The Daily Stoic - 6 Hits of Stoic Motivation (Sports and Philosophy)

Episode Date: January 9, 2022

Today, Stoicism has been embraced by nearly every professional sport. Stoicism as a philosophy is really about the mental game. It’s not a set of ethics or principles. It’s a collection of spiritual exercises designed to help people through the difficulty of life. To focus on managing emotion; specifically, non-helpful emotion. In this episode of the podcast, Ryan breaks down 6 of the most important insights on sports and endurance training from the Stoics.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics. Something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly to prepare for what the week

ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Sunday episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, one of the coolest perks of writing the books that I've written is getting to go talk to cool people in cool places, most of all professional sports. This was kicked off for me. The first person I ever heard from who'd read the books in sports was a mental skills coach for the Colorado Rockies, Imikay, who's gone on to be just a complete guru and badass in the baseball world.

But the next person I heard from was Michael Mbarty, then a special assistant in the front office of the New England Patriots, formerly a GM of the Browns. He won a ring with Bill Walsh and the 49ers as well. Just a guru in the football world. He's the one that brought the book to the New England Patriots and then passed it along with the Seattle Seahawks. It's been really cool to watch this ancient philosophy

that was popular with athletes back in the ancient world, become popular again with professional athletes and coaches and people were just masters of what they do. And I've been lucky enough to speak to all sorts of teams. And in today's episode, I wanted to talk about some stoic motivation, some ideas, how we apply stoicism to physical pursuits, to mastery, to athletics.

It's cool that stoicism is now embraced in all these professional sports. And you would think that these sports don't have a lot in common, but ultimately, philosophy's a mental game as most sports are. In this episode, we're talking about managing emotions, particularly self-destructive emotions, that will make you better at what you do, whether it's pushing through some physical limit or ignoring the cheers and cheers of the crowd. And I hope you enjoy this episode, which you can also see on YouTube if you click the link below. Senator, because the body has to be treated rigorously so that it may not be disobedient to the mind.

I just did my Sunday workout. The idea of exercise is that one, it's good for the body, but two, it's good for the mind. It's training, it's a metaphor. Who's in charge, the little voice in your head that's telling you, I'm no further to go, or is it your willpower that's in charge. So the Stoics practice sports, whether it's Crescipes, who's a distance runner, whether it's Epictetus and Mark's Relius who clearly wrestled, clearly enjoyed hunting, getting outside, doing hard stuff, treating the body rigorously, is a philosophical exercise. It's training you to decide who's going to be in charge. It's training you to build up your willpower.

When you train in distance running, you train at your tea pace, like 80, 90% of your fastest pace, you're trying to get your threshold up higher and higher. So as you go into competition, as you continue to push yourself, what used to be hard is now average. So still it is always pushing themselves. That's why we get outside and get active. Sounded mine in a strong body. That's the idea. The first thing that came to my mind, KG,

it was this one instance where we were playing each other. And he was an average trash dog. Yes. And not only do they use it to get in your head, but just something thrown out to where, if you give it attention, now they're hyped up too. Yeah. And so I took the bait. I took the bait this one time.

And I had one of, not the worst game in my career, but I remember it, that's how bad it was. And he gets into his zone and he pretty much dominates me. And I remember just like losing sleep, like having sleepless nights. Like, he got the best of me. He called me a momma's boy. And I lost it because you know that piece of trash talk

it really gets to you if it's true, right? Right, yeah, that's, right, right. They're throwing a bunch of stuff out there. And one percent of it's true. That's the only thing you would hear. It's because they want to get in your head. They want to rattle you. They want to upset you.

They're trying to provoke a reaction. And I kind of think like life is kind of trash talking as to. You know, like life is trying to distract us, upset us, throw us off our game. And you have to be that person who they can just like lock little bit more attractive, you can just be a little bit more attractive, you can just be a little bit more attractive, you can just be a little bit more attractive, you can just be a little bit more attractive, you can just be a little bit more attractive, you can just be a little bit more attractive,

you can just be a little bit more attractive, you can just be a little bit more attractive, you can just be a little bit more attractive, you can just be a little bit more attractive, you can just be a little bit more attractive, you can just be a little bit more attractive, you can just be a little bit more attractive, successful. One thing you learn in endurance sports is that you always have further to go than you think is possible. Your body is telling you to quit or your mind is telling you to quit, but actually your

body is capable of more and you have to override this, you have to push past it. And so for me, the endurance sports and philosophy have helped me even as a writer, because whenever I feel like quitting, whenever I feel like it's not working, whenever I feel like it's Impossible, whenever I feel like I can't possibly go on any longer. I go I know this feeling. I've dealt with this before. Epic Titus talks about putting every impression up to the test. He talks about how a money changer knows what a counterfeit coin feels like, it sounds like. And when you do endurance sports, you get to that place where you know what weakness sounds like and feels like and what it's telling you to do and how you don't have to listen to that. Because of your practice, you know that most of those limitations, most of that desire to quit or stop or slow down is a lie. And you push past it, you push through it, and this gets you to where you want to go. All

growth is on the other side of resistance. Whether it's writing, whether it's in a relationship, whether it's in your work, whether it's in a creative pursuit, whether it's a business, all growth is on the other side of that resistance. And so having an endurance sport practice, something that you're trying to get good at, whether it's crossfit or weightlifting or running or rock climbing, something where you're constantly testing those reservations. And the whole practice is learning when to push through and when not to push through.

