It’s All About Community | Ask Daily Stoic

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.

0:54It's all about community. Sometime around the year 300 BC, Zeno founded what became the School of Stoicism. He taught his first classes at the Stoa Pochile, the painted porch in the Athenian Agora, to what could have only been a few dozen promising students. The Stoa, the porch, became a place for individuals to gather, to exchange ideas, to work on becoming the best version of themselves. There, they were challenged, provoked, inspired, each holding each other accountable to the philosophy they aspired to live by. It wasn't a lecture hall. It wasn't a university. It was a community, a place to grow.

1:37And from that porch came the Stoics that we know today, Cleanthes, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Cato. These are not pen and ink philosophers, but people who changed the world through their actions, their writings, and their example. Now, today, Stoicism is more popular than ever, and yet too many of us are on the path alone. And that's something we've been trying to solve for the last several years here at Daily Stoic. And we've tried to build our own digital Stoic, something that fulfills Seneca's beautiful and timeless piece of advice. He said that we have to associate with people who are likely to improve you and welcome those who you are capable of improving.

2:20The process is mutual, he said. We learn as we teach. We've been trying to create a place not to learn Stoicism, but live it. And we call that Daily Stoic Life. It's a membership program for people who want to build inner strength, reduce their anxiety or emotional reactivity, improve relationships, take responsibility for their actions, stay grounded in the midst of difficulty, to live with clarity and discipline and virtue. I think we're doing a good job. If you have ever read one of the Stoic books and thought, now what? I think this is what comes next. Community, accountability, a group of fellow Stoics from all over the world trying to apply these things day to day.

3:03You can join Daily Stoic Life right now for just$249 a year. That's less than the cost of a single college course and a daily investment in becoming who you are capable of being. And you can join now, as I said, for less than$250 a year. You've got to keep company with people who uplift you, Epictetus says, whose presence calls forth your best. And that's the type of community you'll find in Daily Stoic Life, fellow Stoics whose presence bring out your best. And I'd love to have you join us, dailystoiclife.com to learn more and join us today.

3:41Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. You might know that I am a college dropout. I guess as I've gotten older, that's become less important to people. But my kids found this out. And my son goes, what do you know? You dropped out of college. He says this to me all the time. He goes, mom knows better. She didn't drop out of college. So I'm going to have to fix that, I guess. But I was back at UCR, UC Riverside. That's where I dropped out at the end of my sophomore year. That's where I discovered and was introduced to stoicism. That's where I met my wife. That's where I wrote a good chunk of my books because I would go back over the years and use the library just because I sort of knew it and was familiar with it.

4:23But I was back. Actually, I uploaded this clip on Instagram, you might like. In 2006 or 2007, I forget exactly, but I dropped out of UC Riverside. And today I am back because I'm giving a talk there. I'm actually being interviewed by the chancellor. It all comes full circle, doesn't it? It was pretty crazy though. I was there at UCR to be interviewed by the chancellor. And we were in the university Theater and the audience got to ask me some questions. He asked me some questions. I thought I would bring you some of that as part of today's episode. It was like an hour and then the students asked me some questions.

5:00So I'll split this up into pieces and we'll spread it out. But here's a chunk of that now. And thanks to everyone who came and hopefully I'll be back. I've never given a commencement address and this is me putting out into the universe that I would like to do that at my pseudo alma mater at some point as well. Anyways, talk soon.

5:23Thanks 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.

6:08We 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.

6:48Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. How did you come to come to UCR? There's a thousand universities, so there's lots of places. Why UCR? The short answer is my high school girlfriend. I grew up in Northern California. I knew I wanted to go to school in Southern California. It felt like so different than where I grew up. This is where things were happening. It was closer to the action. And I'd applied to a bunch of the UCs. And then one day a letter from the chancellor came, which was the offer of a chancellor's scholarship and informing me about the honors program, two things that I didn't know anything about.

7:32And I remember I went on a visit and I liked it. I ended up accepting my then high school girlfriend played soccer here. So it all seemed like it worked out, although we promptly broke up. And then I vividly remember, speaking of vivid memories, attending one of these. The first thing that I attended as a UCR student in the summer of 2005, after I graduated, all the honor students were supposed to come back down and we attended a lecture and Professor Straight was The Speaker. And it was the first time I grew up loving books. I knew at some level that I wanted to be a writer. And there was an actual, we'd all been assigned and given a copy of High Wire Moon.

