This Is Freedom | 1 Habit That Will CHANGE Your Life

0:05Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com.

0:56This is freedom. Epictetus would have shuddered at the cliché that knowledge is power, especially if he heard it uttered by some aristocrat or wealthy Roman, which, sadly, far too many philosophers have been. Born into slavery, Epictetus spent 30 years in bondage and walked with a limp for the rest of his life, courtesy of a sadistic owner. Having known real powerlessness, he would not have been glib about language. He would not have been glib about power or privilege. But that is not to say he did not believe deep in his soul in the power of wisdom. At the time in Rome, many people believed that only freedmen could be educated.

1:42In fact, Epictetus said, it was the opposite. Only the educated were free. Wisdom, then, is freedom. Someone who doesn't know what's what is a slave to impulses, ignorance, and illusions, even if they possess incredible worldly power and wealth. Epictetus saw this daily in the moral disorder of Nero's court, where his master served as a high-ranking secretary. There were many things he could not legally do, but he directed his own education within those limits and, in the process, freed himself from the self-imposed slavery he saw in the ambitious millionaires and schemers around him. The things he learned, the wisdom he acquired, no one could take this away from him, was the one thing that was exclusively his, and indeed it was the most priceless and powerful thing in the world.

2:35Wisdom is freedom, but it is not free. Wisdom must be earned. Wisdom takes work. That's not just the title of the new book, which you have just a couple days left to pre-order, but it is also a fact. And in fact, we must say that the work is worth it, because whether we're a slave or an emperor, wisdom helps us rise above our limitations. It gives us clarity. It gives us perspective, it guides us when we need it most. So study then is not just a path to wisdom, it is the path to freedom. And the new book, as I said, is out on October 21st, which is basically here. Six years of work. I've been working on this since 2019.

3:18And finally, the fourth and final book is here. First, we had Courage is Calling, then Discipline is Destiny, then Right Thing Right Now. And now, wisdom takes work. And I can't wait for you to read it. As I said, a couple days left to pre-order it. It's the most important and helpful thing you can do to support an author. It's how publishers decide how many copies to print, whether it appears in the bestseller list or not, how many copies bookstores order. All that comes from the pre-order numbers. So if you could pre-order it, it would mean so much to me. DailyStoke.com slash wisdom. I don't care what format, who you get it from, but this would be a huge help.

3:51So do that if you could. And I can't wait for you to hear the book.

4:01Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro 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 into 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.

4:46We 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.

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7:02I'm not saying it'll solve all your problems, just most of them. Marcus Aurelius didn't have an easy go of it. Being the emperor would have been extraordinarily difficult. So where does he find relief? It's clear from meditations that Marcus Aurelius, in addition to his interior explorations, was a walker. He walked around Rome, he walked around Greece, he walked around the countryside. Now of course people have been doing this for thousands of years for very good reason. Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Aristotle, Kant, Wordsworth, Dorothy Day, Socrates, all these philosophers, all these thinkers, walking was a part of their practice.

7:41And I can say confidently that if I didn't take long walks every day, I would see the world very differently. And so that's what we're going to talk about in today's video, not just my walking practice, but some insights and lessons that come from some of the great walkers and thinkers of history.

8:02There's a great Latin expression. Basically it means it is solved by walking. Things rough at home, go for a walk. Your kids having a tough time, take them for a walk. Struggling with a big decision, go for a walk. Feeling antsy or anxious, go for a walk. As a parent, walks are magic in relationships. Walks are magic. If you're a creative, walks are magic. Whatever you're dealing with, whatever you're going through, walks are magic. Seneca said the mind must be given over to long wandering walks or it'll break the way that that hammer eventually breaks against the anvil. We go for walks, we get outside, we get moving, and we're amazed at the problems it solves.

8:49The Buddhists, they talked of walking meditations, that meditation wasn't just a thing you did while you were sitting, but walking through a beautiful forest, walking along the ocean, walking in a parking lot doesn't really matter, but you gotta get moving. I'm not saying going for a walk will solve all your problems. I'm saying there are very few problems in life that are not improved by taking a walk. Kierkegaard wrote a letter to his depressed sister-in-law says above all do not lose your desire to walk he said every day i walk myself into a state of well-being and i walk away from illness says i have walked myself into my best thoughts he says i know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it there were schools of philosophy that all they did was take walks the philosophical teacher would walk the students would walk alongside and they would talk the point is the stoics got outside they got active that got moving, take a walk.

