These Are Three Ancient Stoic Secrets | Ask Daily Stoic

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0:55These are three ancient Stoic secrets. When did they carve it? Who first uttered the words? Why did they put them there? Did Zeno see them when he visited as a young man? did Cleanthes or Chrysippus? We don't know, but we do know that for thousands of years, three inscriptions adorned the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, the mythic heart of the ancient world that was nestled high in the slopes of Mount Parnassus at the top of the sacred way, were where generations of Greeks went to get advice for their toughest problems. The three inscriptions, know thyself, nothing in excess, and surety brings ruin.

1:44What do they mean? They mean knowing your strengths, your flaws, your patterns, impulses, fears, desires, biases, and blind spots. It means doing the right thing in the right amount, in the right way. It means that pride goeth before the fall. means always have a backup plan. If you read the Stoics with these three Delphic maxims in mind, you will see traces and echoes of them everywhere. Zeno said that nothing is more hostile to a firm grasp on knowledge than self-deception. Epictetus said that freedom isn't secured by filling up on your heart's desire, but by removing your desire. And Seneca, the unexpected blow, lands the heaviest.

2:33Indeed, the Stoics were not just intimately familiar with these maxims, it's what they were striving for, a life of self-clarity, moderation in all things, and freedom from the traps of certainty, ego, and excess. And at the core of that pursuit, the one virtue that made the rest possible, the one thing that helps us know ourselves to find the right amount and to stay open, wisdom. So many and so great are the powers which will be found in a man, Cicero wrote, of all which wisdom is the parent and director. It's wisdom that helps us understand who we are, what's enough, and when we are and aren't being foolish.

3:19And it's what the new book is all about. Wisdom Takes Work, the fourth in the Stoic Virtue series. Courage is calling, discipline is destiny, right thing right now. And now wisdom takes work. I'm so grateful to everyone who's read the earlier books. I'm grateful that you're listening to this right now and everyone who supported Daily Stoic. This is the book I've been working on now. It's the culmination of six years of work. I feel like I've become not wise in the process, but certainly wiser. And I'm really excited to share it with you. One of the best things you can do to support an author is to pre-order their books.

3:57It's how publishers decide how many to print. it's how you get on the bestseller list it's how bookstores decide how many to order all that comes in from pre-ordering so i try to make it interesting you can even buy signed numbered first editions of all four books in a really cool unique box set that we have a bunch of awesome stuff like that you can get pages from the original manuscripts that i worked on as i was writing and editing the book you can even have dinner with me here in bastrop texas and a bunch of their fellow Stoics. Lots of awesome stuff. Just go to dailystoic.com slash wisdom.

4:31Please do pre-order. It comes out in October. Really excited for you to hear and see and read the new book. And it would mean a lot if you could pre-order at dailystoic.com slash wisdom.

4:48We 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.

5:23My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky'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.

6:00Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events. Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastrop 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.

6:42It 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. We 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.

7:26And 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. Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours.

7:53Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I am in the middle of recording the audiobook for the Wisdom book right now. I think I'm about halfway done. It is a painful experience doing audiobooks, I will say. Not just because it's exhausting. I'm sucking on a throat coat lozenge right now. Like, as a writer, you just don't talk that much, right? This is not my job. I don't talk that much. Today, I did a podcast episode with Stephen Greenblatt, which was awesome. Can't wait to bring you that. Then I had to spend a bunch of time doing the audiobook. And then now I'm getting caught up on some podcast intro.

8:36So this is quite a lot. But anyways, finishing up the audiobook, I can't wait for you to hear it. Taking my time, doing it slowly, doing it right. So it'll be a great listening experience. By the way, you can pre-order signed first editions of Wisdom Takes Work. Also, if you pre-order the audiobook, you can get bonuses too. All that's at dailystoic.com slash pre-order. But today for our Q &A, as I said, I don't do that much talking unless I'm doing talks. Back in January, I did a virtual talk for one of the world's largest staffing agencies, a company called Randstad Enterprise. And it was a sort of start of the year strategy kickoff motivational thing.

9:18They had about a thousand employees in 15 countries and they asked me a bunch of questions. And I am really excited to bring that to you. And I can't wait to see some more of you in person. And by the way, in September, I'm going to be doing a talk here in Austin at the Westlake Performing Arts Center. You can grab those tickets at dailystoiklive.com as well. So if you want to ask me some questions, you can do that. I'll see you there. Anyways, here's me talking to some interesting people from all over the world, answering their questions about stoicism.

