You Are Strong. You Just Haven’t Been Tested. | Only Fools Rush In

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2:15Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

2:55You are strong. You just haven't been tested. In August of 1967, Lieutenant Dave Carey was shot out of his A4 Skyhawk over Vietnam. Soon enough, he found himself a prisoner in Hanoi, where he would be subsequently beaten and tortured and placed into solitary confinement. For six years, he languished there, kept going only by the comrades around him and the occasional pick-me-up from the Stoics. As Cary explained in an incredible episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, fellow prisoners would tap, Stockdale wants you to remember what Epictetus said. And through his adjoining cell, Cary came to understand that this meant to focus on what you control, focus on the choices you can make.

3:40And that's what he did, surviving and enduring and eventually making it through. How did he do it? Cary said that almost every single day since he returned home, someone had asked him where he found the strength, wondering whether he was superhuman. He most definitely is not, he explained on the podcast. And in fact, he wants everyone to know you have the same kind of strength that he does. You have the same capacity and courage and endurance that he does. People just don't know this because they haven't been tested. The world is a tough place. Things will go wrong. We will suffer and deal with adversity.

4:16We should not be afraid of that, though, Carey says. In fact, that fear and that doubt, that's the thing that will hold you back. Know that you've got the stuff. Know that you are capable. Know that you could make the same choices that he did, that Stockdale did, that Epictetus did.

4:49Only fools rush in. This is today's entry in the Daily Stoic. A good person is invincible, Epictetus says in Discourses 3.6, for they don't rush into contests in which they aren't the strongest. If you want their property, take it. Take also their staff, profession, and body. But you will never compel what they set out for, nor trap them in what they should avoid. For the only contest the good person enters is that of their own reasoned choice. How can such a person not be invincible? And then the entry is, one of the most fundamental principles of martial arts is that strength should not go against strength.

5:30That is, don't try to beat your opponent where they are strongest. But for some reason, that's exactly what we try to do when we undertake some impossible task we haven't bothered to think through, or we let someone put us on the spot, or we say yes to whatever comes our way. Some people think that choosing your battles is weak or calculating, but how could reducing the amount of times we fail or minimizing our needless injuries inflicted on us be weak? How's that a bad thing? As the saying goes, discretion is the better part of valor. Stokes call it reasoned choice. That means be reasonable. Think hard before choosing and make yourself unbeatable.

6:05A book I've recommended many, many times, I sell it here at The Painted Porch is Zero to One by Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel says the whole point of business in life is to find where you have a monopoly, where you're the only one doing that thing. There's another book that I rave about that we carry here in the store called Blue Ocean Strategy. There's another one called Blue Ocean Shift. I actually did the marketing for it. But the idea is red oceans is where there's lots of competition. That means being like everyone else, wanting the things that everyone wants, focusing on what's out of your control like everyone else.

6:37It's a far better thing to focus on what is in your control, on being you and your unique self. And the Stoics actually have a lot about this, right? Agrippinus, we talk about in Lives of the Stoics, he says, I want to be the red thread in the sweater, not like the other threads. I want to stand up. And that's the idea. Epictetus says, walk alone, right? Look around you. be who you are. To me, what he's saying is that when you try to be like someone else, you lose. When you want the things that other people want, you lose. When you enter something where you are trying to be like someone or something that you're not supposed to be, you lose.

7:23But when you are yourself, when you stand for what you stand for, when you do what you know is right, that's when you win, even if you quote unquote lose. There's an interview I was reading with the architect, Frank Gary recently, and he would say when he was talking to architects who were just starting out, he'd get them to all get out a piece of paper. And he would say, write your signature on this paper. And then he'd spread them out and have the whole class look at them. And he'd say, they all look different. That's you. That's you. So stay with that forever. And I think that's what Epictetus is saying here.

8:06You are a unique person. You have a totally unique set of DNA and experiences and values, and you are that red thread. So don't make yourself like the others. Don't sell out, right? When you stick to who you are, when you're true to that, you win no matter what. You have a monopoly on you. Don't give that monopoly away. Don't forfeit it. Don't lose it. Another rendering of that Epictetus quote, he says, you can always win if you only enter competitions where winning is up to you. When your focus, as Mark Ceruleus says, on what other people say or do, on getting approval, on having certain gatekeepers accept you or open things up to you, well, that's when you have set yourself up to be defeated.

8:54And even if you win, you still lost in some sense that you've given up something that was uniquely you and uniquely yours. I think that's a shame. And so that's what I want to leave you there. Stick with what's up to you, stick with who you are, and go where you have that monopoly. Competition is for losers, as Peter Thiel said. So go where you're a winner.

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10:36That'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 Supercast 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.

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