Which Limits Do You Respect? | The Real Power You Have

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2:09The best part is you still get 30 days to try it at home and return it if you don't like it. But I know you will. Trust me, your body will thank you for this investment in better sleep, shipping to many countries worldwide. See details at 8sleep.com slash Daily Stoic. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing.

2:51So let's get into it.

3:01What limits do you respect? When you're tired, you stop. When you're not feeling it, you put it off till tomorrow. When it's hard, you make an excuse. You listen to that little voice inside you that lets you off the hook, that gives you a break, that gives you more time. But when that same voice says, hey, maybe you've had enough to drink, or hey, aren't you feeling pretty full, or hey, haven't we achieved the things we wanted? Shouldn't we be happy? suddenly you don't listen to that voice. It's funny which of the voices of temperance, one of the most essential of the Stoic virtues we choose to listen to.

3:34It's funny what limits we respect. Marcus Aurelius noted this in a famous passage in Meditations, one about getting up early in the morning. We have a cool video of this, by the way. It's done like two million views on YouTube. The voice in Marcus's head tries to make the case for the importance of sleep. Yes, sleep is important, he says, but nature set limits on that too. You can't just spend the day in bed pretending it's self-care. The same goes for us when we try to cut the workout short, when we want to get away with not practicing, when we say something is too much work. Yes, it's good to make sure we don't overdo things, but don't weaponize that against yourself.

4:11Each of us faces these choices daily. Which limits will we respect? Which kind of temperance are we going to follow? We should respect the ones that make us better, push back the ones that hold you back from growing, from pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. I think it's important, yeah, we see that the discipline is multifaceted. There's the discipline to push, there's the discipline to hold back. That's why Seneca said it could all be, stoicism itself could be captured in two words, persist and resist. And that's actually the epigraph of discipline is destiny. You know, sometimes it's the voice that says, you know, keep going, keep going, keep going.

4:51And sometimes it's that voice that says, hey, shouldn't you stop? And I just think it's funny, right? We'll listen to the voice sometimes when it suits us, but then when it really challenges us, that's the one we ignore. That's the message. If you haven't read Discipline is Destiny, the Power of Self-Control, it's available everywhere. I hope you check it out. You can listen to it as an audio book if you want. And I'll leave you to the rest of your day now.

5:19The real power you have. There is fleeting power and there is real power. Fleeting power can be taken away while real power is in our minds and our bones. The former tends to be along the lines of wealth, fame, high position, and the leverage that all those things give us over others. The Stoics thought that this kind of power was inferior to the real power that each person possesses, the power of our minds to reason and make judgments and choices based on the real worth of things. You can have both kinds of power too, but only if you keep the first kind of power subject to the kind of power that the Stoics actually cared about.

6:00So Chrysippus, who I talk about in Lives of the Stoics as well, he says, this is the very

6:17Then Epictetus says, don't trust in your reputation, your money, or position, but in the strength that is yours, namely your judgments about the things that you control and don't control. For this alone is what makes us free and unfettered, that picks us up by the neck from the depths and lifts us eye to eye with the rich and the powerful. That's Discourses 326. And then Marcus Aurelius in Meditations 1219 says, understand at last that you have something in you more powerful and divine that causes the bodily passions and pulls you like a mere puppet. What thoughts now occupy my mind? Is it not fear, suspicion, desire?

6:55Something like that. I think the fact that we can talk about Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus as peers, even though one was utterly powerless and the other possessed all the worldly power there was, is an amazing illustration of what Epictetus is saying when he says, for this alone is what makes us free and unfettered, that picks us up by the neck from the depths and lifts us eye to eye with the rich and the powerful. And in fact, you know, Epictetus works in Nero's court. He is a slave of one of Nero's high-ranking officials or secretaries. And in Epictetus's writing, we get a sense, we get him really realizing and trying to communicate later to his students that like, he realized that as a slave, he had a better life than many of these people, that he was freer.

7:48He watches at one point, somebody sucking up to Nero's cobbler, like the guy that makes Nero's shoes is getting flattery because the person wants to get closer to the emperor. And Epictetus realizes that that person who's doing that is of course freer and richer and more privileged than Epictetus in essentially every way, but is then voluntarily debasing themselves, is a slave to their need for power or recognition or money or whatever it is, that person is willingly a slave. And Seneca in that same court talks about this. He says, you know, nothing is more shameful than this sort of form of voluntary slavery.

8:34nothing is more shameful than these people who are addicted to a mistress to their estates to you know being you know the the most famous or popular person in rome and so i just i think it is a powerful statement that the stoics that that among amongst the stoics some of the most powerful and influential and inspiring were the least powerful and recognized um clientes is a manual laborer, but he's considered a peer of Hercules because of his ability to endure things, because of his judgments, because of his incorruptibility. Marcus Aurelius was not the greatest conqueror of the Roman emperors, but he's one of the most impressive because he conquered himself, right?

9:23The throne did not possess him. And so this idea of being free, of chasing the real power, which is power over oneself, power over one's wants, power over one's opinions, power over one's actions, power over, you know, those impulses that might drive you to do this or that. That's real power. There's a line in one of Stephen Pressfield's books where Alexander the Great is taunting this philosopher, and he says, what have you done? I've conquered the world. The philosopher says, I have conquered the need to conquer the world. And I think Pressfield is saying the same thing the Stoics are saying, the same thing that Epictetus is saying.

10:07He's probably drawing on Diogenes the Cynic, but that there is a level of power above the level of raw power that people chase and debase themselves with. So that's your question, your thing to think about today. What kind of power are you chasing? What are you pursuing? Are you really as powerful as you think you are? Or does power have power over you?

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