How Everything Can Change | Ask Daily Stoic

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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.

1:59How everything can change. It's been this way for a while, and there's no other way to say it. It's not been working. You're not happy. You're not healthy. You're not what you're capable of being. And the weight of this can hit you hard. It can make you want to despair, but you don't need to because it doesn't have to stay this way. As Bon Iver puts it in their new song. Oh, how everything can change. In such a small time frame You can be remade You can live again As it happens, Marcus Aurelius said something very similar. Now they see you as a beast, a monkey, he wrote. But in a week, they'll think you're a god if you rediscover your beliefs and honor the logos.

2:51and there is no better time to accept and embrace this possibility than right now right at the beginning of a new year you're not beholden to the you of 2024 you can change but you must make the choice to start that's what i try to do at the beginning of each year that's what thousands of other stoics all over the world do that's what we're going to be doing as a community during the 2025 new year new you challenge thousands of stoics all over the world are going to try to get back to the core ideas of this philosophy, rediscovering our beliefs, honoring the possibility of what we can become. And we're going to hopefully make a big change in a small time frame, right?

3:32Be remade in the process. Think about what that would be worth. Think about the habits you'd like to give up, the routines you want to develop. And let's not do it later. Let's do it now. We're all going to start on January 1st. It's going to be awesome. You can sign up right now at dailystoic.com challenge. You don't need perfect conditions or absolute confidence to move forward. You just need to take that next step. The Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge is that step. It's 21 days of challenges, three live Q &As with me. There's a course calendar, there's a private community. As I said, it's going to be lots of us all over the world doing this together.

4:09And since we created the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge seven years ago, Thousands of people all over the world have done exactly that. People from all walks of life, teachers and executives, stay-at-home moms, students, retirees, and everyone in between. As somebody said last year about the challenge, they said it was genuinely transformative. They said they tried all different types of New Year's resolutions, but this one was novel and challenging. They said they learned things and it helped center them and change the way they thought about things, which is awesome for me to hear. I know I feel the same way, making it, participating in it.

4:43It's been awesome, and I can't wait to see you in it. If that's the kind of change you want, join us for the 2025 Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. It's going to start on January 1st, but you got to sign up now at dailystoic.com slash challenge.

5:02Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. As you know, on Thursdays, we do Q &As. It's kind of a crazy time here. My speaking slows down. My kids get out of school. I'm sort of figuring out what am I going to do with this time? You start to think about the new year, who you want to be in the new year. My wife and I are talking a bunch about changes we want to make in our lives. You know, because you're just coasting on fumes at this point. And you're like, okay, I'm going to get a little bit of time off here. I'm going to come back. I want to do this differently. I want to do this differently.

5:38I want to work on this. I want to stop feeling this way. so anyways that's what we're talking about in our you know wrapping up we're just decorating the christmas tree all the last minute stuff and um one of the things that i know is coming up in january for me is the daily stoic new year new challenge right we kick off the year with 21 consecutive days of stoic inspired challenges but on thursdays where we do the q a's where this all ties in is we do these live q a sessions with stoics all over the world who are all doing the challenges together. So for today's questions, I wanted to give you some of my favorites.

6:14These are some questions from back in 2023. You know, we've been doing it for seven years now. So we've had thousands of people all over the world. I've answered every question I could possibly imagine some funny, some weird, some big, some small, some over and over again. But it's one of my favorite parts. I get to talk to you, you get to hear what other people are working on. I've gotten a bunch or great ideas from people's questions. Anyways, the point is, here are some questions from the New Year New You Challenge. And if you want to join us kicking the year off with some challenges, you can sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge at dailystoic.com slash challenge.

6:50Starts on January 1st. If you're thinking about doing it, just do it. Stop procrastinating. It's always funny to see the people rushing to try to sign up on the second or the third because they already got the year off on the wrong foot. But maybe I will see you in the Q &A or in the community forum and all that stuff. I hope to see you in there. But in the meantime, let's get after some questions from the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge. Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't gonna work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin, and bought a truck.

7:35What 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.

8:17Toyota 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. Hey, thank you so much. I just want to say briefly that stoicism has been pivotal to recovery, pivotal to my recovery.

9:02Thank you so much for that. I've been with stoicism for a little over a year right now and recovery for seven. But here's my question is in the frontal lobe of our brains, we have so much information and you do all the right thing and you continue on doing the right thing. But all of a sudden something triggers you and then you go into that reptile way of thinking. And a lot of times, you know, I can breathe. I'm a meditator. I do all the right things with all that. But sometimes it's just hard to get out. And I have a very stressful job. And sometimes it's just so my question is, is what do you recommend to get out of that reptile type of thinking when it just goes in the back of your brain?

