What Example Are You Setting? | 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.

1:09as you sit there in a job you've hated for the last five years. You say this when you avoid talking politics with your family because it's unpleasant. You say this when you make all sorts of compromises and trade-offs that you know are not right. You say this while you're wearing clothes made in a sweatshop, pay your employees less than you could afford to, travel to countries with horrible human rights records, drive cars that are horrible for the environment. It's not that you're a bad person. It's that you have a reason for all those things. We all do. We have a million reasons. Then we like to direct a very pointed, very black and white accusing finger at everyone else who dares to do the same.

1:47Marcus Aurelius reminds us that what other people do and say is not important. Or rather, it's not as important as what we do and we say. What do we have control over? Those politicians thousands of miles away who are just barely interested in our votes? Or our own decisions and actions on a day-to-day basis? Don't waste your time inveighing against the hypocrisy of others. Start with the hypocrisy in your own home, because there's plenty of it there. What are you doing today, tomorrow? What injustices are you resolving in your own life? What evil are you ceasing to participate in? What good are you doing?

2:25What courage are you showing? Your answers, not politicians or leaders or your neighbors or your bosses, are what counts. Matters what you do. You do. now.

3:06And 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. We 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.

3:51Because 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. Discover 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?

4:36That'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. My 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.

5:13Becky 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. Becky. 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.

5:49hey it's ryan welcome to another episode of the daily stoic podcast i've been lucky enough i've talked all over the world i've talked to special forces operators i've talked to the white house i've talked to big companies i've talked to little companies talk hedge funds i've talked at family offices for billionaires. I've talked at conferences. I've talked everywhere all over the world. It's cool. It's been a really cool experience. I hope it's cool for the people who come, but I would say it's the people it's not cool for is you. By that, I mean, you can't normally come, right? Most of the events I do by nature of them being private events are not open to the public.

6:33Can't buy tickets, couldn't get in unless you snuck in or you happen to work for those companies. So I'm really excited. I'm going to do two public facing dates here for sure. I think two more are being talked about, but I'm doing on September 17th, I'm at the Westlake Performing Arts Center here in Austin. Then in February, I'm in San Diego and the other ones are still being worked out. You can grab tickets to that. I would love to see you here in Austin. Tickets are at dailystoiclive.com. And I'll link to that in today's show notes as well. Last time I did did live dates, where was I? I was in London.

7:11I was in Ireland. I was in the Netherlands. Before that, I did Australia. So when I do these live events, they're usually not in the U.S. So if you are in the U.S. and you want to come see me, I would love to come see you. And I would love to answer your questions, right? That's often what I'm bringing you in these Thursday Q &As is some of the questions that I get to answer when I do talk. So if you want to ask me a question, if you want to come see me give a talk. It's going to be one of the first times I've talked about the ideas in the new Wisdom book, Wisdom Takes Work. So again, grab tickets at dailystoiclive.com.

7:47And in the interim, here is some Q &A from a live event I did remotely, virtually. I was here in Texas. They were all over the world. I was talking to a company that's one of the world's largest staffing agencies. So they had employees in countries all over the world. And they called in, they asked questions, I answered them. And it was really interesting. So I'll bring you some of that Q &A now. And I hope to see you on September 17th here in Austin, or in San Diego in February, or stay tuned to the landing page for the other events coming up soon.

8:24We'll probably get two questions and then we'll let you go. And thank you for your time, of course. Emotions often overrule our first action. So you talk about not sending that email, or maybe taking a second. What stoicism guides do you have to help manage those anger, sadness, et cetera, before the action takes hold? I think there's a magical tool that the ancients invented and it's called taking a walk. And when I get outside and I get moving before I do the thing that I was inclined to do, I tend to chill out, right? And I get some perspective and I get a little bit of space. Of course, journaling is a similar practice.

9:02It's just this idea of maybe pausing a little bit or just questioning. The Epicureans in the ancient world are sort of the rivals of the Stokes, but they get a bad rap too. We tend to think of the Epicureans as these pleasure-loving hedonists. But actually, one of the things that Epicurus says is that before you engage in any sort of pleasure, you have to ask yourself, how are you going to feel the next day. And so his point is like, drinking might be pleasurable, but if you have to weigh the hangover that you feel the next day against it. And I think that's a really important, the ability to go, hey, I want to do this, or I'm thinking about doing this, or my emotions or my impulses are telling me to do this.

9:47But I also have the ability to think about how I'm going to think about it later. And I have to sort of weigh those things. And that gives us the ability to go, okay, actually, that's probably a bad idea. I love that. One final question. When you started this practice, Ryan, what was the biggest challenge you faced? And how did you overcome that? Well, I would say here that I didn't just start this practice, but I am currently engaged in this practice and very much a work in progress with this practice. I hope that it doesn't come off that I am a master of Stoic philosophy. I would say I am a student of Stoic philosophy.

10:28My wife likes to joke that one of us is a Stoic and the other writes about Stoicism. And so I remain flummoxed and I make mistakes and I get caught up by things. I hit send on that email plenty of times, perhaps more times than I don't. So stoicism is a work in progress. It is a philosophy that you're supposed to be studying rather than a philosophy that you have studied. But I will say maybe just connecting to your guys' line of work, I spent most of my 20s as a marketer and I had a successful marketing career and then I built a successful marketing agency. I worked with all sorts of exciting brands and people and public figures.

11:09But I wrestled with, as I think a lot of the people that you guys work with and perhaps many of the people on this call wrestle with, which is like, just because you're really good at something or just because something is lucrative, that doesn't mean that's what you should spend your life doing. And how if you feel called to make a change, even inside, you know, a call from one company to the next or one position to the next to go from sales to a leadership role or a support role or a traveling role versus a stay at home that, you know, there's all these changes we can make and wrestling with making that choice to taking that leap.

11:49But one of the stoic virtues is the virtue of courage. And obviously this is not the same as courage is running into a burning building or onto the battlefield, but, but working up that courage to make a change in your life, to try something new, to put yourself out there, to, to go towards more what you feel called to do. That's a really hard thing. But I think these, when we look back at our lives, those are the choices we're really glad that we made. Ryan, thank you so much. It's been really insightful to hear from you. And I can see in the chat that everyone has taken so much inspiration from your perspective.

12:27Hey, 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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