You Weren’t Born This Way | The Six Stereotypes Of Stoicism

0:00I'm recording this on a Monday, and Monday is our grocery store day in our family. I usually pick my kids up from school and we go over to Whole Foods, get all our groceries for the week. Although here very shortly, we're going to go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at$1.49 a pound if you have Prime with organic birds at$2.99 a pound. And they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials, whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends.

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1:18Welcome 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.

1:56That's wherever you get your e-books. And then if you want a signed leather edition of The Daily Stoic, you can grab that at store.dailystoic.com. Marcus Aurelius was not born Marcus Aurelius. Literally, he was born Marcus, Catalyst, Severus, Annius, Verus. Epictetus wasn't born a sage. To say that he was would be to deprive him of the enormous credit due to a man who went from a lowly slave to a wise and powerful philosopher. No, like everything worthwhile, becoming a Stoic takes work. It's not something you read once and magically grasp at the soul level. No, it's a lifelong pursuit that requires diligence and repetition and concentration.

2:39Pierre Hadeau was right when he called Stoicism spiritual exercising. And exercising is a habit you have to keep up if you want to stay in shape. Every day and night, keep thoughts like these at hand, Epictetus would say of the Stoic insights. Write them, read them aloud, talk to yourself and others about them. That's the practice. That's how Marcus became Marcus, by keeping Epictetus close at hand. It's how you'll become better, wiser, stronger, kinder, and more independent. And look, obviously, this is one of the principles we built the Daily Stoic around. It's an email a day. It's a podcast a day.

3:16It's social media posts every day. The Daily Stoic book, which is, as I said,$2.99 as an e-book this week is a page a day of something from the Stoics. And actually, it's the first time all the Stoics were ever collected in one book like that. The Daily Stoic Journal, which is daily entries and weekly themes, is built on the same premise. It's supposed to be something you return to daily to dip in and out of and follow as a kind of loop. The idea is to put one thing up for you to review, to have at hand, to fully digest, not in passing, not just once, but every day over the course of a year, and preferably year in and year out.

3:56The Daily Stoic page a day desk calendar is good for that too. Look, like two million people have copies of the Daily Stoic all over the world. It's in 30 languages, and many of them have been reading it for eight straight years now. That's why we have the leather edition and the leather cover, because that's a lot of wear and tear. I see copies of them. It's pretty nuts. Marcus would say that a student of philosophy is like a boxer. Through training and practice and repetition, a boxer becomes one with their weapon. And through training and practice and repetition, reading, writing in a journal, listening to the Stoics, talking about the Stoics, we become one with the philosophy.

4:34So we made that your goal this year, to create a practice, to get the reps, to make Stoicism a part of your life and your routine and your mind. And like I said, if you haven't read the Daily Stoic, 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living. Well, this is about as cheap as it will ever get. Used to be$1.99 when we do these promos every year, but now it's$2.99. Welcome to inflation. If you want to grab the Daily Stoic or the Daily Stoic Journal, you can grab the premium editions at store.dailystoic.com. You can get the discounted one on Amazon. I'll link to that in today's show notes.

5:10Talk soon.

5:20When people hear the word stoicism, they often think cold and emotionless, suppressed, repressed. But in all my years of writing and thinking about stoicism and also practicing it in my life, I can tell you that's not true. It's not supported by the scholarship. It's not supported by the practice. So much of what people think about stoicism and the stereotypes about it are totally wrong. And that's what we're going to talk about in today's video. I think one of the things that people don't like about Stoicism is this idea that it's about suppressing your emotions, because we know that's not healthy.

5:56You know, just stuff it down. Don't feel it. Sometimes people call this toxic masculinity. That's not what the Stoics were doing at all. Seneca says no amount of philosophy takes away natural feeling. The Stoics write beautiful essays on grief. They write beautiful essays on anger. They're talking about processing these emotions, understanding where they come from, understanding why giving yourself over to them is probably unhealthy. But they're not saying just stuff it down. They know that that never ends well for people. So stoicism is really the ability to rationally analyze and understand our emotions.

6:30I wouldn't say that a stoic is emotionless. Do they try to be less emotional? Sure. And we all know when we get too emotional. When we're making big decisions, bringing emotions to it often leads us astray. And look, the stoic art of journaling was a place to process your emotions. Anne Frank said that paper is more patient than people. What Marcus Aurelius was doing in his meditations with frustrating, obnoxious, annoying people or situations, he was working through his thoughts. He wanted to dump it out on the page instead of dumping it out on someone else. You want to process the emotion, not suppress them.