9:42It matters. It is a foundational habit that will make you better.

9:50It can be a little gross. It can be a hassle. You can get some weird looks. They're easier, better, more fun things to do. But one of the things I like to do when I'm walking is I pick up trash. It's already what I picked up on my walk today. I don't do it because I have to. I I do it because in a world that's kind of discouraging and frustrating, it's a very tangible thing that makes a small difference. Not a big difference, but a small difference. But if we all did it, the world would be better. I used to walk on the dirt road where we live and I get really frustrated. You know, why were my neighbors dumping this trash?

10:25Why were people such assholes? Why were people so gross? What's wrong with humanity? And then one day it occurred to me, you know, I don't like this, I'm complaining about it, I'm sad about it, but I'm not doing anything about it. Here's something. Popsicle wrapper. And if I'm not doing anything about it and I'm just walking by, at some level, I'm complicit in it being there. I thought of a quote from Marcus Aurelius where he says, remember, here's something else. He says, remember, you can commit an injustice by doing nothing also. So by not doing anything about it, I was also committing an injustice.

10:56I was also making the world the worst place. So that's where I picked up the practice. I just started picking up trash and i've picked up dumpsters worth of trash now all over the world does this make me a hero no does it even offset my personal carbon footprint and probably litter i've let fly out of the back of my truck or something no it doesn't but it is a positive difference and in a world that's so frustrating and disappointing and disillusioning it's good to have stuff like that there's a story about a boy comes to the beach actually he sees all these starfish washed up on the shore he starts to throw them back in the ocean and someone tries to tell him hey it doesn't matter you know it doesn't make a difference it says what makes a difference to this starfish it throws it back again humanity is destroying the environment at an overwhelming pace picking up a couple of water bottles you find it doesn't make a big difference in the big scheme of things but it doesn't make it worse and look it makes you better that's really the point right because you become the person that makes things better and not worse because you're the person who when you see something you do something about it and so that's why this practice is such an important part of my walking practice there really should be one of yours too

12:06one of my rules when i travel is that if i can walk i walk anytime you get an excuse to be outside you should take it who has the time to go for a long meandering walk in the middle of the day not all of us so whenever i have a chance to walk i walk i park further away even if there's a closer up spot and i walk when i take my phone calls uh i walk sometimes when i'm talking and be like oh oh, the venue's a mile away from the hotel and they'll send a car. I said, no, I want to walk. I always walk when I take the opportunity. It's a great excuse. It's good for the body. It's good for the mind, of course.

12:38And it gets you outside. And then I do my thinking about the talk while I'm walking.

12:46What's the relationship between productivity and walks? Because I feel like people who are truly productive, not people who sit at their desk and pound at things all day, but I feel like people who have big scientific breakthroughs, artists people have theories about the world whatever there seems to be a an undeniable relationship with walks yeah well it they they come up all the time and there's there's a good neurological reason for it um but first like where walks become important is once you realize what's important is like we were talking about before actually having the valuable idea like figuring out something good it's not just writing which we can use with like scarecrow it's like just doing stuff, right?

13:26You actually have to think, right? Walks are really common historically for big thinkers. We think like that's not exactly nailed down, but we think what's going on is that the motor neurons involved in walking actually act as a bit of a dampener on certain circuits in your brain, right? So part of your brain now gets into these autonomous motion loops, which acts as a dampener on essentially neural noise. So more distracting thoughts or asides, you're thinking about this or that. So when you're sitting still, sometimes the problem is there's not enough dampening going on in your brain. And so it's hard to sustain your focus.

14:03When you're walking, it puts on some cognitive blinders. You have an easier time holding your focus on an interior abstract idea. So it's, you know, it's jerry-rigging your brain to be better at this thing that's pretty artificial for humans to do, which is to hold abstract ideas in our mind's eye. And, you know, this is not what we evolved to do. We're hacking it. We're certainly not evolved to just sit down for long periods of time either. But we are evolved to cover long distances and look for things and explore places. And take in information while we're walking in a process, right? Yeah. So all we're doing different now in the modern world is we're just turning the eye inward.

