The Time To Start Doing This Is Now | with What's Up To Us, What's Not Up To Us

0:00I'm recording this on a Monday, and Monday is our grocery store day in our family. I usually pick my kids up from school and we go over to Whole Foods, get all our groceries for the week. Although here very shortly, we're going to go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at$149 a pound if you have Prime with organic birds at$299 a pound. And they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials, whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends.

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1:18Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

1:58The time to start doing this is now. We all have vices. We all have flaws. We have habits, as Seneca said, that turn us into slaves. We have things we know we want to change. We know this, but why do we struggle to do anything about it? What happens? Nothing happens. And if we're not careful, our whole life can pass by this way. The world changing around us while we sadly remain exactly the same. You're an old man now, Mark Sreles wrote to himself in meditations, lamenting his lack of progress on some unnamed habit. It's time to stop being a slave, he said, to no longer be pulled along like a puppet on strings, to stop being dissatisfied with today and afraid of tomorrow.

2:48It's time. Change isn't easy. It takes work, real deliberate consistent effort. Quitting smoking, taming your temper, being more present at home, getting over your envy, shedding a few pounds, breaking your smartphone addiction, drinking less or reading more, it's not going to happen by accident. But what is getting rid of one bad habit like that worth? What would that freedom feel like? What would you give to add a new positive way of thinking or acting into your everyday life. Well, that's what we're all coming together to do in January. Thousands of Stoics all over the world, people just like you struggling, growing, trying to make that satisfying progress towards becoming the person they know they can be.

3:34We're all coming together for the 2025 Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge. I'm going to be in there. Maybe you're thinking about joining me. Maybe you're thinking about joining us, but you've been putting off signing up. Well, stop. Let's do it together. Why not kick 2025 off with 21 actionable challenges presented one per day built around the best exercises in stoic philosophy and designed to help you do exactly what Mark Sturilus was talking about, rising up, driving out the bad, taking action on becoming the person you know you're capable of being. And this year, we've taken the last seven years of doing this challenge, plus everything we've learned, everything I've written about, all the insights from the Stoics, and distilled them into what I think is our most powerful New Year New You challenge.

4:20I think 2025 is going to be the best challenge we've ever made. And look, 2025 is going to be a challenging year. So hopefully it will get you off on the right foot. It's not a rebrand. We redo the challenge every year. It's new stuff, new experience, new challenges. And I think it's going to really help you. I know I'm excited about it. I know I'm going to make a bunch of changes from it. I know there's things I did in 2024 and in 2023 and in 2022 that came specifically from challenges in the New Year New You Challenge. It's going to be awesome. We're going to build resilient through discomfort.

4:54We're going to let go of emotional baggage. We're going to form positive habits. We're going to strengthen relationships. We're going to focus on what matters. And I'd love to see you in there. You can sign up right now at dailystoic.com slash challenge. It starts on January 1st. So stop procrastinating, sign up. I will see you in the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge. How much longer are you going to wait to demand the best for yourself? That was Epictetus's question. Well, let's answer it with the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge. And I'll see you in there at dailystoic.com slash challenge.

5:26There's just two days left to sign up. Let's do it. I'll see you in there.

5:33thanks to toyota trucks for sponsoring this episode when i bought my ranch in 2015 out here in basco 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 in 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. It 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.

6:18We 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. And 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.

6:58Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours.

7:10Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I've got my Daily Stoic journal in front of me. Let's riff on today's entry. This is the first week in the Daily Stoic Journal, and it starts with the most important Stoic task that there is. What's up to us and what's not up to us? Epictetus's handbook, The Inchiridion, begins with the most powerful exercise in all of Stoicism, the distinction between things that are up to us in our control and the things that are not up to us. It is this, the dichotomy of control, that is the first principle in the entire philosophy. We don't control many of the things we pursue in life, yet we become angry, sad, hurt, scared, and jealous, and we don't get them.

7:58In fact, these emotions, those reactions, are about the only thing we do control. If that is the only lesson to journal on and think about this year. Consider it a year well and philosophically lived. And then Epictetus' discourses, which we actually opened the Daily Stoic with, so I'll riff on that in a second, but he says, look, the chief task in life is simply this, to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not in uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own.

