This Is The Secret | 6 Stoic Examples Of Living A Great Life

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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.

1:54This is The Secret. it. It seems obvious if you want to be better at your job, you should work more. If you want to be more successful, you should focus on it entirely. And yet history doesn't actually bear this out. Overwork, a lack of balance, it ends in ruin. And it's why Marcus Aurelius tried to remind himself not to be all about business. It's why Seneca advocated wandering walks and lots of time reading and thinking. It's why middle Stoics like Antipater spoke of the importance of cultivating a happy and healthy family, not just worldly accomplishments. As they set up a new administration in the White House in 1977, one of Jimmy Carter's advisors tried to caution the ambitious young staff along these very lines.

2:37None of us, he said, would be any good to the president if we worked 14 hours a day and if our wives were unhappy. Carter said the same thing. We are going to be here a long time, he said, and all of you will be more valuable to me and the country with rest and a stable home life. This is more than just happy wife, happy life. It's a message about temperance, about balance, about self-discipline and moderation. You can't be all about business. There are diminishing returns to working and working and working. It's a false dichotomy to think that you can just squeeze more and more out of yourself.

3:12You're no good to yourself and to the people in your family, whatever form they come in, if you put your professional obligations and advancements above everything else. Step back. Don't overcommit. Learn your limits. And remember, work is temporary, but family is forever. If you want some advice in this regard, I think Discipline is Destiny is a book where I talk about this. And then I also talk a lot about it in the new book, The Daily Dad, 366 Lessons on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids. talk about all these themes because it's important to be good at what you do. It's also important to be good at being a family person.

3:53It's also, as I have found in my experience, the more balanced you are at home, the better you are at work. So if you want some lessons on that, check out the new book, which you can pick up anywhere books are sold, including signed copies here at The Painted Porch. Barnes & Noble has a special edition of the book and people are loving it. So do check it out. The Daily Dad and Discipline is Destiny, available everywhere books are sold.

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5:22One of the best stories in all of Stoicism comes at the founding of Stoicism. Zeno, he's this successful merchant. He comes from a long family of merchants. And he suffers a shipwreck and he loses everything. He washes up in Athens. He has nothing. And there he discovers philosophy. That's how Stoicism starts. And so reflecting on this journey, this thing that he never would have wished happening, changing the entire course of his life. And now history, we wouldn't be talking had he not gone through this. He says, I made a prosperous voyage when I suffered a shipwreck. Meaning the worst thing that ever happened to him was actually the best thing that ever happened to him.

5:55And that's what a stoic says. We don't control what happens. Bad stuff is going to happen, but we control how we respond to it. We control what we turn it into. And whatever it is, whatever metaphorical shipwreck you're going through, you can make it a prosperous voyage if you think about it that way.

6:12The Stoics have this line, they go like, if you don't know what port you're sailing towards, no wind is favorable. You have to know where you want to go. And this is really true even for successful people. Like if you don't know where your stopping point is, what you want your life to look like, now all of a sudden you're in this wonderful fortunate position where people are like, hey, you want to do this? Do you want to do this? They're offering you this. Do you want to take this amount of money to do this or more money to do this? And, you know, if you don't know, like, what's important to you, what kind of work you want to do, what you want your life to look like, you end up defaulting to one of two things.

6:45What pays most or what are other people doing? Those are not the worst proxies in the world. Like, it's better than no proxy. But you can end up very far from what you actually want. And you'll only know that when you get there. So you have to have a very clear sense of where you're trying to go. or these things, these opportunities are really chances to get super off track.

7:12You've got to blow your own nose. To me, that's the core idea of stoicism. Nobody's coming to save you. Nobody can handle this for you. You're not magically going to get better on your own. Your problems aren't going to solve themselves on their own. You've got to do it. You've got to make the changes. If you want to be beautiful, Epictetus says make beautiful choices. Work on getting better. Focus on getting better. Focus on what you can do today. That's how you solve your problem. Step by step, action by action. As Mark's really said, that's how we improve day by day. By making the little choices, the little actions.

7:49Not by waiting for other people to save us, but by blowing our own nose, getting active in our own rescue.

7:59you. You have to be strict with yourself but tolerant with others. Marcus really struggles with this his whole life. It's why he writes about it in meditations. He has these exacting high standards. He thinks that the right thing is not just everything, it's the only thing. And yet he works really hard to remind himself that it's called self-discipline for a reason. It's not a thing you get to project on other people. You don't get to go around insisting other people follow your standards, your code. And this is a thing that disciplined people have struggled with for all time. There's even a saying in ancient Rome, we can't all be Cato's.

8:35Kobe Bryant went through the same thing. He couldn't wrap his head around the fact that not everyone else was Kobe Bryant. So this idea that we can be as strict with ourselves as we want to be, but we have to be tolerant and accepting and encouraging and forgiving of other people because they don't have the gifts we have. They don't have the drive that we have. Most importantly, they never agreed to sign up to the code or standards that we have set for ourselves.

9:03There's an amazing story about Marcus Relius. He didn't want to be emperor. In fact, when he's given the news, he's to be adopted by the Emperor Hadrian. He weeps because he thinks of all the bad kings of history. So Marcus was scared. Maybe he had a little bit of imposter syndrome like you and I have. But the night before he's to ascend the throne, Mark Surrealis has a dream. And in the dream, he feels that his shoulders are made of ivory. And that's how he knows. He knows he's strong enough to bear the weight. He can carry the load. He can do this. And you have to know, you have shoulders of ivory too.

9:36You're stronger than you know. You're stronger than people think. You've got this. You can do it. You have shoulders made of ivory. We all do because we've done the work because we've been training because we've been watching videos we've been working up till this moment and now it's here and we're ready to do it.

9:56Marcus Reelius writes to himself he says fight to be the person philosophy wants you to be and I just love that so much it's that stoicism has this ideal for you to be someone who's resilient someone who's strong someone who's virtuous someone who's kind who cares about the common good someone who isn't easily rattled someone who's committed to bettering themselves. That's what Stoicism wants for you. That's what the Stoics have been writing about for centuries. That's what we do in these videos in the Daily Stoic email. That's the ideal. But the question is, are you fighting for yourself? Are you fighting to be that thing?

10:32Are you striving today to get a little bit closer to that perfect ideal? Are you fighting for yourself? The Stoics can't make you be or do anything. They can just lay out the formula, but it's ultimately on you to follow it, to step up and actually be it. That's what I want you to think about today.

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