The Most Valuable Real Estate In The World | Ask DS

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3:04Welcome 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.

3:45the most valuable real estate in the world people spend a lot of money to buy nice land they want to be in a good neighborhood with good schools they want to have a beautiful view just look at what happened during the pandemic when people rushed to outbid each other for houses outside of major cities because they wanted safety and space and a change of scenery for centuries armies have clashed over territory some of it valuable some of it not willing to pay in blood for control over a piece of dirt. Meanwhile, some of the most valuable real estate in the world sits ignored. What's that? Well, we refer to it in The Girl Who Would Be Free as the empire between your ears.

4:21How many people spend an enormous amount to keep up their estates, but let their brain fall into disrepair? How many of them protect their property, as Seneca said, but let people waste their time or influence their choices? Yes, land is valuable. They aren't making any more of it after all. And yes, you want to have a roof over your head. And yes, nations must protect their sovereign territory. But the Stoics remind us that the greatest empire is within us, between our ears, inside that mushy muscle that is our brain. You have inherited an incredibly valuable piece of property. Will you rule it and cultivate it?

4:55Will you rule over it? Let's hope so. This is obviously the idea in The Girl Who Would Be Free, which is about Epictetus. Epictetus having so much taken from him, having so little control, in some cases even over his physical body, that the greatest empire, the empire between his years, is really all that's left. And that's what that book is about. It's a fable. It's supposed to teach this idea to young kids. I wrote it for my boys, but it's for boys and girls and all of us who need a reminder of this sort of basic premise of stoic philosophy. You can grab the girl who would be free at store.dailystoic.com.

5:30And I think if you get a signed copy, I'll link to this in today's show notes. If you get it, there's a thing you click, you get a signed copy. You can get The Boy Who Would Be King for like 75 % off or vice versa. The idea is these are two books meant to be read together. The Boy Who Would Be King, The Girl Who Would Be Free, Epictetus and Mark Cerelius. Their stories told in fable form for all ages. Really proud of these two books and check them out.

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8:08Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, where we to do our Q &A here. Back in September, I had a quick trip to New York. I was doing a talk for the folks at Hunter Douglas, the blinds and windows company. It's funny. Sometimes a company can sneak up on you. Obviously, I'd heard the name Hunter Douglas. I think anyone who's ever owned a house probably has, but I don't think I would have pegged them as a hundred plus year old company. One of the things we talked about is just the amount of adversity that a company would have experienced over 100 years and how the people there are the heirs to that tradition, right?

8:49They come from a long line of survivors and adapters. They're by definition resilient or they wouldn't still be in business. So anyways, it was a great talk. I may bring you the talk at some point, but I did a nice Q &A at the end. And I'm going to bring you some of those questions from the audience now. Enjoy. When it's enough thinking and you move to action, And when you have to stop action and actually think a little bit so that you correct the course. Yeah. It's a loop, right? It's sort of you perceive it. You decide sort of where the opportunity is. You take the action. And then you sort of decide what you're going to bring to bear on that, what you're going to endure, what you're going to put up with, what you're going to go through.

9:32And then, finally, you're presented with new situations, new information, feedback loop. There's a thing fighter pilots talk about called the OODA loop, which is the sort of loop of you're making a decision. You're seeing what the other fighter pilot is doing, and then you're making a decision, and they're making a decision. And it's this loop that's going faster and faster. And the faster you can go through this loop from orientation to action to decision to action to orientation again, that's what separates the sort of the winners from the losers ultimately. And I think carving out time to do that every day and being fast moving without being reactive is sort of what the Stoics are trying to cultivate.

10:16You speak a lot about the disciplines that we as individuals can exercise. And surely, I guess, if all of us came together each day at work, exercise on this would be sort of quite a part for you. But have you seen anything at the company level, sort of the corporate level that promotes these disciplines or even sort of from a corporate perspective, kind of implements these disciplines less at the individual but more at the company level? Yeah, that's a great question. How does stoicism help us with what you might call a collective action problem, right? Of course, every organization, every country, every family is a collection of individuals, and ultimately, we mostly control ourselves.

10:52So let's just sort of start there. And I would say, you know, how the leaders model this stuff is probably the most important bit of influence we have as far as setting a company culture. I think one of the things that happens is the CEOs or the leaders or the coach or the star athlete or whatever we're talking about, whatever type of organization is, the trouble they get into is they talk about this stuff and they go, but of course it doesn't actually apply to me or in their sort of personal private decisions, they're not living up to it. So I think first off, we got to start with sort of modeling, But I do think we can apply this stuff at the individual level.

11:30So we're talking about carving out time for reflection and space. You don't want to be a company that's constantly having councils and meetings and whatever. That can suck things down. But it is, I think, important that we carve out the space to work through this stuff as a group, to sit down and go, okay, what are we dealing with? I talked about negative visualization. A lot of culture experts and sort of decision-making experts have talked about, like doing a pre-mortem as a team. So you're launching some new product or going into some new market. You convene all the people who are working really hard to make sure it's a success.