8:41And then in Inquiridian 1.1, he riffs on what is and isn't in our control. He says, some things are in our control while others are not. We control our opinion, our choice, our desire, our aversions, and in a word, everything of our own doing. We don't control our body, our property, our reputation, our position, and in a word, everything not in our own doing. And even more, the things in our control are by nature free, unhindered and unobstructed, while those not in our control are weak and slavish and can be hindered and are not our own. And then 122, he says, we control our reasons, choice, and all acts that depend on moral will.

9:20What's not under control are our body and any of its parts, our possessions, our parents, our siblings, our children, our country, anything with which we might associate. Look, I think what Epictetus is saying here is that not just the wisdom of the serenity prayer, you know, you separate things into the categories and you only focus on what's up to you. But that a lot of things that we think of as being up to us are not even up to us, right? Really at the absolute core of it, what we control are our thoughts, our emotions, our opinions. We don't control what happens, control how we respond to what happens, but even then within a constrained amount.

9:58And this might seem kind of resigned or a sad way to start the year, but I don't think it is. I think it's the only way to start the year. It's certainly the only way I thought we could start the Daily Stoic, which I'll read to you the January 1st entry. The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can't, what we have influence over and what we do not. A flight is delayed because of weather. No amount of yelling at an airline representative will end a storm. No amount of wishing will make you taller or shorter or born in a different country.

10:32No matter how hard you try, you can't make someone like you. And on top of that, time spent hurling yourself at these immovable objects is time not spent on the things we can change. The recovery community practices something called the serenity prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Addicts cannot change the abuse suffered in childhood. They cannot undo the choices that they have made or the hurt they have caused, but they can change the future through the power they have in the present moment.

11:06As Epictetus says, they can control the choices they make right now. The same is true for us today, for the year that stands before us. If we focus on making clear what parts of our day are within our control and what parts are not, we will not only be happier, we will have a distinct advantage over other people who fail to realize they are fighting an unwinnable battle. It's funny. I think when we're younger, we have an outsized view of what's in our control and what isn't. And as we get older, we ratchet that back, which is ironic because as we get older, we're also more powerful, more successful, et cetera.

11:44But you just realize, look, you don't control what other people do. I mean, even the longer I've been a parent, it's not the less strict I am, but I do feel the more chill I am because I've made the mistakes. I've tried to control things I don't control. I've seen where my anxiety or stress or worry or whatever gets me, and I cultivate the ability to step back to focus on what I control. I was playing on the floor with one of my sons, and my other son drew on my jacket with a pen a couple days ago. And it's like my favorite jacket. It's like ruined. He wrote all over it with a red Sharpie. I don't know why I didn't notice, but I didn't.

12:21You know, I was mad. I was like, hey, look, no amount of being mad at a child is going to undo the ruined jacket, right? And what's the opportunity that I want to seize here, right? What good is it to make this person feel bad about what happened? No amount of yelling is going to undo what happened. And so I want to take the opportunity to talk about instead, calmly, respectfully, talk about what it means to respect other people's persons, their stuff, etc. And to talk about, hey, how would you feel if I did that to something that you like or that you care about, right? And I didn't do it perfectly, but my wife and I were talking about it after, just like how, like, compared to how our parents would have reacted, how different it was.

13:10But the idea is, look, I just control what I do about it. I just control how I respond. I just control whether I let my emotions get the best of me or not. Or when I catch myself, at what point in that process do I walk it back, right? What's up to us and what's not up to us. I feel like so many things that I'm upset about that I'm getting arguments about what I'm really saying is I wish that hadn't happened I want to undo that that happened that's not how life works that's not something that's up to me and so I'm practicing the idea of getting a little bit better at letting go of that thing of moving on from that thing and so must you this is a year that we try to focus more on what's in our control.

13:54We argue less with reality. I have a whole set of note cards. It's a theme I often journal and think about how often I find us. We're in arguments with reality. We wish things were different. They weren't the way that they were. And this isn't like resigning yourself to the state of society. This is resigning yourself that something that happened did happen. It is done. It is in the past. arguing and re-litigating and re-litigating, it doesn't change it. You don't have the power to make it unhappen, but you do have the power to decide how it's going to make you feel, whether it harms you or not, what you do about it, who you are because of it.

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