The Beautiful Language Of Marcus’s Philosophy | Ask DS

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2:25Welcome 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. We're 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. But thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

3:05The beautiful language of Marcus's philosophy. There are so many beautiful passages in meditations. the way loaves of bread split open at the top of the oven Marcus writes in book three the ridges are just a byproduct of baking he says and yet pleasing somehow they rouse our appetite without our knowing why his poetic observation on the way stalks of wheat bend over under their own weight his reflection on the way things in life are often made beautiful by their imperfections it's also crazy to think he was writing in his non-native tongue to himself, never expecting anyone would see it. In Rome, the Romans spoke Latin, but Greek was the language of philosophy, Gregory Hayes tells us in his introduction of his translation of Meditations.

3:53So in Meditations, Marcus was writing to himself in Greek. There he was in his private journal, challenging himself to write in a more difficult language and doing so in such a beautiful way that it endures all these centuries later. It's a simple reminder we want you to spend some time with this week. As we've said before, if you're gonna do something, do it beautifully. And I still have, I was going through it just the other day for a talk I was doing. I still have my edition of Meditations that I bought in 2006 from Amazon, the Gregory Hayes translation. And it's beautiful to me, but it's certainly showing the wastes and wear of time.

4:37It's scotch taped together. So one of the things we did last year is we reached out to Gregory Hayes, we acquired the rights to it, and we made our own beautiful edition of it. It's leather, it has this cool box, it's got gilt edge pages, it's got a ribbon in it. I tweaked the font size a little bit. I added a cool biography of Marcus in the back. A bunch of awesome stuff. We print it in the UK. and we print it in this old factory in the UK and it comes with a school box. Bunch of awesome stuff. It makes a great gift. Also is now the edition I have on my nightstand so I don't ruin the old one.

5:15But if you haven't read Meditations, the Hayes translation is my favorite, as I've said many times. And this is my favorite of the Hayes translations. And you can grab it in the Daily Stoic store. I'll link to it in today's show notes or you can just go to dailystoic.com slash meditations.

5:47Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. In today's episode, I bring you those Q &As every day where people ask me questions about stoicism. This was one I did back in February at the Anaheim Convention Center. The nice folks at Keller Williams had me do a talk. So I was talking to a bunch of real estate agents and people in the real estate industry. I'm pretty sure this was on stage. It was kind of a weird talk. Gary Keller, who's an awesome dude and has been very nice to me, he and Jay Papazen and someone else from their group, they sat on stage the whole time I gave the talk.

6:26I don't know if that was a glitch or part of pressuring you to really step up and perform, but I could sort of see them in my periphery the whole time I was giving them a speech. Then as soon as I stopped, we went right into a Q &A. So I will bring you that now, talking writing, journaling, stoicism, and overcoming obstacles. I was lucky enough, I did another talk with Keller Williams here at ACL Live. Just more recently, I'll bring you the Q &A and the audio of that at some point. But in the meantime, thanks again to Keller Williams for having me out. And I hope you can enjoy this Q &A. I started thinking about obstacles that we've all been through in this industry.

7:12And strangely, they all start with the I. Like we had an infectious disease, right? We shut down the world. We had an insurrection. We had an invasion from in Russia to the other. We had an ice storm here in Texas. Now we have an inferno in Texas. Yes, yes. I'm not liking this. Well, I mean, you're a student of history. Yeah. Is it my imagination? Or has every generation said, it's never, no one's ever had it so bad? What is, it is funny, right? I'm sure we've all heard this over the last couple of years. People go, when are things going to go back to normal? But I think anyone that has studied history knows that this is very, very normal.

7:47I mean, we had an infection. We had an influenza epidemic exactly 100 years before COVID, right? So these things have happened before. And I think it's worth remembering that things that have never happened before also happen all the time, right? And so history is, you think of the things that happened in someone like Queen Elizabeth's life. Like there was no normal. There was world wars and there was depressions and there was declines and falls. There was good times, bad times. That's what life is. And so I think if we zoom out, we get some perspective in our own lives and in history. And then also if we, one of the things I've tried to remind myself the last couple of years is like, this is what living through history feels like, right?

8:31We look back on history, we talk to our grandparents, and we kind of think that it was all fun or easy or there's just this footnote. But it's like they didn't know when the Great Depression would end, right? They didn't know when World War II would end. They were living in the present in the past. and that that's where we're in now. But we also have the benefit of looking at the past and going, okay, none of these things last forever. There do tend to be cycles. And so I think that perspective is really key. Sometimes you gotta zoom way in, sometimes you zoom way out. But the point is to not be too consumed, too overwhelmed by the moment that you're in.

