This Is What The World Thinks Of Your Dreams | The Wake Up

0:00I'm recording this on a Monday, and Monday is our grocery store day in our family. I usually pick my kids up from school and we go over to Whole Foods, get all our groceries for the week. Although here very shortly, we're going to go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at$1.49 a pound if you have Prime with organic birds at$2.99 a pound. And they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials, whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends.

0:37Everything they sell has high standards to help you shop with confidence. Enjoy so many ways to save on your Thanksgiving spread at Whole Foods Market. Why choose a Sleep Number smart bed? Can I make my sight softer? Can I make my sight firmer? Can we sleep cooler? Sleep Number does that. Cools up to eight times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side. Your Sleep Number setting. Enjoy personalized comfort for better sleep night after night. It's the final days of our Black Friday sale. Recharge this season with a bundle of cozy, soothing comfort. Now only$17.99 for our C2 mattress and bays, plus free premium delivery.

1:11Prices higher in Alaska and Hawaii. Check it out at a Sleep Number store or sleepnumber.com today.

1:18Welcome 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.

1:58This is what the world thinks of your dreams. Oh, you don't like that it worked out this way? Oh, it's not how you hoped it would go? Not what you planned for? Not what you deserved? What do you think Marcus Aurelius thought? 20 years of peace and prosperity. Four predecessors whose reigns went more or less swimmingly. But almost to the day he took over, it was one thing after another. Floods and wars, a plague, coups and nagging health problems. funeral after funeral of his own children. Sure, he had wealth and power, but were the lyrics from Les Mis ever truer for a person? I had a dream my life would be.

2:40So different from this hell I'm living. Marcus hadn't even wanted to be emperor, and now he was king of a nightmare. Here's the thing. The world doesn't care about your dreams. It makes no accommodations for your expectations. It does not give anyone what they deserve. Still, we have to figure it out. We have to decide how we're going to respond. We have to get through it. We have to make the best of it, which, by the way, is what Marcus Aurelius did. In fact, he became great because of it. He may not have gotten the good fortune that he deserved. He may have dreamed of something very different, but all of that is irrelevant because it made him the Marcus Aurelius we know today.

3:22It made him what his nature demanded.

3:34The Wake Up. 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 and my wonderful collaborator, Stephen Hanselman, who I also worked on The Daily Stoic with. Today's entry...

4:16podcast. Anything you do in the morning for the Stoic is designed to make you ready to face the day, and you can be ready for the day as well. Ask yourself the following first thing in the morning. What am I lacking in attaining freedom from passion? What for tranquility? What am I? A mere body? An estate holder? A reputation? None of these things. What then? A rational being. What then is demanded of me, meditate on your actions. How did I steer away from serenity? What did I do that was unfriendly, unsocial, and uncaring? What did I fail to do in all these things? That's from Epictetus' Discourses 4.6.

4:56We 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.

5:31My 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.

6:08Becky. 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. On those mornings when you struggle with getting up, keep this thought in mind. I am awakening to the work of a human being. Why then am I annoyed that I was going to do what I am made for, for the very things for which I was put into this world. Was I made for this, to snuggle under the covers and keep warm? It's so pleasurable. What then? Were you made for pleasure? In short, to be coddled or to exert yourself?

6:47That's from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 5.1. I think maybe the first passage, it really hit me in Meditations. Anyway, this idea of owning the morning, starting the day off right, is really so important. There's that expression, what is well begun is half done. And, you know, I don't know when you're listening to this, obviously, I hope it's in the morning. Maybe it's on your commute. Maybe it's as you brushing your teeth or you've got it on a Sonos player or something. You're walking around your house. The point is how you start the day is really important for me. As I've said before, that my number one rule in the morning is I don't, I don't check my phone.

7:19I don't sleep with my phone in the room. I sleep with it in the kitchen, plugged in. when I go to bed like 10, 11, and then when I wake up, you know, six or seven, that's a, that's a good chunk of time without the phone first and foremost. And then my wife usually gets up before our new routine is my wife wakes up before she goes upstairs, she works. I get up with the kids. I give them the snack, put on their jackets because it's been cold in Austin. And then we go for our walk on the road by our house. We go for this walk, depending on how light or foggy it is, it might change the route. So I don't want to get hit by a car, but we usually do about three miles.

7:53And then we come back, give them their breakfast. My wife is showering or on the Peloton, or maybe she's cooked breakfast for them, whatever. I go back into the bedroom. I sit down with my journals, including the Daily Stoic Journal, which the passage I just read is from. And then I do my sort of thinking. So the Daily Stoic Journal is supposed to be, you do a morning reflection and evening reflection. Just because I've been busy lately, I do the evening reflection in the morning. So I'll reflect on how I did with the thing I was thinking about yesterday. I sort of set my intention for the day as well.

8:26And so what I like about the journal is just the questions, right? So I'm reading this. I do these a little bit before, but so let's, let's see what today's question was. I'm recording this on the, I guess today's the 23rd. So today's question was, if I relaxed my tight grip on life, what would happen? So I'm taking a minute. I'm just thinking about what am I trying to control too hard? What am I trying to force? What can I let go of? And then yesterday's was about what wisdom will I create? So I was sort of reflecting on what I'm learning, what I'm pushing myself on, what I'm thinking about. So it's just a wonderful little part of the morning.

9:02And it's been an integral part of my day. Epictetus says, every day and night, keep thoughts like these at hand, write them, read them aloud, talk to yourself and others about them. That's what stoicism is, this sort of interplay, this engaging with the material and reengaging it. Epictetus, I love all the questions he's asking himself. What am I lacking? Disrupting my tranquility. What am I? Who am I? What's demanded of me? He's reminding himself to meditate on his actions. He's looking at how he steered away from serenity. What did he do wrong? Where did he fall short? Where did he fail? And so if you can start your morning with some of this reflection, it's really important.

9:39And I'm glad you're listening to this, But as we sort of wrapped up the year, it's not that one-way conversation. It's not the Stoics talking to you. It's not my writing talking to you. It's not the self-improvement books you're reading. It's not the podcast you're listening to. It should also be what are you putting out there? What are you asking yourself? What are you thinking about? That's how we improve. That's how we grow. And I think that's a great habit for the year. So if you're not journaling, you should. If you are journaling, I would push you to sort of ask yourself these questions.

10:07But then I'd also just, you know, make sure you have some of that time for that sort of stillness and reflection and contemplation in the morning. And make sure you're asking yourself questions in the morning. I think even the walk that I'm doing, I'm thinking about stuff. My mind is engaged. That's what helps me kick off a great day. And as we said, what's well begun is half done. So let's get out there. I wish you a great morning, whatever time zone you're in. And looking forward to connecting with you over the next 12 months and making this a great year.

10:42Hey, 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.

11:32That'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. No interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for.

12:15And 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.