What Is The Function of Worry? | How Stoicism Can Help You Get Sober (And Stay Sober)

0:00You know, you don't have to let big wireless and your overpriced phone bill suck the joy out of the holidays this year. because right now all of Mint Mobile's unlimited plans are 50 % off. You can get three, six, and 12 months of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month. It's their best deal of the year, and it makes it really easy for you to give your expensive wireless bill the Scrooge treatment. All Mint plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text at the nation's largest 5G network. Plus, you can bring your current phone and number over to Mint. Actually, we just signed up for a Mint Mobile plan to use the social media phone here at the office and we didn't notice any kind of change in the quality of service or network or any of that just a whole bunch of savings turn your expensive wireless present into a huge wireless savings feature by switching to mint shop mint unlimited plans at mint mobile.com slash six that's mint mobile.com slash six limited time offer upfront payment of 45 for three months 90 for six months or 180 for 12 months plans required 12 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra initial plan term only greater than 35 gigabytes may slow when network is busy capable device required.

1:02Availability, speed, and coverage very easy meant mobile.com. You've probably heard the headlines about all the different cuts to foreign aid and food benefits. This is having a profound impact on the world's poorest people and the world's poorest communities. But, you know, just hearing about that, that's not what stoicism is about. Stoicism is, to me, what you're going to do about it. And that's where GiveWell comes in. GiveWell is trusted by tens of thousands of donors each year because they provide free and independent research that helps you understand how to have a big impact. GiveWell has spent the last 18 years researching global health and poverty alleviation, and they direct funding to the highest impact opportunities.

1:44Over 150 ,000 donors have already trusted GiveWell to give more than$2.5 billion over the last several years, and research suggests that these donations will save over 300 ,000 lives. I myself am one of those donors. I donate to GiveWell every year. It means a lot to me. And you can find all their research and recommendations on their site for free. And thanks to the donors that sponsor this research, GiveWell doesn't take a cut from your tax-deductible donation to their recommended funds. And if this is your first gift through GiveWell, you can have your donation matched up to$100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last.

2:19To claim your match, go to GiveWell.org and pick Daily Stoic from the drop-down menu under Podcast. That's how they know that you heard about GiveWell from The Daily Stoic and you'll get your donation matched. That's givewell.org, code The Daily Stoic to donate or find out more. Welcome to The Daily Stoic podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

3:04What is the function of worry? One of the most timeless lines in all of the Stoic writings comes from Epictetus. What upsets people is not things themselves, he says, but their judgments of things. And it's a powerful idea. And it's one made more transcendent by the remarkable fact that nearly every other philosophy has come to the exact same conclusion. I talked recently to Sam Harris on the Daily Stoic podcast. And while Harris's work is heavily influenced by Eastern philosophical traditions, on the podcast, Harris talked about one of the big overlaps between his work and the Stoics. Ultimately, with mindfulness, you're not doing anything other than noticing what is happening all by itself.

3:47Everything's arising all by itself, thoughts, sensations. and it's in that recognition that you see that the problem that you thought you needed to solve a moment ago isn't even there, right? The problem of your anxiety, the problem of your disappointment, the problem of your, you know, it's always this thought-based delusion that that something that's not actually present here is, it needs to be unraveled. You know, I'm not saying that there aren't challenging experiences. I mean, there's obviously the things like physical pain and, you know, that doesn't magically go away once you know how to meditate.

4:27But so much of our suffering in response to something like physical pain is our psychological contraction around it and our anxiety about it and our, you know, fear that it won't go away and or fear of what it means. East, West, North, and South, worry is pointless. As Marcus Aurelius writes in meditations, today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, he says, I discarded it because it was within me, in my own perceptions and not outside. Remember this, the next time you get anxious, the next time you're stressed or overwhelmed with worry, these are thought-based delusions. You can discard them. You can let them go.

5:03Don't make these things make you miserable twice over. change your judgment about these things. And the interview with Sam, it was a great interview. I was so honored to be able to interview him. He's someone I've been a big fan of for a long time. You can check that out. I'll link to it in today's show notes, but it's definitely worth a listen if you haven't heard it yet.

5:32We're all slaves, Seneca says. He says, actually, show me someone who isn't a slave. He said, this person to ambition, this one to their mistress, this one to wine. He was talking about how so many of us, even if we're powerful, even if we're rich, even if we're famous, we're addicted to something.

5:52Maybe you can't start your morning without coffee, or a cigarette, or a drink, or maybe you can't go to bed without doing those things or some other thing, right? We all have addictive tendencies, But addiction comes when that thing gains full and complete power over us, when we are powerless to not do that thing. I'm Ryan Holiday. I'm the author of a number of books about stoic philosophy. I've spoken about it to the NFL and the NBA, sitting senators, special forces leaders. I'm also a human being with my own addictive tendencies and my own demons that I've battled. Workaholism being the darkest and the hardest of one.

