The Most Important Thing | Ask DS

0:00You know, you don't have to let big wireless and your overpriced phone bill suck the joy out of the holidays this year. because right now all of Mint Mobile's unlimited plans are 50 % off. You can get three, six, and 12 months of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month. It's their best deal of the year, and it makes it really easy for you to give your expensive wireless bill the Scrooge treatment. All Mint plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text at the nation's largest 5G network. Plus, you can bring your current phone and number over to Mint. Actually, we just signed up for a Mint Mobile plan to use the social media phone here at the office and we didn't notice any kind of change in the quality of service or network or any of that just a whole bunch of savings turn your expensive wireless present into a huge wireless savings feature by switching to mint shop mint unlimited plans at mint mobile.com slash six that's mint mobile.com slash six limited time offer upfront payment of 45 for three months 90 for six months or 180 for 12 months plans required 12 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra initial plan term only greater than 35 gigabytes may slow when network is busy capable device required availability speed and coverage very cement mobile.com i'm picking my kids up from school today and then doing our weekly routine which is i take them over to whole foods we get all our groceries for the week then we have dinner it's one of their favorite things to do it's one of my favorite things to do and then my wife loves it because she doesn't have to take care of it this holiday season whether you're a guest or hosting the big dinner whole foods market has what you need to delight everyone at your table they even have heat and eat sides from the prepared foods department, you can make Whole Foods your one-stop shop.

1:32Everything follows Whole Foods Market's strict ingredients standards so you know it'll be delicious and good for you. You can also order online for pickup and even delivery in select zip codes to skip the crowds. Shop everything you need at Whole Foods Market, your holiday headquarters.

1:51Welcome 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.

2:33Stoicism is a selfish philosophy. That's what you're supposed to believe, right? That's what all the critics say. And it's not a coincidence that Stoicism is considered self-help and self-improvement. Stoics did emphasize self-discipline after all. Yet a quick textual analysis of Marcus Aurelius obliterates this notion. More than 20 times in meditations, Marcus Aurelius talks about the importance of doing what's right. He talks about the right thing more than 30 times. He talks about the virtue of justice. He's not talking about court cases and the law here. And roughly 80 times, Marcus Aurelius talks about the common good, which he said one ought to serve above all and always.

3:16Literally, in so many words, stoicism is a philosophy about doing good in the world, about doing what's right, not in your own self-interests, but in the interests of others, too. Yet far too much of the focus of the Stoic conversation is about individualistic struggles, how to manage your temper, how to get over your fear of death, when it was so clearly intended to be about our collective struggle. The fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good, Marx Reels writes in meditations. This is the perfect formula because it captures both sides of the Stoic coin. We must be men and women of integrity, but also men and women of action, putting that integrity to work in the world.

3:57The Epicureans retreated to their gardens, but the Stoics held public office. They tried to raise their families right. They tried to contribute to their community. They served in the military, tried cases before the court, helped the vulnerable and misfortunate. They resisted tyranny, many of them dying in opposition to Nero or suffering exile under other emperors. Just that you do the right thing, says Marcus Reelius in meditations. The rest doesn't matter. The idea of doing what's right, of making a positive contribution to the world. Hey, it's me, Ryan, breaking the fourth wall yet again. I'm sorry.

4:33I'm sorry. But what I'm talking about in right thing right now, good values, good character, good deeds, it's this idea. For the last five years, I've been working on this series on the The Cardinal Virtues of Stoicism. I did Courage is Calling, which is courage, Discipline is Destiny, that's temperance, and now Right Thing Right Now, which is about justice. The book on wisdom is to come, but in the meantime, I would really love for you to read Right Thing Right Now, which officially comes out on June 11th, 2024. Pre-ordering a book makes a huge difference for authors and for bookstores as they try to get a book off the ground.

5:07It helps publishers. It's like the most important thing you can do to support a book is to pre-order it. But so I sat down with the Daily Stoic team and we came up with a bunch of awesome pre-order bonuses that I'm throwing your way. You can get signed numbered first editions. If you order five copies, you can get an original page from the manuscript. I sign it so you can see the book as it's getting made. And then if you want to have dinner with me and a bunch of other fellow Stoics, we're going to have a philosophical dinner here at the Painted Porch in the fall. All that is on the landing page.

