You Took The Job

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0:54I'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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1:40Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. And for more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com.

2:08You took the job. The Emperor Hadrian's life sometimes felt, as it does for all leaders, like an endless demand for favors. Letters came from across the empire asking for this and that. The Senate, the courts, his own family, everybody always seemed to need something. And naturally, he struggled under this burden. Naturally, he tried to create barriers and boundaries so he could do his job and maintain some level of sanity amidst all the requests. Once on an imperial tour in some distant province, a woman darted out from the crowd and blocked his path, asking for help with some now forgotten issue.

2:45Hadrian tried to put her off. I haven't got the time, he said, attempting to move past her. Well, stop being emperor, then, the woman shouted after him. Hadrian paused, turned back, and helped her. She was right. This was his job, after all. And it can be so easy to forget this, to feel imposed on, even resentful of it. But guess what? You did take the job. You get the perks. You don't get to shirk the responsibilities. Marcus Aurelius sometimes struggled in the mornings, as we've written. He wanted to stay under the warm covers. He did not want to rise up and tackle the overwhelming correspondence and meetings and demands that awaited him.

3:23but he talked himself through it. He reminded himself that that was the job, that that was what duty and nature demanded of him. And so must we. This is the kind of leadership that I am trying to work on myself. It's one of the things we talk about in the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge, which I think is one of the best things we've done. We actually got some advice from a two-star general in the Air Force. So you can listen to that as part of the challenge. One of the best interviews I think that we've done. Lots of great lessons in there. And there's a reason so many people have taken and loved the challenge.

3:57It's a six plus week course on leadership, but it's really digestible. It won't overload you and it'll give you actual tangible stuff you can use. I can't wait for you to check it out. Go to dailystoic.com slash leadership, or you can check out the leadership challenge at store.dailystoic.com and I'll link to it in today's show notes.

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5:34That'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.

6:17And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into Stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium, and we are offering a limited time discount of 20 % off your first year. Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show descriptions to make those ads go away.