Will You Meet Your Moment? | Ask DS

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1:04Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well, on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording. Thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

1:45Will you meet your moment? Cicero once wrote that the beginnings of things are small, and in a way that was the story of his own life. How does a boy born to an up-and-coming merchant family in a region outside of Rome become one of the most powerful voices of the empire? How did Cicero earn his title as one of history's greatest orators and save the Roman Republic through the power of speech? While other young men of his position partied and enjoyed their wealth, Cicero studied like a man possessed. He is said to have produced as many as 500 lines a night, just like Chrysippus, the Stoic philosopher, was primed to do, and he became a respected author by age 20.

2:26Then he decamped to Athens to study under the philosophy teachers of every school, before making his way to Rhodes to study Stoicism under Posidonius. He worked his way up what became known as the cursus honorum, the ladder of offices, from one position to the other. He fought for justice and tried cases. He brought down the corrupt administration of a Sicilian governor and restored the rights of local farmers, merchants, and citizens, ending years of exploitation and abuse. Such were his abilities that was said that people would stop whatever they were doing to hear Cicero speak. Many of his trial speeches survive, and they are as riveting as anything you might see on a television drama today.

3:07In 63 BC, Cicero took the office of consul after defeating his political rival Catiline in a contested election. The Republic was in the midst of an economic crisis, and Catiline, who hailed from a great aristocratic family like the Vanderbilts or the Mayfields in America, he was financially hurting, and he couldn't afford to run in another election, and so he schemed to take power by force. Maybe this is sounding familiar. Catiline traveled to northern Italy to meet with disgruntled farmers who were drowning and dead and prompted them to carry out acts of arson and terrorism, including the assassination of notable politicians.

3:45He had Cicero in his sights. Once these seeds of chaos were sown, Catiline would march into Rome with an army he was gathering and take over the Republic. But Cicero caught wind of Catiline's conspiracy, and after quietly gathering evidence, he convened the Senate and gave the speech of his life. When, O Catiline, he began, do you mean to cease abusing us of our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? Catiline soon fled Rome, proving beyond a doubt that Cicero was right. Cicero was not a perfect man or a perfect politician. I tell his story more fully in Lives of the Stoics.

4:24But when it counted, he drew upon his talents, drew upon the virtues, courage, discipline, and justice and wisdom, and he saved the republic, not with the sharpness of his sword, but the power of his speech. All of that training, all of that study, all that work, it paid off. That's what philosophy was supposed to be, training you for the big moments of life. Most of us will not be called to meet a moment like that, but each of us should imagine we are training for something. Destiny taps each of us on the shoulder, as another great speaker and statesman would say. will we be able to answer? Will we have cultivated the skills and the virtues necessary to answer well?

5:03That is the question. It's actually also something I talked about in the interview I did with Francis Ford Coppola, whose new movie is all about the Catalan conspiracy, which you should check out. I'll link to the interview. But it's also one of the ideas I've been thinking about and talking about on stage. I did those talks in Australia, and then I'm coming to Europe and Canada this November. You don't think that writing books is going to put you in front of 2 ,000 people in 100-year-old theaters, but it's a surprising, strange position. I've been trying to draw on some of my own training and experience to try to meet that moment.

5:36I always think, how has philosophy trained me for this? What do I need to draw on? How can I step up and meet this? How can I do my best? What do I need to bring from my life experiences to this moment? And anyways, I'd love to see you there. London on November 12th, Rotterdam on the 13th, Dublin on the 15th, Vancouver on the 18th, and Toronto on the 20th. The ones in Australia sold out, so we are coming down to the end on these tickets. You can grab those at ryanholiday.net slash tour. I'll link to it. And I'm going to be doing some Q &As. I think beforehand, there's a few VIP tickets left, and then we'll do a Q &A at the end of the talk also.

6:16But if you want to come spend some time with me, if you want to ask some questions, we can talk about Cicero. We can talk about whatever you want. I'm just pumped. I'm putting together my talk now, and I'm going to bring my family with me, so I'm excited about that. I'll have to draw on some philosophical training to get two kids across the ocean and to a bunch of different cities in relatively small amounts of time, but it's going to be fun. And I'm excited to see you, London, Rotterdam, Dublin, Vancouver, Toronto. I'll see you there, ryanholiday.net slash tour.

6:56Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I was telling you last time I was in Vancouver, and I was thinking about after that, I was remembering the first time I went to Vancouver. I remember I was with my parents. I just had this memory of walking along those sort of rocky, stony beaches. the ocean's so black up there. I remember I found a sweatshirt. My wrist was broken. I'd broken my wrist. So it must have been fourth grade. I just remember finding a sweatshirt. But it was like, you know, when you find stuff and most times trash and sometimes you find something like, this is cool.

7:31Something my parents would ever let me get. And so they let me keep it. We couldn't return it to anyone. And so I just remember that sweatshirt. It's funny. This has nothing to do with today's episode, except today's episode came from the last time I was in Vancouver. I was doing a little chat at the Elevate Collective Mastermind. I'm going to be back in Vancouver on November 18th. I'm doing a talk. I'll be flying from Dublin where I'm doing a talk like two days before and before that London and Rotterdam. But one of my favorite things to do is travel, swim, experience the sights, and then get to talk to many of you.