5:35Just go to dailystoic.com slash justice. Of course, you can order the book from anywhere. And then you can redeem the bonuses there. But if you want some numbered first editions signed by me, you can't get that anywhere else. You can grab those. It's cheaper than on Amazon, by the way. Just head over to dailystoic.com slash justice to grab the book. It's coming out in June, but it would mean so much to me if you pre-ordered it now.

6:06Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. coming to you from Bastrop, Texas. And my office here is in Bastrop. The bookstore is in Bastrop. My ranch is in Bastrop County. It's where I live. It's where I write. And it's where I do so much of what you listen to and absorb. And I was invited to do a little Q &A down at the Bastrop Public Library, which is right up the street from the bookstore. My mortal enemy, they're giving books away for free over there. I don't know what they're doing, but they were nice enough to ask me to come down and answer a few questions. And so I'm going to bring you some of that in today's episode, talking about how and why we opened the Painted Porch, how I integrate stoicism into my life in this wonderful little small town, and how I try to balance work, life, and family.

7:00Just some stoic questions from some lovely folks. And I believe the event was to raise money for the public library, which is always nice. If you are ever in Central Texas, or you're driving through from Houston or College Station, Bastrop's a lovely place to visit, and I think you'll like it. It's got a nice little library, and of course, we've got the bookstore. So I'll bring you today's episode. Enjoy. So how and why did you end up in Bastrop? uh we moved to austin in about 10 or so years ago and we lived in east austin we loved it and then i think we were having a conversation one day and and we said something like uh if we're going to live in texas we should really live in texas and plus uh our our goat needed a bit more space than east austin could uh could offer and so we we bought a little ranch out in uh bastrop County and we've been sort of here ever since.

7:55So it's funny because we opened the bookstore in 2021 I think and so everyone in Bastrop is very very welcoming of course everyone comes in and says you know welcome to Bastrop you know and it's like we've been here for a very long time but no it's been great. We love it. Well tell us a little bit about the Painted Porch and maybe some upcoming or future plans you have with that space. Yeah I was thinking about it technically we're mortal enemies because you know you guys give books away for free here which is insane I think that's the socialism they're telling me I should be scared about no we were we were sitting at Maxine's one morning my wife and I and she we were looking at 910 and 912 Main Street, which I think had last been maybe a Mexican restaurant.

8:51And it'd been vacant for some time. And we had this crazy idea that it could maybe be a bookstore. And that was probably crazy under regular circumstances. And we started construction and got serious about it exactly four years ago. So March of 2020. So perfect timing. And nothing got in the way. it was sort of like arrested development I think I've made a huge mistake we thought that quite a bit for the first year or so but it worked out what it actually was is we needed some I think I needed to stop working from home and we needed more space for all of our books and and so instead of renting boring office space somewhere on the outskirts of Austin.

9:46We just thought, what if we did something cool? And it's been really, really cool. Good. And how many of you have been to the Power Porch? Well, thank you all very much. It's a beautiful space. When people visit, that's one of the first places I take them, right? It's to take photos in front of that fireplace. That fireplace was inspired, if you've ever been to Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., you walk in, you can't actually, you don't spend very much time in the theater. You're there for like two seconds, and then they take you to this museum that's attached. And I don't know if you remember, they have a tower of books that goes, it's like a three or four story building, but it goes all the way up and it's a spiral of books only about Lincoln.

10:23That's how many books they'd written about Lincoln. And so I thought that and I saw that and I always thought it was cool. And I know we wanted something that kind of stood out about it. We want to do something like an art project in the space. And so that was the idea. That fireplace is non-functioning. So I don't think ordinarily you would wrap, you're getting the Fahrenheit 451 territory there. But because it's non-functioning, but it was built up very nicely. We were able to stack books up on it. Oh, that's super cool. Thank you. You've written and spoken about this practice of erite or virtue and choosing what we do with situations that arise, those situations we find ourselves in.

