There Are Dreams That Cannot Be | 9 Habits The Stoics Want You To Stop Doing

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1:29Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

1:53There are dreams that cannot be. Marcus Aurelius certainly hoped his reign would be peaceful and prosperous, as the fates had blessed his mentor Antoninus for 23 years. Certainly he dreamed of growing old with all his children around him. Never would Seneca have asked for exile and loss, for Nero's descent into cruelty. Epictetus, like every child, would have hoped for a life of fun and lightness. Stockdale, as he left his family for a tour of Vietnam, no doubt envisioned returning home unscathed as soon as possible. But as the song goes, there are some dreams that cannot be. Because fate, the world, it does not care much about what we want.

2:36It does not care much about our plans. It does not consider us at all. The pandemic, the economy, the affair that broke up your marriage, the car accident that shattered everything. Life happens. Painful stuff happens. In an instant, all our well-laid plans, our hopes, what we deserve, we are informed that it cannot be. There are storms we cannot weather, yet weather them we must. We must practice what the Stokes call the art of acquiescence. After assenting, we try, as Stockdale did, to turn this event into something that in retrospect we would not trade. That's all we can do.

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4:38But I know you will trust me your body will thank you for this investment in better sleep shipping to many countries worldwide. See details at eightsleep.com slash daily stoic epictetus once encapsulated all of stoic philosophy in just two words persist and resist meaning there were some things we had to keep doing but more importantly there were things we had to stop doing habits practices vices that the stoics say you must stop doing it's the perfect time to start quitting some destructive habits get rid of destructive emotions free yourself from the things that are holding you back. I'm Ryan Holiday.

5:18I've written these books about Stoic philosophy. I've been lucky enough to talk about it to the NBA and the NFL, sitting senators and special forces leaders. And what we're gonna talk about in today's episode are not things I tell them to do, but things I tell them they must stop doing, that I'm trying to stop doing, and so should you. Don't give in to your anxiety this year. You have to stop letting anxiety rule you. In one of the passages in Meditations, Marcus Ruella says, today I escaped anxiety. He said, wait, wait, no, that's not right. He says, actually, I discarded it. It was within me.

5:48The plane, the airport, that's not responsible for your anxiety. You're responsible for your feelings. You're responsible for the worry that you're projecting at this thing. And it's not helping you. It's not making you better. It's not doing anything about the problem. You're just torturing yourself in anticipation of what might happen or might not happen. I've never been in the thrall of anxiety, traveling somewhere. And then afterwards, I'm like, I'm so glad I was so anxious about that. It did so much. No, it made people around me upset. It made me upset. It made me miserable. It didn't do anything for me.

6:17And it's not going to do anything for you this year. You have to stop doing less than your best. There's this great story about Jimmy Carter. He's being interviewed. He wants to get this job when he's a naval officer. And after Carter has talked about how he did in school, all the grades he got, the tests he passed, the things he learned, the interviewer looks at him and goes, but did you always do your best? And Carter has to answer him honestly. And he goes, no, I guess I didn't always do my best. And the man looks at him and he says, why not? And he gets up and he leaves the room. And that question haunts Carter for the rest of his life.

6:49Why didn't he always do his best? And as you look back in your own life, on last year and the years before, why didn't you always give your best? Why are you doing things that you don't think deserve your best? This year, we have to do our best at whatever we're doing. We have to give everything that we have. That is one of the things that we control. We don't control whether we succeed. We don't control whether we win. We don't control whether we get recognized for what we do. but we do control whether we do our best, whether we give everything we have. And as the great Steve Prefontaine quote goes, giving less than your best is to cheat the gift, not just the gift of your talents, I would say, but also the gift of the time in front of you, the life you've been given.

7:28The Stoics say you have to stop being a slave this year. There's a story I tell in Discipline is Destiny about Richard Feynman. One day it's like 10 o 'clock in the morning, he's out for a walk and he feels this pull. He wants to have a drink. He never saw himself as an alcoholic. He never had this problem with alcoholism. He was deeply uncomfortable with this drive, this pull to do something. It was coming from a part of him that he didn't control. The Stoics say that's something you have to be really suspicious of. Seneca says slavery isn't just this legal status. He says everyone's a slave.

7:58He says someone's a slave to their mistress. Somebody's a slave to money. Someone's a slave to power and attention. And he said those people might be literally free. They might be powerful, they might be important, but they're not in control. In Discipline and Destiny, I also tell the story of Eisenhower. I'm told by his doctor that he's smoking up. He'd smoke like four packs a day for 40 years. It was hurting his health. I love this. He says, I gave myself an order to stop smoking. And he stopped smoking cold turkey like that. It's going to be harder for some people, easier for some people. But the point is, you've got to give yourself that order.

