Take This Seriously | Ask Daily Stoic

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.

0:54Take this seriously. After seven years in a Vietnamese prison camp, Admiral James Stockdale was thinking about taking his study of Stoicism, the philosophy he credited with helping him survive those horrific years, even more seriously. He wasn't exactly sure what that might look like in practice, though. Would he write more about it, read more about it, apply practices like the dichotomy of control more? Again, he wasn't exactly sure. At a conference not long after he returned home, Stockdale met the great philosopher Will Durant and brought up his interest in Stoicism. Durant wasn't much help as far as clarifying what the next step might be, but he shared Stockdale's interest and pointed him to a passage in his book, Life of Greece.

1:38Stoicism was a noble philosophy, it said, and proved more practical than a modern cynic would expect. It brought together all the elements of Greek thought, and though it naturally won only a small minority to its standards, those few were everywhere the best. Like its Christian counterparts, Calvinism and Puritanism, it produced the strongest characters of its time. Theoretically, it was a monstrous doctrine of an isolated and pitiless perfectionism. Actually, it created men of courage and saintliness and goodwill, like Marcus Aurelius Epictetus, Cato the Younger. That's what stoicism has done throughout history.

2:17It has made people the best they could be. It's produced some of the strongest characters of all time. Certainly, that's what it had already done for Stockdale, and yet there he was, like Marcus Aurelius, who was famously seen heading off to philosophy lectures, even as an old man, remaining a student and still getting better as he went. And that's what it can do for you if you take it seriously. But maybe you, like me, like Stockdale, are always wondering about what that next step is, how to continue your studies of this philosophy. Well, that's why we created our course, Stoicism 101, Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life, to help you do exactly that.

2:58It's the best practices and routines of Stoicism delivered in 14 custom emails delivered daily. That's 20 ,000 words of exclusive content. You learn what a Stoic does, what a Stoic doesn't do. The Stoic secrets to success, the Stoic secrets to resilience, the Stoic secrets to productivity, the Stoic secrets to virtue, and what sets Stoicism apart from other philosophies and how to live your best life. For less than the tuition even of one intro to philosophy class at a community college. Here, you'll learn all you need to know about stoicism, and you'll learn it from yours truly. How much progress shall I make?

3:35This is Seneca's question. He said, just as much as you try to make. He says, don't wait. Wisdom comes haphazard to no man. But this course is beginning on November 10th, which is right here around the corner, and we'd love to have you join us together. And you can sign up right now at dailystoic.com slash 101. And remember, Daily Stoic Life members Get this course and all our Daily Stove courses for free.

4:04We 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? Right. 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.

4:40My 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. Becky 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.

5:17Becky. 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. 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.

5:58It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There 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.

6:43And 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.

7:09Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. Back in September, I got to give a talk here in Austin. It was a lovely morning. Got up, took my kids to school. I went for a long run around Town Lake, went swimming in Barton Springs. And then I went to the office and worked for a bit. And then I got to go give a talk here in my adopted hometown. You know, usually I'm in and out of the venues because I'm on the road. But this time it was local. We got to, you know, invite all the employees out. A bunch of our friends came. It was lovely. And I actually got to meet like you guys, right?

7:46Most of the talks that I do are not available to the public. They're companies or corporations or nonprofits. Like, you can't just buy a ticket and come. But this one in Austin I did was. So that was really cool. I answered questions after. And I'm going to be doing that again in basically a month. On December 3rd, I'm going to be in Seattle. So you can come to that. In February, I'm going to be in San Diego and Phoenix. You can grab tickets to any and all of those at dailystoiclive.com. Thanks to everyone who came out to the talk in Austin and asked these questions. I can't wait to see you in Seattle, San Diego, and Phoenix.

8:24DailyStoicLive.com

8:31From one parent to another, a parent trying to teach his kids these virtues. Sure. Can you talk to me a little bit about how you try to give them this wisdom? When I start to talk about Marcus Aurelius, my girls lose me in about five seconds. Do you think my kids are interested in it? Because they're not at all. Actually, often, you know, when they're, like, watching on their iPad or whatever, if we want to threaten them, we go, I'm going to turn on one of my videos, and that's the only thing you can watch. So, look, I don't think kids are ever interested in things their parents are interested in, especially if the parents think that thing is educational.

9:12But I do try to find when there's the little slivers of interest, and then I want to put as much energy behind that as possible. You know, obviously I've been talking to my son about the Romans and Mark Sturilius and Seneca and Epictetus, and he was not interested at all. And then one day he became obsessed with Greek history, which is not exactly what I'm interested in, but it's in the ballpark and I'll take it, you know. And he became obsessed with this podcast called Greeking Out, which we had to listen to an ungodly amount of times. And then we had to go to Greece to see all the places, and then we had to read all these things.

9:45and it's like it's on one level exhausting and on the other totally exhilarating and amazing and you you got to take the the opportunities when they're there so I try to find you know the little spark of interest and you know you see if you can get that going and you know one out of ten times you you find something that really gets going you know right when you start to figure out dinosaurs they're like I don't care about dinosaurs anymore and then and then you know that that's kind of part of it too. And just like, I just try to love this period that we're in where we're excited about this thing.

