The Daily Stoic - Can You Subject Yourself To This? | A Week Without Complaining

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 to 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, visit DailyStstoic.com. It's natural, it's common, it's also a cognitive bias. We have our assumptions and we stick to them.

Starting point is 00:01:02 We seek out confirmation of them. We do not want to have to change them. This is comfortable and it's also a recipe for getting things terribly wrong and a Stoic must fight it. This is why Seneca tried to read books from rival schools. Why Marcus Aurelius said he appreciated people who disagreed with him or even corrected him. Certainly a rare thing for an emperor in those days. When we had the writer Wright Thompson on the Daily Stoke podcast, which you can listen to, or can even watch the episode, it's great, I'll link to it on YouTube. He talked about something he did for his book, which I loved.

Starting point is 00:01:36 It's called The Barn, The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi. Using a cybersecurity term, he talked about the importance of red teaming your beliefs to guard against preconceived notions or Incorrect assumptions. It's like when you're writing the detail you love. Yeah, the triple check. Yes, cuz like yeah So the my researcher and fact checker on this book is a woman named Katie King And there are a couple of things in there that were so crazy that I started trying to can I was like, man, could this possibly be? So there were a couple of things I sent to her and I was like, I love this so much. I need you to like red team the shit out.

Starting point is 00:02:09 Like I need you to try to argue against it. And so like we did that. We had a fact check where I rented a house and we moved into this house for like a week. And all we did was we had a fact check. And we had a fact check. And we had a fact check. And we had a fact check. And we had a fact check. And we had a we did that. We had a fact check where I rented a house

Starting point is 00:02:25 and we moved into this house for a week. And all we did was tear it apart. Because I got to the point where page after page of details that are so ominous and menacing and crazy that I started to think, almost the opposite of the cognitive, I started to think, this can't be true. Yeah, but that's a really important skill

Starting point is 00:02:48 that you have to build. And a lot of people not only don't build it, they build the opposite of it because it's sort of hard work. It's also, as opposed to building, I think the natural state of being is cognitive dissonance. You have to go out of your way to sort of even come up with a intellectual framework

Starting point is 00:03:06 to start trying to chip away at it. You have to interrogate the thoughts, the beliefs, the views that you're most attached to, not to prove you're right, but to ensure you're not wrong. And Marcus Willis talked about this. He said, if anyone can refute me, I'll gladly change. It's the truth I'm after, he he said and the truth never harmed anyone what harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance you must understand that flip-flopping on

Starting point is 00:03:35 your beliefs is not a sign of weakness it's a source of strength neither is admitting error or even quitting in fact it's something that needs to be stopped we must constantly test what we think we know. We must red team our assumptions. We must seek out people who can refute us. We must go out of our way to go after the truth wherever it leads us. A week without complaining. Epictetus spoke often to his students about the need to give up blaming and complaining. In fact, he saw it as one of the primary measuring sticks of progress in the art of living. How much of life is wasted pointed fingers. His complaining ever

Starting point is 00:04:25 solved a single problem? Marcus Aurelius would say blame yourself or no one. This week try constructive feedback over complaining and responsibility over blame. And if something goes wrong, spend some time reflecting on what the true causes were. Don't waste a minute with complaints in your journal or out loud. This is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoke Journal, 366 Days of Writing on Reflection and the Art of Living by me, Ryan Holiday, and my co-author Stephen Hanselman. You can get this anywhere books are sold, although we also have signed copies in the Daily Stoke Store and of course at my bookstore, The Painted Ports here in Bastrop, Texas.

Starting point is 00:05:05 But we have three quotes from Epictetus today about complaints. He says, You must stop blaming God and not blame any person. You must completely control your desire and shift your avoidance to what lies within your reasoned choice. You must no longer feel anger, resentment, envy, or regret. That's the Discourses 322. For nothing outside my reasoned choice, he says, can hinder or harm it. My reasoned choice alone can do this to itself.

Starting point is 00:05:32 If we would lean this way whenever we fail and would blame only ourselves and remember that nothing but opinion is the cause of a troubled mind and uneasiness, then by God I swear we would be making progress. That's Discourses 3.19. Then he also says in in Coridion 1.3, but if you deem as your own only what is yours and what belongs to others is truly not yours, then no one will ever be able to coerce or stop you and you will find no one to blame or accuse. You will do nothing against your will and you will have no enemy and no one will harm

Starting point is 00:06:04 you because no harm Can affect you It's funny. Just as I was sitting here. I was thinking to myself Man, it's so hot. It's hot in my office. I have to turn off the AC when I record But one of my favorite quotes from Marcus realist about complaining which I actually also have in sort of fictionalized in the boy Who would be, he says, don't be heard complaining at court, not even to yourself. Right, there are so many parts of Marx's realist's job

Starting point is 00:06:33 that we get the sense that he didn't really like. He's kind of an introverted person, he's a good person, he wants to do what's right, he's not an ambitious person in the sense he doesn't want to dominate or win everything. And so it must have been so frustrating to be around these obnoxious, annoying, you know, dishonest people, these professional politicians, basically. But he catches himself. He's like, it's not even enough not to complain publicly. And of course, everyone would have

Starting point is 00:07:01 indulged his complaints. He's emperor. But he says, don't even complain in your own mind. And that is some higher level shit right there, isn't it? To not only be able to stop yourself from complaining, I think it was Will Bowen. He had the no complaint challenge. Every time you say a complaint, you have to move the bracelet from one wrist to the other. And the idea is, can you leave it on one wrist for 30 days? Can you get it in one spot for 30 days? No complaints. But imagine how most

Starting point is 00:07:29 of us would fail if even thinking about a complaint, not even verbalizing it, disqualified us. But that's the challenge of the Stoics. And I think Epictetus, though, is more honest when he talks about just progress. The less blame, the less complaining, the more responsibility you're taking, the more constructive you are. That's what matters. Are you making a little bit of progress every day? Are you moving forward? Are you complaining less?

Starting point is 00:07:58 Right? I think that's a fair way to think about it. So I thought the complaint, but I didn't say it. That's progress. But maybe next time I can just go the temperature is what the temperature is. If I want to do this thing that's what I have to put up with. So that's what it is. Thinking about it doesn't help me. It doesn't make me any cooler. Right. It just makes me frustrated. And that's why we try not to complain. So don't be heard complaining today, not even to yourself. That's the standard we're ascribing to. But could we

Starting point is 00:08:27 just make some progress? We just blame only ourselves? Or ideally no one? That's progress. Let's do it. Let's work for it. Let's make ourselves a little bit stronger as a result. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the daily Stoic as a result. honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.

The Daily Stoic - Can You Subject Yourself To This? | A Week Without Complaining

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