11:05How have you found or been able to practice this philosophy yourself? it's funny I have it it's behind my desk now when I was staring out into a very empty bookstore in the depths of the pandemic and we were I wouldn't say regretting it but we were we were wondering how this was going to work out I wrote this little note to myself I said 2020 is a choice will make you a better person or a worse person. And that's kind of how I think the ideas in stoicism ultimately come down. It's like you are faced with some situation and you can't necessarily know how it's going to end up. I didn't know if the bookstore would ever open.

11:51I didn't know if it would work out. I didn't know if people would like it. I didn't know, you know, the vast majority of the road ahead was uncertain, but I could have some influence over how I changed as a result of it for better or for worse. So to me, that's when the Stoics say the obstacle is the way. That's what they mean. They don't mean everything is a chance to have more fun or everything is a chance to improve your career or your bargaining position. I mean, sometimes, you know, sometimes there's a comeback. Sometimes there's a surprise silver lining, but not always. But the real thing that you can always do is emerge from it wiser, more empathetic, more understanding, a better sense of what's important or not important.

12:40So that's kind of how I think about it. That's good. One would hope. All right. You have said in the regimen there is freedom. so with all your daily reading and writing and podcast recordings and working with the brass check how do you practice that self-discipline that allows quality time for Samantha and the boys I mean one of the reasons I live here instead of in New York City or Los Angeles or some other place is like it's simpler it's easier everything's close and so I we kind of have tried to I think you know if your routine requires immense amounts of discipline and willpower to maintain because everything around you is difficult and frustrating and complicated you know you've got to be a superhero just to sort of keep an ordinary amount of you know things in the air so we that was what made us really excited about this is you know you can walk to the dentist or you know is this uh the benefits of being in a small town.

13:45There are downsides, of course, but the benefits of the small town is that, or what I love about this town is it's got pretty much everything you need. So when I sort of try to set up my days, I just try to keep them simple. I try not to get overcommitted. And then I try to do the things that are important. And part of the reason we set up the bookstore and the office and all the stuff was that it just made things easier. I'm not driving into Austin this thing's not on this side of town and just kind of that's kind of our home base and um it's it's been wonderful yeah and it gets it out of the house so like when we're there it's work and school or whatever and then when we're at home it's home as opposed to you know I think boundaries are really important and the pandemic has created this sort of hybrid work environment and work from home.

14:36This is all wonderful, right? But I think that from that, just as discipline can create freedom, freedom creates the opportunity or the necessity of discipline. So if your office says you have to be here from this time to this time, and this is when your lunch break is, and there's someone looking over your shoulder to make sure you're on task, you know, you don't have to be that disciplined. You don't have to have boundaries or systems because they're forced upon you. But when you have freedom, when you're in control, you are required then to have self-discipline. You have to impose order on the chaos that is getting to do what you want.

15:18And I see employees struggle with that all the time. They think it's wonderful, and it is, but it just demands more of you. And so I think part of why we set the things up is just to be able to go, okay, here, when we're at home, we're at home, and when we're working, it's work. You can have this sort of endless bleeding, so you're always on your phone and always doing stuff. So that's one of the reasons we sort of set things up that way.

15:54You hear that? That's not just a Toyota truck. That's the sound of no crowds. no alerts no distractions and no telling what you'll find next you know like a detour so why would you ever take a tour and you could take a detour toyota trucks my family owns a 2023 toyota 4runner and honestly it's my favorite vehicle that i've ever owned Around town, it's smooth and reliable, but where it really shines is on our trips into the backcountry. We've taken it on backpacking adventures to Colorado and New Mexico, loaded it up with gear, and never had to think twice about whether it could handle the terrain.

16:40That's what Toyota trucks are built for. Off-road confidence, rugged durability, and the freedom to explore. Toyota has a long history with the outdoor community, and they're committed to helping more people get out there and experience what nature has to offer. From remote trails to scenic byways, Toyota Trucks empowers you to take the detour, roam freely, and discover places that still feel wild and untouched. And they're not just making great trucks, they're working to expand access to adventure so more people can connect with the outdoors and pass that passion on to the next generation. Discover your uncharted territory.

17:09Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. That's toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours.