The Daily Stoic - Can You Believe We Can Do This? | Only Fools Rush In

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

We’re doing better than it sometimes feels. Let us marvel at the cooperation that is possible—considering the flawed and petty humans it depends on. 📚 Books Mentioned: Zero to One by Peter ThielLives of the Stoics by Ryan HolidayBlue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan KimThe Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday🎥 Watch Dr. Laurie Santos' episode on The Daily Stoic YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8OARstQGfM📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women help you learn from them. to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visitdailystoic.com. how disconnected and unkind we are to each other, how dysfunctional our political system is, how broken our roads and institutions are. The problems we cannot seem to solve, we could do

so much better. We just know it. And yet the Stoics remind us that every situation has two handles, that there is more than one way to look at everything. When Dr. Lori Santos was on the Daily Stoic podcast, you should know who she is. Her happiness course at Yale is one of the most popular in the 300-year history of the school. It's a must-listen episode. She lamented the problems with today's society, and then drawing on that exact exercise from Epictetus, she noted that human beings do manage to cooperate at a level

that essentially no other species has ever managed. Consider a group of other predators, she pointed out, locked in a metal tube called an airplane for several hours. Think of the bloodbath. And, of course, remember that they could not have invented airplanes are the incredibly complex international organizations that manage air travel. So, yeah, yeah, we could do better. We could use more bipartisanship and neighborliness and cooperation,

and it is our stoic duty to model that behavior as individuals. But human society also deserves some credit. Modern society deserves some credit, too. For all the problems and failures of the pandemic, Marcus Reelius' Rome did much worse in every single way during the Antonine plate. For all the failures of our modern world, politicians, the founding fathers steeped in classical virtue, could not have even imagined the international allies and coordination we take for granted today, nor were they capable of eradicating

slavery and other injustices that we have rightfully addressed. We are doing better than it feels sometimes. So let us marvel at the cooperation that is possible, considering the flawed and petty humans that depend on it. Let us be grateful for the problems we have solved. Let us embrace and build the connections and kindness that is there. And do listen to the episode with Lori Santos. It's really good. Let me just bring me a little chunk of it. And then I'll link to the rest of it in today show. It's worth downloading and listening to for sure. It is amazing that we have one of that we get to be in one of the few species that all that happens is somebody says a nasty thing to the white attendant. Right. If we can by and large cooperate and close with each other.

So even in like the O'Hare terribleness, you can find, you know, these moments about. But as we were just saying, it's hard. And it's hard in part because our mind. is Bill with this negativity bias. We instantly go to the terrible things. It takes no work whatsoever to find, like, how mad I am about O'Hare, the flight's delayed, right? But it takes some work to notice the neutral stuff or the good stuff. But this is what I think that the kind of training and the practice is about, right, is that you build up the ability to do that better and better.

The other day after we dropped our kids off at camp, my wife and I realized we had a little more time for you to be at the office. So we took a nice hike through one of my favorite parks, McKinney Falls here in Austin. And when you live in active life like that, you got to take care of yourself. You got to make sure you're getting nutrients if you want to go on adventures. And Kachava's whole body meal shakes help you do just that. You mix it up with your favorite alternative milk or water and you're ready to go. You can throw in a little fruit or nut butter if you want to turn it in kind of a smoothie. With 25 grams of 100% plant-based protein.

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That's Kachava, K-A-C-H-A-V-A-D-C-A-D-C-A-V-A-D-C-O-C-T-O-C-C-T-O. Searching for a romantic summer getaway. Escape with Rich Girl Summer, the new Audible Original from Lily-Cchew. The exquisitely talented Philippa Sue, returning to narrate her fifth Lily Chew title. This time, Philippa is joined by her real-life husband, Stephen Pasquale, set in Toronto's wealthy cottage country, aka the Hamptons of Canada. Rich Girl Summer follows the story of Valerie, a down-on-her-luck event planner, posing as a socialite's long-lost daughter, while piecing together the secrets surrounding a mysterious family,

and falling deeper and deeper in love with the impossibly hard to read and infuriatingly handsome family assistant, Nico. Caught between pretending to belong and unexpectedly finding where she truly fits in, Valerie learns her summer is about to get far more complicated than she ever planned. She's in over her head and head over heels. Listen to Rich Girl Summer, now on Audible. Go to audible.com slash rich girl summer. Only fools rush in. This is today's entry in the daily stoic. A good person is invincible. Epictetus says in Discourse is 3.6, for they don't rush into contests in which they aren't the strongest. If you want their property, take it. Take also their staff, profession, and body. But you will never compel what they set out for nor trap them in what they should avoid. For the only contest the good person enters is that of their own reasoned choice. How can such a person not be invincible? And then the entry is one of the most fundamental principles of martial arts. is that strength should not go against strength.

That is, don't try to beat your opponent where they are strongest. But for some reason, that's exactly what we try to do when we undertake some impossible task we haven't bothered to think through, or we let someone put us on the spot, or we say yes to whatever comes our way. Some people think that choosing your battles is weak or calculating. But how could reducing the amount of times we fail or minimize the needless injuries inflicted on us be weak? How's that a bad thing?

As the saying goes, discretion is the better part of valor. Stoics call it reasoned choice. That means be reasonable. Think hard before choosing and make yourself unbeatable. A book I've recommended many, many times I sell it here at the painted porch is zero to one by Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel says the whole point of business in life is to find where you have a monopoly, where you're the only one doing that thing. There's another book that I rave about that we carry here in the store called Blue Ocean Strategy. There's another one called Blue Ocean Shift that actually did the marketing for it. But the idea is red oceans is there's lots of competition. That means being like everyone else, wanting the things that everyone

wants, focusing on what's out of your control like everyone else. It's a far better thing to focus on what is in your control, on being you and your unique self. And the Stoics actually have a lot about this, right? Agrippinus, we talk about in lives of the Stoics, he says, I want to be the red thread in the sweater, not like the other threads. I want to stand up. And that's the idea. Epictetus says, Walk alone, right? Look around you. Be who you are. To me, what he's saying is that when you try to be like someone else, you lose. When you want the things that other people want, you lose. When you enter something where you are trying to be like someone or something that you're not supposed to be, you lose. But when you are yourself, when you stand for what you stand for, when you do what you know is right, that's when you win. Even if you, quote unquote, lose, there's an interview I was reading with the architect, Frank Gary. And he would say when he was talking to architects who were just starting out, he'd get them to all get out a piece of paper.

And he would say, write your signature on this paper. And then he'd spread them out and have the whole class looking up. And he'd say, they all look different. That's you. That's you. So stay with that forever. And I think that's what Epictetus is saying. here. You are a unique person. You have a totally unique set of DNA and experiences and values,

and you are that red thread. So don't make yourself like the others. Don't sell out, right? When you are, when you stick to who you are, when you're true to that, you win no matter what. You have a monopoly on you. Don't give that monopoly away. Don't forfeit it. Don't lose it. Another rendering of that Epictetus quote, he says, you can always win if you only enter competitions where winning is up to you. When your focus, as Mark Serrilla says, on what other people say or do, on getting approval, on having certain gatekeepers accept you or open things up to you, well, that's when you have set yourself up to be defeated.

And even if you win, you've still lost in some sense that you've given up something that was uniquely you and uniquely yours. I think that's a shame. And so that's what I want to leave you there. Stick with what's up to you. Stick with who you are. Go where you have that monopoly. Competition is for losers, as Peter Thiel said. So go where you're a winner. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoog podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years. as we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.