You Must Make This Shift | How Stoicism Helps You Deal With Big Challenges

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1:29Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

1:52You must make this shift. Marcus Aurelius ruled over millions of people, and he didn't care what any of them thought about him. Well, at least he worked hard not to care about what any of them thought about him. We see that throughout meditations, where we see him repeatedly talk about focusing more on his own actions than other people's opinions. The accidental byproduct of this focus was that millions of people loved Marcus. And that is usually how it goes. After a great rookie season with the Chicago Cubs in 2017, Ian Happ had a rough second year. And then he started the 2019 season by being sent back down to the minor leagues.

2:34On the Daily Stoic podcast recently, Happ talked about the mindset shift that helped him get back to the majors. You know, instead of wondering why or trying really hard to impress a coach or somebody that makes the decisions, to say, you know what, I'm going to believe in myself and put in the same work. And, you know, at some point they're not going to be able to keep me out of the lineup. I found myself caring more about what the guy that made the decisions thought and kind of getting away from my process and what made me a really good player and trying to do kind of the things that wouldn't get me put on the bench.

3:15And the end result of that is always like you do the things that get you put on the bench. Shifting his focus from the externals to the internals, Happ worked himself back into the Cubs lineup. In this past season, he made his first all-star team and picked up his first Golden Glove award in the process. That's what happens when you care more about what you are doing and less about what others are thinking. As Mark Cirelius writes, ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. But real success, real mastery, real sanity, that, he says, comes only by tying it to your own actions.

3:59So that's why we as Stoics shift our focus to the internal stats and the scoreboards. We focus on the things we control, the choices we make, the work we put in, the standards we hold ourselves to. do. We trust in that and know that the rest will take care of itself.

4:22I'm picking my kids up from school today and then doing our weekly routine, which is I take them over to Whole Foods and we get all our groceries for the week. Then we have dinner. It's one of their favorite things to do. It's one of my favorite things to do. And then my wife loves it because she doesn't have to take care of it. This holiday season, whether you're a guest or hosting the big dinner, Whole Foods Market has what you need to delight everyone at your table. They even have heat and eat sides from the prepared foods department. You can make Whole Foods your one-stop shop. Everything follows Whole Foods Market's strict ingredients standards, so you know it'll be delicious and good for you.

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5:13There's an epic Titus line, he says, if you only enter competitions where winning is up to you, you'll never be defeated. I think he means racing against yourself, setting your own standards, then success is in your hands. So what I like about challenge is the way I think about it in my life is, who am I racing against? Who am I trying to beat? If I'm trying to beat myself, if I'm trying to push myself, if I'm trying to win just by trying, by doing it, then I'm in the right headspace and I'm thinking about it the right way. Seven-ish. Seven-ish, plus or minus, but the problem really isn't the miles.

5:43Right now we're at 3 ,500 feet in elevation. The town's at 8 ,500 feet in elevation, so that's 5 ,000 feet of elevation gain. And 5 ,000 feet is about a mile, so you're gaining about a mile. So I'm basically going uphill one mile. So seven distance, but then one mile of that is basically straight up. Yes. Okay, do you think anyone's ever done this before? Ran up it? Yeah. Not like willingly, you know, maybe back in the 1800s. I had a message like the fact that there's a - The road was washed out and they had to get a message up right in the middle of the night. But I don't think willingly anybody has run up this in a while.

6:16Okay. I think the real question with it all is how long is it going to take? Do you have an estimate of how long you think it's going to take? So I did seven miles earlier this week. Let me see. It took me under an hour to do seven miles. Probably like 50 minutes to do seven miles. Okay. I would like to think less than double that. So less than two hours. The other caveat is under three days ago, the entire road got washed out, so you're gonna have rivets and rocks. That's not so bad. I live on a jerk road like this. This is where I practice. Dustin, do you guess higher or lower? I think it's higher.

6:49How long do you think it's gonna take? 245? 245? I don't want the stakes sitting in there for two hours under 80. We're taking guesses on how long it's gonna take me to do seven miles on the road with about 5 ,000 feet of elevation climb. what's your guess? Well I appreciate you believing in me I don't have any expectation of doing that but we'll see. My guess is three hours and 35 minutes. All right I can definitely do that. Comment below how long you think it's gonna take trying to run seven miles. We need an official clock here. Well I'm gonna start a run on mine. Where's the starting line?