9:42Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, to me, this is why the walks that we're talking about are important. This is why journaling is so good for me. You know, sort of sitting down and putting those things on the page is really, really important. and then I think structuring one's day to have pockets of silence and solitude you know I look at certain people's schedule and it's just like one thing after another then of course they make bad decisions or of course they're overwhelmed or of course they default to what's easiest or reptilian or whatever you want to call it it's like they're not creating space to recharge and recover just like an athlete uh you know who's who's never taking breaks is eventually going to hurt themselves if you think of the brain as a muscle if we think of these sort of personality traits that we're trying to cultivate as a muscle you know we've got to be kind to ourselves and create space for us you know to to do the thing that we want to do yeah thank you yeah you talk about if it's up to us it should get 100 of our effort if it's not up to us it gets zero percent well that's quite something to live by i want to know specifically in terms of keeping up with current events reading news um i want to be an engaged citizen i want to know what's going on with the world i do but i can go down a rabbit hole of following the latest whatever's of some you know, toxic personality in our political world or whatever it might be.

11:16So what does Stoics say and what do you do as far as keeping up with the news but not letting it control you? Yeah, this is a great question. So I think a couple of things here. So the Stoics are obviously quite black and white when they say it's either up to us or it's not. And a couple of more modern Stoic writers, I think William Irvine and Massimo Pigliucci have said, well, there's really a third category here, which is stuff we can influence, but we don't necessarily have control over. So voting is a good example, right? You don't control who gets elected, but you do have a very small say.

11:52And if we all abdicate that say, well, then it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy and none of us have a say. So I think it's worth noting that there are things in this kind of middle category. As an author, I don't really control whether my books sell or not, but I also kind of do. If I decide not to market them, if I decide not to put energy towards them, if I just say, it's not up to me, it's up to the gods or luck or the market or whatever, well, they probably won't sell. This is, I think, a tricky middle ground. Um, being an informed citizen participating in politics, et cetera, I think, uh, is a good example of this.

12:43Seneca famously says that the difference between the Stoics and the Epicureans is that the Epicureans only get involved in the events of the world and in politics if something forces them to. and he says the Stoics only don't get involved if something forces them not to, right? So the idea is that the default for the Stoics is that you are engaged, you are informed, you are active, and this is different than the Epicureans who sort of retreat to the literal and metaphorical garden and just sort of, you know, focus on their own happiness or exploration or equanimity. um so i i like that i think a stoic is engaged i think a stoic does know what's happening and certainly almost all of the stoics the the famous ones anyway were involved in politics in some form or another um if not actively as politicians themselves then certainly having opinions on how things were happening now what i would say is that being an if being an informed citizen is your obligation in a democracy or a republic or whatever.

13:49The question is, what is the best way to be an informed citizen? Is mainlining cable news or constantly pulling down the Twitter feed to see the latest news or chatter, is that actually being informed or is this a form of entertainment or in some cases an addiction. Like, I think a lot of us consume too much news and don't know enough history. And so I would just urge you, like I talked about this a lot in some earlier challenges and in my writings, like in the early days of the pandemic, is following what Fox or MSNBC or CNN is saying in real time, the best way to be informed? Or Could you read John M.

14:37Barry's The Great Influenza? Or are there basically better ways to be informed than following the news in real time? Often the answer is yes. So I think your obligation is to be informed. It shouldn't come at the expense of your mental health. It shouldn't be disruptive or addicting or all-consuming. and we do have influence over the world that we live in and we should take that responsibility seriously. We just don't need to become information addicts. I did see a good question in here about the so-called third thing. I'm going to have a chapter about this in the Justice book, which will be the third book in the Stoke Virtue series.

15:21But basically, for people who aren't familiar with what that's referring to, Marcus Aurelius talks about not asking for the third thing being you do a good deed, it helps someone, right? And then the third thing being wanting recognition or appreciation or gratitude or a favor in return for that third thing. I think connecting to this idea of what's in your control, not in your control. The other way is like, you do, you work really hard, you do all the things that are required to be successful. And then are you successful or not? Right? The third thing is expecting a payoff for what you have put in.

16:06And I was just talking about this, I'm in New Orleans right now, I gave a talk to a large group here in New Orleans yesterday. And we were talking about this one of my favorite quotes in the Bhagavad Gita, where basically, he says something like, you are obligated to do your duty, you are not obligated to, you know, receive the fruits of doing said duty. And that's what I think about as a writer, it's what I think about as a person, like you're obligated to do the right thing, to do your work, to do what you're supposed to do, are, you know, to help other people when you can, are you obligated or owed being repaid for that?

16:49No, you're not. And to expect it is to often set yourself up for disappointment or frustration. And that's sort of how I think about that.

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