So What’s Your Plan? | with Judge Yourself, Not Others

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1:18Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

1:58So what's your plan? It either went the way you wanted it to go or it didn't. You're breathing a sigh of relief or now you're filled with dread. What will the next four years bring? Whatever you predicted, wherever you sit politically, the Stoics have one question. And really, it's the same question that the Stoics always have for us, which is, what are you going to do? What's your plan? because whether you're a candidate, one or not, whether a convicted felon, rapist, and unstable lunatic sits in the White House or not, has life or death power over millions with the temperament of Nero or not, whether you're excited about the direction of the country or not, you still have to focus on what's in your control, which is you.

2:43You can't just wing this. You can't just expect to know what you'll do if you don't have the time to consider it. As Seneca said, that all the terms of the human lot must be before your eyes, even the bad ones, especially the bad ones. Whoever you are, whether you're a sitting senator, a new parent, a war veteran, a 20-something who just voted in their first election, take a moment to reflect on the range of possibilities that the coming days might bring. The point of this exercise isn't to worry, but to prepare. It's a chance to reaffirm your principles and think through how you'll respond to whatever fate places before you.

3:17It's the unexpected blow that lands most heavy, the Stoics remind us. Don't let the unpleasant or the improbable slip from your mind as you consider potential outcomes. Reflect on all of them. Think about how you should respond grounded in your duties and obligations. Anticipate the emotions that might arise, whether it's elation or anger or something in between, and plan how you'll keep them in check. Whether in victory or defeat, stay steady for the only thing truly in your control is how you choose to respond. Complacency, fatigue, naivete, these are not options. Like a Stoic, like Cato meeting Caesar, like Stockdale parachuting down into indefinite imprisonment, we all must be ready to meet our responsibilities with virtue.

4:06Our jobs as individuals, as we said before the election, remains the same. The winds may howl, but we cannot be swept away. Whatever the next year brings, major or minor, we will need courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. In fact, we will need them more than ever. And as you know, I do these Daily Stoic emails in advance, so I don't know. It is Schrodinger's cat to me. I have no idea the state of American democracy by the time you are listening to this. I have hopes, sure. But as Seneca says, hope and fear are the same. We focus on what's in our control. We focus on what we're going to do about it.

4:42We make a plan. We handle the parts of it that are in our control. And we got to do our best. So obviously, I have some hopes, but I don't know. I hope everything turns out all right. I'm going to focus on what's in my control. I was writing in my journal, like, you got to be a good husband. You got to be a good father. You got to be a good writer. You got to be a good citizen. You got to be a good human being. Nothing that changes on the global political scale changes that. The stakes can change. The specific situations can change, but the obligation, my path remains the same.

5:24Judge yourself, not others. This is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living by yours truly and my wonderful collaborator Stephen Hanselman, who I also worked on The Daily Stoic with, there is nothing less philosophical than being a know-it-all. This is especially true of those who use their knowledge to scold others for their mistakes while claiming the superiority of their knowledge or insight. The Stoics taught that behaving this way was to miss the entire purpose of philosophy, as a tool for self-correction, medicine for our own souls, not a weapon for putting down others.

6:06Seneca's letters twice employ the metaphor of scrubbing down or scraping off our faults. We need to see ourselves as in the care of philosophy's principles, he says, or as Epictetus put it later, when referring to the philosopher's lecture hall, we need to see it as a hospital for our own therapy. So try not to write down a single complaint or problem of another person in your journal this week, focus on what ails you. We have two quotes from Seneca's moral letters and one from the discourses. When philosophy is wielded with arrogance and stubbornly, it is the cause for the ruin of many. Let philosophy scrape off your own faults rather than be a way to rail against the faults of others.

6:47That's Seneca letter 103. Some people with exceptional minds quickly grasp virtue or produce it within themselves, but other dim and lazy types hindered by bad habits must have their rusty souls constantly scrubbed down. The weaker sorts will be helped and lifted from their bad opinions if we put them in the care of philosophy's principles. That's Epictetus's Moral Letters 95. And then Epictetus's Discourse is 323. Men, the philosopher's lecture hall is a hospital. You shouldn't walk out of it feeling pleasure but pain, for you weren't well when you entered it. I think this is a tension here, and I've seen it some people maybe get it wrong, probably in bad faith when they, you know, reply to stuff I've posted or written, you know, who are you to criticize, I don't know, anti-vaxxers?

7:36Or who are you to say that this political opinion or to say that this is right or wrong? You're not perfect. Of course, right? Of course, I'm not perfect. Of course, a stoic is primarily focused on their own edification, their own improvement. They're trying to look in the mirror, they're trying to scrub off their own faults. That doesn't mean that we turn a blind eye to what's happening in the world. That doesn't mean we indulge and accept and encourage ridiculousness or injustices by other people. I mean, some of the best Stoic lines are quips or criticisms of other people, right? The Stoics were also teachers.

8:13Zeno, Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, they were writers and thinkers. They were responsible for teaching philosophy to people. Of course, we have to make judgments, I think what the Stoics are really talking about is not being a Monday morning quarterback at the expense of your performance on Sunday, right? When I study history, obviously part of my job is to make judgments and communicate these ideas to you and to people and to myself. And that really is what I'm doing. And I have a chapter in Courage's Calling about why we don't judge another person's courage, right? We don't fully understand everything that's going on with them.

8:51but in another sense we do judge their courage but instead of criticizing them instead of feeling better than them because they made this mistake we try to look at them as cautionary tales almost like we would in a greek tragedy or a roman play a shakespearean play and try to apply those lessons to our own lives so the point is when you see someone else doing something wrong when you see something you don't like when you see someone debasing themselves when you see someone advocating a preposterous or dangerous opinion, you can criticize it. You can call it out for what it is, but don't feel superior for it.

9:26Try to learn from it. Try to apply lessons from that to your own life. That's the journey that we're on here. Obviously, as a writer and a speaker, I have to draw on examples. My work would be not very compelling if I didn't do that. I have to walk a slightly different razor's edge. I mean, look, that's what's so funny, right? The Stoics are saying, don't criticize other people. And yet, even in this quote from Seneca, Moral Letters 95, he's saying, look, some people get this naturally, but there are other dim and lazy types hindered by bad habits, and they must have their rusty souls constantly scrubbed.

10:04So that does exist, right? And somebody has to do that job. And perhaps that's your job with a friend or a family member. Just remember that your real job is scrubbing down your own rusty soul. and if you ever think that it is not rusty well that is a compelling sign right there that it is just a funny note i get this all the time because of ego is the enemy people go what do i do about my boss's ego what do you do about all the egos in our organization bah bah bah bah bah but much less often do i get the question i have an ego what do i do about my ego right the question we often are gravitating towards solving other people's issues focusing on other people's flaws But, as they say in the Bible, don't worry about the splinter in your neighbor's eye when you have a log in your own.

10:54So that's what philosophy is about. You are not well. Treat yourself first. But, of course, you may recognize similar symptoms in other people if you need to point them out. Go right ahead.

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