I can't recommend it highly enough. I know that getting outside and doing that stuff, it might not seem like what the Stoics are doing, what philosophers were doing, but in fact, it was what they were doing. The Stoics were athletes, and this practice is deeply important in to get into that philosophical place of resilience and fortitude.

Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water

from air and sunlight. Together, they discuss their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So, if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery. Yeah. As an athlete, I had the ability to grow physically with my skillset and then also through competition of failure.

So now five years out of being an athlete, I'm missing that. So that's why we hired a performance coach to help us, like where do you find growth in your life? Sure. Like, it's one thing to read your books and read all these books, but like, to be of action and to have someone tell you you're wrong or to do it in a different way or try this.

You know, that's the benefit of this. People outside of you that if you can trust or give yourself up to it, they can see it so much more clearly than you can. And that's where I was not very coachable because I grew up around coaching. I knew a lot. I knew it was too much.

That's like, too much like your dad doing it. Yeah, you know, and like, I probably knew either equal or to more because I've been in so many situations around the sport where I was not coachable. So I think it actually makes for me to be a better coach because I understand that not everyone is receptive to coaching But the truth of it is if you really want to grow you've got to have people in your life that are willing to tell you you're wrong Yeah, to do it differently, so what was convincing to me about coaching like Tiger Woods has a coach

Like he doesn't need one, but he has a coach, right? Yeah, when you look at stoicism Most of the early stokes had sort of stic tutors early on who were sort of advisors of their whole life. I think historically not only should you have like coaches, you should have advisors, you should have tutors. So overcoming obstacles is really about persistence and dedication. It's also about following a methodical process. I talk about Nick Sabin and the idea of the process which builds Alabama and to perhaps the greatest college football dynasty in the history of the game. How does Sabin do this? It's not about focusing on winning. It's not about focusing on the playoffs. It's not about the championship. It's not even about the

fourth quarter. It's not even about the first game of the season. He wants players to focus on the immediate thing in front of you. The average down in football is like seven seconds. He says, focus doing your job. These seven seconds. You accumulate a piece by piece. Zeno says, well being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. The process is small and humble, but it's ultimately unbeatable. And even writing the obstacles the way was, okay, first I got to do a proposal. Then I got to sell. Then I got to start the book. Then I got to write not the whole thing,

but just the first sentence. And then the next sentence, and then chapter one, and chapter two, and chapter three. And even getting it to sell, you know, it doesn't sell when it first comes out. It's only six years later that it hits the best seller list for the first time. It takes six years to sell a million copies.

But that's because I never quit on it. I never got distracted by external results. I just focused every day on doing a little thing to make me and the book a little bit better. If there's one thing that philosophy can teach any athlete, whether you're an amateur, whether you're a collegiate prospect, whether you're a top ranked recruiter, whether you're making millions of dollars in the pros, it's something that I talked about to the Cleveland Browns this year when they had me talk about stoicism. What I said, I started my talk and I said, look, everyone in this room controls one thing.

They control how they play. You don't control what your teammates do. You control how you play. You don't control what they say about you on Twitter. You control how you play. You don't control the size of your contract. You control how you play. You don't control what they say about you from the stands.

You control how you play. You don't control what the ref stands, you control how you play. You don't control what the ref says, control how you play. You don't control whether it's snowing, you don't control whether it's raining, you don't control whether it's a hundred degrees, you can control how you play. You don't control whether your teammates get hurt, you don't control if your teammates are fair, you don't control if the guy in the position ahead of you wants to groom you and mentor you or not, you control how you play. You don't control whether you're opponent's cheat.

You control how you play. You don't control if your coach is a bully and he screams at you. You control how you play. You don't control if people are doubting you. If they don't believe in you, you control how you play. You don't control if people are doubting you if they don't believe in you You control how you play. You don't control Yesterday's game you can show how you play today. You don't control if you've lost to this team a thousand times

You can show how you play. You don't control if your team wins. You can show how you play. You don't control if you lose You can show how you play. All you control if it's not clear you control how you play. You don't control if you lose. You control how you play. All you control, if it's not clear enough, is how you play right now, right the second. Whether there's doubters, whether you're being adored, all you control is how you play. The effort that you bring, the decisions you make, the principles by which you operate. And that's ultimately all you can judge yourself on. You don't control the outcome. You don't control the facts.

You don't control anything, but how you play. But if we can focus on this, the stoke said, if we can focus exclusively on what we control, not only be happier, we'll have way more energy and way more to focus on what is in front of us while everyone else waste time whining about, complaining about worrying about, thinking about, bragging about what they don't control. Thank you so much for supporting Daily Stoke. Go to DailyStoke.com slash store and carry some of the products that I use on a daily

basis. These are my everyday carries. I hope you check it out. DailyStoke.com slash store. Thank you for all the support. Hey, Prime Members. You can listen to the Daily Stoke early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondry Plus in Apple Podcasts. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life.

But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking.

Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app.

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