The Daily Stoic - Be Patient With Them | Protect Your Own Good

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Be patient with them. When we were kids, life was often overwhelming and bewildering. We would fall asleep in a car seat or a stroller and wake up hours later in a dark room with no idea how we got there. Everything was new. We had to walk into a classroom for the first time, sit at something called the desk, and stay there all day.

Starting point is 00:00:32 away from our parents, learning from strangers. We were constantly being subjected to rules that no one had explained, told to do things that we didn't understand. But ultimately, adults understand that it's difficult to be a kid, and that's why we're patient with them, why we take our time to explain things to them, why we don't hold their mistakes or their tantrums against them. But is it really all that different to be an adult? Many of us are still walking into new rooms for the first time, new jobs, new relationships, old relationships with new problems, children of our own to care for, aging parents who now need us in ways they never did before, responsibilities we didn't have yesterday, rules and practices and

Starting point is 00:01:11 cultural norms that are constantly changing. In Marcus Reelius' famous passage about the obnoxious and rude and frustrating people he knows he'll meet in the course of a day, he makes a really important point. He reminds himself and us why people are like this. They are like this, he says, because they don't know better, because no one taught them. All these things result from there not knowing what is good and what is evil, he writes. And how can I be angry at my kin or even hateful towards them? Everyone is new to this life thing. We're all figuring it out as we go, still reacting, still afraid, still working through lessons we haven't mastered yet.

Starting point is 00:01:47 Like a kid, we've never been this age before. Nobody has. So let's be patient. Let's assume the best. Let's help them do better. Hey, it's Ryan. I'm on the road right now doing talks all over the country. I love traveling.

Starting point is 00:02:06 I love going to new places. The thing I don't like about it, though, is I don't get to sleep in my bed at home, which I like, not just because it's home, but because I have an eight sleep on my bed. I've had an eight sleep on my bed, I don't know, five years. I love it. My wife loves it. We love it because it cools the mattress. It heats the mattress.

Starting point is 00:02:24 You can have different sides cool at different temperatures. It's even how I wake up in the morning. Instead of an annoying alarm clock or that, you know, horrible sound on your phone, it lightly buzzes you awake, and then when you're up, you want to turn up, off, you just tap the mattress. There's all sorts of awesome features in my eight sleep. It was worth every penny. The point is, I love my eight sleep and the eight sleep keeps getting better. Eight sleep users report up to 32% better sleep and up to 34% better deep sleep. This is all stuff you love. You can use the code Daily Stoic at eightsleep.com slash daily stoic right now for up to

Starting point is 00:03:00 $500 off. And this fourth of July sale ends on July 12. So don't wait. and if you have an HSA or an FSA, some AteSleep stuff qualifies for that as well. Through TrueMed and qualified customers save about 30% on average. Check your eligibility at trumed.com slash eight sleep before you buy. TrueMed is for qualified customers. HSA and FSA tax savings may vary. I was asking some people at the staff meeting for Daily Stoke the other day if anyone uses whatnot. And apparently I'm way out of the loop because not only did a bunch of them use it, they raved about it.

Starting point is 00:03:36 And look, when you check out the app, you sort of get it. It's really exciting, honestly. They're seeing all these sales happen in real time, and you see the face of the person who's selling it, which is, of course, not really what online shopping typically is. If you don't know what whatnot is, it is the largest dedicated live shopping platform, beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury, fashion,

Starting point is 00:03:58 even cookies. And there are people there selling stuff, building real thriving businesses. And anyone can start selling on whatnot, whether your business is very big, very small, whether it doesn't even exist yet. People selling on What Not sell 10 times more than other major marketplaces because you're not just listing products, you're building a real connection with your buyer. Check it out today.

Starting point is 00:04:19 You just go to What Not in the App Store. That's W-H-A-T-N-O-T, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, What-N-O-T, What-N-N-O-T, download it and you can start selling right away. Protect Your Own Good Musonius Rufus, one of Epictetus's teachers, taught that human beings are all born with an innate goodness, or as he put it, with an inclination to virtue. It's our choices that decide whether that goodness comes out or not. We're not bad people, essentially, though we might sometimes do bad things. The purpose of Stoicism, then, is to remind us of that goodness and to help us work hard to protect it.

Starting point is 00:05:02 So spend some time this week writing about the choices you can make, the actions you can take, to do just that. And this is from the Daily Stoak Journal, 365 days of writing and reflection on the art of living, which I use myself every morning. I love the little prompts. Here is Epictetus's discourses, who, as you know, Epictetus was Mousonius Rufus's student. Protect your own good and all that you do. And as concerns everything else, take what is given as far as you can make reasoned use of it. If you don't, you'll be unlucky, prone to failure, hindered, and stymied. That's discourses for three. And then Marcus Aurelius' meditations, Marcus then influenced by Epictetus. So Musonius teaches Stoicism to Epictetus, whose writings then survive and make their way to Marksurelius.

Starting point is 00:05:49 Marks Rilius, as it happens, is introduced to Stoicism through Junius Rusticus, who loans him his copy of Epictetus. Dig deep within yourself, Marcus writes in Meditation 759, for there is a fountain of goodness ever ready to flow. You will keep digging. I guess what the Stoics are doing here is really pushing back on this notion of original sin that we're toxic, broken, horrible people, that human nature is something to be feared. There is a darkness in us, but there's also incredible good. And I think the Stoics are talking about what side of you are you going to nurture? What side is going to come out? What side are you going to look for?

Starting point is 00:06:26 What side are you going to reveal? And Musonius and Epictetus and Marcus are all tested in incredible ways. Musonius is exiled three times, perhaps four. Epictetus, you know, experiences the incredible injustice of slavery. Marcus Aurelius is given absolute power. And as they say, power reveals, but I think also adversity reveals. And in both Musonius and Epictetus's case, adversity revealed an unbreakable goodness, a commitment, a tenacity, a perseverance, and unswerving belief in these principles that we're talking about now. And then Marcus, it really is, you know, he wasn't challenged the same way.

Starting point is 00:07:09 Although life did challenge him with loss and grief and pain and sickness. But it also challenged him with a great bounty of good fortune. And that too tested his character. It tested whether there really was goodness inside of him and what side of him he was going to reveal. So as you go out into the world this week, think about who you really are underneath. Think about what kind of character you've been cultivating. And let's show people who we are and who we can be and what we actually believe. As Marcus says, let's not waste time arguing what a good man should be.

Starting point is 00:07:44 Let's be one. Let's be the best we can for ourselves, for our family, for our world. And I'll talk to you soon. Hey there, just a heads up. I'm going to be on tour this fall. You can see me in Australia, in New Zealand, in October, in August. I'm mixing my months up here, but in August, you can see me in Chicago, in Minneapolis, in Detroit.

Starting point is 00:08:07 Then I'll be on the East Coast sometime in November and December. Anyways, grab tickets to that, DailyStoiclive.com. I hope to see you there.

The Daily Stoic - Be Patient With Them | Protect Your Own Good

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.