It Doesn’t Matter Who It’s From | 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.

1:58It doesn't matter who it's from. It's sort of a strange choice if you think about it. In the opening lines of the sequel, The Gladiator, Paul Mescal, playing the grandson of Marcus Aurelius, he's rallying the troops for a terrible battle. Quotes them a line from Epicurus. Where we are, death is not, he tells them. Where death is, we are not. Why is he quoting the rival school, the Stoicism. It's not like there's a shortage of lines and meditations about death. But just like as we've talked about before, we have a video on this. The opening scene in the first glantier also has a hidden Stoic lesson.

2:39And so maybe it makes sense here that the grandson of Marcus Aurelius would be liberally quoting from a rival school of philosophy. After all, who does Seneca quote more than just about any other philosopher in his letters? It's Epicurus. And Marcus Aurelius himself, Gregory Hayes points out in the best intro and translation of meditations, he never explicitly identifies as a Stoic. No, Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher, and like Seneca, he quoted any author if the line was good. Philosophy is not dogma, it's truth. It doesn't matter who said it. What matters is whether it gets the job done. What matters is that it helps us live better, think deeper, and face life's challenges with virtue.

3:21The wisdom of Epicurus, of Seneca, of Marcus, they're tools for the same purpose, to prepare us for what life demands and to remind us what truly matters. Philosophy isn't about an allegiance to a school. It's about a commitment to growth, resilience, and truth wherever it may be found.

3:46Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoic. podcast. I've gotten to do some cool things in my life. I've been invited to talk to sports teams. I spoke at the NFL owners meeting. I've been in cool hotels and cool venues. I've gotten some perks. And sometimes I bring my family along. Usually I ask my wife, hey, I got this cool thing. I'm going to be going here. You want to come? It's in Hawaii or it's in this country. And usually she's like, I'm good because she knows it's not that glamorous. And we try to keep a stable life for our kids, where we're not interrupting them and leaving them too much.

4:25But I remember I walked downstairs the other day and I said, I just got invited to talk at the White House. And they said, if I come on this date, I can also come to the White House holiday party. Do you want to come to this one? And she was like, yes. So back in December, we flew out to DC. She was just there for the day. She flew in in the morning, flew out at night. I stayed. And the next day, I gave a talk to about 200 White House employees in what's known as the Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. I had been there maybe 15, 16 months earlier. I got offered to do a tour of the White House, which I did.

5:08I saw this room. I think when I was there, there was like some longtime government employees having this retirement ceremony there. the idea that I would come back and be answering questions about stoic philosophy was not high on my list of expectations, but it was cool. And what my host said, which I thought was interesting, he works in the digital office of the White House, or did, he said, with a change in presidents, every single person in that room was about to go through a major life and or career change. So they just wanted me to talk about that. Not a political talk, not a partisan talk, but a how do you transition?

5:45How do you deal with change or disappointment or frustration? How do you make sense of a crazy, chaotic world? How do you make sense of a world where you've got to go find what your next thing is going to be? Anyways, this was an honor for me. It is obviously the inauguration here. It is coming up very shortly. So I'm bringing you a Q &A with this group of White House employees. This is obviously the outgoing administration, not the incoming administration, I suspect I will not be invited sometime in the next four years. So I guess back in 2017 or 18, I spoke to the White House Communications Agency offsite.

6:21People don't know that the White House is actually run by like a sort of a combined military command of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, I guess. I don't know exactly. But it was very cool experience to do that. They're the ones who, you know, when the president is the embodiment of the command center. So where he or she goes, that's where, you know, all the things that have to go with them go. And so I talked to that group. Although again, this is a nonpartisan thing. So much of the actual operations of government are nonpartisan or political in any way. We sort of screw that up in our country by politicizing everything.

