This Is Why We Study | Ask DS

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0:55I'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.

1:32Everything 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. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well, on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members or as part of the challenges.

2:09Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording. Thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

2:23It's sort of strange. If you think back to when you were a kid, what appeared to you to be the best part about being an adult? No more school. Because that's the example that adults by and large set, that education stops, that adulthood is like one long summer break. You cross that stage, receive your diploma, and your real life can begin. But then you realized just how real life could get as an adult. You met obstacles you couldn't overcome. You experienced grief and misfortune that overwhelmed you. Your relationships weren't quite what you'd hoped them to be. Even if you were one of the fortunate ones, successful beyond your wildest dreams, something still felt off like you missed a turn on your way to the top.

3:01Perhaps that's what brought you to stoicism, why you subscribe to this podcast, to learn practical wisdom you can use to improve your actual life. It might seem strange becoming a student once more as an adult, but this idea that graduation is the final destination of learning and studying and investing is your education. It's actually a relatively new phenomenon. Not long ago, adults prioritized their own education as much as their kids. There's a story of Epictetus teaching one day when a student's arrival caused a commotion in the back of the room. Who was it? Hadrian, the emperor. An emperor studying under a slave.

3:37Hadrian's example clearly had an impact on his successor and adopted grandson, Marcus Aurelius. Late in his reign, a friend spotted Marcus heading out, carrying a stack of books. Where are you going? He asked. Marcus was on his way to a lecture of Stoicism. He said that learning was a good thing, even for one who was growing old. I'm now on my way to Sextus the philosopher, he said, to learn that which I do not yet know. In adulthood, Cato had a Stoic philosopher named Athenodorus come live with him so he could continue his studies. Thrasia was one of the Stoics who challenged Nero. He continued his studies up till his last breath.

4:10In fact, he was discoursing and studying with Demetrius when his death sentence from Nero arrived. This is what it means to be a Stoic. To be a Stoic is to be a lifelong student. It is to follow in the footsteps of Hadrian and Marcus and Cato and Thrasia. It is to know that wisdom is an endless pursuit, to believe that one never graduates, one never arrives at some final destination of education. There's this cool annual thing out there called Stoic Week, where people all around the world commit to living like Stoics for a week. And as part of that, we're relaunching one of our most popular courses, Stoicism 101, one, ancient philosophy for your actual life.

4:45It's a chance for you to dive deeper into the Stoic ideas you're most curious about with me, with Ryan. Whether you're new to Stoicism or have been studying it for years, it's a course for people who want to get serious about Stoicism, who seek a practical guidebook for real problem solving, who want to keep learning, who want to learn what they don't yet know. You'll get a bunch of stuff on the essential lessons of Stoicism and some of the Stoic secrets to resilience and success and productivity and virtue. And it's a short class. It's just two weeks. You won't do it alone. You're going to be in a cohort with a bunch of other awesome Stoics.

5:19There's a private discussion board. Plus, you'll have some office hours with me, Ryan, and we can talk. You can ask questions. I can talk about what I'm working on. How much progress would you make? Maybe that's what you're asking. Someone asked Seneca that question. And he said, just as much as you try to make. Why do you wait? He says, wisdom comes haphazard to no man. If you want some of the best lessons from the Stoics and you want to take it to the next level, well, why don't you join us in Daily Stoic 101 to kick off Stoic Week. You can sign up at dailystoic.com slash 101 to join. It's going to start on October 28th, so don't delay.

5:55Let's get into it together and I'll see you at office hours.

6:07Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I was on the road back in June. I went out to Salt Lake City and I talked to this mastermind that's for very successful people trying to integrate their newfound success, their newfound fortunes even into their life. It was this idea about money. And I think it's fascinating because many of the Stoics were quite wealthy. We talk about this in the Wealthy Stoic Challenge. the idea of like what wealth actually is and what it means. And just having a lot of money certainly wouldn't be the stoic definition of wealth. And I thought this was a fascinating conversation.

6:47So I always love Salt Lake City. It's a great place to run. I love to run up to the Capitol and back. And that's what I did. It was a fly in and out. I think I flew in, ran, showered, changed, gave the talk and went straight to the airport and got back in time. So it was an in and out trip for me, but I thought it was fun. And I think you will enjoy these questions that they asked me. Do you believe that you, even though you teach it, you study it, you write about it, do you believe you live it? I would say, well, I'll give you this. My wife says that one of us is a Stoic and the other writes about Stoicism.

7:23So I am the aspiring practitioner. And And I think sometimes the reason we get really interested in something is that it's what we aspire to be, but not how we naturally are. So I think we've all met people who are just kind of naturally stoic. Oftentimes, our grandparents seem to embody those values. We never met them when they were 20, so maybe they weren't then. Maybe it's something that comes with old age. But I would not classify myself as someone who's naturally these things. And so the reason that the writings are there and the reminders are there, we should see Christosism as a practice.

7:57It's not like a thing that you accept into your life or something that you read in college and then you're good. It's this practice. And that's what Marx realist himself was doing. He becomes emperor and he's like, okay, you got to make sure that this doesn't change you. And what he's doing in the rest of those pages is trying to kind of have a discussion with himself and ongoing kind of monitoring to make sure he's doing it. So that's, I happen to publish the writing that I do about stoicism, but it's as much a practice for me as anyone reading it. Yeah. You studied under Robert Greene. I did.