12:11And you sit down and you go, let's pretend that it failed. Why did it fail? And let's sort of work through that hypothetical. And so I think setting systems or sort of standing ways that you sort of work through these things as a group is we're obviously all trying to do it as individuals, but we can come up with sort of rituals or set kind of meetings and exercises that put those ideas into practice as a group, and that reinforces it. If Marcus Aurelius was here today, what would he be telling us in how to handle social media, the 24-7 society that we live in today? Yeah. I mean, it's interesting to think that he's the most powerful man in the world.

12:59He's ruling over an empire of 50 million people, millions of square miles. We probably get more information in an hour than he would have gotten in a year. Just the sheer volume of information that we have access to, this is an extraordinary advantage in many ways. But political scientists today talk about what's like the CNN effect. The job of leaders is to think big picture, to plan for the future. And yet they're besieged by this sort of 24-hour news cycle, worse with social media, that's forcing them to think about every immediate thing as though it's more important than that larger plan. I think that's what causes some of the drift or the distraction I'm talking about.

13:42I always find it so interesting, yeah, when I'm talking, I'm walking into a military commander's office or the coach of a sports team or executive or CEO. And they have a TV in their office just running the news, whether it's CNBC or ESPN or Sky News or whatever. They've got the news running in the background on mute in their TV. And I go, how could you possibly be focused to have this thing that's designed by definition to distract you and suck your attention from what you're doing to look at that? And so I think one of the things he'd be talking about is how do you create a little bit of a bubble or a little bit of space around yourself so you can think about what you need to be thinking about, not what everyone else wants you to think about.

14:30And we can think about our mind, this sort of command center, as this contested bit of territory that advertisers want access to, you know, strangers on the street want access to, people you care about want access to, you know, your phone wants access. All these people are fighting for that. And you have to be disciplined and also put up some barriers that protects it or you're going to be giving up control of the one thing you have control over to something that probably doesn't have the same interests as you in mind. And creating that is, I think, really important. And we know that's why he was writing in his little journal, was that exact thing, carving out that space to think about what he wanted to think about, not what all the messengers and sycophants and assistants wanted him to think about.

15:22From all the thoughts from the Stoics and the learnings or what they believe, is there one that you think can summarize the essence or the one that you like the most? I mean, I think the big one is that everything is an opportunity for excellence, right? Or the Stoics would say virtue, right? And the four virtues for the Stoics are courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom. So everything's an opportunity to sort of be brave and to endure, right? To put yourself out there. Everything's an opportunity to be strong, right? To sort of do what you should do and not do what you shouldn't do. It's always an opportunity to do the right thing, to help other people, right?

16:06To be a positive force in the world. And then it's always an opportunity to learn and grow. The idea then, if we could say that the essence of stoicism is that how do you start to see all the situations, big and small, positive or negative, as a chance to apply one of those four ideas or all of those four ideas? Because they're really inseparable. To me, that's the core of stoic philosophy. And how do you train or practice for that? I think you just do it, right? You try to do it in the small situations to build the muscle memory so you can do it in the big situations. That's kind of how I think about it.

16:50You know, you talk about saying no, which to me is, I think, a very difficult thing to do. In an environment where collaboration is so key in enabling you to get things done, how do you balance it? Yeah, I mean, there are things we do want to say yes to and we have to say yes to. And I think that's why we have to practice saying no, because if you're saying yes to everyone, right, if you try to be everywhere, you ultimately end up sort of being nowhere. So I think it's a it's that's obviously the million dollar question. If I could be like, here are the three rules for what to say yes to and what to say no to, you know, that would be very, very valuable.

17:28I don't think it's unfortunately that quite that simple. But it is, you know, like one of the questions I do have is like, is this a thing that only I can do? Right. We know in economics, the law of comparative advantage. If you want to do what only you can do or what you are best at doing, and then you want to delegate, outsource, collaborate on those other things. And so that's one of the questions that I try to think about. Is this something that someone else could do? Ideally, is this something someone else could do cheaper than me? And I'm trying to get to those things that only I can do that are really, really important to me professionally and personally.

18:07And that's one of the rubrics. I love writing. That's why I became an author. One of the interesting things about being a writer is that it presents all these opportunities to do cool, potentially lucrative things that are not writing. and I have to be disciplined about what I say yes to, or I can end up in a situation where the reward for my success is that I don't get to do the one thing that I really like doing. And, you know, we say, hey, I'm doing this for my family. And it's like, well, if you never see your family, is it really for them? Right. And so, you know, knowing what's important to you, knowing what you can only do, I think these help you decide what to say yes or no to.

18:47Very good. Ryan. I'm so happy that you said yes to us. Yes, it was an honor. This is very cool. Really, I mean, being here and sharing all this knowledge, all those insights is very important for us in this moment that we are going through. A lot of transformation, a lot of challenges, a lot of choices. And I think that having some insightful thoughts based on philosophy, based on real, important, amazing lives. It's incredible. Thank you so much for being here with us. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.

19:48Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode.

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