There Are Some Things Only Adversity Unlocks | Just Say No To Future Misery

0:28Why choose a Sleep Number smart bed? What can 160 years of experience teach you about the future? When it comes to protecting what matters, Pacific Life provides life insurance, retirement income, and employee benefits for people and businesses building a more confident tomorrow. Strategies rooted in strength and backed by experience. Ask a financial professional how Pacific Life can help you today. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York. Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

1:03Welcome 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.

1:42There are some things that only adversity unlocks. We would like things to go our way. We'd like them to be easy. We wish there were fewer mistakes, fewer obstacles, fewer opponents. We complain that it happens this way, cursing our misfortune, failing to realize that this is exactly the way it's supposed to be. In his fascinating new book on Canadian wildfires, John Villand, and if you haven't read his book, The Tiger, you must, he explains that fire is the principal mechanism by which the boreal forest purges and regenerates itself to the point that the cones of several keystone conifer species, including the black spruce will not drop their seeds unless they are heated to temperatures unachievable by sunlight alone.

2:30As it happened, Seneca said the same thing was true of us. As fire proves gold, he explained, so adversity proves men. He said that he actually pitied the person who has not been knocked down and bloodied in the ring because they don't know what they're capable of, and because they haven't been tested. Their true capacities remain unknown. And so it goes for us. The obstacles are not impediments. They are opportunities. They are not holding us back. They are fueling us, unlocking our potential and showing us moves that would not be possible otherwise. Our adversity is our advantage. Our trials set up our triumphs.

3:10If we let them, if we endure them, if we absorb them. And obviously this is the idea behind The Obstacle's Way, right? The book that I wrote almost 10 years ago now that sort of kicked off everything, including this podcast, right? The idea that the impediment to action can advance action. What stands in the way can be the way that, as Marcus says, using the same metaphor of fire, that everything we throw in front of the fire is fuel for it. And if you haven't read the book, I hope you check it out I can grab it anywhere books are sold. I hope you check out some of the stuff. And anyways, thanks for listening.

3:54Just say no to future misery. How often we make ourselves miserable in advance, out of fear of this, out of desperate hope for that. When we focus on pining for avoiding a certain future, We make ourselves miserable here in the present. Hakato of Rhodes, a great student of the Middle Stoic scholar Panitius, taught that this misery is always tied to hopes and fears that we have of imagined future outcomes. And so from this, Seneca reminds us to say no to both, because indulging in hope or fear robs us of the ability to enjoy the present. So today, try not to think so much about the future, what you hope will happen, what you fear might, and just focus on right now.

4:40Be where you are with what you're doing, what you're thinking right now. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living by yours truly, Ryan Holiday. You can pick this up anywhere books are sold. I use this journal myself every single day. And you can also pick up a signed copy at store.dailystoic.com. It's ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, Seneca writes in moral letters, engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its own until the very end. For such a soul will never be at rest.

5:19By longing for things to come, it will lose the ability to enjoy present things. Then Seneca again, there will be no reason to live and no limit to our miseries if we let our fears predominate. And then going back to the original quote, Seneca in moral letter says, Hakato says, cease to hope and you will cease to fear. Primary cause of both these ills is that instead of adapting ourselves to the present circumstances, we send out our thoughts too far ahead. You know, it's funny, in my podcast interview with Oliver Berkman in his new book, 4 ,000 Hours, he quoted something that he said is a real British expression, but I had actually heard of a couple days earlier in Ted Lasso, the idea that it's the hope that kills you.

6:07Which, it's not that the Stoics are nihilists who, you know, don't hope, it's that they try to get to a place of indifference where they're just like, whatever will be, will be, I'm going to be good with it. This is also a theme that came up in my interview with Dr. Edith Edgar, who wrote The Choice, which was about her experience in the Holocaust. And she talks about how there was a person who knew she knew in the camps who thought they would get out, be freed by a certain date. And then the woman died on that day of despair, of disappointment. And Admiral Stockdale talks about this, that it was the optimist who got crushed, right?

6:43Because they said, oh, in March, oh, in June, oh, by Christmas. But this was not something in their control. And so in a way, hope is the same as fear. It's to hand over your happiness, your contentment, your ability to continue on to some arbitrary thing or event or person or intervention in the future, which is not up to you. The person who needs it to be a certain way or needs it to not be that way, and that's why they're afraid, Seneca's right, that soul will never be at rest. And by longing for things or by fearing things, we lose the ability to enjoy present things. I thought this little phrase is a particularly good one, and I think it's worth repeating again, where he says, to be miserable in advance of misery.

7:29That's what fear is, right? But hope is just the opposite of that. It's just being delusional in anticipation of an event outside your control, which often will be misery. So just try to put fear or hope aside. Just try to be. Be here with this, whatever it is, wherever you are, whether that's a plane ride you have today, whether that's traffic you're stuck in, whether it's a job you have a couple more months left in, or maybe it's battling an illness or a blown out knee. Just is. Don't magically hope it's going to get better. Don't fear it getting worse. Just be with it now. Focus on what you can do now.

8:15Enjoy present things as best you can. Be indifferent, as the Stoics say, which is to say, good with any of the possibilities, because you are good. You are capable. And that's the Stoic prescription for you this week. Say no to future misery. It's not worth it. I'll talk to you soon.

8:38If you want to come see me talk, you want to see me get over some of my own stage fright, and you want to ask questions and hang out a bit, I would love to see you. I'm doing events in London, Rotterdam, and Dublin in early November. And then after that, Vancouver and Toronto. This is all basically the 12th through the 20th. So it's going to be a busy November for me. So grab tickets, ryanholiday.net slash tour. Both the events in Australia sold out. So these will sell out also. So grab your tickets. I'll see you all soon.

9:18Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist. That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like the Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show but not listen to ads, well, we have partnered with Supercast to bring you an ad-free version of Daily Stoic. We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with Premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast completely ad-free.

10:05No interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for. and you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium, and we are offering a limited time discount of 20 % off your first year. Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show descriptions to make those ads go away.