8:36Yes. 48 Laws of Power. What were some of the lessons you learned? I mean, he was, he was basically your mentor, correct? Yes. So I dropped out of college when I was 19 or 20 and I apprenticed under a great writer. I knew I wanted to be a writer and I thought the best way to become one would be to learn from someone who's actually done it. And so it was a, it was a wonderful process. It took many, many years. I think, you know, it, it feels more official in retrospect than it was like everyone should have a mentor. I think every young person should have some period of apprenticeship where they kind of learn the craft of what they do.

9:12But it's not like the old days where Ben Franklin is like, there's an apprenticeship contract. It's something that evolves over time. But I learned really practical stuff from Robert, like how you research a book, how you write a book. My writing and researching the system is all a result of him. But then also, I learned, I think, as we always do, a lot more from how, here's this guy who sold millions of books, who's instructed heads of stayed and CEOs of big companies and armies. He's done all this cool stuff, but how sort of how lightly he wore it and then how focused he always was on getting better and doing the next thing.

9:53And so, yeah, I feel like almost everything I learned, I learned from him in one way or another. You've taken that from him. Are you paying it forward or will you pay it forward to someone else? Yeah, that's the thing. You get these breaks in life. These people take you under their wing. They show you things. They open doors for you. And there's really nothing you can do to pay them back. Now, I do think we sometimes think of mentorship as this selfless thing. The best mentor-mentee relationships are reciprocal. Like you're bringing energy and ideas and raw manpower. You're bringing things to them, of course, too.

10:28But really, ultimately, there's nothing you can do to pay them back. You can only pay it forward. And so how do you how do you take what you learned and how do you take the example, good and bad, because I've also had some other mentors who are not as great as Robert. And then how do I do that better? And yeah, I have a chapter in the new book, which is about the virtue of justice. And I'm talking about how, you know, when you look at a great coach, like a great sports coach, it's not just how many championships did they win or how long did they have the job. But one of the things we evaluate coaches on is their coaching tree, right?

11:00What did the coaches underneath them go on to do? And were they the kind of insecure coach who's like trying to hold their people tight? Or were they the kind of coach who's making phone calls for people? And I talk a lot about Greg Popovich, who I think has the greatest coaching tree in the history of sports. And so, yeah, I think about that and the ability to, it's funny having learned from Robert, the first law and the 48 laws of power is never outshine the master. Because people are always very sensitive and very insecure. and I think what's been amazing about Robert is how helpful he's been in my success.

11:33And I think that's a skill that you have to learn. The ego wants you to take all the credit, which is another one of the laws of the book, but you want the credit, you want the attention, you never want to be out and to actually go, no, I'm going to feel as proud of their accomplishments as I do of my own. And that's something I've gotten to feel more lately as people who've worked for me have gone on to do things. it's a wonderful thing to add because it doesn't matter how your stuff's going you got these other things to be excited about too yeah in stoicism you have kind of this uh teaching or concept that you should be really almost indifferent to joy or pain yeah or you know sorrow yeah it's like it's some point yes do you ever get to the place where you're like this has to some degree taken some of the fun out of life you know like is there a balance in that right you know i'm saying like No, no, no, of course.

12:27Because I read it as well. And it's like, and so much of it is so practical. And so in living an even keel, you know, like in different life so that these things don't affect us are great. But then you never get the high highs or the low lows. Yeah, I think, look, first off, the stereotype of the Stoic as having no emotions is just not true, right? Marcus Aurelius had a family. He had hobbies that he was interested in. There's jokes in meditation. The idea of the emotionless Stoic is not true. I do think the Stokes tried to be less emotional, and most of us see how our emotions get us into trouble, particularly in business when we're making decisions.

13:04But I'll give you a personal example I was just going through. So I really try to focus when I'm working on a book to just be happy with the parts of it that I control, which is the writing that I do, the ideas that I have, the effort that I put in. And the reason you don't want to be so attached to the outcome is like, well, you could put it out and there could be a tornado or you could get snubbed by a bestseller. There's so many things that could happen. Or you could, as other artists of experience, you could be way ahead of your time, right? And so if it's only worth it if people say, good job, you're very vulnerable.

13:39So I try to focus on the parts of it that I control. And I find that this has helped make me more successful because I'm putting all that energy into the project itself as opposed to just like hoping. At the same time, so I was in New York last week, did all these shows that I'd never done before. And then I could hear from little things that the book was selling better than I thought. And then it ultimately ended up hitting number one, which is really cool. but I found I was a little detached, almost too detached. And so it wasn't that I, it was like, I just felt nothing. And the result was, it wasn't joylessness.

14:14It was just nothing. And that felt also kind of counterproductive. And it also felt I had to go, hey, other people are working very hard on this too. And so if I'm like, I don't care, I'm also demeaning the effort and the work that they're putting in. And so it's a balance. And if you are utterly detached and emotionless and you don't care about anything, I think you've gone past the point of stoicism and you're somewhere closer to nihilism, which is not what we're talking about. But it is trying to focus as much as possible on the parts of it that are in your control and not being overcome or overruled by the emotions.

14:52Because what if the news had come back and somebody sold more or, next week if it's not in the same spot, am I going to let that determine whether two years of work was worth it or not? I don't want to do that either.

15:09Hey, 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 of 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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