What Do You Do When You Have Nothing To Do? | Don't Let Your Soul Go First

0:00I'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.

0:37Everything 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. Why choose a Sleep Number smart bed? Can I make my sight softer? Can I make my sight firmer? Can we sleep cooler? Sleep Number does that. Cools up to eight times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side. Your Sleep Number setting. Enjoy personalized comfort for better sleep night after night. It's the final days of our Black Friday sale. Recharge this season with a bundle of cozy, soothing comfort. Now only$17.99 for our C2 mattress and bays, plus free premium delivery.

1:11Prices higher in Alaska and Hawaii. Check it out at a Sleep Number store or sleepnumber.com today.

1:19Welcome 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 in 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.

2:00What do you do when you have nothing to do? The in-between moments, the lulls, the waiting, the extra time you weren't planning to get. What do you do in those moments? For many of us, these brief windows are instantly filled with what Seneca called busy idleness. We get occupied by mindless and meaningless distractions. We check email, we gossip, we sit there waiting for it to be over. Over on the Daily Stoic podcast, we were talking to James about one of the challenges in the New Year, New You Challenge, which we don't want to spoil and you should definitely join. You know the link by now, I'm sure, but I'll link to it.

2:42And anyways, it prompted him to say, really interesting, which if you haven't listened to the interview, you definitely should. I'll just, I'll play what he said because it was great. I like the idea of having good defaults. You know, I sometimes the way I phrase it is what do you do when you have nothing to do? So like for a lot of people, when they have nothing to do, when they've got a 10 second break while they're standing in line at the store or when they, you know, have five minutes in between a meeting, what they do is they scroll on their phone. They pull up social media. They look at, you know, whatever they they they have a default mode that they go into when they have nothing to do.

3:13And what I've really tried to do, I'm still working on this. I definitely don't have this figured out. But what I've tried to do is have a better answer to what do I do when I have nothing to do. In book one of Meditations, this is one of the things that Marcus said he admired most about Antoninus, that he was, quote, not prone to be pulled in all directions, but sticking with the same old places and the same old things. Antoninus knew what to do when he had nothing to do. He was able to avoid being pulled in all directions because he had his defaults, he had his priorities, and he had discipline.

3:47And we encourage you to find yours because those in-between moments, they're not insignificant. They're not nothing. They're your time, time you will never get back. And it adds up, shaping not just our days, but our lives. And again, if you haven't signed up for the Daily Stoic New Year New Year Challenge, definitely do that, dailystoic.com slash challenge. I appreciate James popping by and chatting. and I think you'll really like the challenge, dailystoic.com slash challenge.

4:21Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Basko County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't gonna work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove in Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma And this truck wasn't just transportation 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.

5:07We 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.

5:46Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Today, we are talking about the December 27th entry in the Daily Stoic, 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living. I am holding a cloth-bound one here, although I just signed so many leather-bound Daily Stoics to get out for people for gifts for the holidays. And then this is the window, something like 30 or 40 % of all the sales of the Daily Stoic come like this several week period, like the last half of December, first half of January.

6:36It's crazy. Everyone is just like gifts, wanting to get serious, wanting to make changes. I love it. It's really cool. And, you know, we end up discounting the e-book of Daily Stoic in this period. So if you look where you get e-books, it's probably like$1.99 on Kindle and everywhere you get books. So check that out as well. I'll put a link in today's show notes. But in the meantime, today's quote comes from Meditation 629. It's a disgrace in this life when the soul surrenders first while the body refuses to. The title of the entry is based on that. Don't let your soul go first. Despite his privileges, Marcus Aurelius had a difficult life.

7:21The Roman historian Cassius Dio mused that Marcus did not meet with the good fortune that he deserved, for he was not strong in body and was involved in a multitude of troubles through practically his entire reign. At one point, he was so sick that a rumor spread that he had died, and matters were made worse when his most trusted general used it as an opportunity to declare himself the new emperor. But throughout these struggles, the years at war, the crippling illnesses, his troubled son, he never gave up. It's an inspiring example for us to think about today if we get tired or frustrated or have to deal with some crisis.

7:57Here was a guy who had every reason to be angry and bitter, who could have abandoned his principles and lived in luxury or ease, who could have put his responsibilities aside and focused on his own health. But he never did. His soul stayed strong even after his body became weak. He didn't give up right up until the second that his body finally did, when he died near Vienna in the year 180 AD. Yeah, Mark Surios was a tough dude. I've said this before, but the fact that this guy who buried multiple children, who had chronic illnesses, who experienced betrayal and pain and loss and heartbreak and disaster after disaster, that he kept going was a profound statement of hope and resilience and sheer willpower.

8:49That to me is what stoicism is. It's not this, oh, I don't feel anything nihilism. It's this love of what you do and who you are. That's what he talks about in that famous passage about waking up early in book five of meditations. It's just people who love what they do wear themselves down doing it. you know, they just stay at it. They just keep going. They don't quit. And he had so many reasons to give up, so many reasons to not go on, so many reasons to take an easier way out. And he didn't. And I find that very, very impressive. I actually thought of it briefly. I told you I was at the White House for their Christmas party and Biden came out and gave a a brief talk and look, my feeling about where we are politically, we don't have to get into, and we don't even have to get into the sort of, is there this problem with aging politicians not making room for a new generation?

