You Need To Learn How To Be Better At This | Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself

0:00Ryan Holiday: Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom, into the real world.

0:14Ryan Holiday: You need to learn how to be better at this. There was once a student who was overheard in Epictetus' classroom speaking proudly about finishing all the works of Chrysippus. Chrysippus was, although brilliant, one of the more difficult Stoics to get into, and he remains so to this day. He was obsessed with logic and proofs. In fact, one contemporary tells us, what Homer was to poetry is what Chrysippus was to logic. He loved to quote ancient sources at length, and indeed he liked to write at length. Attributed to him, though most are lost, are some 700 different books and essays. Epictetus was not particularly impressed by this or by the student for reading at all.

0:58Ryan Holiday: In fact, he said if Chrysippus hadn't written so obscurely, you'd have nothing to brag about. He was saying, in short, that Chrysippus was hard to read and that was a failing as an author. But this is unfortunately a reality, isn't it? Like, it'd be wonderful if every great novel was easy to get into, if every philosophy was made accessible, if every history tome was readable and clear. Sadly, they are not. And it's extra sad because that means there is wisdom out there that people are missing. While the authors should do better, we can't sit around and wait for that to happen. If we want to get into it, we are going to have to work for it, going to have to become better readers.

1:40Ryan Holiday: That's one of the things we built the Read to Lead Daily Stoke challenge around, Not just that every leader has to be a reader, but your reading should be leading you. It should be getting you out of your comfort zone. You should be reaching, right, just beyond your capacities and abilities. That's how you get better. That's how you grow. And in this awesome challenge, which we have been running for many, many years, we are going to help you get the most out of everything you read, stoic texts, modern leadership books, classic literature, anything else that interests you. and we are relaunching it here in September.

2:16Ryan Holiday: We're going to be doing it all together, Stoics all over the world. We're doing a live Q &A about it on September 23rd. And if you sign up right now, you can get 20 % off all the books in the challenge if you buy them from the Painted Porch. Let me just read you one little testimonial from someone who took the course. They said, before this course, I used to consider myself a reader, but now I feel like I'm truly reading for the first time in my life. I just love hearing that. Someone wrote in on day one. They said that buying Read to Lead has already proved to be one of the best online learning investments they have ever made.

2:47Ryan Holiday: How cool is that? Well, I would love to see you in there. You can sign up for the Daily Stoic Read to Lead Challenge right now at dailystoic.com slash read to lead. I'll put a link in the show notes. And you can also, of course, sign up for Daily Stoic Life, get this challenge and all our challenges for free, including New Year to You, which is coming up here very, very soon. That's at dailystoiclife.com.

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5:18Nothing to fear but fear itself. But there is no reason to live and no limit to our miseries if we let our fears predominate. That's Seneca's moral letters. And I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoic 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by yours truly, my co-author and translator, Stephen Hanselman. In the early days of what would become known as the Great Depression, a new president named Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn in and gave his first inaugural address. As the last president to hold the office before the 20th Amendment was ratified, FDR wasn't able to take office until March, meaning that the country had been without strong leadership for months.

6:02Panic was in the air, banks were failing, and people were scared. You've probably heard the nothing to fear but fear itself soundbite that FDR gave in that famous speech. But the full line is worth reading because it applies to so many difficult things we face in life. He says, Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. The Stoics knew that fear was to be feared because of the miseries it creates. The things we fear pale in comparison to the damage we do to ourselves and others when we unthinkingly scramble to avoid them.

6:49An economic depression is bad, but a panic is worse. and a tough situation isn't helped by a tear. It only makes things harder. And that's why we must resist it and reject it if we want to turn this thing around. As it happens, I retold this story and I forgot that I told it in the Daily Stoke, but I retell part of the story in Courage is Calling. This is from, I think, the third or fourth chapter in the book. And it says, the important thing is to not be afraid. It's easy to be scared, especially lately. Events can escalate at any moment. There is uncertainty. You could lose your job, then your house and your car.

7:28Something could even happen to your kids. Of course we're going to feel something when things are shaky like that. How could we not? Even the ancient Stoics, supposedly the masters of all emotion, conceded that we'll have involuntary reactions to loud noises, to uncertainty, to being attacked. They had a word for these immediate precognitive impressions of things. Fantasia. Isaiah. They were not to be trusted. Do you know what is the most repeated phrase in the Bible? It's be not afraid. Over and over again, these words appear a warning not to let first impressions rule the day. And then I quote some of the parts from the Bible where they talk about this.

8:09It's actually stunning how much it appears. And I reference a Hebrew prayer that dates back to the 1800s. It says, the world is a narrow bridge, and the important thing is not to be afraid. The wisdom of this expression, I write, has sustained the Jewish people through incredible adversity and terrible tragedies. It was even turned into a popular song in the Yom Kippur War. It's a reminder, yes, things are dicey, and it's easy to be scared if you look down instead of forward, but fear will not help. And when the markets crashed in October 1929, America faced a horrendous economic crisis that lasted 10 years.

8:45Banks failed. Investors were wiped out. And employment was some 20%. Franklin Delano Roosevelt succeeded a president who had tried and failed for three and a half years to make a dent in the problem. Was he scared? Of course he was. How could he not have been? Everyone was scared. But what FDR counseled in that now legendary inaugural address in 1933 was that fear was a choice. Fear was the real enemy because it only made things worse. It would destroy the remaining banks. It would turn people against each other. It would prevent the implementation of cooperative solutions. Who does good work when they're afraid?

9:21Who can see clearly when they're afraid? Who can help others? How can you love when you're afraid? How can you do anything when you're afraid? The receiver can't catch the football if they flinch in anticipation of the hit. The artists can't deliver the performance if they tremble at the ready pens of the critics. And the politician will rarely make the decision if they worry about the consequences at the polls. The family will never get started if all the couple can think about is how hard it's going to be. And an army that lets a retreat turn into a rout will be slaughtered. There is no room for fear, not with what we want to do.

9:57This life we're living, this world we inhabit, it is a scary place. If you peer over the side of a narrow bridge, you can lose your heart to continue. You freeze up. You sit down. Don't make good decisions. You don't see or think clearly. So the important thing is to not be afraid.