Use This To Slay Stress | Ask DS

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1:03Welcome 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. Some 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.

1:44Use this to slay stress. You think the Stoics didn't experience stress that they didn't have reasons to be anxious and worried? Of course they did. Zeno lost everything in a shipwreck. Cleanthes arrived in Athens with empty pockets. Seneca had health problems, was exiled, and then had to show up for work every day in Nero's court, walking on eggshells around an unstable man with a penchant for bloodlust. Epictetus survived years of slavery. Marcus Aurelius' reign included a plague, health problems, wars, flooding, bankruptcy, and family issues. That's the definition of stress. the friction of conflicting obligations, hardship, uncertainty, pain, failure.

2:27These were all inevitable parts of life, according to the Stoics. But suffering because of it, actually being stressed because there was stress? No, that's not the same thing. One does not have to follow the other. The question, of course, is how do we stop ourselves when our thoughts start to spiral out of control? How do we get outside of our heads when our stomach is twisting in knots or our heart is pumping out of our chest. Well, one way is to create mementos, as the Stoics did, that can help remind us of our philosophy and our principles. Seneca kept a bronze mirror on his desk that he would look into and remember his aging mortality.

3:03That's memento mori. When Epictetus's expensive brass lamp was stolen from his house, he replaced it the next day with a cheap clay lamp, which he kept till the end of his life. It was a symbol to avoid material attachments. And it was his student Arian who transcribed the teachings of Epictetus and compiled them into the Inchiridion, which means in the hand or ready at hand. It's been a book that's been carried by Stoics for centuries. If you're neurodivergent or you have young kids, maybe you're familiar with the idea of fidgets, little toys or gadgets you carry around ready at hand to help dispel nervous energy or attention.

3:39We spent a lot of time over at Daily Stoic trying to come up with one of those to help with nervous energy that we have, both directly at Daily Soken. We know all people have that nervous energy of anxiety, so that at the moment you feel panic rising through your chest or worry consuming your thoughts, you can pull this thing out to remember Seneca's wisdom about anxiety, that he who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary. I've got one here. I keep it on my desk. First off, it's beautiful. It's got the Ouroboros on it, the idea that anxiety is when the snake is eating its own tail.

4:14Seneca's reminder, focus on what's in your control, what's up to us, not what's not up to us. But then I love the hole in the middle. I just sort of pinch my index finger and my thumb in it and I just kind of spin it. I carry it around, I spin it. I've been spinning it lately before I go on stage, before I give a talk. And then it's got Seneca's quote, as I was saying, and one of Marcus's. He says, today I escaped my anxiety. He says, No, I discarded it because it was within me, in my own perceptions, not outside. And this thing that was true for Roman Emperor 2 ,000 years ago also applies to us.

4:48We are the source of our anxiety, which is also inspiring because it means we can do something about it. And that's why we created this, and I think you're really going to like it. But I've got a bunch of different totems like this in my office. Of course, I've got the Memento Mori one. If you've ever seen the ring I wear when I'm on stage, I've got some pictures of my kids that mean different things to me. I have that no sign in between them. I've got a chunk of a tombstone in my bathroom mirror that I think about. It's sort of my memento mori. The idea is I come up with these practices. And the memento mori is my newest one.

5:20I really like it. I'll link to it in today's show notes. You can grab it at dailystoic.com slash anxiety coin. I'm really proud of this one. I think you'll really like it. Check it out.

5:37hey it's ryan welcome to another q a episode of the daily stoke podcast i was just reading this article it always made me curious why los angeles is like so far from the ocean like downtown la is like very far from the ocean and when i was in sydney i was just thinking like this is what los angeles could be this is like los angeles and san diego like merged together right because it's like actually on the water la has a huge port it's just far from it not just santa monica but the port of long beach which they eventually connected but it's not the same thing anyways what this article was saying is that the spanish had passed a law that said out of fear of pirates you couldn't found any new cities closer than 20 miles from the ocean so that's right where los angeles is right on the river and i was struck by by melbourne uh when i was there i also gave a talk in Melbourne, that it wasn't right on the water the way that Sydney was.

6:29It was back further kind of on this river, which I had this lovely run along. I loved Melbourne, even though I was only there for maybe 25 hours or so. But it's just fascinating. I just always love the way like certain cities are this way and what's the underlying logic and why did they develop this way? I'm just fascinated by that. So I'm really excited, by the way, I'm going to be in London, Rotterdam and Dublin to do talks, as well as Toronto and Vancouver. This is all in November. they're almost sold out so if you want to grab tickets you can do that at ryanholiday.net i've been to all of those cities before vancouver was settled by the british as opposed to the spanish so that's why it's right there on the water i'm pumped to get to rotterdam which i've never been to before i've been to amsterdam a bunch but i've never given a talk in rotterdam or been there i've done talks in london and dublin before i gave a talk in vancouver earlier this year but when i do talks they're rarely to like the larger public so you can see in the questions that we put up here, a lot of the questions are like really basic, right?

