This Is Your Main Job | The Real Power You Have

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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$149 a pound if you have Prime with organic birds at$299 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. 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.

2:08So let's get into it.

2:22This is your main job. It might not seem like much, but it may well be the hardest thing to do in the world. When tensions are high, when political dysfunction spills out into the streets, when anger and frustration abound, when misinformation and extremism and utter nonsense pervades, when cruelty and meanness become acceptable, when the system is falling apart and the center looks like it may not hold. Your job is simple. Don't become a lunatic. Don't let it infect you. Don't let it make you lose your mind. Marcus Aurelius had to do this in the terror of the plague. He had to do this during a coup attempt.

2:58Think of Cicero during those civil wars. Think of Chrysippus telling himself that the whole point of being a philosopher was not to join in with the mob and the rabble. They were holding out. It's not that they were disengaged. They were very engaged. It's that they strove not to be consumed by the passions that had wrecked their society. Lincoln had to strike a very similar balance. He knew that slavery was wrong. He knew that a good chunk of people were hell-bent on destroying the country. He also knew that he could not afford anything other than calmness, foresight, and clarity. He could not lose his humanity.

3:28He could not lose his mind. And neither can you. As we said recently, we can't let bad times turn us into bad people. The winds may howl, but we must not be swept away. We must remain good. We must remain sane. This is our main job. And look, your other main job is to vote. Go vote. Don't be a lunatic. Don't be infected. Make a smart, educated, stoic decision. You might be saying, who are you talking about? You know who I'm talking about. Make the right decision. do the right thing. Think of Marcus Aurelius' celebration to Antoninus, what he learned from him, what he felt Antoninus embodied. And then tell yourself, who's the opposite of that in almost every way?

4:14That's today's message. I'll leave it there.

4:25the real power you have and 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 ryan holiday you can pick this up anywhere books are sold i use this journal myself every single day and you can also pick up a signed copy at store.dailystoic.com. There is fleeting power and there is real power. Fleeting power can be taken away while real power is in our minds and our bones. The former tends to be along the lines of wealth, fame, high position, and the leverage that all those things give us over others. The Stoics thought that this kind of power was inferior to the real power that each person possesses, the power of our minds to reason and make judgments and choices based on the real worth of things.

5:16You can have both kinds of power too, but only if you keep the first kind of power subject to the kind of power that the Stoics actually cared about. So Chrysippus, who I talk about in Lives of the Stoics as well, he says, this is the very thing which makes up the virtue of the happy person in a well-flowing life. When the affairs of life are in every way tuned to the harmony between the individual divine spirit and the will of the director of the universe. Then Epictetus says, don't trust in your reputation, your money or position, but in the strength that is yours, namely your judgments about the things that you control and don't control.

5:52For this alone is what makes us free and unfettered, that picks us up by the neck from the depths and lifts us eye to eye with the rich and the powerful. That's Discourses 326. And then Marcus Aurelius in Meditations 1219 says, I think the fact that we can talk about Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus as peers, even though one was utterly powerless and the other possessed all the worldly power there was, is an amazing illustration of what Epictetus is saying when he says, for this alone is what makes us free and unfettered, that picks us up by the neck from the depths and lifts us eye to eye with the rich and the powerful.

6:46And in fact, Epictetus works in Nero's court. He is a slave of one of Nero's high-ranking officials or secretaries. And in Epictetus's writing, we get a sense, we get him really realizing and trying to communicate later to his students that he realized that as a slave, he had a better life than many of these people, that he was freer. He watches at one point somebody sucking up to Nero's cobbler. The guy that makes Nero's shoes is getting flattery because the person wants to get closer to the emperor. And Epictetus realizes that that person who's doing that is, of course, freer and richer and more privileged than Epictetus in essentially every way, but is then voluntarily debasing themselves, is a slave to their need for power or recognition or money or whatever it is.

7:45that person is willingly a slave. And Seneca in that same court talks about this. He says, you know, nothing is more shameful than this sort of form of voluntary slavery. Nothing is more shameful than these people who are addicted to a mistress, to their estates, to being, you know, the most famous or popular person in Rome. And so I just, I think it is a powerful statement that amongst the Stoics, some of the most powerful and influential and inspiring were the least powerful and recognized. Cleanthes is a manual laborer, but he's considered a peer of Hercules because of his ability to endure things, because of his judgments, because of his incorruptibility.

8:29Marcus Aurelius was not the greatest conqueror of the Roman emperors, but he's one of the most impressive because he conquered himself, right? He possessed the throne, did not possess him. And so this idea of being free, of chasing the real power, which is power over oneself, power over one's wants, power over one's opinions, power over one's actions, power over those impulses that might drive you to do this or that, that's real power. There's a line in one of Stephen Pressfield's books where Alexander the Great is taunting this philosopher and he says, what have you done? I've conquered the world.

9:14And philosopher says, I have conquered the need to conquer the world. And I think Pressfield is saying the same thing the Stoics are saying, the same thing that Epictetus is saying. He's probably drawing on Diogenes the Cynic, but that there is a level of power above the level of raw power that people chase and debase themselves with. So that's your question, your thing to think about today. What kind of power are you chasing? What are you pursuing? Are you really as powerful as you think you are? Or does power have power over you?

9:53Hey, 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.

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