9:47I think there's a lot of validity in that. But you just, like the next day I was reading, I was still in DC because I was giving a talk the next day, but he had then flown back home to Delaware where he was laying a reef at the gravesite of his wife and his young daughter who died in that car accident in the 70s, right at the beginning of his political career. He had a reason to give up and not keep going just then. Stutter. You know, again, it's sad we're at a place politically where, again, whatever you think of some of his policies, and if you think he did a bad job as president or you think he should have left the presidency earlier, this is a tough dude.

10:23This is a dude who life knocked around, who could have spent his golden years not in public service, could have just cashed in on the speaking circuit or the memoir circuit or any number of things. And again, I think it's negative that we only look at it as, oh, you know, clinging to power. I'm sure that's a part of it. That's what draws everyone to politics, just as like, I have many reasons why I do what I do, some more selfish than others. But he also clearly had policy aims that he wanted to accomplish. He also clearly thought he could do a good job and he stuck with it. And for the Stoics, this idea of a long life of public service, a long life of being committed to your ideals, being involved in the thick of things, not taking the easy way out, not retiring in indolence, even if it's much deserved.

11:20Certainly Biden would relate to the idea of a troublesome son and didn't always get it right. Certainly Marcus didn't always get it right, as history shows us. But these things, again, right or wrong decision, it's exhausting. It would take so much out of you. So, yeah, I just thought about that as I saw him up there. And some element of it was also, you know, it just seemed crazy that he thought I could go another four years. But maybe that's sort of the point, is you think you have more in you than you do. Mark Sturulus dies on the job. And then when it sort of snuck up on him, he said, go to the rising sun for I am setting.

12:12You know, inevitably, we'll all be that setting sun at some point. And the idea, I guess, to quote the famous poem, is that we don't go quietly into that good night, that we push, we stay at it. We don't give up before our time. because there was another moment, the betrayal that Cassius Dio tells us about involving Vydeus Cassius, his general who declares himself emperor. Marcus was sick and supposedly near death, and he had been written off. It had been assumed that he had nothing left, that he had expired. But he had, in fact, many years left. That's what we're talking about. And we mean this in the big ways, like in the presidency, but also in the small ways, you know, to make time for your grandchildren, to make time for your children, to be a resource, to be an ally, to be a mentor.

13:13As long as you still got the juice in you, you know, to keep doing good. I think of Jake Seliger, who died this year, my friend, who we had on the podcast. I mean, he was writing and publishing up until his last days. And that work was meaningful to him, I'm sure, but it was meaningful to me and it's still there and people are still discovering it and it means something. And I think that's what Marcus is talking about here. As long as you got a little left in you, do what you can with it, stick around, make a positive difference, tough it out. This is what we're training for, preparing for. This is what one of the things that philosophy helps us with.

13:55that's my message. So again, look, this comparison isn't to imply that anyone is like Marcus Aurelius, anyone is a king, anyone is a philosopher king. That's not what I'm saying. I was just struck by the timelessness of that story of people in power and the way life takes its toll on us. And at some moments, maybe we still feel young, we still feel like we've got it in us, but it has unmistakably worn us down. But that spirit inside us has to stay there, has to keep going. And yeah, look, I do think he's a consequential president. I think he accomplished quite a bit. I think he ironically did probably more for what we would call the working class in this country and then watched as those were precisely the voters who abandoned him.

14:46Again, a timeless idea. Mark Shredos talks about being a leader is to earn a bad reputation by good deeds. I think history will come around. We're in it now, probably end up being judged like a Carter or a Truman, unpopular when they left office, but not in the George Bush sense of the word where a disaster well in the making continues to get worse and worse and worse. I think it'll be the opposite. We'll start to see the payoff of some of these things as time goes by. And certainly the fundamental decency and sincerity and commitment to public service tragedy of being painted as somehow corrupt by one of the most corrupt politicians in American history is, again, a tragic irony.

15:35And look, as the transition of power comes here in the next few days, I don't think we need to worry about anyone leading a coup against the U.S. government. And he'll be in the audience at the inauguration peacefully handing over power. And there's something noble and stoic about that, even though I'm sure he has a number of doubts, probably better information than most of us do about, you know, the handoff that he's having to make. But this is there is something I think lowercase stoic about all this. Certainly as a practicing Catholic, he'd be quite familiar with all those cardinal virtues, courage and discipline and justice and wisdom.

16:19I don't know. I'm losing the thread on this. It's late in the evening now. I've just signed like a bazillion books. I just went for a run. So I'm getting a little tired. I hope you had a good Christmas if you celebrate. Hope you're ready for the new year. Don't get too crazy. and I hope I can see you in the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge, which is built around challenges to toughen you up and build some of that will and to explore some of these ideas from the Stoics. And you can sign up for that at dailystoic.com slash challenge. We're just putting the final touches on it now. I think it's awesome.

16:52I think it's our best one yet. We do a new one each year. We spend the good chunk of the year coming up with the days, fine tuning and workshopping them, building out resources, and then we get all the tech behind it and everything. It's our biggest production. It's a huge part of what we do here at Daily Stoic. I think it's going to be awesome. And by the way, you can get all our challenges for free, including the New Year, New You challenge as part of a Daily Stoic Life membership, which you can grab right now at dailystoiclife.com. And I hope to see you in it on January 1st. Just sign up at dailystoic.com slash challenge, and I'll see you there.

17:28Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at dailystoic.com slash email.

17:54Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist. That'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 Super overcast 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.

18:49And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium, and we are offering a limited time discount of 20 % off your first year. Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show descriptions to make those ads go away.