It's Easy To Take This For Granted | Teach Them To Do The Right Thing

0:00I'm recording this on a Monday, and Monday is our grocery store day in our family. I usually pick my kids up from school and we go over to Whole Foods, get all our groceries for the week. Although here very shortly, we're going to go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at$1.49 a pound if you have Prime with organic birds at$2.99 a pound. And they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials, whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends.

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1:19Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from The Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

2:00It's so easy to take progress and luxury for granted. Warren Buffett has talked about how somebody today, with the comfort of heating and air conditioning, has what a 15th century king could have only dreamed of, being cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Yet how many of us have sat in the seasonally appropriate climate of our home and felt bad that we didn't live somewhere bigger or nicer? The coach section of most airplanes now has technology, electrical outlets, headrest televisions with hundreds of movie options that first class didn't have even just a few years ago. The planes are faster and cheaper to buy tickets on too, and they are no longer filled with toxic Don Draper era cigarette smoke.

2:45Still, we complain that they don't serve meals anymore or that we didn't get a free upgrade or that the seat in the emergency exit row doesn't recline. This is why the Stoics spent so much effort trying to limit their attachments to various comforts. They worked at being self-contained, at not needing the newest and fanciest or most expensive new luxury, because they understood that it was not only ungrateful, it was a quest that only ever ended in disappointment. The more you are content with your surroundings, whatever they are, the more power you have. The fact that Warren Buffett still lives in a house he bought in the 1960s because it was plenty of house for him, that he still drives a Buick because it was plenty of car for him, hasn't stopped him from achieving or helping people.

3:33You can still even fly first class if you like. Just put it in its proper context. Which is to say don't complain if the satellite TV goes out when you're over the Rockies or if they ran out of your preferred entree option at meal service. because if you stepped back and looked at it historically, even in your own life, you'd see just how far ahead you'd already come. We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that, but I do control how I respond, right?

4:15Right. That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a bestselling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence. My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for Good Inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr.

4:52Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It Over the Holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr. Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent And just as a human being and Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15, you just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Friday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. As you know, usually on Fridays, I read an excerpt from the Daily Stoic and then we riff on it.

5:38Well, Well, today I've got something very special in my hands. It just came off the plane. I think a plane. We didn't do boats because we were worried about that longshoreman strike that was going to shut down all the ports. The lead time on some of the stuff we make for Daily Stoke is many months in advance. And so that was happening as we were deciding between air freight and boat freight and all that. Ended up going into the Gulf somewhere and then up the Mississippi to our distributor in Illinois. But I haven't told you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the leather edition of the Daily Dad.

6:09And if you haven't read the Daily Dad, which is daily Stoic-esque, one sort of thought from the ancients or from the wise every day to help center you, some of them are inspired by Stoic philosophy. So I'm going to read not the December 6th entry, but the May 18th entry. I'm just cracking this one for the first time. I don't know if you can hear that. That's the gilded pages kind of splitting for the first time. Anyways, I'm going to read the May 18th entry. Let me find it here. God, I love that sound. Teach them to do the right thing. This is the May 18th entry from The Daily Dad, 366 meditations on parenting, love, and raising great kids, rather adults.

6:56The quote is from Marcus Aurelius. just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn't matter. In the beautiful and hilarious novel A Man Called Ove, a young Ove is working at the same rail yard as his father. He is cleaning a car with another worker, Tom, when they find a briefcase left by a passenger. Instinctively, Tom goes to steal it. Ove is surprised. A few seconds later, he finds and he picks up a wallet left by a different passenger. Just then, Ove's father walks in. He asks Ove what he wants to do with the wallet. Ove suggests that they return it to the lost and found, where it's quickly claimed by the woman who lost it.

7:36Not many people have ever handled this much money, the woman says. Well, Ove's father replies, many people don't have any decency either. Later that evening, Ove asks his father why he didn't tell management about the briefcase that Tom had stolen. His father shakes his head in replies. We're not the sort of people who tell tales about what others do. In both instances, O's father is showing his boy what decency looks like. Decency is about what you do. It's not a standard you hold others to. Decency is what you do with the money you find. It's how you raise your kids. It's not something you wield.

8:15It's not something you gossip about. It's something you embody and embrace. You know, to me, that lesson, the stoic lesson there is like, we don't control what other people do. We don't control that other people lie and cheat and do terrible things sometimes, but we control who we are. We control what we handle. Strict with ourselves, tolerant with others. That's another quote from Mark Strelitz. It could be at the top of this one there. We do the right thing because it's the right thing. And if I'm remembering correctly, it doesn't work out for the boy. I think he gets in trouble somehow, right?

8:49People aren't always going to appreciate it the way that the woman did. But it's funny, as I'm reading this, I'm looking at the other entry. The whole month of May in the book is about character and how characters fade. And there's another story, a very stoic lesson, I think, that we tell in the May 19th entry, which I figured I'll read here for you. It says, teach them to be bigger. A 10-year-old Jim Lawson was walking down the street when, as he passed a car, a small child looked at him and called him the N-word. Stunned by the hate and the meanness of it, Lawson reached into the car and slapped the boy in the face.

9:25When his mother found out about this, she was understandably worried. In the then segregated and racist South, the actions of a young black boy could so easily lead to something terrible and tragic at the hands of awful and unaccountable adults. But more than that, she wanted her son not to be defined or changed by the hate of the world around him. What good did that do you, Jimmy? His mother asked him. We all love you, Jimmy, and God loves you, she explained, and we all believe in you and how good and intelligent you are. We have a good life, and you are going to have a good life. With all that love, what harm does that stupid insult do?

10:01It's nothing, Jimmy, she said. It's empty. Just ignorant words from an ignorant child who has gone from your life the moment it was said. This was a life-changing exchange. It put Jim Lawson onto his world-changing path of nonviolence. He would organize the first sit-ins in Nashville in the 1960s. It helped him realize that he was above the horrible things that other people said and did, and that what mattered was what he said and did. What mattered was responding with kindness and love. What mattered was knowing that he was good and that he was loved and that nothing anyone else thought or what anyone else did could change that.

10:42Lawson's parents there gave him the gift of teaching him that he was bigger than the small people who lived around him, that he could be bigger and do bigger things. And now here today, can you do the same for your children? I love that story. I read it in David Halberstam's The Children, and it stuck with me. And just a beautiful, beautiful story, which I was honored to tell in the book. Anyways, another stoic lesson. We don't control what other people do. We control how we respond to it. We can't let it change us. Can't let it affect us. As Mark Sturlus would say, the best revenge is to not be like the one who injured you, to not be like the one who harmed you.

11:25anyways that's two entries from the daily dad book i'm having a lot of joy it's too perfect just hearing these pages crack this new leather edition which you can grab at dailydad.com slash leather i hope you check it out really proud of this thing i love this book it's one of my favorite things to do and if you like this uh we do a a daily dad meditation every day over on the daily dad podcasts just like daily stoic daily email daily podcast a bunch of great content on social too. So if you haven't checked out Daily Dad, do that and check out the book, dailydad.com slash leather still shipping in time, hopefully to make it to you if you want to give it as a gift, someone in your family, and I'll leave you there.

12:11Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at dailystoic.com slash email.

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