You Make This For Yourself | 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.

1:09Perhaps you feel a bit like Marcus did when he wrote in meditations that, I was once a fortunate man, but at some point fortune abandoned me. He had every reason to think that, didn't he? As we've said before, his reign was an unending series of troubles, plagues, floods, wars, coups. Yet Marcus Aurelius didn't actually feel like he'd been abandoned. But true good fortune is what you make for yourself, he wrote, effectively arguing with himself. Good fortune, as he defined it, was good character, good intentions, and good actions. Life can curse you, but you can still be a blessing. Bad things can happen, but that doesn't stop you from doing good things.

1:52You can still be a good person. That's the luck we make for ourselves. That's always in our control.

2:04Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I've been to Europe quite a bit. Not so much with the Stoic and stuff. I've been to Europe many times over the years. It was funny. We were walking in Amsterdam with my wife and I said, you know, it feels like it was almost another lifetime that I was here. I think the first talk I gave in Europe was to the NextWeb. They had a conference in Amsterdam. I remember one year I was in Amsterdam doing a talk with Casey Neistat and I went with him and he went wakeboarding through the canals of Amsterdam. It feels like it happened to another person, but it didn't.

2:41It happened to me. And I was back in the Netherlands in November. I did a talk in London. I did a talk in Rotterdam. And then I went over and did a talk in Dublin. But I was in Rotterdam, which I'd never been to before, only very, very briefly. My best friend growing up, Chris came out. We got to see each other briefly. And then I went and did the talk. And then the whole family took a train into Amsterdam for a few hours, where my son, my youngest, bumped into a friend from school who was also there. Kind of a crazy, you know, jam-packed day. I went and saw the Anne Frank house, got some French fries, saw the canals, and then hopped on an airplane and flew to Dublin for the last talk.

3:30All of which brings us to today's episode, because when I was in Rotterdam speaking at the Ahoy Theater, which was very cool, I took some questions. And that's what I wanted to bring you today. Obviously, on these Thursday episodes, we do the Q &A. Here is me taking some questions from the crowd in Rotterdam. I hope you enjoy. I'm not sure when I'm going to be doing more of these, but hopefully next time I do, you can come out and I'll see you there.

4:01We just took our kids to an outdoor performance of 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. Becky 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.

4:36My 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 first, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And 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.

5:13Becky. 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. Hi, Ryan. Thank you so much for coming. Yes, of course. Thank you for coming. I had to be here. Great speech. I wanted to ask you, you ready? Yes. Okay. In Stoicism and how the world is changing dramatically and progressively over the last few years. How do you see the virtues, especially, sits in, let's say, young leadership who are obviously going to be leading the next generation?

5:58Yeah, I mean, I'd love to be able to say I'm just so inspired by all the virtue that I've seen from leaders across the world these last couple of years. But I don't think anyone would agree with that sentiment. I think we desperately need leaders who are virtuous. I think we are entering a world where everything is becoming a means of acquiring a social media following or something. Do you know what I mean? Where people are running for office in the United States, not because government is a way that we solve people's problems or do things together, the way we address collective action problems, but that government is a way to become famous, that government is a way to wield power, that government is a way to make a lot of money, Right.

6:57It's called public service. And I think, you know, people are people are sort of hacking the system. They're seeing that it's a way to get famous, to get attention and actually doing the thing is secondary or not that important. and the idea that leadership, that politics, that organization, that these are trades and skills, just like writing is a trade or a skill, just like plumbing is a trade or a skill, just like managing money is a trade or a skill. And I think we have to understand that that leadership is a thing and it's a thing that some people are really good at and we need to find those people and raise them up.

7:44There's something in the United States called like the Eisenhower paradox, which is basically the idea that like Eisenhower is one of our greatest presidents and he didn't really want to be president. He was sort of drawn into it, drafted to it. And many of the best American presidents did not from an early age aspire to the presidency. And often many of the worst ones did. Like there's something crazy about saying, there's a most powerful person in the world and I should be that person. There's something fundamentally crazy about that. Marcus Aurelius did not want to be emperor. You can almost read in his writings a kind of a resignation, like that he sees it as this burden.

