We Must Create Order From Chaos | Ask Daily Stoic

0:05Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com.

1:09with the cold, the house project that must be finished. How do we make sense of it all? George Raveling, the legendary basketball coach and one of our favorite people, talks about this in his new book, What You're Made For, which I feel lucky enough to have helped brought into the world. And we just had George on the podcast as well. George was overwhelmed by self-doubt when he was tapped to run one of the biggest divisions at one of the biggest companies in the world. That was at Nike in his 60s. He had no prior corporate experience and wasn't sure how he'd manage all the responsibilities before him.

1:47But then a mentor gave him a pretty simple system. He said, when you leave the office every day, leave a yellow pad in the middle of the desk. And when you come in in the morning, write down the three most important things you got to do that day in that order. And that day, do not do anything else but the first thing on the pad. He said, and then when you get the first one done, go to the second one. That will put structure to your day and give you a sense of purpose. And basically, George says that this simple system ended up working wonders. The whole daunting, overwhelming role suddenly began to feel manageable.

2:22And he says, this experience reinforced a belief that had guided me throughout my career and life, that one of our fundamental purposes as a human being is to create order and structure from the chaos of existence. And the Stoics believe this too. That's why they were so big on habits and routines. In a world where so much is out of our control, committing to a routine we do control was a way of establishing and reminding ourselves of our own power. Without a disciplined schedule, procrastination sets in, chaos and complacency and confusion. What was I supposed to do? What should I wear? What should I eat?

2:58Where do I start? Should I tackle this problem or that one? And this is torture. Seneca would say that life without design is erratic. We must create order. We must design routines and systems. And when we do, chaos and uncertainty and disorder and complacency and confusion are boxed out by the order and clarity that we have built. And you should absolutely listen to George's episode on the podcast. I think it was fantastic. One of my favorites. I very rarely fly out to do them, but I flew out to do that one with George, sat down and had a lovely conversation. And you should check out the book, What You're Made For.

3:34It just came out. Look, how many books do you think Michael Jordan writes the foreword to? George, I said, George, I think you should ask Jordan. He said, okay. He sent a message, and then we got confirmation a few days later that Jordan would be happy to. You know, I haven't worked on many books where that's been the case. I don't even know if I've ever seen a book where that was the case, because that's just who George is. It's a lovely little forward and I think a lovely little book. What You're Made For, Lessons from Raveling's Life in Sports is available everywhere. We've got copies at the Painted Porch.

4:07I'll sign your copy if you want. I'll link to that in today's show notes. Grab it.

4:15Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. So I was telling you recently that I'm a dropout of UCR. That's UC Riverside. So even though I didn't graduate from there, still where I went to school influenced me almost more than any other institution. I mean, UCR is where I met my wife. UCR is where I was introduced to Stoic Philosophy. I was covering an event for the college newspaper. It's where I wrote some of my first books. I covered a bunch of things actually for the college newspaper, and I can still remember them. I saw Elizabeth Wurzel speak. She's one of the first famous authors that I ever saw.

4:55I remember I did a story about a gay Eagle Scout who had been like sort of kicked out of the Boy Scouts. I remember I watched some like pickup artist or dating artist and I just was like, oh, this is just so lame. Definitely don't want to be that person. I covered a bunch of different events over the years for the UCR Highlander, which is one of the first places that I ever wrote, the first office that I ever had, the first time I was ever paid to be a writer. You know, it's where I got started, really. But if I go back even further, when I enrolled at UCR, I got a scholarship. It's called the Chancellor Scholarship.

5:30And then I was in the honors program. This was all to help cover the bills. If you were in the honors program and you lived in the honors dorm, it covered some of your tuition and rent. Anyways, the beginning of our freshman year, the summer, we went to this seminar hosted by the Honors Department. And the speaker was this woman, Susan Strait, who's a novelist and a writing professor at UCR. And she was the first author that I ever met. And I've had her on the podcast subsequently. You can listen to that episode. She's going to come on again. I'm excited about that. Anyway, she reached out and said, hey, would you want to come do an event at UCR?

6:04And I said, oh my God, yeah, this would be incredible. It's full circle. And so I was at the University Theater back in early April. And first off, I was introduced by Professor Strait, so that was full circle. And then I was interviewed by the chancellor, Chancellor Wilcox. It was just absolutely incredible. And the whole honors program was there. It was mandated, like the ones that I had went to when I was an honor student. And so that was all sort of full circle and strange and surreal. And I will bring you a chunk of that now. Enjoy.

6:40Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation, it getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

7:25We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. and by we I mean not just my wife but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course this is stoicism too because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you.