10:21And then I, I also try to do my best as excruciating as it is to be, you know, interested in Mr. Beast and stuff like that. Adding to the countries that are here tonight, I come from Iceland. Wow. I would have to say I'm an Austinite. Okay. At this point. My question is very simple. I've been reading your books for a number of years now, and they've helped me through difficult periods. But as you mentioned to my fellow audience here that yes, we tend to be lone wolves. Do you see yourself running like workshops in the future? Because I feel like that's one of the things that I would really appreciate.

11:06This is an independent work for me. But if I get into the right community, Is that something you would maybe establish in our area? I haven't thought too much about it. I like the idea. I mean, what I love to do is write. I love to write books. That's my main thing. That's what lights me up. And one of the hard, weird parts about succeeding as a writer is people want you to do a lot of things that are not writing, like this. This is the opposite of writing. No one becomes a writer because they want to talk to large groups of people in person. It's like you became a writer because the thought of that is mortifying.

11:45So I've got a lot on my plate, and I'm mostly trying to protect that. And I know my next couple books that I'm in the middle of. But maybe someday. Obviously, I love talking about this, as you can tell. And maybe smaller groups would be slightly less intimidating. I'm Jess. And I was really glad that you brought up John Mackey and Conscious Capitalism earlier. because I've been into libertarianism for a really long time. And lately, I've gotten interested in self-governance. I was wondering how communities can utilize Stoic ideas. Yeah, that's probably beyond my pay grade, to be perfectly honest.

12:25But obviously, the Stoics were obsessed with and fascinated with the idea of governance. We know Zeno writes a book called Zeno's Republic, which is unfortunately lost. Although as they excavate Pompeii, they're finding more and more of these tightly rolled papyri that they're able to scan. And AI can slowly see what they say. So who knows? Maybe this will come out at one point. And all the Stoic writings on what a government should look like and how it should work will survive. But yeah, I think obviously the idea of personal liberty is essential to the Stoics. there's a passage in meditations where Marcus talks about what he learned from his fellow Stoics.

13:08And he says, let me find it here because I love it. He says, I learned from my brother Severus to love my family, truth, and justice. And he says, it was through him that I encountered Thrasia, Helvidius, who we talked about, Cato, who we talked about, Dion, and Brutus, and conceived of a society of equal laws governed by equality of status and of speech and of rulers who respect the liberty of their subjects above all else. Now, again, a bit rich to hear from the emperor of Rome, an enormous exploitative colonial hegemon, but it's like, you know, hearing about how all men are created equal from Thomas Jefferson.

13:47The idea is good, and then we have to make that promise real and that's obviously the the project we're all engaged in either on a local level or a national level. I was wondering if you teach younger students because I would love to learn more about stoicism and wisdom. Oh well that's very nice. I don't teach any students but like do you have any clubs or like anything like that? Well and especially now that I'm not allowed back at the Naval Academy. I teach even fewer students. No, I mostly try to write my books, and then I try, like, I don't watch a lot of YouTube videos. I definitely don't go on TikTok, but the reason we make content in all these different mediums is that I want to meet people where they are.

14:33I'm trying to translate my work in as many mediums as possible, and then I, in turn, learn by being in that medium. And of course, I am trying to teach my two kids, however uninterested they currently are in the Stoics. You sound like you're already ahead of the curve and doing great, so thank you for your question. I know you do hard things, and you were in Athens in Delphi some time ago. Yes. I plan to be there in November. Are you going to do the marathon? I am. Oh, it's going to be fun. I know. Well, I saw you run it. I did. And I want to get some pointers from you. How do I survive the trip from Marathon to Athens?

15:16Don't do it by yourself in the middle of July. That's my first tip. I should have started earlier because I definitely got heat stroke and I threw up all over the Olympic Stadium when I arrived. Obviously, discipline and sort of fortune and strength and commitment, that's part of it. I did not really think at all about nutrition or caloric intake. I was just like, I can do this. And I did do it. It was just much more painful than it needed to be. So it's a all concrete up and down course. It's as almost a thousand feet of elevation climb. It's pretty industrial. The whole, like you see the ocean for a little bit, but then you're like under freeway underpasses.

15:58And it's like, not obviously not what the Greeks did. On my birthday, I did 20, and I had some gas in the tank when I finished. And when I'm looking at my time, I'd come out a little slower than I needed to. And I think I overcorrected in the marathon, and I came out a little too fast. I think I was in the low sixes for my first three or four miles, which is just not sustainable. Discipline is not just doing more and more, I guess is what I'm saying. It's also about holding back and restraining and being by myself. I had trouble pacing a little bit. And so that's what I learned. Also, you have to wear a shirt to enter the stadium.

16:40I found that out. I had to go find out wherever I'd put my shirt. And so that sent me back a little bit too. But good luck. It's a beautiful thing.

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