9:57you talk a little bit uh you talked a bit about your you know your pre-mortem and your journaling i'm interested motivation can wane over time particularly in the face of setbacks and we have had a particularly tough year last year what strategies can leaders teams people adopt just to say sustain that motivation and build momentum towards our goals yeah to me one of the ways we sustain momentum. And I think about this on every book project, because you start off with excitement and you're ready to go. And then you fall into what I once heard an entrepreneur call the trough of despair. And that's after the excitement wears off and you're just in it.

10:38And I try to look for little bits of momentum. I try to break a big, complex, hard project into as many small ones as I can. I was saying I swam at Barton Springs this morning. I try to swim a mile, but I don't swim a mile, right? The pool is an eighth of a mile long. So I swim eight laps of one eighth mile. And I'm just trying to get through this small chunk, right? This is what the idea of doing just a couple of crappy pages a day is supposed to help you do as a writer. Also many, many days, I would say most days, I do more than the crappy minimum. And I would say that they're not so crappy.

11:18But the idea is by sort of lowering the stakes or lowering what you're trying to accomplish in a day, what you're able to do is create a sort of a minimum or a beatable goal that allows you to get that sense of momentum or progress. If you're trying to turn a freighter, right, you're not going to notice much day to day. If you have to only feel progress because the freighter is visibly pointed in a different direction than it was when you started, that's going to be a lot of disappointing days. But if you can find benchmarks inside that, or things to encourage you inside that, that to me is what you want to focus on.

11:56So I try to take a big project or an overwhelming thing or an exhausting thing and break it down into smaller pieces that allow me to feel like I'm making progress and I'm checking boxes. I love that. And there's a couple of things coming through that I think build on that and relate a lot to the emotions also that you go through as a human being every day. But then you also try and bring to your work or not bring to your work. And there's a question here around the stoic tenant of striving for contentment. How do you recommend balancing this contentment with this constant drive for growth? And is that your, you know, your couple of pages a day?

12:33Is it your positive action? How would you really balance those two things? This is maybe a little controversial, but I like to tell people that I don't have goals. And I don't have goals because of something the Stoics talk about, which is that you're always wanting to be focused on what's in your control. And a lot of our goals are external, right? People are like, I want to be accepted into this university, or I want to hit this best seller list, or I want to be the number one salesperson, right? These are things that are sometimes based on measurements, but they're largely based on criteria or gatekeepers or a selection process that isn't always fair and certainly not always up to you.

13:15So I focus instead on, you know, effort. I focus on my own sort of internal metrics of like, am I giving my best? Am I growing? Am I learning? So I am always trying to get better, but I'm not so much focused on whether other people are rewarding or recognizing or appreciating that improvement. And I realize this is a little bit counterintuitive and perhaps is slightly more well suited to the world of being a writer than a business person. And I just think it can be so easy to get caught up in numbers or various external metrics. And what you're neglecting is the sort of day-to-day-ness of, am I doing my best?

14:00Am I really putting myself into this? Am I really trying? Am I doing all that I can do? And if I feel that, then I can be satisfied each and every day, whether I get the win or not, whether I get the recognition or not. And that's just kind of one of the things I think a lot about. I'm not so much motivated by how my books are selling, but how I'm growing as a writer, how I'm becoming more balanced between work and my personal life. Am I becoming more content, as you said? That isn't to say that I'm not still trying to improve, but am I less am I less needy? Is my ambition less external and more internal?

14:48To me, that's a sign of progress. Am I the best at what I am capable of being? That's the race that I'm running, as opposed to looking around and comparing myself to all these other people there. I'll give you one sort of beautiful image that Seneca has. He talks about this word euphemia, which to him meant sort of tranquility, but I think also kind of means a contentment. And he says that the key in life is to know the path that you're on. He says to have a sense of the path that you're on and not be distracted by the paths that crisscross yours. He says, especially the paths of those who are hopelessly lost.

15:33So I'm trying to get where I'm trying to go. That's what's motivating me. I'm not complacent in that sense, but I'm content or at least inwardly focused in the sense that I'm not trying to beat anyone else. And somebody else's success does not have the power to make me unhappy or discontent about my own success or my own progress, because I understand we're running totally different races.

16:10Hey, 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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