Where Are You Trying To Get Better? | Do Not Be Deceived By Fortune

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0:54I'm picking my kids up from school today and then doing our weekly routine, which is I take them over to Whole Foods. and we get all our groceries for the week. Then we have dinner. It's one of their favorite things to do. It's one of my favorite things to do. And then my wife loves it because she doesn't have to take care of it. This holiday season, whether you're a guest or hosting the big dinner Whole Foods Market has what you need to delight everyone at your table. They even have heat and eat sides from the prepared foods department. You can make Whole Foods your one-stop shop. Everything follows Whole Foods Market's strict ingredients standards so you know it'll be delicious and good for you.

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1:41Welcome 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, and 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.

2:21Where are you trying to get better? Tom Brady has always been relentless about trying to get better, trying to get his passes out quicker, trying to get his spirals a little tighter, trying to optimize his diet, trying to recover from games faster. And while none of us are like Tom Brady on the practice field, we're all like him in the sense that we spend a lot of time and energy focusing on improving ourselves at work, at our chosen craft or profession. But when it comes to personal improvement, we're a little less intentional there, even though we and our children would benefit from a similar intentionality.

2:55After he retired and then unretired, Tom Brady talked about his struggles with trying to be an elite athlete and an elite husband and father. During the offseason, he said, my family's got a lot of time. I have enjoyed that. He said, but I can still do a better job of that, he admitted. It's constantly trying to be a little bit better each day. Marcus Aurelius once asked himself why he was trying to get better at wrestling, but not better at being a human being, better at forgiving faults, better at being someone his family could rely on. It's the million-dollar question. You're relentless about improving at work, much less so about improving at home.

3:35Where would we be if we could try this even a little bit? If we could try to get a little bit better each day at being present, at being more patient, at forgiving faults, at encouraging, at empathizing, at appreciating, at protecting, at prioritizing. How much more wonderful could life be? And how would this actually make us better at work too? That's obviously the idea behind the new book, The Daily Dad, one page a day to help you be better at parenting, being a better spouse, being a better person. stoicism is there so we're all the different philosophical traditions but the idea is you're not just magically going to become a better parent something got to work on just like you're not going to become a better philosopher without actively studying stoicism which is what the emails are about and the videos are about and all the content that we do here at daily stoic and daily dad if you haven't checked out either book the daily dad or the daily stoic i hope you do i hope you check in with them often and help you get a little bit better.

4:51Do not be deceived by fortune. This is the September 8th entry in the Daily Stoic. And our quote today comes to us from Seneca in his letter on consolation to Helvia, that's his Mother. It's a beautiful essay. You can read it on the shortness of life, one of my favorite little collections of Seneca's writings, but we'll get to the quote now. He says, no one is crushed by fortune unless they are first deceived by her. Those who aren't pompous in good times don't have their bubbles burst with change. Against either circumstance, the stable person keeps their rational soul invincible, for it's precisely in the good times that they proved their strength against adversity.

5:35In 41 AD, Seneca was exiled from Rome to Corsica. For what exactly, we're not sure, but the rumors were that he had an affair with the sister of the emperor. Shortly thereafter, he sent a letter to his mother seeking to reassure her and comfort her in her grief, her grief being that she missed her son. But in many ways, he must have been speaking to himself as well, scolding himself a little for this unexpected twist he was taking pretty hard. He had managed to achieve some measure of political and social success. Maybe he chased some pleasures of the flesh, but now he and his family were dealing with the consequences, as we all must bear for our behavior and the risks we take.

6:17How would he respond? How would he deal with it? What the very least his instincts were to comfort his mother instead of simply bemoaning his suffering. Though some other letters show that Seneca begged and lobbied for his return to Rome and to power, a request that was eventually granted, he does seem to have borne the pain and disgrace of exile fairly well. The philosophy that he'd long studied prepared him for this kind of adversity and gave him the determination and patience he needed to wait it out. When he found his fortune restored as he returned to power, philosophy prevented him from taking it for granted or becoming dependent on it.

6:54This was good because fortune had another turn in store for him. When the new emperor turned his wrath on Seneca, philosophy found him ready and prepared once again. It's a tension, right? Seneca says we suffer more in imagination than in reality. You don't want to just be thinking of all the terrible things that could happen. You don't want to be biting your nails in anticipation of this or that. And yet, if you are naive, if you trust in fortune, you are setting yourself up for pain. He says, never forget a fortune's habits of behaving exactly as she pleases. Yes, you know, as we become successful, as we get things, we start to go, this is how it should be.

7:33I earned this. I made this. It's mine. And maybe a lot of that is true. You're not the ultimate decider. Something can take that from you. Unfairness can take it from you. Injustice can take it from you. Tragedy can take it from you. The emperor can take it from you. So if you are deceived by fortune, that this is yours now, that this is the new normal, that this is stable, you have bought into an illusion and that you can be disabused of that illusion at any moment. How painful will that disillusion be? My favorite line is an invisible man. It says, how does it feel to be free of illusion? It's painful and empty.

8:10and we build our lives around these illusions, around the sense that this is how it should be, all is right in the world, you are begging. You are begging for life to visit some humility upon you. So we have to be careful. We have to be aware. We have to practice. We have to prepare. We have to train. We can't take any of it for granted. None of it is nearly as stable as it appears. That's what Seneca realized, not just at this exile, but early on his life when tuberculosis sent him to Egypt to convalesce. Nero turned out to be insane. That's what life does. It reminds us. It doesn't go the way we want it.

8:51And I think it's problematic how often we say things like, this is unprecedented. This is not normal. This has never happened. This has always happen. This is always how it's going to be. Normal is crazy. Normal is chaos. Normal is sudden reversal. I was just reading Morgan Housel's The Psychology of Money, and he has this line in there, unexpected things happen all the time, or things that have never happened before happen all the time. That's the wisdom of what Seneca is trying to say there. That's what we prepare for, train in this philosophy for, is to be ready for precisely those kind of events.

9:28So when things go wrong, we can be the person. Imagine, again, and if you haven't read On the Shortness of Life, pick up a copy there in The Painted Porch, if you could. I'll link to it in today's episode. There's something sweet about the fact that Seneca is the one exiled, but he's writing the consolation to his mother. It's not his mother saying, you got this, kiddo, it'll be all right. He's saying, mom, I'm okay. It's going to be all right. He's comforting the people who are grieving and missing him. That's what this discipline of philosophy can be. That's what Seneca practiced for. And that's what we're working towards.

10:05Self-control, that's what Seneca was embodying there in his stoic, lowercase stoic handling of the terrible injustice dealt to him. And I hope to give you some of that strength too. Enjoy. Talk soon.

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