Live Like This To Handle Anything | Ask DS

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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.

1:59Live like this to handle anything. When you read about Cato or Marcus Aurelius, you're struck by their extraordinary reserve. They were certainly friendly and kind, even playful at times to those close to them. But with strangers, they kept a measured distance. They were self-contained. This quality was rare in Rome, and it's even rarer today. We live in a world overflowing with overshares and gossip. The people proudly flaunt their chaos, inviting not just a glimpse into their lives, but full immersion. Everywhere you look, there are busybodies, energy vampires, trolls, and toxic narcissists.

2:35Seems that no one pauses to think before speaking. No one practices restraint. Social media has fostered an epidemic of poor boundaries, and with it, a culture marked by insecurity, low self-esteem, and a blurred sense of where one person ends and another begins. So how can we establish better boundaries in a more confident sense of self like the Stoics had? How can philosophy address our modern day struggles with communication and resilience and relationships? Well, that's actually a question I tried to answer in my new master class, which is built around this idea of using ancient wisdom to solve modern problems.

3:14And the first class is out now, and it features some of my conversation with Dr. Jennifer Baker, a philosophy expert who researches virtue ethics and teaches philosophy at the College of Charleston. By living philosophically, she said, we can learn to handle anything. And it was philosophy that created an inner citadel within Marcus and Cato. It was philosophy that protected them all from the pushback and attacks on their character. If you're willing to engage with the process of philosophy, the same can be true for you. The Stoics taught the importance of knowing one's place and path in life.

3:46They advised tuning out gossip, keeping a healthy distance from flawed influences, avoiding the trap of adopting others' bad habits. They championed reserve and dignity and poise, a steady detachment from the opinions of others. And this isn't easy. It demands real self-discipline, but it's also the foundation for true well-being and happiness. And as we've seen in the lives of Marcus and Cato and many other Stoics, it is a path to greatness. And with It's so cool to do this masterclass. I believe we have some other episodes we're going to run from it. But I got to sit down. They had this awesome set that the production quality was incredible.

4:24And we got to talk about not just Stoicism, but a bunch of different schools of ancient philosophy and how what they teach can be applied to your everyday life. I bring in a bunch of experts, not just Dr. Jennifer Baker, but a Navy SEAL, a trained psychologist. and we're trying to take their teachings, merge it with the teachings of the ancients. And again, use this ancient wisdom to solve modern problems. The rest of the masterclass is going to drop in four courses over the next couple of weeks. You can head dailystoic.com slash masterclass to find those and learn more about the course. I love being a student of things.

4:59It's always great to find ways to continue your education as the Stoics themselves did. And this masterclass is a great way to do that. dailystoic.com slash masterclass. Check it out.

5:13Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Two of the things that are most controversial when I talk about them with the Stoics, if you actually look at the history of the Stoics, it should be the least controversial. The Stoics were in politics and many of them were wealthy. And yet when you talk about stoicism and money, stoicism and finance, people go, oh, you're turning this into a prosperity gospel. You talk about politics, you say, why'd you have to drag politics in there? Both of those criticisms would have sounded absolutely absurd to Seneca, who was born wealthy, an incredibly savvy and successful investor, and then a career politician who held elected office, right?

5:58Objections noted. It's something we do have to talk about. and we're not going to talk about politics here. What we're going to talk about is some stoic lessons and ideas when it comes to our finances, when it comes to money. I flew to New York City back in June. I spoke at this Money Is Mastermind. I was at the Grand American Hotel, which is a cool hotel. And it's basically a group of entrepreneurs who get together. They want to learn how they deal with the success they have, how they manage their money, how they make sure that they manage with all this money to be happy, to actually get the value out of it, which, you know, the Stoics talked about so few of us do, right?

6:40Seneca says poverty is not just having too little. It's also wanting more. We talk a lot about this actually in this cool challenge we did, the Daily Stoic Wealth Challenge, which is about a deeper definition of wealth, not just the size of your bank account, but it's about how you get freedom, how you get peace, how you get happiness as a result of financial success, and then also how to be disciplined and smart about money. I'll link to that in today's show notes. I think it's one of the best challenges we did. You can check that out. But again, it was controversial when we did it. People said, oh, you're just trying to turn this into a way to make money.

7:18No, I'm trying to talk about the things that Stokes talk about. And this is one of them. And that's why people had a bunch of questions at The Mastermind, I think you're really going to like this. A couple book recommendations, if I may, that I'll throw out there. The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel is great. Die with Zero by Bill Perkins is great. And I Will Teach You to Be Rich by my friend Ramit Sethi is awesome. All three of these guys have been on the Daily Stoic Podcast. I'll link to those episodes as well if you want to go further down this rabbit hole. When you talk about Stoicism and what I heard, it seemed very similar to non-attachment, which I believe is an Eastern philosophy.

7:57How do you compare the two? And have you ever thought about bringing more of just non-attachment to the discussion of your writing? Yeah, I think there are a bunch of overlaps between Stoicism and Buddhism. Yeah, there's a bunch of overlap. I did a book on stillness, which is where I think the Eastern and Western traditions have a lot of overlap. To me, what I like about it is the idea that many thousands of miles apart, different sides of the planet, you had these two very different schools coming to a lot of the same conclusions independently. To me, that lends a lot of credence to them. It's also interesting, it was during Marcus Aurelius' reign that the Romans send a diplomatic envoy to the Han dynasty of China.

8:42So on the one hand, they were not connected. And at the same time, this was one of the first moments of that connection, which I think is really interesting and cool. Hi, thank you so much. Was there a particular moment where you were cornered that must have, I don't know, broke you, that inspired the concept, that kind of, I have no choice but to pursue this? Yeah, I think some of us experience adversity in kind of one one foul swoop, you know, a tragedy, a diagnosis, how we were born, where we come from. And we tend to think of adversity as that, this sort of singular thing. I went through this.

9:25I'm in a wheelchair. I, you know, immigrated from this country. And those are obviously profound bits of adversity and obstacles to overcome. But I also think, and to me, this is more what the stoic definition of obstacles is. It's a day-to-day thing. We're all waking up in a world that we don't control. And the more we try to fight against that, the more we try to exert control. We think if I just get like rich and powerful and important enough, then it'll be the way that I want it to be. Right. That it's really wrestling with and coming to terms with that, having to surrender to the silliness of that.

10:04It was more my experience and where I was coming from in the book, that we're just constantly faced with these situations where part of it is up to us and part of it is not up to us. And the energy and the focus and the emotions that we throw at the part that's not up to us, we're just throwing good money after bad. And when we focus on here's what I'm going to do about it, here's what I'm going to make of it, here's how I'm going to be in response to this, that's where the stoicism is. And so that's kind of where I came to it. And yeah, there's been big moments in my life where I've been sort of punctured by these things, but in a way, I don't see them as that different than the little ones.

10:42It's like, look, your plane's delayed. How are you going to respond to this? It's just a microcosm of this larger thing of, you know, I just went bankrupt. How am I going to respond to this?

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