Why Are You Going Through Life This Way? | Just Say No To Future Misery

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.

0:55Why are you going through life this way? It must be exhausting. It cannot be fun. It's definitely not working well for you. Being this sensitive, being this easy to provoke, picking these fights, getting sucked into these tense disagreements. Think of the peace it's cost you. Think of the relationships it's worn out. Think of the opportunities you've lost. All because you get caught up in the moment. All because you react without thinking. All because you've failed to look at this, whether it was some minor slight or some real injustice in the calm light of mild philosophy. A good life, an effective life, a meaningful life is not possible without cultivating the ability to pause and reflect, to resist being offended or baited, to put up with differing opinions, to accept what's not in your control, to be able to focus on the opportunity and not just the obstacle that has appeared.

2:00To remember, as Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations, that the consequences of giving into our emotions are almost always more harmful than the circumstances that arouse them in us. This is why the Stoics thought that pausing was not a weakness, but wisdom. They knew that even a small delay could mean the difference between regret and the right decision. We have a new coin for Daily Stoic that I just absolutely adore. It's been a great reminder for me. It says, pausa et reflecta on the front. We're calling it the pause and reflect medallia. It's a reminder to stop and to breathe, to think before you act, because that moment of reflection can save you from a lifetime of, I wish they hadn't, or just from having to say, I'm sorry, later.

2:55It's a tool to help you when your emotions run hot. There's a mirror on the front. Seneca says, you know, you should look yourself in the mirror when you're caught up in the sway of anger. And on the back of the coin, there's the letters of the alphabet, some advice from the Stoic Athenodorus to a young Octavian. He told him to to not do anything before he's counted all the letters of the alphabet. We made it with the same mint we've been making all our Daily Stoic coins with. We've been making stuff in the U.S. since 1882, right? Even just thinking of that timeline helps you calm down and see things with a little bit of perspective.

3:33I'm really proud of this one. It's become one of my daily carries, and you can grab it at dailystoic.com slash pause. I'll link to it in today's show notes. And yeah, just remember, Stop doing this to yourself. Stop doing it to other people. Pause and reflect.

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7:00Just say no to future misery. How often we make ourselves miserable in advance, out of fear of this, out of desperate hope for that. When we focus on pining for avoiding a certain future, we make ourselves miserable here in the present. Hakato of Rhodes, a great student of the Middle Stoic scholar Panitius, taught that this misery is always tied to hopes and fears that we have of imagined future outcomes. And so from this, Seneca reminds us to say no to both, because indulging in hope or fear robs us of the ability to enjoy the present. So today, try not to think so much about the future, what you hope will happen, what you fear might, and just focus on right now.

7:46Be where you are with what you're doing, what you're thinking right now. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 days of writing and Reflection on the Art of Living by yours truly, Ryan Holiday. You can pick this up anywhere books are sold. I use this journal myself every single day. And you can also pick up a signed copy at store.dailystoic.com. It's ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, Seneca writes in moral letters, engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its own until the very end. For such a soul will never be at rest.

8:25By longing for things to come, it will lose the ability to enjoy present things. Then Seneca, again, there is no reason to live and no limit to our miseries if we let our fears predominate. And then going back to the original quote, Seneca in Moral Letter says, Hikato says, cease to hope and you will cease to fear. The primary cause of both these ills is that instead of adapting ourselves to the present circumstances, we send out our thoughts too far ahead. You know, it's funny, in my podcast interview with Oliver Berkman, he quoted something that he said is a real British expression, but I had actually heard of in Ted Lasso, the idea that it's the hope that kills you, which it's not that the Stoics are nihilists who, you know, don't hope.

9:12It's that they try to get to a place of indifference where they're just like, whatever will be, will be. I'm going to be good with it. This is also a theme that came up in my interview with Dr. Edith Edgar, who wrote The Choice, which was about her experience in the Holocaust. And she talks about how there was a person she knew in the camps who thought they would get out, be freed by a certain date. And then the woman died on that day of despair, of disappointment. And Admiral Stockdale talks about this, that it was the optimists who got crushed, right? Because they said, oh, in March, oh, in June, oh, by Christmas.

9:45But this was not something in their control. And so in a way, hope is the same as fear. It's to hand over your happiness, your contentment, your ability to continue on to some arbitrary thing or event or person or intervention in the future, which is not up to you. I've been trying to think about that. I'm going to adjust to what is. I'm going to accept it unflinchingly in the sense that it simply is. I'm going to adapt to it. I'm going to adjust to it. I'm going to make the most of it. I'm going to be here now. Now, I'm not going to rob myself of the present, right? The person who needs it to be a certain way or needs it to not be that way, and that's why they're afraid.

10:26Seneca's right. That soul will never be at rest. And by longing for things or by fearing things, we lose the ability to enjoy present things. I thought this little phrase is a particularly good one, and I think it's worth repeating again, where he says, to be miserable in advance of misery. That's what fear is, right? Hope is just the opposite of that. It's just being delusional in anticipation of an event outside your control, which often will be misery. So just try to put fear or hope aside. Just try to be. Be here with this, whatever it is, wherever you are, whether that's a plane ride you have today, whether that's traffic you're stuck in, whether it's a job you have a couple more months left in, or maybe it's battling an illness or a blown out knee.

11:21Just is. Don't magically hope it's going to get better. Don't fear it getting worse. Just be with it now. Focus on what you can do now. Enjoy present things as best you can. Be indifferent, as the Stoics say, which is to say, good with any of the possibilities, because you are good. You are capable. That's the Stoic prescription for you this week. Say no to future misery. It's not worth it. I'll talk to you soon.

12:12I just wanted to say thank you.

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