6:55So I was talking to the nuts and bolts people then and now, and I wanted to bring you a chunk of that in today's episode. I am bleeping out everyone's names here because, you know, unfortunately we are heading in a, again, a partisan sort of, well, some people call it the revenge tour, which is a dark, sad thing. So I'm going to bleep everyone's names, but I'll give you a chunk of my Q &A and I'll bring some more of that later on as we go through the year. Anyways, it was an honor for me and just a real treat. I'm glad my wife got to come with me and I wish she'd watched this talk.

7:33Thanks 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 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. 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.

8:19We 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. 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.

8:58Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. I used to watch your videos on the way to school all the time. Oh, wow. I'd be like, 10 stories to get your life together. I'd be like, wait, I'm actually getting a lot together. Clearly you did or you wouldn't be here. I was like, thank you so much. Thank you to you. And then I'd be like, oh, my kids, I'm stressed out. I'm working out. and then it'd be really awesome and then you got me into your book so i want to thank you for that oh amazing principles and stuff like that so i think it's a big thing and like broke culture talk about that but you actually get into it in a healthy way it's not like talks in medicine but actually teaching people like how to get into stone principles and helping doing something for that then my second thing is is i think a lot of people in public service are like I want to do a million and one things.

9:53I want to work at the White House one day for another administration. Hopefully I want to have my business on a million and one things. And so in terms of like a scope principle from your perspective, how do you prioritize what's important in the moment, right? Because a lot of people want to do everything at once, but then some people say like, we should do this person with that. But as you talk about, you're a very productive person. So how do you do a scope principle, prioritize what you want to do in the moment? Let me do just the first thing there, because I think it's important. There is, when people are talking, as we're doing post-mortem on the election, and sort of having the young vote, the young male vote especially, I think, I do think young men are struggling, and we can say that about taking away from other groups who are struggling, and I would say they're struggling, and there's not much in the way of content ideas, role models to deal with that.

10:50And so a lot of these influencers have become very popular by filling a vacuum of stuff about how should you set up your life? What are good habits? What are bad habits? What are things you need to know about the world? and so I think a lot about how do I use the platform because I was a young man who you know you wake up and you're like nobody taught me how to do any of these things that I'm supposed to do and so when I talked about the founders and so philosophy earlier you would be taught these things in school there was a moral component to education not just how do you do unstandardized tests and that is a role that philosophy and religion are supposed to fill in life and so when you take those away there's a vacuum and people step in and fill that vacuum and I think a lot about we need to think more as a culture about how do we fill that vacuum with positive moral instruction about how to be a good person, how to be a good man how to be a good woman, generally how to be a good person in the world and philosophy is I think a great answer to that but the way into those things via social media is really practical stuff about you know just foundational habits things to read you know ways to think about things and so that's what I would like to just write books but I spend a lot of time working on stuff on social media to meet people exactly where you work I'm so glad that you found stuff as far as like prioritization it is tough you can't be everywhere you've got to know what your main thing is you know what's the main thing what's so for me that's writing so I do all these other things and my two main things are my family and writing.

12:33And so I have to go, okay, I get these cool opportunities, other things come up, the stuff I get excited about. But ultimately, if I don't have a good chunk of time every day to do those two things, that's not good, right? So really kind of crafting, like, hey, what do you want my days to look like allows you to make certain career and life decisions. In 2016, I got an offer to be a staffer for one of the cabinet secretaries. And it seemed cool, it seemed exciting. Ideology aside, I was like, that's the opposite of this, the opposite of where I wanted to live. The main thing would be I wouldn't be able to do right, which is my main thing.

13:11And so I was like, okay, this is a cool opportunity, but it's not the right opportunity. And so being able to know what you want your life to look like day to day, sometimes maybe you go hey for six months or a year i'm gonna do something different but i'm going to come back here but so thinking about like what do you want your life to look like day to day and then you got to be able to judge these decisions because you're going to get offered and asked a lot of things to do and some of them get you closer to the main thing and some will get you further from the main thing um and being able to say no to things that are exciting or lucrative or prestigious but are not where you want to end up.