8:17It was a real book, you know, a real book. And here was the actual person that wrote it. And, you know, she went to the school, she taught here. I was just, that was a transformative moment in my life. So how I got here is one story, but how I ended up where I am is largely because of that experience, I would say. What connected us? Because you go UCR to marketing director. Yes. A stoic philosopher. Yeah. Well, the first place that I ever wrote, the first real job that I ever had that wasn't, you know, a fast food restaurant was for the UCR Highlander, which was then a little building behind the hub.

8:56I think it was, I don't remember what it was called, but it's gone now. But is it gone? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. There was a little building there. And I remember I submitted an article to the Highlander and then another one. And then one day the editor called me in and said, hey, do you want to like actually work here? And I didn't know that was a thing you could do. And I became the features editor at the Highlander and they gave me an office. Like they were like, here's the key to your office. And all of it, I was like, what is this? This doesn't feel real. And so, yeah, I was writing for the college newspaper and I started using it as an opportunity to, I would just email people and say, hey, can I interview you?

9:37And they would say yes, because you're a journalist. And I met all these different people and I ended up working for a number of them. And I ended up as a research assistant for this writer named Robert Green, who became my mentor. He's the author of the 48 Laws of Power and the 33 Strategies of War. mastering all these books, but that was how I, I got started. Got started. Yes. But there's still not a story. Don't go there. Okay. So that's a very, that is about as weird of a story as you can imagine. So I was writing for the college newspaper and we had these little mailboxes back in the day.

10:12People get mail and they, there was a secretary. She would, calls would come in and I had a little slip that told me that I had a call and I called back and it was, it was a PR agent. who represented Trojan condoms, who was putting on a event in Los Angeles. And it was specifically for sex columnists, which I was not, but I was not going to disabuse them of this notion because I wanted the trip. So I drove out to Hollywood and they put us up in this fancy hotel and didn't tell us anything about it. And I get there, the speaker that they had hired was Dr. Drew Pinsky, the TV doctor who then was well known for Loveline, which I used to listen to as a high school student in my room before I went to bed.

11:01And he's talking, he tells us all this stuff. It was interesting. We were supposed to cover it. I don't really know. But all I remember is I went up to him after and I asked him if he had any book recommendations. I don't know what possessed me to do this, but I said, I like to read, are you reading anything interesting? And he told me he was reading Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher, and that I might like it. And I went back to my room and I typed in it on Amazon and Epictetus came up, but so did Marcus Aurelius. And I'd seen the movie Gladiator. So I knew who Marcus Aurelius was. And I bought Marcus Aurelius's Meditations.

11:37And that book came to my college apartment on Iowa. I lived in Grand Mark. And this book came and it changed my life. I was taking a philosophy class. I don't know if people still lose, but I was taking philosophy 101 and the meaning of life in the university village movie theater. We built a classroom. Yes. All right. Well, there was a classroom that, but you could watch movies at night and during the day you would take your classes there. And, uh, I was taking a philosophy class, but I opened up Marcus Aurelius and these are not the same, like Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius' as meditations are not even on the same planet.

12:16Like one is just a human being sort of pouring himself out on the page. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. And that turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made in my life. Help those who aren't familiar with exactly what is spilicism in your mind, but I think what hit me when I'm reading meditations there in the living room of my apartment was that, you know, what we were learning in class was theory and ideas and you know, who these people were. And then you read meditations. And I remember getting to book five and Marcus Aurelius is talking about why he needs to get up early, even though he would rather huddle under the covers and stay warm.

12:56And he says, is this what you were put here to do? Huddle under the covers and stay warm. And I remember I typed that passage up and I printed it and I put it next to my wall because I had a morning class that I didn't like going to. And so I think what struck me about the Stoics is that here you have philosophers, but they're not dealing with metaphysics or anything other than how do you be a person in the world? And then ideally, how do you be a good person in the world? And it just sort of the centuries collapsing and all that just it felt very magical. I think when I try to summarize the Stoics to people, I usually say it's something like, we don't control the world around us, but we control how we respond to the world around us.

13:41And the Stoics are trying to present a formula for responding with what they would call erite or excellence. So how do you do great things, be a great person in a time that is not so great, as most of the Stoics knew quite well.

13:58Hey, it's Ryan. Ben, 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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