Will You Prove Yourself Worthy? | Ask Daily Stoic

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.

1:09found himself the emperor of Rome, the head of an enormous army, the head of an enormous empire, the wielder of incredible power. Yet what was most impressive, one historian would write, was that Marcus Aurelius proved himself worthy of all this. The power didn't corrupt him, the privilege didn't entitle him, the responsibility did not overwhelm him. Now, what about you? Almost certainly you have not been so enormously blessed, but you were born to technological and social progress that the ancients could not have imagined. At even a public school, you were given access to ideas and breakthroughs that the brightest minds of antiquity could not have wrapped their heads around.

1:56Your average life expectancy is longer. Your quality of life is better. Your water does not come to you via lead pipes. You have all your fingers and toes. Your children will probably not die before they become toddlers. All this privilege, all this good luck, what will you do with it? What will you make of it? What will it make you? Through nothing but an accident of birth, you have been blessed. Will you prove yourself worthy of it?

2:30Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. You know, I have to be honest. Before I went over to Rotterdam in November, I was not exactly sure where it was. I've always found it a little confusing. You know that there's a great scene in an episode of Seinfeld. They're sitting in the diner and they're talking about the Netherlands. Here, I'll play it for you. What is Holland?

3:05what do you mean what is it it's a country right next to belgium no that's the netherlands holland is the netherlands then who are the dutch so i knew where amsterdam was and then i don't know it's amsterdam part of the netherlands where's holland who are the dutch right it's a little confusing i've been to amsterdam three or four times. As I said, Amsterdam is where the sort of Tim Ferriss effect was visited upon stoicism because he bought the rights to the obstacle is the way when we were both there at a conference. And there was another conference I was there with Casey Neistat, so he showed me the power of YouTube when he went wakeboarding through the canals of Amsterdam.

3:46So I have been going there a long time, but I'd never been to Rotterdam. Anyways, in Rotterdam, it was lovely. I did a a Q &A before the event for some VIPs and then a Q &A after. I'm going to bring you a chunk of those questions. Let's get into it. We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then 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.

4:20Becky 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. Becky'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.

5:01And 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. And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events.

5:31Super cool to see you here in Rotterdam, Ryan. Thanks for being here. Yes. So the bad news is that I've been trying to formulate my question and I still haven't figured it out. So maybe you can help me out. We'll just do it live in front of all these people. Yeah, I've been trying for a week now and it has to do something with the stoic virtues for sure. And I think you're getting a bit more activistic in the recent years and I really like that. And also I think when you look at the stoic virtues, there's this thing where you don't want to be too judgmental. You want to be strict with yourself, soft towards others.

6:11Otherwise you have a certain mission in life or a certain responsibility to take. Sure. So I find that super challenging to find a balance on that scale. Yes. Could you maybe give some sort of advice on how to find a balance on that scale? That would be my question, I would say. Yeah. No, no, it's a great question. Yeah, a Stoic is engaged and involved. You have to be. Seneca says the key distinction between the Stoics and the Epicureans is that an Epicurean gets involved in politics or causes only if they have to, and a Stoic gets involved unless something prevents them. So the default is engaged, involved, outspoken, etc.

6:57But yes, there is a tension, I think, and you're right to point this out, between being engaged and active and outspoken and being judgmental or condescending or annoying. I have to think about this with the Daily Stoke email. The Daily Stoke email goes out to a million people all over the world. The idea that I would not speak about very real and very important things happening in the world for fear of upsetting some percentage of those people would be cowardly and injustice. At the same time, if all I talk about are those things, that audience will get smaller and smaller and its influence will diminish to the point of not being able to have a positive impact.

7:41So I have to think about that balance. It's funny, every time I talk about American politics or something like Trump and what the rise of fascism represents, people go, bad idea to alienate half your audience. And it's very American of you to think that my entire audience is American. It's not. And I do tend to find when I talk internationally, people see these things much clearer as if an outside perspective. And also, you guys have a bit more experience with what happens when you elect some of these people or some of these people take power, which is a lesson we seem to be forgetting where I'm from.