7:05The Stoics were not repressed. They were just not controlled by their emotions. That's what the Stoics say. They say, the greatest empire is command of yourself. So who's in charge, you or your emotion? That's what the Stoics talk about when they talk about emotion. They wanted to get to a place of ataraxia or stillness. The world is crazy and chaotic enough. Let's not add our own chaos and craziness to it.

7:33Nothing blows apart the notion that the Stoics were humorless more than the idea that an early Stoic named Chrysippus literally dies of laughter. The exact joke is sort of a you-had-to-be-there kind of a thing. It's lost to us. But they don't tell us this as a cautionary tale. He had a sense of humor and he laughed so hard that he died. Seneca said that the philosopher has two choices. He said we could go the way of Democritus and cry over the sadness and the frustratingness of life where we could go the way of Heraclitus and laugh. And so the Stoics knew that life could be dark. They knew that life could be hard.

8:07They knew that life could be painful. And they saw humor as a form of relief from this. The Stoics were funny. Most smart people are funny. When you get the essence of something and you really understand it, you can see what's absurd about it. You can see what's ridiculous about it. You can see what's funny about it and you can enjoy that. And also humor was a way to not take themselves so seriously. We can imagine Marcus Aurelius needing humor so he wasn't corrupted by all the power and flatterers around him. Seneca joked that if you can learn to laugh at yourself, you will never cease to be amused.

8:41So the Stoics were also turning this incisive sense of humor on themselves. They were laughing at themselves first. So we have to cultivate this. The Stoics not only had humor, but they actively cultivated that sense of humor because it's an important Stoic skill. We 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.

9:17Becky 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. My 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 about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids.

9:58And 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. Becky. 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. A huge misconception about the Stoics is that they're unfeeling and uncaring. The four core Stoic virtues, I have them tattooed on my wrist here, are courage, okay, self-discipline, okay, wisdom, yeah, we get that. The other is justice. Throughout the Stoic writings, there is this profound emphasis on kindness, compassion, empathy.

10:45Mark's really at one point in meditations, he's frustrated with someone, he's annoyed by them. And he says, but ask yourself, when have you acted like that? Even his first powerful passage in meditations, where he talks about how people are frustrated, he says, okay, but you can't be implicated in that ugliness. You have to remember you were made to work with these people, that you come from the same place, that you share this affinity for each other. I think that's one of the most consistent themes actually in Marcus Aurelius' writings is this sympathy for this connection to other people and the essentialness of that.

11:19It's this good character and acts for the common good. So yes, the Stoics do try to focus on what they control, but empathy is something we control. Sympathy is something we control. The Stoics had this exercise of concentric circles. So yeah, there's us in the middle and we care about ourselves, but then we care about our family. We care about our neighbors. We care about our community. We care about our country. We care about humanity. Part of the work of the philosophy was to pull those outer rings inward. Mark Spreira says you have to remember that what injures the hive injures the bee. We're all interconnected.

11:51You can't allow someone else to suffer, to be a victim of injustice without it harming you in some way. You can't harm another person without harming yourself in some way. The Stoics are deeply compassionate individuals. They care about justice. They care about making the world a better place. Why else would they have written these works of art? Why else would they have served in politics? Why else would they have tried to make a difference? They didn't care. Of course they cared.

12:23One of the hardest things for people to stomach about Stoicism is this idea of resignation. And I think people think, I didn't get where I am accepting things. No, I pushed, I changed things. How else would we get progress if we didn't push, if we didn't try? That's true. But remember, the core element in Stoicism is the idea of focusing on what you control. We have to accept something before we can act upon it. We don't control what happens, but we control how we respond to what happens. There's this great Stoic practice of amor fati. Nietzsche, who talked a lot about the Stoics, he said, amor fati is to not merely bear what is necessary, but love it, embrace it.

13:01This doesn't mean you never try to change things or improve things. Of course you do. But you have to accept that some things are not in your control. You have to accept the parts of it that are not in your control so you can focus on the parts of it that are in your control. If you think about Marx's life, he experiences death and loss and natural disasters, one problem after another. An ancient historian says he doesn't meet with the good fortune that he deserved. His whole reign is involved in a series of troubles. But when Marcus Aurelius decides not to see that as unfortunate, to say, hey, I was made for this.