7:27Like people who have no idea who I am or know nothing about stoicism, that's reflecting their questions. But in Melbourne and Sydney, and then these dates I'm doing in November, you guys can come so we can get really into it. And we're going to do like a VIP Q &A before the talks. I think there's a couple of those tickets left. Also, all of which is to say, go to ryanholiday.net slash tour to grab those ticks. I'll link it in today's show notes, and I will see you there. And without further ado, hear some questions from that sold out crowd in Melbourne. Come ask me your question in person, and maybe you'll hear yourself on the podcast.

8:05So this is regarding purpose or calling in one's life, right? So I can't imagine getting to a point of self-belief or knowledge that I could want to share my thoughts with the world, let alone going through the process of writing, editing, publishing, but you've achieved success at such a young age, even in a corporate setting in your 20s, and believed in yourself enough to want to share it with the world. How did you recognise at the time, or even in hindsight, that your reflections or observations were such value to the masses, especially filling out holes like this and even more? Are there any signs that one can observe, that you can know that you're on the right path to where you should be going?

8:50Yeah, I sometimes tell people you should only do a book if you can't not do a book. Like, you feel like it would be painful to not do it. And if that's not how someone feels, I would urge you to spare yourself the trouble and pain of doing it. There's an expression, writing is, painters like painting, writers like having written. It can feel good after, but the process is not so fun. So I don't know. I've always loved books, and I got so much out of them that I felt called to do that. I don't exactly know why or how. I don't know what compelled me to think I could do it. Maybe it was pure ego.

9:43I hope not. I did end up doing it, so maybe there was something there. But no, it's something I felt a calling to do. And I feel like one of the things I do believe is we all have that. We have some calling, something we were put here to do, something that only we can do. And the best way to spend your life is on something that if you didn't do, no one else would do. It wouldn't get done except by someone with your sort of unique combination of DNA and experiences and skills. So for me, that happened to be writing, but for other people, it's something else. So I don't have a good answer other than it just felt right for me.

10:30I really want to ask you your idea on psychedelics being the death of ego, but I'm not going to use my question on that. What I'm more curious on is adversity is how we build ourselves, build resilience, build character, move forwards. How do we put our children in adversity without being arrested? As a parent, I want my child to grow. I want to develop. I want her to build resilience. And outside of sport, I'm just wondering if you have any other ideas on how we can do that in this modern day. Yeah, we know that the obstacle is the way that we're better for the adversity and the difficulty that we go through, the obstacles that we've experienced.

11:15So sometimes people will say to me, so should I seek out obstacles or should I manufacture them for my children? I feel like life takes care of that for us. You know, I've never met someone else. Certainly there's people who are privileged and have had some lucky breaks. We all have adversity and difficulty in our own way. You know, sometimes it's one big, serious, singular event. Sometimes it's something that happens very young. And then sometimes for others of us, it's like more a day-to-day thing. So to me, it's more about how you respond to the things that life deals you as opposed to what life deals you.

11:58So sometimes, again, it's big and enormous, something unfair, something frustrating. something deeply painful. And then sometimes it's, you know, much smaller than that, much more day to day. I don't think we need to seek out adversity for our children. But I do think things like sports and, you know, to sort of mimic it. But I think life will take care of it. I've never met someone that never went through any adversity at all in their life. If this is something you have explored, I was hoping you could talk about any particularly fascinating alignments or distinctions between what you've been exploring and any type of Buddhism as a philosophical exercise and practice.

12:44I think there is an incredible amount of overlap between Stoicism and Buddhism, but what is so profound about sort of wisdom of east and west is how independently it developed. Meaning and significance of suffering, the importance of stillness. Both Epictetus and the Zen Buddhists talk about, you know, a cup or a bowl of water that's too murky to see through, but allowing the silt to settle down and eventually you can see through it. But they seem to have come to this metaphor independently, which to me leads us to believe that there's something fundamentally true about it in the same way that different species evolved similar adaptations to address problems, but they did it on different continents, not really sharing ancestors.

13:44I kind of think of the development of Eastern and Western philosophies being very similar, but it is incredible to think, as independently as the philosophies seemed to be, it was in Marcus Aurelius' reign that the Romans first make contact with the Han dynasty of China. And so there was some brief connection. So maybe it was little things going here and there. And then certainly in the Dark Ages, it is the philosophers in the Middle East that rediscover the ancient wisdom and preserve it and protect it and allow in the Enlightenment and later scholars to rediscover the things that we had learned in the Gold Age and to bring it back.

14:35So they're both independent and separate, and that's something wonderful and powerful, and then also inextricably linked and impossible to separate from each other, especially today. And that's a lovely, powerful thing to me.

14:52Hey, 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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