8:18If stoicism is just about getting stronger, faster, more productive, more self-contained, it might be more popular, but it's also going to be hollow and somewhat empty. And I struggle. I don't think I always get it right. I think maybe early on I was too focused just on what stoicism could do for me and you and and not enough on what it asks of us and all of us. And maybe sometimes I talk too much about those things. I don't know. I'm always trying to twist the dials and get it right. Yeah, I'm thinking about it. Certainly. I don't have a great answer. If I did, I'd spell it out, but I don't. So thanks.

8:59My question is about the mindset, courage mindset, winner mindset, warrior mindset. Okay. When things get challenging or tough, I notice that my habit is more of a victim mindset. Like, I'm not going to make it. It's too hard. Things like that. So I'm now saying to myself, like, it's not as bad as you think it is. Keep on going. You're not the only one in the world who experienced thoughts like this. Yeah. And my body also says a bit like, it's too much. I get feelings like dizziness or something like that. Sure. So I realize now that I have to experience these things to get to act differently.

9:43Do you have some tips or advice for me? One of the things I like about running is that you learn that your body is a liar. That you always have way more in the tank than you think you do. and that you have to push past that. That's what sort of both mental and physical toughness are about. And so when I'm in the middle of a book project or my kids haven't slept or I've got some crazy big project or some big problem I can't see a way out of, this is what I mean when I'm talking about trusting the process. You trust the process and not the feeling you feel in the moment because you've been through the process enough times that you know it's more reliable than these feelings, that thing inside you that's screaming to stop or quit.

10:33Now, look, sometimes that voice is right. You're about to pull a muscle or you desperately need to take an off day. There's a tension. You don't always blow past what your body's telling you, but you do develop the ability to sense what's really going on. And this is kind of what stoicism is about on another level, right? The Stoics talk about putting every impression to the test. Sometimes you trust the impression, sometimes you don't. But it's, is this really true? Or am I just feeling it now in this moment? And you develop that in all senses. But the physical sort of, this is why I think having a physical practice is so important.

11:16Because you learn to sense that about yourself. and you learn how much you can do if you push through that resistance or that part of you that wants to stop. It's nice to hear you live. I normally hear you on my car, on the audiobooks. Oh, yeah. So I just have a very simple question, a practical advice to tap into stillness in a world of overload of information, doom scrolling, chaos coming. So I would like to hear a practical advice on this. Delete all the social media apps from your phone. Number one, don't sleep with your phone in your room, right? So you're having a large block from it every day.

12:01Don't touch your phone for the first one hour that you're awake. Add a journaling practice. Add a physical practice like we're talking about that doesn't involve screens. Like people are like, oh, yeah, I work out. and they're on a treadmill looking at a television screen, scrolling the worst news in the world, you know? Stillness is not this magical state of mind that you get by going like this. To me, it is a discipline. It is a practice. It's something you have to build your day around. General James Mattis, who was the Secretary of Defense, four-star general in the Marines, he carries Marx, Reelius' meditations with him on 40 years of deployments.

12:42I think that he's carrying books with him on deployments is an interesting, he's carving out time to read and think every day. When he was Secretary of Defense, he had an hour of reading time, reading slash lunchtime scheduled in the middle of the day. And the idea of carving out time and space for reflection, for quiet, for solitude, you know, for less voices, maybe even less of my voice is, I think, essential. You just got to do it. And then the stillness comes from there.

13:17Hey, 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 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.

13:47Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist. That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like the Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show but not listen to ads, well, we have partnered with Super overcast to bring you a ad free version of Daily Stoic. We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with Premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast completely ad free, no interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for.

14:42And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium, and we are offering a limited time discount of 20 % off your first year. Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show descriptions to make those ads go away.