You’re in a Hurry and Don’t Know Why | A Hard Winter Training

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.

0:15Ryan Holiday: You're in a hurry and you don't know why. It's never slow with us, is it? We're always rushing, rushing to get ready in the morning, rushing on the way to work, rushing through our lunch, zipping through our to-do list, rushing to grab the kids from school, rushing to finish this phone call, rushing to get dinner cooked, rushing to an airplane or a train, rushing through a book we're reading, fast-forwarding through commercials, rushing through a bedtime routine. It seems like we're rushing everywhere all the time. Sometimes it's because there are real deadlines, flights, or getting to a meeting on time, But even then, why do we act like it's the most important thing in the world?

1:03Ryan Holiday: We are rushing always as if we're not rushing through our own lives, as if we're not filling ourselves and our families with stress and anxiety. We would do well to remember the Alabama lyrics. I'm in a hurry to get things done. Oh, I'm rushing, rushing till life's no fun. All I really gotta do is live and die, but I'm in a hurry and don't know why. Slow down. Pause. Take a breath. Because one day you'll realize you rushed through too much of your life, too much of your loved one's life. You'll realize that as you were rushing, you were dying, as Seneca said. You were rushing through something you could never get back.

1:51Ryan Holiday: You rushed through beautiful details that you might have otherwise noticed if you took your time. And the rushing you thought was urgent, while some days seem so small compared to the moments, the days, and the years of your life you missed out on, because you were in a needless hurry.

2:15Ryan Holiday: My kids just started school, so my schedule is sideways. Suddenly, I don't have all morning or all afternoon, I got places to be. And if I don't do it early, I'm not going to work out. I'm figuring it out, right? Because the problem is when life gets busy, workouts are usually the first thing to go. So whatever you can do to lower that barrier is great. And with Tonal, you can make sure you are checking workout off your to-do list with their smart and compact strength training system right in your home 24-7. Tonal is the convenience of a full gym and the guidance of a personal trainer anytime at home in one sleek system.

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4:41Ryan Holiday: a hard winter training. The art of living has three levels of discipline, study, practice, and hard training. Reading the Stoics or listening to them, that's study. Trying out the lessons and reflecting on them in a journal, to friend, that's practice. What's left, though, is hard training. Epictetus liked to use the analogy of the Roman army's practice of training hard in the off months of winter so that they could be prepared to meet any challenge when they returned to battle in the spring. Seneca would spend time each month exposing himself to tougher-than-usual conditions. He too used a military analogy, pointing to the way that soldiers are tasked with hard jobs so they could be strong when the enemy eventually came.

5:27Ryan Holiday: So what are you doing in your life to push yourself beyond mere study and practice? And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living by yours truly and my co-writer and translator Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, and then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, every day and night we keep thoughts like this at hand, write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them. You can check out the Daily Stoic Journal anywhere books are sold.

6:03Ryan Holiday: You can also get a signed, personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoic store at store.dailystoic.com. This idea of keeping the thoughts at hand really ties into this week's entry. We've got two quotes from Epictetus and one from Seneca. We must undergo a hard winter training and not rush into things for which we haven't prepared. That's Epictetus and his discourses. Here's Seneca in Moral Letters 18.

6:53Ryan Holiday: attack so that when it comes, they won't grow tired. And then finally, Epictetus says, when a challenge confronts you, remember that God is matching you with a younger sparring partner, as would a physical trainer. Why? Because becoming an Olympian takes sweat. I think that no one has a better challenge than yours. If only you would use it like an athlete would use a younger sparring partner. So a couple of things here. One, I sometimes get this question, should I seek out adversity, if adversity is such a good teacher, should I seek it out? I say, look, for the most part, life is going to give us most of the training we need.

7:30Ryan Holiday: Life's going to throw most of the adversity we need at us. So you don't need to go like getting yourself into trouble so you can know what a prison cell feels like, right? I don't think that's really what it is. As Epictetus is saying, look, instead of bemoaning the adversity when you do feel it, go like, hey, this is good. This is training I needed. I'm going to use this. So I think about it that way. How are you, though, actively engaged in training that makes you stronger, more mentally tough, more physically tough? So to me, this is where like a strong physical practice comes in. It's also where getting up early, maybe intermittent fasting, maybe cold showers, but mostly working out because I love working out.

8:10Ryan Holiday: But still, every time I have to convince myself to do it right. I love running. It's almost painful not to run. But there's still lots of days when I don't want to do it and still be easier to go slower. I have to push myself every single time. But every time I do it, I get better at pushing myself, right? I usually do some sort of weight training about four days a week as well. And so that is much less fun for me. And I really do have to push myself to do it. And that training, though, the act of pushing myself to do something that I'm uncomfortable with, that's not fun, that challenges me. this doesn't just make me stronger and more fit and better at chasing my kids around the house.

8:50Ryan Holiday: What it really does is make me better at overriding that impulse that I don't want to do something because it's hard or that I'm afraid or that it's going to be exhausting. And you think I don't wake up so many days and I don't feel it. I don't want to do it. It's hard. What if I phone it in today? Is anyone really watching? Will anyone know? Well, I've trained for exactly that kind of insidious opponent. As Stephen Pressfield talks about, I know the resistance well. I have built up a lot of muscles that make me stronger than the resistance. And that's where this training comes in. And I think that's a metaphor for all forms of adversity, difficulty, resistance, weakness in life.

9:30Ryan Holiday: And so I hope you have some sort of active practice. Use the adversity, train against it when it's there, but also build some active daily practices or weekly practices in your life as well.

9:45Thank you.