8:26Responsibility is a better word, but he's not like loving the attention and the power. He sees it as a great weight. In fact, we're told that when Marcus Aurelius is told he will someday soon become king, he breaks into tears and he's crying, he says, because his understanding of history teaches him how many bad kings there were. So when you have leaders who not just understand that they're public servants, but also respect the weight and the danger and the almost corrosive effects of power, you start to get closer to what you want, right? Someone who understands that they are playing with something powerful and important and precious, and they have to treat it seriously, that it's not simply a means to an end.

9:23I think we need more leaders like that. I don't know how to get there, but I can diagnose the problem. Hey, Ryan, thanks for the speech. Really enjoyed it. First of all, Stoicism is your personal philosophy, also your business. Do you have a work-life balance that you can define? Second of all, I was lucky to be introduced with meditations in a very early age. I always had the trouble to understand the definition of good in that book. Yeah. Most of the time I associated it with a bit of a utilitarian approach. Yeah. But what you said today is not really similar to that one. Start from the individual good and the personal good and origins from your own self outwards.

10:14and when it comes to marcos aurelius he's trying to chase the good but also he's fighting marco money wars for 14 years yeah i wouldn't say i'm particularly great at work-life balance i would say i'm better at it than i was before and i am trying to get better at it still i think tension is a better word they're in tension with each other you know you can't have it all and everything comes with a trade-off. Yeah, stoicism is what I personally try to use and try to live by. It's also what I get to write and talk and speak about. But in writing and talking and speaking about it, it gives me a lot of practice.

10:54I get to just sort of internalize these things in a way that, you know, I don't think I would if I was writing about other things, which I, you know, did for many years. Sort of been an accidental business, you know, direction of my life and then go, hey, you only have so much time. You only get to spend your life on so many things. Why not spend it on the thing that you both like and need the most as opposed to trying to jam all these other things in? But yeah, I would agree stoicism is looking at a more black and white view as like, is this right? Is this wrong? What is this taking of you as a person?

11:36Less so, how does this do the most good for the most people? And yet, even the Stoics were, as elected leaders, forced to compromise and make the best of bad situations. So I think sometimes the Stoic writings can feel very black and white. And what I think is so fascinating about the lives of the Stoics is we see them really wrestle with these vexing questions. Cicero said of Cato that Cato's problem was that he sometimes thought he lived in Plato's Republic rather than in the dregs of Rome. And then you have Marx realists in meditations reminding himself that he doesn't live in Plato's Republic.

12:16And so there is this tendency in philosophy to make everything, you know, very clear, very black and white, you know, cons, categorical, imperative, you know, never do anything that you shouldn't do all the time that everyone in the world shouldn't do. But then when you represent millions of people or you are the head of state for an empire, you have to make much more realistic and pragmatic decisions. Because if you don't, it could have enormous consequences for people right there in front of you. And these things cease to be a philosophy experiment and start to be a cost-benefit analysis. And I think there's a tension there in stoic philosophy, just like there's a tension in all of us.

12:56So there are ideals and aspirations and our commitments and capacities. I enjoy and learn a lot from watching them wrestle with that. You know, Seneca talks a lot about don't do this, don't do that. And then he finds himself the advisor to Nero and he has to wrestle with, and I myself wrestle with my view of him. You know, should he have quit in disgust or protest and then immediately become irrelevant and probably be executed then? or should he have stayed on and tried to rein Nero in? And at what point does this constraining impulse become complicity? There's no clear line, but it's a vexing moral quandary.

13:42And the Stoics were not just sitting there with their books. They were wrestling with these moral quandaries.

13:51Hey, it's Ryan. Ben, 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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