14:39Yeah. So instead of taking in information across the savannah and kind of processing all this information, instead we're walking on the river walk in Bostrop. We can just turn that eye inner and put it on internal things. But yeah, it's the same idea. So walking, yeah, it's super common. That's why. I mean, I do all of my best thinking, all of my best thinking walking. Me too. And Nietzsche said only ideas had while walking have any worth. Nietzsche walked a lot. Yeah. Kierkegaard would walk just like hours a day. I mean, Aristotle's school is named after his movements, his walking, right? And so, yeah, there is, it's almost inseparable scientific discovery, philosophical discourse, and walking.

15:19Even though the irony is, when we think of the philosophers, we think of them standing in the Lyceum or in the school. We see them stationary, but in fact, they were always in motion. Yeah, you read the various dialogues, right? The Citilion dialogues. And yeah, they're walking. it's Socrates with Phaedrius. And they're walking by the river as they're talking, right? That's the way it unfolds. You know who the champion walker in the arts right now is? David Sedaris. Oh, doesn't he walk around and pick up track all day? He does, he will. But these walks he does are epic. Yeah. Like crazy walks.

15:53Like when he's in Manhattan, he'll like walk from the Battery like all the way up to like the Upper West. Like he'll just walk the whole island or whatever. He'll walk 10, 15 miles. No, he got an award from the Queen because he would just take these walks and then he started picking up trash while he was on the walks, which I also do. Like I live on this dirt road and so I'll sort of walk it over and over again. And it's like, there's another nail, you know, or whatever. Sometimes it's not, it's even worse than that. But yeah, there's something about you're doing this thing. So there's not really any expectations that you should be working or that you should have the breakthrough.

16:29And perhaps that's where it comes from too, like Archimedes in the bath or whatever. Or it's when you've turned, it's still operating in the background because you can't turn it off. The thing that's working on the problem. But when you stop being so willful about it, something unlocks and it's very powerful. And it comes to you. Yes. Do you also get, I get this in my town, people think you're eccentric. Like you probably get it worse here. You know, I live in a little town outside of DC, but I walk the same loops through my neighborhood. And they're like, oh, there goes. I mean, they know it now because we're a small enough town.

17:04but people are like, why do you walk so much? I was like, this is what I do for a living.

17:12I do this one thing every single day and you can see I'm a little sweaty right now. I just went on a long walk with my kids. This is the property there. We just went on this long walk around our property. We talked, we threw sticks, we told stories. We were just outside. There's this great expression from Nietzsche. He says, only ideas had when walking have any worth. And I think that's right. Even Seneca talks about how the mind must be given over to wandering walks. He says fields that are not allowed to rest will not bear plants. And so this is really important. For me, walking is physical activities.

17:43It is exercise. But it's really about letting my mind rest. I leave my phone at home. I leave my thoughts at home. I leave my work at home. And I just go outside and I walk. And I don't even consider it exercise. It's exercise for my mind. It's time I spend with my family. It's time I spend on my property. It's time I spend outdoors. It's time I spend practicing gratitude and appreciation. This is a thing I do every day without fail, whether it's in a parking lot or on a beautiful beach somewhere. I go outside and take a walk and so should you.

18:14I'm not saying that every single problem in your life can be solved by going for a walk. I'm just saying there's almost no problem in your life that can be made worse by going for a walk. And you may well solve your problem, even if just because going for the walk calms you down or distracts you. But look, I would just say whatever you're dealing with, whatever you're upset about, whatever you're worried about, whatever is vexing your mind or racing through your head, go for a walk. Put the body in motion. Let the mind relax for a minute. You'll be amazed at what might happen. And look, the very worst thing that can happen is that you got outside, you saw the sunrise or the sunset, you saw the clouds, you saw the stars.

18:49It doesn't matter. You got outside. You got active. You're better for that. And I think it will probably make a difference whatever you're dealing with. When I wrote The Daily Stoic eight years ago, I had this crazy idea that I would just keep it going. The book was 366 meditations, but I'd write one more every single day and I'd give it away for free as an email. I thought maybe a few people would sign up. Couldn't have even comprehended a future in which three quarters of a million people would get this email every single day and would for almost a decade. If you wanna get the email, if you wanna be part of a community that is the largest group of Stoics ever assembled in human history, I'd love for you to join us.

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