7:28Is the sign the starting line? Touch the sign and then Touch the porch, the porch of the museum is the end. Which I'm going to collapse on? Yep. There's no turns I can take, so I can't get lost, right? Nope, just straight to the road. All right, I have to touch the sign? Yep.

8:09The first few miles, everything was going great. Felt easy. And it starts creeping up. The climb is just relentless. I tried to catch myself at about what felt like halfway, which should have been about three and a half miles. I tried to go, don't think of this as halfway. The problem is when you start to get optimistic, when you start to think you're on the downside of it. As a rider, this happens all the time. you go, I'm at the halfway point, I'm about to submit it. There's all these false finishes, right? Or false check marks. You think you're further than you actually are. And then when you realize how much further there is left to go, this is when it crushes you.

8:44This is when it kills you. You have to have the discipline to rein in that sort of preemptive celebration, that sense that you've got it. The halfway point, you have to remind yourself isn't even close to halfway done and in fact the the last 10 that might be as hard as a full 50 and so it gets harder as you go especially on a trail like this where the climb was just i said to myself when i was starting like it levels off there's moment i thought i remember ups and downs now this is just up and up and up and up the whole time there's one point where i'm running and it's real steep and I'm like struggling with it.

9:26And then I remember when I drove my truck up here last time, our truck overheated at that point. So you think about how steep and relentless a climb has to be to knock out an F-150 4x4 with a big engine in it. Of course I was struggling. And so I had to remind myself, you know, I'm just a human being.

9:51so you're just about halfway four and a half miles i better be further than halfway i'd say you're about halfway you're about halfway you know they say they say halfway is 90 left right so that's the hard part you're only you're doing you're doing good time though you're under an hour Yeah, this is 13-minute miles. That's pretty damn good. I don't need any help.

10:21One more mile left. One more. I should probably tell myself it's two. The last mile is always the hardest. You wouldn't think it could just keep going up. And up.

10:42The important thing about confidence is like when you know you can do something, like I know I can write a book because I've written a book. I know I can run real far because I've run real far. I know I can push my body further than my body thinks it can go. When you know that, you have a kind of confidence that lets you go, okay, this is physically possible. I'm probably not going to die doing it. So then it becomes a matter of sheer willpower. The key is to not look behind you and not think too far ahead. That's one foot in front of the other. But it's hard when you get a flash forward of how far you're left to go.

11:19That's why Marcus really said you can't be crushed by your imagination as a whole. And all the shit that is to come. I think they got the distance wrong. It's already 675. There's got to be quite a ways to go. The shorts have held up well. The shirt too. There's a John Wooden thing where he...

11:39first day of practice, he has the best recruits in the world. They think he's going to give them all this sage advice. And he goes, gentlemen, this is how you put on your socks. And then he says, gentlemen, this is how you lace up your shoes. And you're like, what? And his point is, if you don't do that right, you don't sweat the small stuff, you don't get the big things right. The devil's in the details as they say. I like these socks. The 10 ,000 socks are decent. All right. We're simple. Let's finish this shit.

12:20Hey, Brent. Yeah? Do you have anything to eat? I got it. Two hours, or one hour, 59 minutes and 26 seconds. That's what I got, yeah. Because I'm on this tour for discipline, I think what I wanted to test myself and test my discipline, which is why I had the idea that I would run from the bottom of Cerro Gordo to the top of Cerro Gordo. It was a physical challenge, unlike really any I'd done before. I knew that it wasn't about speed. It was really about, like, could I push myself? Could I last longer even when I was uncomfortable and tired and exhausted and totally out of gas? I talk about Shackleton in Discipline is Destiny.

13:04You think about, he had this motto, by endurance we conquer. And you think about what he's subjected to. You think about how badly he would have quit. And you think about what a skill that is. It's a muscle to develop. This sense of fortitude and strength and unwillingness to quit. And you have to seek out things in your life that allow you to test that. And by testing it, make it a little bit stronger. The key thing that humans have to cultivate in life is the ability to endure, to survive, to hold on, to hold fast to the things that are important to them. That, to me, is the ability to bear, to endure.

13:42This is how we conquer. This is how we get through difficult times. This is how we show the world who we are and what's important.

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