The Daily Stoic - Do This Every Day | Clarify Your Intentions

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

The pages were a safe space. A place away from the intrigues of court. A place away from war and death and pestilence. A place to process his stress, his anxieties, his fears.We can see in Meditations what these meditations were doing for Marcus Aurelius—they were doing what journaling can do for all of us. Give us space to think, space to calm down, space to get perspective, space to be grateful, space to remind ourselves of what’s important.-And in today's Daily Stoic journal reading, Ryan reminds us to clarify our intentions, that all of our efforts must be directed towards something which makes us less distracted along the way. When we clarify who we want to be and where we want to be we define our own success.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check 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.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the Daily Stoic. My book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stokes with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works. The pages were a safe space, a place away from the intrigues

of court to place, away from war and death and pestilence, a place to process his stress, his anxieties and his fears. We can see in Meditations what Meditations was doing for Marcus Aurelius. It was doing what journaling can do for all of us. Give us space to think, space to calm down, space to get perspective, space to be grateful, space to remind ourselves of what's important. It's also interesting, though, to see that Mark Serious was tough on himself in his journal too.

They didn't just use the space to snipe at others or judge them. He was also asking himself some hard, probing questions. What am I doing with my soul, he asks in book five? And then he says that he he that you need to interrogate yourself to find out what inhabits your so-called mind and kind of soul you have now, a child's soul, he says, an adolescent, so a woman's a tyrant soul, the soul of a predator, or its prey. Marcus Reales was an all-powerful emperor. No one was interrogating him, no one else was subjecting him to these tough questions. So we knew that if he didn't do it, no one would. Well, today,

you are concerned with your soul because it's nobody else's business. So if you don't interrogate yourself about it, if you're not examining your own mind, who will? If you're not using the pages of your journal to get to self-awareness, to get to clarity, how will you ever get there? That's what I do. In my daily stroke journal, I bust it open every day. I brought it with me. I'm recording this on vacation with the family.

Brought it with me as I always do. And after I wrap this up, I'm gonna go sit in the other room and do my nightly journaling. I keep my daily stroke journal in this little cool leather case. It's cold, some note cards and a pen. Also, protects it when I throw it in my bag

or my kids knock it off the nightstand. So you can check all that out, and store it at dailystodial.com. You can get the dailystodial journal anywhere, books are sold. I also just started now for the eighth year, my one line a day journal, which I love. I grabbed that on Amazon,

but we sell them at the painted porch also. I also just write in a blank journal. The point is find something that works for you, whether it's the Daily Stoke Journal or anything, five-minute journal. My sister just sent me a picture of her using the five-minute journal this morning. So the point is find a journal that works for you, start a journaling habit. This is the great time of year to do it. And I hope to hear from you not soon, but in a long time, you tell me, I heard you on this podcast,

and now for the last several years I've been doing a journaling habit and it's made a huge difference for me. I've gotten to know myself better and all that. That's what today's message is about. Good after. I remember very specifically I rented an Airbnb in Santa Barbara. I was driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I just sold my first book and I'd been working on it and I just needed a break.

I needed to get away and I needed to have some quiet time to write. And that was one of the first Airbnb's I ever started with. it and I just needed a break, I needed to get away and I needed to have some quiet time to write. And that was one of the first Airbnb's I ever started with and then when the book came out and did, well, I bought my first house, I would rent that house out during South by Southwest and F1 and other events in Austin. Maybe you've been in a similar place. You've stayed in an Airbnb and you thought yourself, this actually seems pretty doable. Maybe my place could be an Airbnb.

You could rent a spare bedroom, you could rent your whole place when you're away. Maybe you're planning a ski get away this winter or you're planning on going somewhere warmer while you're away, you could Airbnb your home and make some extra money towards the trip. Whether you use the extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home could be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host? Check out how I built this on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Clarify your intentions. This is the January 5th entry from the Daily Stoke. I am holding the Plothbound edition. We have a leatherbound edition.

But today's entry starts with a quote from Seneca. He says in on tranquility of the mind, let all your efforts be directed to something. Let it keep that end in view. It's not activity that disturbs people, but false conceptions of things that drive the mad. And then I write, law 29 of the 48 laws of power is planned all the way to the end. Robert Green writes, by planning to the end, you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and you will know when to stop. Gently guide fortune and help determine the future by thinking far ahead.

And as it happens, the second habit in the seven habits of highly effective people is begin with an end in mind. Having an end in mind is no guarantee that you'll reach it, no stoic would tolerate that assumption, but not having an end in mind is a guarantee that you'll reach it, no stoic would tolerate that assumption, but not having an end in mind is a guarantee that you won't. To the stoics, false conceptions are responsible not just for disturbances in the soul, but for chaotic and dysfunctional lives and operations. When your efforts are not directed at a cause or a purpose, how will you know what to do day in and day out? How will you know what to say no to and what to say yes to? How will you know when you've had enough when you've reached your goal? When you've gotten off track, if you have never defined what those things are, the answer is that you cannot. And so you are driven into failure or worse, into madness by the oblivion of directionlessness. One of my

favorite quotes from Seneca and actually Montenio quotes it as well, he says, you know, if you know not what port you are sailing to, no wind is favorable. If you don't know where you're trying to go, if you don't know what the end is, if you don't know what you want your life to look like, what you want this project to look like, if you haven't defined what success is to you, you're going to have a real hard time not just getting there, but making every individual decision in the course of your life. When I consult with people, that's one of the things I ask them almost always, especially authors, I've got what to success look like to you. Because so often we just go, well, I want what that person has and that person

has and that person has and that person has and that person has right This is what Renas Gerard says we don't know what we want So we want what other people want we just sort of default to the defaults And we haven't actually thought about how that fits for us what that means to us what that actually looks like if We'll actually be happy with that thing that we're sacrificing and working so hard for So when you clarify your intentions when you get clear about what you're trying to do, who you're trying to be, who you want to be, when you get there, you're going to be in a tough spot.

And so at the beginning of a year, it's a great time to think about that, to think about who you want to be, to think about what you want to do, to think about what success looks like, and define it concretely, not abstractly, but concretely. The reason Robert talks about planning all the way to the end is he talks about, this isn't just a problem of somebody at step zero, not knowing where to go, but this is the person who on step 99 doesn't stop after one more step. They go through that, they keep going, and they turn, they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, they go too far, they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They go too far.

They go past the mark they aimed for. So you plan all the way to the end. So you're not taken to excess. So you're not distracted. And so you know how to plan what to do. You know what's important. If you don't know where you're sailing, no wind is favorable, right? You can't ask for directions to a destination you haven't defined.

So today here at the beginning of the year, let's spend some time defining precisely that our intentions, our goals, what success looks like to us. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.

Hey, it's Guy Ross here, the host of How I Built This. It's a podcast that gives you a front-row seat to how the greatest businesses were built, and the innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists behind them. Every week I speak to someone new, like Max Levchin, a computer genius who built PayPal into a successful business against all odds, with future visionaries like Elon Musk and Peter Teal, or Emmett Sheer, a gamer who turned a 24-7 live stream of his friend into the billion dollar gaming platform Twitch. And all of these great conversations can help you learn how

to think big and take risks and navigate crises in life and work from people who've done all of that and more. Follow how I built this on the Wondering app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to how I built this early and add free right now on Wondering Plus.