8:27You have to say, who's in charge? This habit, this addiction, this vice that I have, this thing that I want, or am I in charge? Am I the boss or is it the boss? And that's what Feynman was reacting to. That's what Seneca was reacting to. That's what Eisenhower's reacting to. And ultimately, that's what Epictetus is reacting to in the same court as Seneca. He looks around and he goes, I'm a slave, but I'm freer than these people because I'm in control of my habits. I decide what I do and what I don't do. And we have to give ourselves that power this year. In one of the beautiful passages and meditations, Mark Serious reminds himself everything in life comes from change, good and bad.

9:05By trying to keep things the same, not only are you, of course, focused on something that you don't control, but you're preventing yourself from all the wonderful opportunities that exist that could come your way. We live in a time of disruption. We live in a time of institutions that are falling apart. We live in a time of innovation, new institutions that are being created. So you can't fear what's going to come of that. that the Stokes say all you can focus on this year is embracing those things, adapting yourself to change rather than fighting it, rather than fearing it, rather than resenting it.

9:34Because it's going to happen regardless of how you feel about it. So what you should focus on is what you're going to do about it. Mark Swillis talks about justice over and over again in meditations, the things that we have to do. But he reminds himself by saying, and remember, you can commit an injustice by doing nothing also. JFK, in one of his famous speeches, thinks he's quoting Dante. He says, hottest places in hell are those who remain neutral. Dante never says this. We can imagine that he's probably thinking of his own father, Joseph Kennedy, who famously advocates neutrality and eventually appeasement as he's the U.S.

10:09ambassador to Britain as World War II is breaking out. Kennedy reacting to the fact that in one of the great moral moments of history, his father turned a blind eye to what was happening. He didn't care. And so we have to understand that history is going to look back at this moment and judge us for the things that we were morally neutral on as well. Things that we turned a blind eye towards. Stoicism is focused on what we control as individuals. As individuals, there's not a lot that we control. And yet, and yet, if every individual only focused on what they controlled, we would lose the capacity for what you would call collective action.

10:44To be able to come together to solve complex, big, societal, global issues. You cannot turn a blind eye this year. You must ask yourself, where am I part of the problem? Where can I be part of the solution? How can I focus on and think about the common good? How can I make sure that I'm not committing an injustice by doing nothing, caring little, saying nothing? Don't look for the third thing this year. In meditations, Mark Ceruleus says, okay, you did something good. Someone benefited from it. That's one and two. The third thing he said is asking to be recognized for it, asking to be thanked for it, asking to be paid in return for.

11:20He says, no, you have to stop looking for the third thing. We don't control whether people appreciate it. We don't control whether people understand it. We don't control whether it's liked in its own time. We only control what we do. If you want to have more resources, more happiness this year, one of the things you can do is stop looking for credit, attention, recognition, compensation in return, and focus instead on, did you do your best? Did you do a really good job? Did you give everything that you had? Do you think you made a positive contribution to the world, to humanity, to the common good?

11:51If so, then you have been paid back. You have been recognized. You did what your nature demanded. The Stokes would say you did your job and that's enough. You have to stop putting stuff off. One of my favorite quotes from Mark Strelitz, he says, you could be good today. Instead, you choose tomorrow. Seneca says the one thing that all fools have in common is they're always getting ready to start. They're always putting it off a little bit in the future. My friend, Steven Pressfield says, we don't say I'm never going to do it. You say I'm going to do it tomorrow. You have to stop putting stuff off this year.

12:22You have to do it now, not later, now. You have to quit holding on to stuff. I don't mean physical possessions, although you should stop hanging on to those too. The Stokes would say that you have to let go, right? It already happened. It's done. Grudges aren't helping you. Regrets aren't helping you. There's a great New Year's tradition where people would write down all the things that they're hanging on to, that they regret, that they're mad about. And then on New Year's, they would light it on fire and they'd watch it dissolve into smoke. The Stoics would say that hanging on to stuff, torturing yourself, regretting things, it's not serving you.

12:53It's not serving the world. And it's not going to make you who you're capable of being this year. So let's start the new year by letting go of things. We have to quit holding on to things. Seneca says it's not that life is short. It's that we waste a lot of it. We put stuff off. We don't do things urgently because we think it's not urgent. We think we have an unlimited amount of time. But we don't. Death stalks us all. I carry this coin in my pocket. It says Memento Mori on the back. It has a quote from Mark Serial. It says, you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

13:23Let that determine what you don't do this year, what you stop doing this year. Not just that you stop wasting time, but you stop wasting time being a slave to things, that you stop wasting time chasing other people's approval, having opinions about things that don't matter, that you waste time not demanding the best of and for yourself, right? You have to stop. You have to take this moment seriously because this moment may be all that you have. Let's carry that forward with us the rest of the year.

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