It’s Given Us More Of Ourselves | (Dis)integration

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.

1:09ourselves out of that mess. The fallout from the pandemic, this nightmare of a work situation we're stuck with, the problems big and small that life gives us. They are not cheap. They are not free. They are also not without their benefits either. As we've said before, it's in struggling and dealing with these problems that we discovered things about our capacities. Indeed, we had to increase our capacity in order to deal with them. Adversity costs us, sure, but it also gives us more of ourselves. It unlocks something in us that was not reachable in ordinary circumstances that we didn't know was there.

1:53When the Stoics practiced amor fati, it was not the failure or the loss or the physical pain that they loved. That would be ridiculous. No, they were embracing who they could be in response to it. They were embracing what they would become because of it. They were embracing the new parts of themselves and of relationships and life itself that they were given as a result of it. We had something taken away from us by fate, but by turning towards it, by facing it, struggling with it, we found something too. We found out who we really were. which was someone greater and stronger than we ever could have imagined.

2:40Amor fati means a love of fate. It's the mindset of making the most out of everything that happens. Marcus Aurelius, he said that a blazing fire takes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it. Nietzsche said that amor fati was his formula for greatness, that we not only bear what is necessary, but love it. And that was the inspiration for our Amor Fati Challenge coin. It's a creation I was lucky enough to collaborate on with my mentor, Robert Green. And it's something I carry around with me always. This coin helps me reframe every obstacle and difficulty I face in my life, as well as all the great things that have happened in my life as well.

3:18So you can check it out. Go to dailystoic.com slash AF. And I promise you, you will love it. 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 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.

3:58There 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. 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.

4:35And 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.

5:07Today's entry from the Daily Stoic, disintegration. These things don't go together. You must be a unified human being, either good or bad. You must diligently work either on your own reasoning or on things outside of your control. Take great care with the inside and not what's inside, which is to say, stand with the philosopher or else with the mob. Epictetus' Discourses 315. We are all complicated people. We have multiple sides to ourselves, conflicting wants and desires and fears. The outside world is no less confusing and contradictory. If we're not careful, all of these forces pushing and pulling will eventually tear us apart.

5:53We can't live as both Jekyll and Hyde. Not for long, anyway. We have a choice to stand with the philosopher and focus strenuously on the inside, or to behave like a leader of a mob, becoming whatever the crowd needs at a given moment. If we do not focus on our internal integration on self-awareness, we risk external disintegration. Obviously, you're listening to me, so you can't see it. But in the book, I have disintegration, the dis in parentheses, one word, but there's the parentheses. And the reason I do that, it's actually something I talk about in the intro, my first book, Trust Me, I'm Lying.

6:29And if you've read Trust Me, I'm Lying, or you've heard of it, it might seem very different than what I talk about here at Daily Stoic. Or if you see a video of me, and then you contrast it with the somewhat ominous, maybe even evil cover of Trust Me, I'm Lying, it might seem as difficult to reconcile. And indeed, it is. And I talk about this in the intro of the book. I was, of course, familiar with stoicism when I wrote that book. I was, of course, studying stoic philosophy before I even got into marketing. And, you know, I've read Mark's Reuse many times in those years that I worked for those controversial clients.

7:04Was it hypocrisy? Was I a bad person? I mean, I don't get to say that. But what I think about it, and as I reflected on it when I wrote that book, is that I was not integrated. I had these two different parts of myself that were very not aligned. Does that make sense? It's funny, we use the word disintegration to mean comes apart, right? But really what it would mean, dis and integrated, means not integrated. And that's what I was. I was not integrated. I had these different spheres. I had this part of me that really liked philosophy, that really believed in these ideas and stoicism, that was trying to apply them in my life.

7:41And then I had my actual occupation and day job where I was pulling these marketing stunts and living, I don't want to say an unphilosophical life, but certainly not a life fully in accordance with the philosophical ideas. I don't think I was making the world a better place. That's partly why I wrote the book, partly why I changed. The philosophy helped me get there. But for a long time, these things were compartmentalized. They were not integrated. And so I think that's what Epictetus is talking about. He says, you must be a unified human being. You can't be these different things. Seneca was not a unified human being.

8:18He was a brilliant artist and a ruthless power broker. He was a philosopher who also coveted wealth and status and influence, who wanted to be on the inside of things. And that disintegration, some would call hypocrisy, I would just say was not the integration he needed. And he got closer to that integration as he got older. He ultimately leaves neuroservice and dedicates the last few years of his life to getting there. And that's where I think a lot of his best work is from. But that lack of integration is a problem for all of us, right? You say you love your spouse, that your family is really important.

8:55And then, you know, you spend all your time at the office, or maybe you're having an affair. Or, you know, you say you care about the environment, but then look at some of your personal decisions, right? You claim to be a good person, but then look at how you treat people who are close to you, right? Hypocrisy is one thing, but I think it's often that we have trouble just applying what we believe or applying it fully or seeing, in fact, that the way that we're acting, which feels normal or appropriate or necessary given our profession, is actually not in accordance with our values or, as Stokes would say, not in accordance with nature, not who we're supposed to be, what we're capable of being.

9:38So this integration is the work that we need to do, both in studying the philosophy, maybe it's going to therapy, maybe a relationship helps you get there, maybe just long conversations, a lot of self-awareness. I think ultimately, not to reference another one of my books, but it's our busyness, our franticness, our yearning or push for things that keeps us so busy and preoccupied that we don't notice the disintegration. I think that's largely what it was for me. I was just trying to get ahead, doing cool things as they came up. I was young, had a million things going on, didn't want to let certain people down.

10:19And so that lack of awareness about my disintegration was largely rooted in just not having the time, not having the space to reflect, not having literally a minute to do it. And I think part of the reason we keep ourselves busy is so we don't have to do that. Because when we do it, it's painful. When we do it, it demands change. So I'm urging you, I guess, to take a little time to think about whether you're integrated, to think about where you're not a unified person, to think about where you're focusing on things outside your control, because inevitably it will tear you apart. It does not end well.

10:54And it can make you do things that you're ashamed of or embarrassed by or later regret or have trouble explaining, all of which are true for me to a certain degree and true for I think anyone as you get older and wiser and better. I'm wishing you much integration in the stillness required to get to that integration. I encourage you to do that work.

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