Nothing Can Get In The Way of the Mission | Test Your Impressions

0:00Ryan Holiday: Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

0:14Ryan Holiday: Nothing can get in the way of the mission. We have our job, we have our goal, we have whatever it is that we're trying to do. And then we have other people, we have circumstances, we have freak events and freak weather, and these things can get in the way. they can disrupt that goal, mess up our plans, even eliminate our job. But our mission? Well, that can never be prevented because our mission is dealing with obstacles. Our mission is to be a good person no matter what happens. Our mission is excellence always. What this means, what Marcus Reelus is trying to say in meditations, is that when something gets in the way of the mission, we've been given a gift.

0:54Ryan Holiday: Fate is offering us fuel. It's not hindering us in the least because our mission is bigger than this thing in front of us. Our mission is, by definition, flexible and adaptable and yet also unchanging. That mission might be raising your kids with character. It might be serving your community with integrity. It might be building something. Company, a non-profit, a body of work, the right way. Maybe it's rebuilding after a setback. Telling the truth when it's inconvenient. in or simply refusing to let bitterness take root in your heart. Roles shift, titles change, but the mission never does. Our mission is to show up.

1:32Ryan Holiday: Our mission is to be good. Our mission is to be excellent. So while circumstances can change what that looks like, nothing and no one can actually get in the way of it. And if you want to go deeper into meditations along with me and thousands of other Stoics all over the world, well, this is the time because it is meditations month here at Daily Stoic. April is the month Mark Surrealis was born. And in honor of that wonderful birthday almost 20 centuries ago, we're going to be diving into meditations as a community, doing a kind of book club about it. And if you want to grab that guide, we'll actually throw it in for free.

2:07Ryan Holiday: You can join me in the live session we're going to be doing about it and all of that if you grab a leather edition of meditations. And look, I'd love to see you in there. Grab the Meditations Month bundle. I'll see you in there. Let's do a deep dive together into one of the greatest books of all time.

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4:54Ryan Holiday: Test your impressions. This is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living, which I myself just worked on this morning. I do the journal every morning. One of Epictetus's key teachings was all about testing our impressions, any experience, perception, or circumstance that was in front of us. And he uses a key verb to emphasize this practice 10 times in discourses and once in the opening of the Inchiridion. And the word carries the meaning of the assayer, one who tests fine metals and coins to verify their authenticity. In one of the most memorable uses, Epictetus compares our need to test impressions to what is done with coins and how the skilled merchant can hear a counterfeit coin cast upon a table just as a musician would detect a sour note.

5:44Ryan Holiday: So this week, go through the process of assaying everything that comes before you, assuming it all to be counterfeit or misleading until we can prove otherwise. And you know, it's funny, I think I've really first wrapped my head around this idea of to assay or the word assay, because at Cerro Gordo, you may have heard my interview with Brent Underwood, who's one of my longtime, I guess he was formerly my intern and great guy who works at Brass Check. He's one of the partners and he's helped build Daily Stoic and someone I talk to on the phone almost every day. And a few years ago, he bought this ghost town in the mountains of Southern California called Cerro Gordo.

6:18Ryan Holiday: And he's been trying to sort of turn it into this like resort. But anyways, when I went out and visited, he showed me this building and it's called the assay office. So the miners would pull this silver out of the ground in the ore or whatever. And sometimes they'd melt. I don't know exactly how it works, but they would take it to this office. And this is where like the guy with a brain, the dispassionate observer, the money man would test it and let them know just what they found, how rich it was, how valuable it was, what percentage it was, this or that or this. This was like the filter through which all the rocks pulled out of this mining town were filtered through.

6:52Ryan Holiday: And just because you thought it was valuable. It didn't matter unless the essay office came through and said, boom, boom, boom, and stamped it and gave it. Another funny little thing is that the brothel was located immediately next door. So you'd find out you'd just become a rich man. And then, of course, you go do your business. But the idea is you have to put everything to the test. And that's what Epictetus is saying. He says, when it comes to money where we feel our clear interest, we have an entire art where the tester uses many means to discover the worth, just as we give great attention to judging things that might steer us badly.

7:22Ryan Holiday: But when it comes to our own ruling principle, we yawn and doze off, accepting any appearances that flash by without counting the costs. That's from Discourses 120. And then he says in 2.18, first off, don't let the force of an impression carry you away. Say to it, hold it up a bit and let me see who you are and where you are from. Let me put you to the test. And then in Inchiridion, he says, from the very beginning, make it your practice to say to every harsh impression, you are an impression and not at all what you appear to be. Next, examine it and test it by the rules you possess, the first and greatest of which is this, whether it belongs to the things in our control or not in our control.

8:01Ryan Holiday: And if the latter, prepare to respond. It is nothing to me. So look, if you went and got your rocks tested at Saragord and they found out to be worthless stones, you wouldn't be like, but I want them to be what they are. I'm going to continue to pretend, right? You wouldn't spend money that you just found out you don't actually have. So this process of testing one's perceptions and one's facts is a really essential part of the process. You can't just go through life pretending things are what they are or taking them at first glance because there's so many factors at play from cognitive biases to your upbringing to just misleading appearances.

8:37Ryan Holiday: You have to put everything to the test. You have to see things as they actually are. And this process of assaying everything that's in front of you is a key stoic exercise, and I hope you can build on this practice this week. Slow down, take a minute, put it to the test, see if it's real or counterfeit, see if it's what everyone else wants you to see, or as Mark Cerelius says, see what is really there.

9:07Ryan Holiday: 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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