8:04Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. We 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.

8:48My 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.

9:25Becky. 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. And is that, I think, even more so today than it has been in other parts of your life, given that most politically in the rest of the world? I mean, I think there's something, you know, like that Chinese expression, may you live in interesting times. There is something about the periods in which Stoicism is relevant that probably says something about the time that it's in. But I mean, you know, and this is, I guess, 2006.

10:07It felt urgent and relevant then. It feels relevant 20 years later. And I think one of the fascinating things that I took from the Stoics is that Stoicism was not ancient philosophy to the Stoics. And yet it was. There's a passage in Meditations where it strikes me that, you know, Marcus is realizing that Stoicism is 500 years old when he's reading it. Like, so it was as distant to him as Shakespeare is to us. and he's just sort of meditating on how in that 500 years, and indeed for all time, people have been doing the same things, having the same problems, getting in the same fights, prioritizing the wrong things.

10:47This is just what human beings do. And so I certainly think there's something about this moment that feels very Roman, unfortunately, but when you read the Stoics and then the people who are influenced by the Stoics, there is this timelessness to like, oh, somebody wrote this down and got it a long time ago. I'm one of the people that Susan gave a book to. And I studied it for tonight. There are times when it's almost the broken cup. It's one of those where is this pessimism is an optimist. Yes. The broken cup being the Zen parable about the cup is already broken. The cup is already broken. Yeah.

11:22When I read meditations for the first time, I found it empowering and inspiring. As I've dealt with it more and more, and as I've come to study, not just Marcus Aurelius, but all the Stoics, I look at the time that they lived in. I look at what they went through. Marcus Aurelius is, you know, he loses his father as a young age. He's thrust into power. He doesn't want this. There's a plague. There's a historic series of floods that lead to a famine. There's wars. He buries half of his children, and he had 12. I go back to that passage about, this is why you got to get out of bed early in the morning.

11:58That he got out of bed at all, in some respects, is a statement of profound resilience and hope. So there is something, I think, a little dark, a little depressing about the Stoics. But then when you realize that the world was and is dark and depressing, and what Stoicism is, is this refusal to give in, this refusal to despair, it does, I think, accept pragmatically and realistically, not just who other people are, but our limitations as human beings to change that. but then to try anyway is to me actually kind of inspiring. You found out the notion of giving up verses, asking for help. Well, there is.

12:39There's a passage in meditations, and it's funny. So I have my copy, which is now 20 years old. It's pretty worse for wear. I found, I'm not going to go, but I opened up a copy, and a receipt fell out. And the receipt was for the borders in the Riverside Plaza, which is obviously no longer with us. It was also then it became, I think, a Forever 21, which is also no longer with us. So this is all very stoic as the things you remember cease to exist. But but I realized that this was my wife's copy, which she had bought after I talked about it too much on our first date. One of the passages that struck me in my copy that I've seen where I underline it.

13:22Mark Shereo says, you are like a soldier storming a wall. You have fallen. And again, he's talking to, when he says you, he means him. And I think that's what drew me to it. It's so personal. But he says, you're like a soldier storming a wall. You've fallen and you can't get up. And you have to ask a comrade for help. And then he says, so what? Question mark. And I just loved that. I loved the nonchalance of that. And the contrast to the stereotype of the stoic is unfeeling and invulnerable. and invincible. I mean, yeah, you can be those things if you are the kind of person that sees yourself as part of a team or part of a large organization.

14:06You know, the Stoics believe that we're all sort of interconnected and interrelated and couldn't be separated from each other than even the obnoxious and frustrating people were part of this team. Again, I think the more you unpack what Stoicism is, the more and more, I think, exciting and invigorating and, you know, deeply human it is. You can take that set of concepts. Yeah. Think about your experience here at UCR and offer some perspective for students now who are in the middle of trying to develop those kinds of supporting networks and trying to be independent and trying to be stoic and invent sense of work.

14:37One of the things that struck me after I left and I had this great opportunity to go work for a writer, which is the only reason I left. I loved, I think some people drop out of college because they hate college. And I've gotten so many emails from people over the years. I'm thinking about dropping out of college. And I always look, if the email says they're failing out of college, I say, you definitely can't leave, right? If you have something better, you know, maybe it's, but so I love college and I hated to leave, but I had this chance to do what I was here to learn how to do. But one of the things that struck me after I left was how many resources and what access I had here that I had never taken advantage of.

15:19I've joked about this before, but I wrote a good chunk of my first book in the Rivera Library, which I don't think I stepped foot in while I was a student.

15:32Hey, 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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