8:09So I'll be doing those dates and I'll be doing Q &As like you hear on these Thursday episodes of the podcast. I think the VIP tickets, you come to a private Q &A first, kind of like this mastermind. And then later, obviously there'll be an audience Q &A. But I'm excited to answer your questions and hit the road and be traveling with the family. So that's all going to be really exciting. Thanks to everyone who came out to the Elevate Collective Mastermind. Thanks to Elevate for having me out. But in the meantime, let's get into some of those questions. These were entrepreneurs asking me how stoicism applies to what they do.

8:41So hopefully that resonates with you. and you can grab those tickets at ryanholiday.net slash tour and maybe I'll find another sweatshirt while I'm there hopefully I won't be there in a cast first off thank you yeah for being here and you know I read your book a while ago I I was like all of college very like all the philosophy classes just in a much more approachable way so first part that's a compliment how do you process for you is that like oh that was nice or it doesn't matter what external comes to me because it's all inside or do you actually process the compliment because it's very meta to ask you about external from internal it's something i'm working on but i try to take compliments and i try to remind myself like it matters to the person who's saying right so someone's saying like hey they they like something that you did yeah and if there's a part of you that's like well it could have been better what about the the part of you that's arguing is disagreeing with someone about their opinion, which is strange.

9:38You should just accept it. So I appreciate it. And it's what I was trying to do. I was trying to popularize this philosophy and make it accessible to people. So when people say that I did it, that's what I was trying to do. So it's good to hear. When according to plan. It's like verification. My actual question, though, is you were just talking about family. That was my question is when I heard you say that I heard you mention, you know, you can't outsource being a parent or at least you shouldn't. And I'm very mindful to do that but stoics have like all of business is just kind of points on a board it's fleeting you're gonna die it doesn't matter so which i very much appreciate but being a parent it's like reverberating what you do does matter it's going to last through generations and what is the stoics and your mindset on being a great parent and a great partner because that totally does matter and it totally but there's also no points on the board there's no bank account that proves that you're doing the right thing.

10:35Yeah. No, it's funny. Everyone wants to have sort of multi-generational impact and legacy. And that's why they're neglecting their family to go to the office, right? It's kind of strange how we rationalize this stuff. A lot of times we say we're doing stuff for our family, but really we're doing it for ourselves. So I don't know. To me, it's like the place that you have the most impact and control sounds like control is not the word I want to say here, but it's, it's the thing that is most up to you. Uh, and, and then we neglect that for these things that are so much not about us. And that's a, that's a strange thing.

11:16And I, look, the history of the Stoics is, uh, I wouldn't say exactly a, um, a ringing endorsement of their parenting prowess. If you've seen the movie Gladiator, Joaquin Phoenix's character, that That really is like what Mark Cerullus' kid was like, is that his fall, there was the sociopath, like we don't know. But I think the idea that you should be involved, that you should actually try to be good at this thing, that it's important. You know, they lived 2000 years ago. They're not quite on the same page as us about these things. So I don't think we have to take that as the gospel necessarily.

11:52But to me, it's really important and very meaningful. And, and yeah, ultimately, what are you going to look back on at the end of your life? Are you going to be glad you're going to wish you're probably going to wish you spent more time with your family? You're probably going to wish you were less hard on them. You know, you're probably going to wish you said things more, certain things more often and other things less often. So if, if you can sort of do that exercise and think about how you're going to think about it later, why not just do it now? Something that I really struggle with is what you mentioned about having being miserable about something before it actually happens or overanalyzing all the negative things that could possibly happen and actually fearing death a lot of times.

12:33So I'm wondering if you have any advice about that and potentially that's something that you have struggled with or not at all, or if there's a practice that you would suggest to not be so tied to what bad things could happen in business or life and being more still, I guess. Yeah. To me, the main question that the Stokes ask is like, is this up to me or is this not up to me? And then I try to ask myself, is this emotion that I'm feeling impacting the situation in any way? Or is it mostly just torturing myself about it? Right. Like I'm quite concerned about what's going to happen in America in November.

13:11But it's me waking up and following the news every day about it influencing. I already know what I'm supposed to do. Right. I already know if anyone asks my opinion what I should tell what I would tell them to do. And I know it's going to be a narrow run thing. But just like biting my nails or being miserable about it for the next several months isn't changing. Now, depending on how I feel about it, is there a plan that I need to take? You know, like what can I do about it if this worst case scenario happens? That would be a constructive use of my time. but following it in real time day to day, if I'm not a decision maker in any of those areas, you know, is, it's not just a recipe for unhappiness.

13:55There's an opportunity cost to it because I could be either proactively doing something about it, or I could just do what I'm supposed to be doing, like in my life with my family and in my job. And so I try to think about that. And, you know, you could argue there's a similar thing about death. Like it's going to happen. There are no amount of dreading it makes it more or less likely to happen. And whenever it happens, it's probably going to be too soon. But just wasting this minute in front of you, thinking about that, all that all that does is have the effect of meaning that one more minute of is wasted or unused.

14:35Very easy to say, by the way, not so hard. As I read the news this morning, yeah. Hey, 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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