6:30It's also a reason that I don't drink, don't do drugs. I know I have that part of me and I know it's not a part of me that I want to enable. Well, in today's episode, we're going to talk about what the Stoics teach us about sobriety, about discipline, about getting clean, keeping clean, taking control of ourselves and how we battle these very timeless and very human addictions and what Stoicism can teach us on that day-to-day journey.

7:01All right, so walk me through, how does stoicism help you get sober? People think that rehab, people who haven't been, I think they have this preconceived notion that there's like this pill they give you. And suddenly it just all goes away. You go to rehab and you come out and things are just fine. And what I realized it was for me is it's a deep dive into why we make the choices we make and why we're so self-destructive. Yeah. After you start understanding more about what is kind of triggering you on this journey, the answer to these kind of insecurities is discipline. And it is a structure. And people, it's funny, as I've read more as I get older and the more things I've taught myself, I've realized that a lot of the spiritual practices or a lot of books that I've read are almost saying the same thing in different ways.

7:46Sure. Like the theme that I found most important to me is that for lack of a better word, discipline is destiny. Yeah. And that has been my way out of the turbulence in my life back in the day. Yeah. I think like if anyone's ever been to physical therapy or rehab from an injury, you get the sense that it's like, oh, I'm going to be worked on. I'm going to go and I'm going to get massages or this kind of treatment or this medicine. But really they're like, no, here's the work that you have to do. Right. And it's the same for, I think, the other forms of rehab. You don't go there and then they're like, here are all the secrets to not drinking or doing this or that anymore.

8:26What they're like is, here are the things that you have to do every single day of your life. Like, as they say, they say it works if you work it, right? If you do that work, then you'll stay sober. If you don't do that work, you won't. And it's really, really hard work. It's like the hardest work because it's on yourself and it's against habits or practices or assumptions you've had your whole life.

8:51In recovery circles, they have this great acronym HALT. It stands for hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. The point is when you're feeling those things, when you haven't been sleeping enough, when you haven't been eating right, when you're isolated, whatever it is, you're less likely to be able to be the strong-willed, disciplined, healthy, safe, smart person that you want to be. You know, the Stoics weren't superhumans. They didn't because they read a couple of these texts, never have cravings, never slip, never mess up. And in fact, a big part of Stoicism is that kind of self-awareness, monitoring why you're feeling what you're feeling.

9:26Stopping when you feel that feeling and going, why am I feeling this way? Am I feeling frustrated, upset, like I need to do this thing that I told myself I'm trying to stop doing? Do I need to do it or do I just feel that way because of some other thing that I've been neglecting or not taking care of? There's a great study I saw a couple years ago that found that the majority of arguments between spouses were rooted in one or more of them being hungry, right? So if you're mad at yourself for falling off, if you're mad at yourself for not being the disciplined, stoic and complete and total self-command of themselves, stop and think about that acronym.

10:01Ask yourself, hey, what's actually going on with me? And am I setting myself up for success generally? But then specifically in this moment, what voice inside me am I listening to? What is the context in which I'm considering this or thinking this or reacting this? Seneca says that philosophy doesn't take away natural feeling. You know, it doesn't matter how many books you've read, how steeped in stoicism you are. If you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired, you're not going to be your best self. And thinking about that is a really, really important important part of making better decisions.

10:33Over and over and over again, more than 40 times in meditations, he talks about being of service to the common good, doing things for other people. He says our job is to put up with people or to help them. Right. Pick one of those. Right. And I love this idea. We should not just give help, but get help. We should not just get help, but give help. Be of service to as many people as possible, to be and to do as much good as possible, insofar as that is in our control. And this is why the idea of being of service, I think, is so developed into the 12 steps, into sobriety, is that one of the best ways to lighten our burdens is to help someone with theirs.

11:12One of the best ways to get perspective on our own problems is to think of people, to spend time with people who are really, really struggling. And then one of my favorite ideas from Seneca is that we learn as we teach. As we help, we're helping ourselves. This is something that when the world feels like it's falling apart, when it feels like we can't possibly make a difference in the big scheme or scope of things, what we can do is help our neighbors, our families, you know, a stranger on the street. We can make a difference in a very small way. That's in our control. To me, that's actually the essence, not just the essence, but the highest point of Stoicism.

11:51We don't overindulge because it's a violation of the key virtue of temperance, the right amount. Moderation in all things, the Stoics would say, although some things, not at all. Nobody is having less fun than the glutton or the addict, the Stoics would say. If the pleasure means you wake up with a hangover, it's not really so pleasurable, is it? So it's about moderation. It's about temperance. It's about finding the right amount of things.

