Have You Read The Books? | Test Your Impressions

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1:29Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

2:07Have you read the books? We say we want to get better. We say we want to learn about this or that. We say we want to make a change. We say we've decided to get serious. But is this true? The Stoics had an expression, acta non verba, deeds, not words. So it's ironic that most of us say we want to make these improvements, but we can't or won't do the bare minimum. Ramit Sethi, Daily Stoke podcast guest, has spoken to thousands of people whose finances are a mess, who claim they want to get things together. He asked them, okay, but have you read a single book about money? It's like that scene in the movie Knocked Up.

2:45You haven't even read the baby books. If you want to do something about your anger problem, there are books you can read about that. We even have a course about it for Daily Stoke. If you want better habits, there are books about that. We also have a course about it. If you want to get started with stoicism, there are books you can read about that. And of course, we have a course about that too. If you want to be a better parent, we have a book about that too. One page a day, just like the Daily Stoic, called The Daily Dad, 366 Meditations on Parenting and Love and Raising Great Kids. And there's a bunch of pre-order bonuses.

3:17You can grab it at dailydadbook.com. Look, is reading a book or taking a course going to solve all your problems? No. It's not going to immediately transform you. They are, after all, just words. But reading those words is an action. It is a first step. It is a small but essential commitment. And that's why Katherine Heigl and so many expecting parents have gotten so upset with their partners who won't read the baby books. If you want to get better, if you want to get serious, then get the books, read them, and then take the next most important step, which is to apply them. Although I actually found so many of the parenting books to be not very good, which is why I've been working for the last four years on The Daily Dad.

4:06The idea being that you don't read a parenting book once and you're transformed, but it becomes part of your daily routine, a daily ritual. And like The Daily Stoic, like Stoicism, by returning to it over and over again, you're making a commitment to yourself about your values, about who you want to be, about what's important to you. Anyways, please do pre-order the book. It's a huge help, especially the earlier you do them. I'm really proud of this book. I just finished recording the audio book, so you can pre-order that also. But if you want a signed numbered first edition from me, you can grab that at dailydadbook.com.

4:41It would mean a ton. Check it out.

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5:52Test your impressions. This is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal. 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living, which I myself just worked on this morning. I do the journal every morning. One of Epictetus's key teachings was all about testing our impressions. any experience, perception, or circumstance that was in front of us. And he uses a key verb to emphasize this practice ten times in discourses and once in the opening of the Inchiridion. And the word carries the meaning of the assayer, one who tests fine metals and coins to verify their authenticity. In one of the most memorable uses, Epictetus compares our need to test impressions to what is done with coins and how the skilled merchant can hear a counterfeit coin cast upon a table just as a musician would detect a sour note.

6:42So this week, go through the process of assaying everything that comes before you, assuming it all to be counterfeit or misleading until we can prove otherwise. And you know, it's funny, I think I've really first wrapped my head around this idea of to assay or the word assay, because at Cerro Gorda, you may have heard my interview with Brent Underwood, who's one of my longtime, I guess he was formerly my intern, and this great guy who works at Brass Check. He's one of the partners, and he's helped build Daily Stoic and someone I talk to on the phone almost every day. And a few years ago, he bought this ghost town in the mountains of Southern California called Cerro Gordo, and he's been trying to sort of turn it into this, like, resort.

7:21And he's lived there for the whole pandemic. But anyways, when I went out and visited, he showed me this building, and it's called the Assay Office. So the miners would pull the silver out of the ground in the ore or whatever, and sometimes they'd melt. I don't know exactly how it works, but they would take it to this office. And this is where like the guy with a brain, the dispassionate observer, the money man would, would test it and let them know like just what they found, how rich it was, how valuable it was, what percentage it was this or that or this. This was like the, the, the, the filter through which all the rocks pulled out of this mining town, uh, were, were filtered through.

7:59And, and just cause you thought it was valuable, It didn't matter unless the essay office came through and said, boom, boom, boom, and stamped it and gave it, you know, another funny little thing is that the brothel was located immediately next door. So you'd find out you'd just become a rich man. And then, of course, you go do your business. But the idea is you have to put everything to the test. And that's what Epictetus is saying. He says, when it comes to money where we feel our clear interest, we have an entire art where the tester uses many means to discover the worth, just as we give great attention to judging things that might steer us badly.

8:31But when it comes to our own ruling principle, we yawn and doze off, accepting any appearances that flash by without counting the costs. That's from Discourses 120. And then he says in 2.18, first off, don't let the force of an impression carry you away. Say to it, hold it up a bit and let me see who you are and where you are from. Let me put you to the test. And then in Coridian, he says, from the very beginning, make it your practice to say to every harsh impression, you are an impression and not at all what you appear to be. Next, examine it and test it by the rules you possess, the first and greatest of which is this, whether it belongs to the things in our control or not in our control, and if the latter, prepare to respond.

9:11It is nothing to me. So look, if you went and got your rocks tested at Sarah Gordon and they found out to be worthless stones, you wouldn't be like, but I want them to be what they are. I'm going to continue to pretend, right? You wouldn't spend money that you just found out you don't actually have. So this process of testing one's perceptions and one's facts is a really essential part of the process. You can't just go through life pretending things are what they are or taking them at first glance because there's so many factors at play from cognitive biases to your upbringing to just misleading appearances.

9:46You have to put everything to the test. You have to see things as they actually are. And this process of assaying everything that's in front of you is a key stoic exercise, and I hope you can build on this practice this week. Slow down, take a minute, put it to the test, see if it's real or counterfeit, see if it's what everyone else wants you to see, or as Marcus Aurelius says, see what is really there.

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