13:32I'm going to turn this into something. That's what makes him Marcus Aurelius. He says the impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. That's stoicism, the decision to accept this, but then to choose to make it a meaningful, significant, important part of your life, to rise to meet that challenge, to grow because of it. That's the famous Stockdale paradox. Stockdale says you have to unflinchingly accept the reality of the situation and at the same time hold that you will turn it into something that in retrospect you wouldn't trade away. So it's totally wrong to think of the Stoics as passive.

14:06They were incredibly active. They did practice this art of acquiescence, this little bit of acceptance first and foremost. So Stoicism is morbid, right? Seneca talks about death so much in his writing that there's a collection of his writings just called How to Die. Of course, all the Stoics did die. That is the fate of all humans. It's the one thing we all share in common. I wear a necklace, says memento mori. And then the reminder for Marcus Riles, you know, you could leave life right now. Yeah, he says that. But the important part, the operative part of that expression was let that determine what you do and say and think.

14:43Epictetus went as far as saying that as you tuck your child in at night, you should say to yourself, they will not make it until the morning. That's so morbid and dark. Who wants to contemplate the death of their child? The purpose of meditating on the mortality wasn't to be depressing in the Stokes. It was to be invigorating, to remember to use your time wisely. Seneca says, it's not that life is short, it's that we waste a lot of it. We're more protective of our money and our property than we are on the one non-renewable resource. How crazy is that? Marcus Aurelius was unfortunate enough to bury multiple children.

15:15When he practices Epictetus's exercise, which we know that he did, he was trying to remind himself, don't rush through this. Don't take it for granted. You don't know how much time you have. Balance the books of life each day, Seneca says. Don't put stuff off and don't think of death as this thing in the future far away you don't have to consider. Instead, think of death as something that's happening right now. We are always dying. So we have to get up close and familiar with it. We have to know what it is because it's happening to us constantly. And we want to let that inform how we live and the decisions we make.

15:49Sometimes people will say, what do I care about a philosophy that's just a bunch of old, dead, rich white guys? And this too could not be further from the point. Sure, there's Marcus Aurelius, who's the emperor of Rome, but he's not representative of the Stoics necessarily. I mean, And his favorite Stoic philosopher was Epictetus. And Epictetus was a slave from Greece. The Stoics cover the full social spectrum in ancient Roman. And it's important that we realize that the Roman Empire covers an enormous swath of territory, including Africa and Britain, Greece, the Far East. In Marcus Aurelius' time, the Romans made contact with the Han Dynasty in China.

16:28Stoicism was founded amidst adversity and disaster. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, loses everything in a shipwreck. He washes up penniless in Athens, but he would say he made a great fortune when he suffered that shipwreck because it led him to discover Stoic philosophy. Then and now the Stoics have been an incredibly diverse group, men and women, black and white, every culture, every economic condition, every circumstance you can imagine. There's been someone there interested in and practicing Stoic philosophy. Marcus Reus is trying to remind himself actively in meditations. He says there is no role so well suited to philosophy as the one he was in, but that's true for all of us.

17:11However you have come to Stoicism, whatever you have going on in your life, it's inclusionary, it's open, it's available to you. You can apply it to your life right now. And this is why Stoicism has endured for 20 plus centuries because it's been relevant to people in all walks of life for all time. It's universal. And that's why stoicism is more popular than ever. Sure, it's popular with men, but it's also extremely popular with women. I see that in the sales and the numbers and the followers of my own work. It's popular internationally. It's popular in professional sports and parenting circle.

17:49It's popular amongst billionaires, and I get letters from prisoners. If someone tries to prevent Stoicism as not for you, they're missing the point. And if you think Stoicism is not for you, you are falling prey to the biggest misconception about it there is. The Stoics weren't perfect. They didn't have all the answers, but they were something more than the caricature of what Stoicism is sometimes portrayed at. So if Stoicism is interesting to you at all, if some of these reservations were what's holding you back, then I hope you'll give Stoicism a shot and I hope you'll check it out. I send out a free daily email, one piece of Stoic wisdom every single day.

18:31It's received by over a million people all over the world, the largest community of Stoics who have ever lived. And I assure you they are not humorless and morbid and depressed and uncaring. No, these are people just like you. And you can sign up right now at dailystoic.com slash email. I hope to see you there.

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