This Is What They Do | Give Thanks

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2:03Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics. with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

2:43This is what they do. People are people, kids are kids, mosquitoes are mosquitoes, squirrels are squirrels. The latter was something that the late Paul Woodruff tried to remind himself of, having picked up this insight from Marcus Aurelius. The squirrels were not trying to give Paul a hard time. They did not mean any harm when they stole the bird seed he was putting out. As Paul explained in his wonderful episode of the Daily Stoic podcast before he died, he came to understand that the squirrels were simply doing what they do. They were doing what their nature demanded. Some people are thieves.

3:16Some people are exaggerators. Some people are moody. Some people are exasperatingly friendly. Kids are loud. Mosquitoes bite. This is their nature. They are doing what is demanded of them. What's been ordained for them. Why get angry? Why resent it? Why expect anything different? It doesn't change them, but it does change you. It makes you bitter, resentful, and tired. Accept them. Adjust to them. Love them.

3:49Give thanks. This is the December 29th entry in the Daily Stoic. In all things, we should try to make ourselves as grateful as possible, Seneca says in Moral Letters 81. For gratitude is a good thing for ourselves in a manner in which justice commonly held to belong to others is not. Gratitude pays itself back in large measure. I guess what you could say is that gratitude is a gift you give yourself, even though you are expressing your gratefulness to other people. But think of all the things that you could be grateful for today, that you are alive, that you live primarily in a time of peace, that you have enough health and leisure to read a book or listen to this podcast.

4:32But what are the little things? The person who smiled at you, the woman who held the door open, the song you liked on the radio, the pleasant weather. Gratitude is infectious. Its positivity is radiant. Even if today was your last day on earth, even if you knew in advance that it was going to end in a few short hours, would there not still be plenty of things to be grateful for? How much better would your life be if you kicked off every morning like that? If you let it carry through from morning to night and touch every single part of your life. I think about gratitude a lot. Obviously, we did our Thanksgiving message a month ago where we're talking about gratitude.

5:07I have a gratitude journal, actually, Mona Catan, the makeup artist and online influencer sent it to me as a gift a couple of years ago. And I write like one or two things that I'm grateful for a day. You know, my family, my friends, my success, you know, the obvious things. But I try on a really consistent basis to take the time to express gratitude for things that maybe on the surface I'm not grateful for. The pandemic, political polarization, Trump,

5:45critics, problems I have with my parents, pain that I feel, an argument that I just had that I'm sick. I try to express explicitly there on those pages gratitude for things that, again, I'm not feeling grateful for, but in taking a moment to write why I am grateful for them, I become grateful for them. I force myself to see something good in them. I force myself to find a positive in it. I force a way to see that actually I'm quite lucky, even if this thing is itself an unlucky thing, right? In the perspective of all the ways that I am lucky, this little bit of bad luck isn't so bad. And so forcing myself to write that down to think about is really great.

6:35My friend Pete Holmes, a comedian, talked about how when he thinks of his parents, he says to himself, I forgive them. He's actively practicing what he wants to feel, even though he doesn't actually feel that. And it becomes true over time. And I think this is an exercise we can apply to gratitude. And Marcus says, convince yourself that everything is a gift from the gods, that it's all a gift, that you're grateful for all of it, that it's great, even though it doesn't always feel that way. That's the kind of gratitude we're expressing. And that's the kind of gratitude, you know, this month in the book is about death.

7:10When you go, hey, I could die at any moment, or people all around me are dying at any moment, right? It does force a little bit of a different perspective where you can find some stuff to be grateful for. So that's today's message. A reminder here, two days from the end of the year, the Daily Stoic New Year New Year Challenge. It's just about to start. You've clearly already procrastinated quite a bit if you haven't already signed up, but I would love for you to pull the trigger on starting the year right. 21 days of Stoic-inspired challenges that will make you better. They are challenges. It's not going to be easy, but that's the whole point.

7:44We really push ourselves in the challenge. It's one of my absolute favorite things to do as a participant And as a writer, we've been working hard on it the last three or four months. The Daily Stoic team has, I think it's our best year yet. Been doing it for five years now. Thousands of people all over the world have done it, are going to do it together this year. All new stuff. Check out the Daily Stoic New Year New Year Challenge, dailystoic.com slash challenge. I'd love to see it in there. And let's blow out 2023. Let's start it with a bang. Let's start it with some gratitude. and then let's make some stuff to be grateful for with the changes and challenges we're gonna accept and push for.

8:22I'll see you soon, dailystoic.com slash challenge.

8:35Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.

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9:59That'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 a 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.

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