Who Do You Wish To Become? | Turn Words Into Works

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.

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1:18Welcome 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. So let's get into it.

1:58Who do you wish to become? This is that time of year that we make resolutions and dream up what possibilities a new year could bring. Maybe this is the year we break six figures in salary, or maybe this is the year that we lose a certain amount of weight or read a certain number of books. But as we know, these kinds of resolutions tend not to stick. Talked to James Clear about this on the podcast recently. You should listen to that episode if you haven't. But he talks a lot about this in Atomic Habits because we too often focus on achieving things. Instead, he says we ought to ask ourselves what new identity we want for ourselves and what are the habits and behaviors and routines that we could start to begin showing up as that person.

2:48This is what he said. and it doesn't matter if it's two minutes or if it's 20 minutes or if it's an hour, but I'm gonna try to find a way to show up today. And my little phrase is, every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. The ancients understood that we don't change or grow in one giant leap. It was Aristotle who said that, you know, we are what we repeatedly do. And this is, I think, something the Stoics would agree with. Well-being, Zeno said, is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. And it's why the Stoics were all about habits and routines, why Marcus Aurelius tried to wake up early, why Seneca was always going on long walks, why Epictetus encouraged his students to write down their thoughts each day and reflect on them at night.

3:34It wasn't just about knowing what the right thing was, it was about showing up and doing it day in and day out in the little chunks of time that we had. The Stoics understood that only by changing what we do little by little that we change our life. And that's the idea behind the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge to help you show up a little bit in a new way every day for 21 consecutive days to kick off the year. Three weeks of actionable challenges, one email per day built around what I think is the best wisdom in Stoic philosophy. We do an all-new challenge every year. We come up with a bunch of awesome exercises.

4:18It's one of my favorite things to do. I have so many habits in my life that I have picked up as part of it. I know who I am right now is a result of challenges that I've done every year for the last seven years. The results are real, man. It can be awesome. And I'd love to see you in it. You could sign up right now at dailystoic.com slash challenge. Let's kick off this new year with a framework, with a community, with some mentors. And that's what we built the challenge around. It's gonna be awesome. I wanna see you in there. Progress is not achieved by luck or accident, Epictetus said, but by working on yourself daily.

4:58So each day to kick off the year, let's do it with a challenge. And I will see you in there, dailystoic.com slash challenge. It starts on January 1st. So stop putting it off. Let's do it.

5:13we just took our kids to an outdoor performance the nutcracker they had a snow cone and then uh 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 that'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.

5:50Becky'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. Becky 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.

6:32And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events.

6:47Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. This is the last of these entries of the year. The last, as we pull from the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Meditations of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living. I think ultimately, the most important. It's about turning words into works. Marcus Aurelius spent a great deal of time on his journals, yet within these pages we find him admonishing himself to throw them away, to never read them. Why? Because he didn't want it to be an excuse from the essential tasks at hand. The art of living will never be found anywhere but in our own efforts to be a good person.

7:31Never forget that that is the aim of Stoicism and of your own journals. It's not to fill up pages with pretty thoughts, but inspire you to take action, to turn the words, as Seneca said, into works. And in that, we have the perfect place to end the year with the ultimate Stoic prompt. Get active in your own rescue. We have two quotes this week from Marcus Aurelius' meditations and then one from Seneca's moral letters. Stop wandering about, Marcus says. You aren't likely to read your own notebooks or ancient histories or anthologies you've collected to enjoy in your old age. Get busy with life's purpose.

8:10Toss aside empty hopes. Get active in your own rescue. If you care for yourself at all, do it while you can. That's Marcus Aurelius 3.14. You have proof in the extent of your wanderings that you never found the art of living anywhere. Not in logic, nor in wealth, nor in fame, or in any indulgence. Nowhere. Where is it then? In doing what human nature demands. And how is a person to do this? By having principles be the source of desire and action. What principles? Those to do with good and evil. Indeed, in the belief that there is no good for a human being except what creates justice, self-control, courage, and freedom.

8:55and nothing evil except what destroys these things. That's Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 8.1. And then ultimately Seneca in Moral Letters 108, he says, All study of philosophy and reading should be for the purpose of living a happy life. We should seek precepts to help us, noble and courageous words that can become facts. We should learn them in a way that the words become works. And ultimately, look, that's the journey for me. ironically as a writer is that I write them that's my job but if I don't listen to them if I don't get better at it then I'm what am I I'm nothing but a sophist right and what are you if you read about stoicism if you listen to this podcast if you follow the quotes on Instagram or watch the videos but you're not actually getting better day to day you're not getting better at those virtues courage, self-control, justice, wisdom, right?

9:56You're not focused on applying the ideas. Ultimately, that's what matters. As Mark Cirilli says, we should waste no more time arguing what a good person is. Be one, as Epictetus talks about. Embody the ideas. Am I as good at that as I want to be? Are you? Right? All this stuff is pretty straightforward, pretty simple. You find yourself nodding your head to it. But then when you're tired, when you're frustrated, then when you're trying to do something that's really important to you, when things are really going sideways, well, it's hard to actually stick with them. It's hard to actually apply them.

10:36Right? But that's the whole point. That's the whole point of the philosophy. Look, I take some solace in the fact that clearly Marcus Aurelius is struggling with that, right? He's saying that even as an old man, right, he's telling himself, you got to stop wandering about, right? He's saying, you still haven't figured it out. You got to get active in your rescue now before it's too late, right? So I take some solace in the fact that one of the greatest toics to ever live is still struggling with that, you know, many decades older than I am. but that time is ticking away and those opportunities are passing us by.

11:14And so the purpose of the Daily Stoic Journal, the purpose of the Daily Stoic Podcast, the purpose of all this content, obviously, yes, it's compelling to me as a writer. I feel a duty to bring the ideas to other people. But ultimately, what I'm really trying to work on is just be a little bit better at them day to day, my own life. How would I grade myself on that? I don't know, not as high as I'd like, but higher than before, right? Higher than if the intervention had never happened, which is ultimately, right, how we judge a medicine, how we judge anything scientifically. We compare it against a control group.

11:55We compare it against a placebo. And I know how I was before, right? I know what I'm capable of if I don't try, if I just sort of go the path of least resistance. If I think about what I could get away with, that's not enough. We have to be better than that. We have to push ourselves. So that's ultimately the whole purpose of stoicism. That's the thought I want to leave you here with at the end of the year. It's about turning the words into works. What do you have to show for it, right? It's not about pretending. it's not about imitating it's about action it's about putting up the numbers putting up the results trying to get a little bit better every single day I don't expect magical transformation from myself or from you that's not possible this isn't about epiphany but it is about repetition and practice holding yourself accountable and with that I bid you adieu to the end of this year I hope you can look back, reflect here as the year is winding up and see where you could have done better.

13:03Hope you can set aside some plans, some goals for the next year. I hope you can build on the successes that you did have. That's what I'm going to try to do. And we'll be right back at this again because we don't stop. Talk soon.

13:22Hey, 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 of 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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