The Time Is Now | Ask Daily Stoic

0:02Welcome 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.

0:42The time is now. Obviously, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago because the earlier you get started on something that takes time, the bigger and better the results will be. It would have been better if you made the changes you needed to make in your life two years ago or in 2023 or in 2024. Look, it would have been better if you did it at the first of the year, but, you know, January 1st, 2025 has come and gone. That would have been a great time to start new habits. A new year, a new you, right? Fresh moment, fresh calendar. And these missed opportunities can haunt the best of us. In meditations, though, Marcus Aurelius reminds himself not to feel exasperated or defeated or despondent because your days aren't packed with wise and moral actions.

1:32He says, you got to get back up when you fail to celebrate behaving like a human, however imperfectly, and embrace the pursuit you've embarked on. So we're all going to fall short. We all procrastinate. We all avoid making necessary changes. But so what? What matters is the choice you make after you come to that realization. So yeah, it would have been better to plant the tree a while ago. But the second best time is now because it's not too late. It's never too late. You can still do that here now in 2025. You can break old habits. You can forge new ones. You can build a framework, a system that allows you to be more resilient, more focused, tougher, braver, more virtuous, whatever it is.

2:13If you want some help with that, we are relaunching the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge. Thousands of Stoics all over the world just spent the last 21 days, the first 21 days of the year, tackling one Stoic challenge after another. We all did it as a team. we checked in with each other throughout the three weeks we shared what we were dealing with i got a bunch out of doing the challenges with other people it's too late for that but it is not too late for you to do the challenges by yourself because as i said we've relaunched the challenge it's going to be open from now until february 1st you can start it right now you don't have to put it off you don't have to wait for some start date you can start it right now and i would love to see you in there daily stoic.com slash challenge because today is the day stop waiting stop putting it off you could be good today as mark's really said but instead you choose tomorrow doesn't matter if january didn't go as planned the whole year is not lost what matters is that you make the right choice now and i would love to see you in there daily stoic.com slash challenge it's your last chance to do the daily stoic new year new you challenge with us i'll see you in there

3:20Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I feel pretty good. I'm actually remarkably well-rested, even though my son woke up at like 4.30 this morning. Part of the reason is because we've been going to bed earlier. That was one of the challenges that we did in the Daily Stoic New Year New Year challenge, which is to set a bedtime. The Stoics talk a lot about waking up early, which is important and requires willpower. But I find what time I go to bed, I have less discipline about. And I was just doing a talk in San Diego and someone was asking me this beforehand. And I was like, have you heard of this thing called revenge bedtime?

3:56Like revenge bedtime is when you stay up late just to get extra time to yourself. It's something that parents sort of inflict on ourselves. You're just scrolling on social media or watching TV or whatever. You're just like, I just need this me time. But it's actually punishing you and your kids the next day. Anyways, that's like one of the things that I took out of the challenge. It's been awesome. I haven't been absolutely perfect about it, but I have been more focused on what time I go to bed so that whatever time I wake up, even though I have a time I have to wake up by, I'm not so fried. Although as I said in something else, maybe I don't know what order these are coming out.

4:31I do look like I have bags under my eyes. I had a nice swim this morning and the goggles keep pressing on my face. So I got to figure out when I'm going to be on camera. But anyways, where does that leave us today on Thursday? A little Q &A. So we are relaunching the New Year New You Challenge. We got a bunch of emails from people who are like, hey, I missed it. I wasn't ready the first week of January to start the year off with 21 consecutive Stoic Challenges, but I still want to do it. Well, it is not too late. You can join us. We're just running the challenge now. And my favorite part of the challenge is the Q &As that we do together.

5:06So I'm going to bring you some of those Q &As from the challenge we all just did. And you can get the Q &A and all 21 Stoic challenges. It's not too late this year or for the challenge. You can sign up now at dailystoic.com slash challenge. And then remember, of course, if you sign up for Daily Stoic Life, you get the challenge and all the challenges. We got a bunch more planned this year for free. So check that out, dailystoic.com slash challenge. And here's me doing the Stoic office hours as part of that challenge. Listen in.

5:41We 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? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence. My wife introduced me to Dr.

6:17Becky'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. Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being.

6:59And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. you just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events. Over the last year, I've gotten really into all your stuff. So just really wonderful. So this is your second time? No, first challenge. I've just like read, been reading all your books and read all the, just really, really into it. And particularly in like a work context where I run a small business or growing business, like 400 people. That's not a small business. Congratulations. We're in startup mode, but yeah, a lot of people. Um, and my question relates sort of the business context.

7:36So, um, I know there's a lot about like focusing on what you can control, especially like not controlling other people. Yeah. And I feel like I've really grasped that concept, but the thing I struggle with or would love your take on is like in my job, particularly, I feel like there's a lot of needing to influence people or trying to motivate people, lead people. And obviously like Marcus, that's his whole life, but I'm trying to make sense of this like balance between, I know that I can't control like my employees or other people, but I'm accountable to the business that's performing and I need to influence them.

8:10So like, I don't know if you have any tips on like how to make sense of the pressure I put on myself to like have people do certain things, but knowing at the end of the day, like control them. This is a great question. And I think it's really important. And sometimes this is why I think taking stoicism out of the academic domain and thinking about it in the real world with real people is so important. I wrote a book called Lives of the Stoics, where obviously I was looking at the biographies of the Stoics. And when you just look at what the Stoics talk about, it can be very easy to render the words very differently than they were obviously meant.

