You Have To Be Able To Deal With This | A Little Better Every Day

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2:24Welcome 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.

2:59You have to be able to deal with this. Emotions are a part of being human. They're a part of us. They're hardwired in. So it's a mistake to think that stoicism is about the suppression or the elimination of this. How would that be part of living in accordance with nature? In her wonderful book about parenting, Good Inside, which I've raved about a lot, I know, but it's that good. And she has a great episode on the podcast. Dr. Becky Kennedy reminds parents that it's impossible to simply remove your children's uncomfortable feelings. You can't, just as your parents couldn't, tell them to stuff it down.

3:31You can't gaslight them into thinking that the emotions aren't there. You can't make life so wonderful and fun that they're never sad or angry or jealous or frustrated. And the same goes for us as adults. We have to learn how to process and deal with our emotions responsibly, maturely, especially painful and distressing emotions. Adults whose childhood were focused mainly on happiness, Dr. Becky writes, were not only unprepared for tough moments, but they experienced more discomfort in those tough moments because deep down they think that they're doing something wrong if they can't find the happy and get themselves to a better place.

4:05We've talked before about Seneca's consolation essays where he works his family and friends through the awful grief they're experiencing. It's important that we understand that this is how a stoic must deal with strong emotions, period. Not stuffing it down, not masking it with smiles. We don't seek our pleasure to counterbalance it. In fact, the more you do those things, the harder time you will have in the future, if even more serious and distressing things happen. If you haven't listened to Dr. Becky's episode on the podcast, you should. It was fantastic. And you should check out her book, Good Inside.

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6:03A little better every day. This is week four in the Daily Stoic Journal. The Stoics saw their lives as works in progress. They didn't believe they were born perfect, but they believed that with work and dedication, they could get a little better every day. There is real delight in this progress, as Epictetus quoted by Way of Socrates. Marcus Aurelius avidly pursued his own education and improvement, eagerly looking for advice for mentors and historical examples. Well, let's follow that example this week and see how you get a little better as each day passes. We must keep constant watch over ourselves and, as Seneca phrased it, put each day up for review.

6:49Looking back on our day helps us to better understand where we may have fallen short and gives us tangible feedback for how to improve and grow. Only what you measure and record can be monitored. Only what you put up for reflection can be learned from. And our first quote is from Seneca's Moral Letters. I will keep constant watch over myself and most usefully will put each day up for review. For this is what makes us evil, that none of us looks back upon our own lives. We reflect upon only that which we are about to do, and yet our plans for the future descend from the past. Marcus Aurelius from Rusticus, he said, I learned from Rusticus to read carefully and to not be satisfied with a rough understanding of the whole and not to agree too quickly with those who have a lot to say about something.

7:37And then Epictetus says, but what does Socrates say? Just as one delights in improving his farm and another his horse, so I delight in attending to my own improvement day to day. This is Epictetus's Discourses 3.5. As I think about the decade and a half now I've spent studying stoicism, I sometimes marvel at who I was when these ideas first hit me and how far I've come. Some ways I look at how not far I've come and how I'm still find myself making the same mistakes over and over again, which Marcus remarks about in meditations. He goes, look, you're still an old man. And yet here you are, you're afraid of death.

8:16You're losing your temper. You're prizing the wrong things. But the truth is he had come very, very far. And I feel like I have come far. I'm not perfect. I'm not where I want to be, but I can't deny that I have made progress. And so that's what stoicism is. It's progress. What does that progress look like? Well, one of my favorite observations from Seneca says, how do I know I'm making progress as a stoic? He says, I'm a better friend to myself. Are you? Right? I don't know when you first came into understanding these ideas, what you first read, but it's wonderful in those moments where you catch yourself and go, this really would have rocked me before.

8:57This really would have sent me off before. I really wouldn't have caught myself before. I think about this even with my marriage with my wife, like just things we were talking about something the other night and it's like, yeah, we've been together for 15 odd years and we're just coming around to realizing that when you do this, I do this, or that I do this. And so on the one hand, it's like, man, things would have been easier if we figured this out earlier. And yet, it's also wonderful that we're figuring it out now. And the time, it's going to save us. And the frustrations, it's going to save us.

9:32And the heartache, it's going to save us. Right? You delight in your improvement day to day. You make little bits of progress. We have a TikTok that I posted about this. But one of the most interesting things I read about Tom Brady is that it's not that Tom Brady is obsessed with winning. People think that's what it is. He's obsessed with getting better. And that's how you get great. It can be a curse, certainly, right? It can be taken too far. If you only look at what you can do better, if you only look at where you fell short, if Seneca's sort of putting yourself up for the review every day becomes a kind of torture, you know, that's not the idea.

10:09The idea is that we, you know, we push ourselves to get better. We notice where we've made improvement. I interviewed Michael Dell on the podcast, I guess this was last year. And he had this great acronym. He says, pleased, but never satisfied. That's how the company celebrates the success it's had, how he celebrates the success he's had or the improvements he's made. But that doesn't mean you rest on your laurels. That doesn't mean you call it. No, you're always trying to get better, right? And the person who focuses on where you can get better, who is pleased, but not satisfied, that's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

10:46That's how we get better. That's how we push ourselves. That's the idea. So if you think of stoicism then as a day-to-day journey, a week-to-week journey, a year-to-year journey, right? It's not a magical transformation. It's something you work. As they say in sobriety circles, it works if you work it. The ideas, if you work it, if you make small improvements, if you try to apply them here and now a little bit every day, it adds up. Well-being is realized by small steps, Zito said. but it's no small thing. So the little tweaks, little breakthroughs, little conversations, all the things that have happened for me over the years, they're not major.

11:25Not any one of them is probably worth writing home about. That's why I don't tend to put myself in the books, but cumulatively, you know, it's changed the course, the bearings, the direction of my life in a really, really big way. And I know that's true for lots of you. And here we are at the beginning of the year. Let's set out to make some small improvements day to day over the next 12 months and think about who you would be if you made a 1 % improvement every day for the next year, every week for the next year, every month for the next year, every year for the rest of your life, right? That adds up.

12:02It adds up. Small steps, but it's no small thing. That's the message from the Daily Stoic Journal, which of course you can pick up everywhere and check out the new leather cover. I think it's really sick, store.dailystoic.com.

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