13:51Those are the real challenges in life. Good challenges, but still a challenge. Hi, Ryan. Thanks again for sharing your time with us. My question has been focused on storytelling. I will pull the write books one day and want to hear more about what are those key drivers for your storytelling approach and how has that shifted over time across meetings? I was very fortunate that I was a research assistant for one of our great living writers is Fanny Brock and Creed with the 40 laws of power and mastery, the laws of human nature, 33 strategies of war. And so I really learned like the building blocks of how a book happens, research and then storytelling.

14:30And I think a lot of books fail because they are fact-based. Sounds like I have a problem with facts. If you're just like, hey, these are facts. That's not how people remember, and that's certainly not how they get excited. A book is a journey. You're sitting down, you're going to get five or six hours of your life to the course of reading a book. And so, how do you take them on a journey from point A to point B? It's usually a two-story. Same with talks, same with politicians. You've got to tell a story. It's got to be a compelling story. And so, I decided when I was going to write about ancient philosophy to not say, hey, let me tell you what Seneca said or Mark Stavula said or Epictetus said and why it is or is it true, I decided because of my background in pharography that what I was going to do is take these ideas from the Stoics and illustrate them with stories in many cases via people who are more well-known than the Stoics.

15:24So I'll pick you know a team on the way to the Super Bowl or pick a great uh you know bat on history or a great leader and I want to tell stories that illustrate the ideas. So my first book on stoic philosophy obstacles away the word stoic probably appears three times in the whole book it is a book demonstrating what stoic philosophy looks like often through people who had never even heard of stoic philosophy and maybe were were the opposite of stoic philosophy in other aspects of their lives but in this example that i'm telling you they're demonstrating a stoic idea so i what i do is i have what i want to say or the point i'm trying to make and then i find examples and stories that demonstrate this.

16:05And that, the research part of it is the hard part. The right way is actually much easier. Hello. So nice to meet you. Like the young gentleman that mentioned earlier. So I came across you, I think, five years ago. Lovely. Yeah, I've been with the administration for a few years, but Capitol Hill is my home base. I was there for you. I needed to come across you. I was definitely at an inflection point. to say the least but so nice to meet you thank you for being here i think what could be very helpful for me definitely practicing stoic but perhaps for the room is so you already talked about prioritization which is everything but then other layers if you talk about discipline yeah right and and the what you do beautifully the various medium mediums that you you talk about stoicism but through the body, right?

17:01The meditation, walking. But concrete steps like that because I don't want to speak on behalf of everybody, but after January 20th, the market is saturated. Job interviews right now are a bit marked. And so how to stay disciplined and then how to, the ability to concentrate and then concentrate at a long period of time. I personally think is key for this new transition, but I think that's going to be helpful. No, I think you're right. We tend to think of philosophy as a theoretical or a mental thing. And of course it is, but there's a physical component to it too. That's why discipline is one of the stoic virtues.

17:42I mean, Aristotle's school is named after walking. I think philosophy and walking have always been intertwined. It wasn't this idea to even sit in a classroom and listen to someone lecture for a long time. There was an active practice to it. And there were stoics who were athletes. There were stoics who, what was beautiful observations about me, they were clearly like outdoor people. And we, unfortunately, live in an indoor world. And so I think having a strong physical practice, ideally it's an outdoor physical practice, is really, really important, especially when things are going sideways because you have a win every day, you know?

18:18The world could be falling apart, but like I got a good run in, you know? and it's something that's in your control. That's the other part of having a great physical practice. It's like, you win because you did it. And so building that in, like, I have a cold plunge at my house. I've read up a bunch of things about its, you know, health benefits. This could be complete bullshit. I have no idea. To me, that it's unpleasant and hard, but I do it anyway, that's the benefit of the thing. And having some of those practices are really great. one of the things I like swimming is that it's a screen-free activity and you're kind of in this sensory deprivation element you know but it doesn't happen whatever it is for you you gotta have some kind of practice hey 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 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

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