversity and difficulty. There's a Frederick Douglass quote, maybe it's not totally accurate, some people doubt that he said it. He says, it's easier to create strong children than repair broken men.

8:38And I think that's what Seneca is saying here about adversity. And you think of the adversity that Seneca goes through in his life, his tuberculosis young, he has to spend 10 years in convalescence as a child in Egypt, of all places. I talk about this in Lives of the Stoics. If you don't know Seneca's life story, it's pretty incredible. On the way back, his uncle is killed in a shipwreck. Seneca makes his legal debut. is going places, and then he's exiled on these trumped-up charges. He loses a child. He's called back, but he's called back. He's in Nero's court. Obviously, things are difficult working for Nero.

9:14You know, it's one thing after another for Seneca, up until the end when he's forced to, you know, die by his own hand at Nero's demand. But Seneca had trained for this. Even Tacitus, who's not a fan of Seneca, it's very clear that in that difficult moment, it was something he'd thought about, worked on, prepared for. That's who you want to be. You want to be strong. You want to be able to bear what comes. It might be physical training, like running for a marathon. It might be something like, hey, I cranked the shower cold. Or it's the reading you're doing, the conversations you're having, the community that you're building, the relationships that you're building, the exercises you're walking through in your mind.

9:53All of this is training you, preparing you, putting yourself in a position so you can succeed whatever happens, so you can be strong enough in that moment and not need to be repaired afterwards. That's what we're doing here. That's to me kind of the mission of Daily Stoic. That's the preparation my own philosophical practice is about. And it served me well the last couple of years. I hope it served you well. And I hope the training and work you're doing now sets you up to be served well in the future. Enjoy. Talk soon.

10:27Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.

11:05Look, 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 an 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.

11:53No 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.