8:48So when the Stoics talk about focusing on what you control and reminding yourselves that you don't control other people, it could be mistaken to think that they're just like, yeah, just focus on you, write everything else off. But obviously Marcus Aurelius at the head of the Roman army was not like, well, I can't tell people what to do. I mean, literally his job was to tell people what to do. And there were Stoics who served in all different assets and facets of leadership. So I think your word influence there is important. One of the things I think is so fascinating about Marcus Aurelius is that he didn't seem to be intent on changing anyone.

9:26He seemed to find a way to get things out of people, even when he disagreed with them or disliked them or found that they had, in some cases, cross purposes to him. So what I think we're talking about there is leadership and leadership is influence. It's persuasion. It's obviously leading by example also. And then I think it's a lot about selection. You know, if we if we could take for granted that we can lead a horse to water, but we can't make them drink. We do want to make sure that we're only this now this metaphor is getting pretty tortured. We're only hiring horses that like to drink, you know?

10:01And so, so that's one of the ways I, I am thinking about this in my own practice is like, okay, if I can't change anyone, I can't force anyone to do or be a certain way. What I can do is get much better at who I select and who I deselect. Right. And so I'm thinking a lot about that. But you know, it's funny, in the leadership challenge, we interviewed this guy named General Dan Kane is a two star general in the Air Force. And he was saying that in his like 2030 year career, he can remember giving two direct orders in his whole like we think we go, okay, sure, we can't really control people. But generals can Marcus Aurelius as an all powerful general obviously could.

10:49And I thought that was so interesting because sometimes people in business are sort of jealous of people like, say, in the military or in like the president, like, oh, they can really make someone do stuff. And he was saying even then the same limitations on our power are there and understanding that it really is about persuasion and it's about influence. It's about modeling. It's about setting up incentives. I think about this tension a lot. It's not that the Stoics go, hey, I don't control other people, so I don't even try. It's understanding that we have certain limitations, and then it's understanding how within those limitations, we do have opportunities to influence and direct, and that's where we got to put our energy.

11:28Cool. Appreciate it. Awesome. Yeah, great question. So my question for you is through my practice, I've learned my personality traits that have harmed myself and have harmed others. I've also learned my personality traits that have helped myself and helped others. And because it's an ongoing thing until I die, I have more to learn. So my question is, what personality, are you prepared to be vulnerable and share the personality traits that you've discussed? I'm glad you said traits, plural, because I have many that cause problems for myself and others. But I would say a big one is, you know, I'm sort of driven and intense and I like to do things the way I like to do them or the way I think they should be done.

12:21And that sort of should or that ought to, although it feels good for me, can be oppressive to other people, right? Because they didn't sign up necessarily for my assumptions. They don't necessarily agree. I have a tendency to stress people out. That intensity can, you know, sort of crash against other people. So I find that I have to sort of keep that in check or I have to be understanding that, you know, sort of not everyone has the same constitution as me. Not everyone reaps the same rewards from the stuff as me and sort of trying to figure out a balance between me sort of maximizing what I'm trying to do or achieve what I'm trying to do and coexisting and having positive relationships with other people.

13:14That is definitely a struggle for me. But great question. I appreciate that. And then the other side of that is what are your strengths? What have you found that have been helpful for you and also with the world around you. I mean, I'd like to think I'm a good communicator, that I'm good at taking, you know, these ideas or these sort of ways of thinking about things and making them applicable and accessible to people, not just in my writing, but in my actual life. So, you know, I'd like to think I'm good at that and it has a positive impact on people. My question, I wanted to go back to the word of the year.

13:53Yes. What's yours? My word of the year, it's initiative. I was trying to figure out I was like oh you know I'm trying to deal with procrastination and I also play D &D so I was like oh just roll for initiative every day so I have my D20 and I'll roll it as like a symbolic that's awesome so I think my question and what I'm kind of struggling with is do you have any recommendations to account for like nuance in the word because I know I have a tendency to like always go in and like take action but like maybe you know the opposite side of that is like you're chasing, right? And like, kind of fall into that trap.

14:30So I think what kind of recommendation would you have just to like, either temper it or find the balance rather than go all in? Well, I think temper is a great word, right? When we think of temperance, particularly in America, if people are familiar with that word at all, they think the temperance movement, which was about not drinking alcohol, right? But temperance in the ancient world was about the right amount. That's what Aristotle's definition of virtue was. And to him, virtue sat in the midpoint between two vices. So his famous example is about courage, that too much courage is recklessness and not enough courage is cowardice.

15:10And courage was right in the middle. And you could probably say the same thing about initiative. So too much initiative, if you're always making the first move, if you're always diving in, if you're always chasing, you're probably going to get yourself in trouble, just as if you never have any initiative, you're going to get yourself in trouble. And so I think the word as a virtue that you're aspiring towards is, as Aristotle says, the right amount in the right way at the right time to the right, you know, it's that dialing in that's essential. I think having the word there as kind of a default is really helpful, but knowing that, hey, doing it all the time to the nth degree is also not right, that you've got to find the right amount in the right way.

15:56That's really important. Yeah, totally. That definitely makes sense. All right. Great word though.

16:06Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say, We so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.

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