9:05Love it. I feel like if it were an absurdly succession of things, like you bringing stoicism back to the world was perfect timing. Like, I know timing found you in some way. Sure. The world did need this on some level. Yeah, but I think, you know, Marcus Aurelius is writing during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. He's writing during the Depression. Like, people have always turned, when things are good, when things are easy, right, people are just like, oh, I'll wing it, I'll be fine. But it's when things go sideways that we go, hmm, you know, if only someone had thought about this or been through this, can I learn from them?

9:39And so, you know, it's obviously been exciting and interesting to watch the sort of books that are popular. would I trade it? You know, would I trade for this? Is the trade worthwhile? Certainly not. But, you know, I do like the idea that, you know, when things fall apart, people turn to these sort of tried and true ideas. You mentioned you actually juxtaposed it here, Elon Musk and Queen Elizabeth. Sure. And it occurred to me, like, these are business people. Yeah. And you have Elon Musk that doesn't appear to be living all of these virtues all the time. Sure. But that hasn't stopped him from being wildly successful.

10:16So it's not conditional. Success is not conditional on adopting this. But what do you get in exchange for adopting this? Yeah. When I think about this with ego, right? Because ego is the enemy. It's not that egotistical people are never successful. Egotistical people are successful all the time. It's that when you get up close and personal with these folks, you go, oh, I don't know if that was worth it, right? I don't know if I would trade with that person, right? And so when I look at someone like Elon, I don't go, oh, look at what a loser this guy is. Look at how he's never done anything. I mean, he's an incredible entrepreneur, a brilliant guy, incredibly successful.

10:55Does it seem like he's having a good time? No, to me, it seems it looks like more like a compulsion, right? And it looks like someone who's sort of shooting themselves in the foot or worse quite often. And then I go, and what is the cost of that? Not just to his family, to his friends, to his employees, but where is that holding him back? Even someone who's really efficient, really hardworking, there's only so many hours in the day, you only have so much energy. If you are being needlessly deposed in multiple lawsuits, that's not a good use of your time, even if you end up being vindicated in these lawsuits.

11:27So I think people who are disciplined manage to avoid trouble. They manage to avoid needless conflict. because they're secure in themselves and they are in command of themselves. And they go, that looks like trouble. I'm going to go over here. They avoid the kind of spirals that a lot of people get in. When trouble is trouble, we're not going to avoid trouble any of us. But how we respond to it will allow us not to magnify it and make it worse. Yeah, it's that expression like, don't go borrowing trouble. You know, like you got enough on your plate already. You're seeking out things, you know. And by the way, anyone who spent much time on Twitter, you never feel good getting in these arguments with random strangers, right?

12:07You feel worse. Your hormones spike. You are stressing yourself. You get this fight or flight reflex without the benefit of training and fighting. It's just this sort of needless excretion of adrenaline that I think wears you down. And it's just not... Success should not be the freedom to get in a lot of stuff. We don't need to go to Twitter for that. Exactly. Yes. So make it practical. I know this is a new crowd. Make it practical. If I want to have a better command, I want to not be captive to my fears. I don't want to be captive to my emotions. We all are entitled to them, but how we actually respond.

12:48Sure. What's the first step? I mean, you're holding the journal there. I think journals are a great place to work some of this stuff out, right? There's the moment you're overwhelmed by it, you're frustrated by it, you're scared by it. and then instead of just dumping that out in an email or freaking out or hitting the eject button, you work through it on paper. This is why pros and cons lists are so great. But also, we talked about the physical practice. I think walks are magical. It's the ability to sort of step back and go, here's what I think I should do, but should I actually do that? Here's what everyone else wants me to do.

13:26Here's what I normally do. And to go, I'm going to take a beat. I'm going to think. This is what Tim, I think, was talking about. As you get knocked down, you have this impulse to immediately jump back up. That is a positive character trait that is great. But you might also just get punched in the face again for no reason, right? If you go, hey, if I back up here, or how can I do it differently? How can I rest for two seconds, right? I think people are in great command of themselves. They use these opportunities to think and reflect and practice and to just be sort of conscious of what you're doing and what you're doing.

14:02A little bit of time. Yes. Taking a beat is the word you said. So whether it's 20 seconds or 30 seconds, I had E.L. Doctor was my thesis advisor. Yeah. He saw me smoking and he said, you know how I quit smoking? Every time I wanted a cigarette, I just watched the second hand on my watch. And 30 seconds later, I didn't need a cigarette. I love that. So a little bit of time, whether you journal, whatever, get up, walk around, and maybe we don't have to respond to the world. And I think when I look back at mistakes I've made or the things I regret, in retrospect, I had more time to think about it than I allowed myself.

14:35And that it, look, there are the things you do that look like they should have worked, you planned it out, and it just didn't go your way. And then there's the things where, I'm sure you guys see this with your clients all the time, right? It's like, we got to respond tonight. And it's like, well, what if the contract says you had 24 hours? Like, why don't you use all 23 hours and 59 minutes of that?

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