12:19The essence of Stoic philosophy is being in command of yourself. In fact, Seneca says, no one is fit to rule who is not first master of themselves. And the reason we're not masters of ourselves is we give that power over to someone or something else, right? Drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, Right? Codependency. That's the tragedy of addiction. Not only is it bad for the person, but often we can become addicted to our relationship with different addicts. Right? The Stoics, it was about being in control of yourself, not your urges, not your desires. The Stoics look at Alexander the Great. Mark Sreus does, he looks at Alexander the Great as someone who is super powerful, but not actually powerful because he can't stop.

13:03There's never enough. Seneca himself actually defines poverty as not having too little but wanting more. More is all you need as the great Metallica song Master of Puppets goes. That is such a dark and slavish place to be. So the reason we battle our addictions, the reason we try to get clean, the reason we practice discipline so we can be fit to be good parents, to be leaders, to be bosses. Like if we're not in command of ourselves. If something or someone, some urge or some substance, if that's really what's ruling our life, that is not a good place to be.

13:42It's really simple. There's all the things in the world that happen, and then there's the tiny, tiny bit of it that you control. All the things that happen in a little dot that you control. The Stokes called this the dichotomy of control. There's some stuff that's up to us, some stuff that's not up to us. The chief task in life Epictetus said he was a former slave. He knew all about unfortunate realities. He said the chief task in life is discerning what's up to us and not up to us, what's in our control, not in our control. This is also the brilliance of the serenity prayer. That's the key. Is this up to me?

14:15Then it should deserve 100 % of your energy. If it's not up to you, if you can't influence, if you can't control it, then it's none of your concern. All the things that can happen, tiny bit that you control.

14:29and we're at the screening the night you know the movie premieres and quentin tarantino is there and suddenly i'm like literally amongst the people i so look up to and i wake up the next morning and the reviews are coming in and the reaction's great and i immediately tell everyone in the house i'm saying that i need to leave right now i'm getting on a plane i'm out of here and people are screaming at me they said josh why like this never happens and it may never happen again and you're going to leave, enjoy this. And I just, as soon as I was a member of the club, I, you know, it's, it's that great saying, like, I never wanted to be part of a club that would have me as a member.

15:06And it was one of the most impactful moments of my life that I realized good or bad at the highest of the high or the lowest of the low, I am bottomless and nothing be it food, drugs or prestige can fill up this hole in my soul and i got sober two weeks later and i think it's it's undoubtedly correlated that sort of spiritual bottom

15:35and it is inevitable that we will fall short marcus did i do everyone does antoninus pious probably did too which is why in meditations marcus really says to pick yourself back up when you fall but he also says to celebrate the fact that you're a human being what matters he says is that you come back to the rhythm of it we're gonna be jarred by circumstances we're gonna be messed up we're gonna slip on our diet on our New Year's resolution on the progress we were making that's okay what matters is that you get back up what matters is that more often than not you stick to it that you always come back home to it

16:16accomplish something good with hard work the labor passes quickly but the good endured this is if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure the pleasure passes quickly but the shame endured and this is the stoic's idea of freedom what leaves the residue and what doesn't what has power over you and what doesn't who is in charge right is it you or the urges i think about this with my phone. Am I using the phone or is the phone using me? And when I can't not use the phone that says something about my relationship to it, I need to change, right? What rules your life? What has power over you?

16:51And what power do you need to take back? So you can enjoy the fact that legally we have incredible freedoms in this country, in this era, in this time, right? In this prosperity, the freedom that you have has to be enjoyed and lived up to. But first, that means freeing yourselves from a lot of things that we self-impose, right? Epictetus says it's better to starve to death in a calm and confident state of mind than to live anxiously amid abundance or to be dependent on something. The idea is that you live free or you live a kind of death and that this pleasure turns very quickly into pain.

17:40My family owns a 2023 Toyota 4Runner, and honestly, it's my favorite vehicle that I've ever owned. Around town, it's smooth and reliable, but where it really shines is on our trips into the backcountry. We've taken it on backpacking adventures to Colorado and New Mexico, loaded it up with gear, and never had to think twice about whether it could handle the terrain. That's what Toyota trucks are built for. Off-road confidence, rugged durability, and the freedom to explore. Toyota has a long history with the outdoor community, and they're committed to helping more people get out there and experience what nature has to offer.

18:10From remote trails to scenic byways, Toyota Trucks empowers you to take the detour, roam freely, and discover places that still feel wild and untouched. And they're not just making great trucks, they're working to expand access to adventure so more people can connect with the outdoors and pass that passion on to the next generation. Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. That's toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist.

18:47That'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 Supercast 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.

19:30And 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.