The Daily Stoic - Do You Have That Dog In You? | Ask Daily Stoic

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 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. Inia. The Stoics spoke about kindness. They tried not to get upset. They tried to avoid arguments. But you know what? Sometimes somebody just needed to say something. And sometimes the truth hurts.

Starting point is 00:01:14 The Stoics were inspired and shaped by the example of Diogenes, the dog of Sino. Diogenes was known for his brutal takedowns of hypocrites, of fools, and of the powerful. And it was his example that Zeno was following when he eviscerated a pompous student named Aristot, after years of tolerating his interruptions and disagreements. It was Diogenes that Agrippinus channeled when he responded to exile with a shrug and a dismissal, saying, okay, we'll take our lunch on the road. And it was Diogenes who Epictetus admired and looked up to perhaps more than any of the other Stoics. While they never sought to hurt anyone's feelings, they didn't indulge people's. pleasant fictions either. They spoke up. They defended themselves. They protected what was important.

Starting point is 00:02:04 They had that dog in them. A game one at that. And what about you? Does political correctness have you cowed? Are you too differential? Are you easily fooled by appearances and status? Do you say what truth needs to be said? Because sometimes philosophy isn't polite. It's powerful. And the truth? Well, it bites. Which is why we created Stoicism 101, ancient philosophy for your actual life. It's a 14-day course that delivers the core principles of stoicism in a way you can actually apply it every day, the same way the Stoics practice themselves. It's one of our most popular courses. We've been running it for years. There's going to be a private discussion board, all the previously recorded office hours from the other times we've run Stoicism 101, along with a bunch of other awesome stuff.

Starting point is 00:02:57 and to join us, you have to sign up by Monday, November 10th. That's when it starts. I'll link to that in today's show notes, or you can just go to dailystoic.com slash 101 to join us. This podcast is sponsored by Zbiotics and their game-changing product pre-alcohol. By taking Z-biotics pre-alcohol, drinking alcohol no longer means you have to make the choice

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Starting point is 00:05:33 and conditions apply. If you're hiring, do it the right way with Indeed. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. Doing a Q&A today. As you know, I get to travel all over the world giving talks. In the last year or two alone, I've into Dubai and Brazil and Hawaii and Australia, in Europe and Canada. But most of the talks that I give are not available to the public, right? I'm usually talking to companies or groups or conferences. But back in September, I spoke here in Austin, in Westlake, about a thousand people. And many of you came. And that was awesome. And it was great to see you. Afterwards, I answered a bunch of questions. And I'm going to bring you a chunk of that today. And if you want to come

Starting point is 00:06:20 see me talk and ask me some questions while I'm going to be in Seattle on December 3rd, San Diego on February 5th, and Phoenix on February 27. All of those tickets are available at Daily Stoic Live. I'm excited to see you and we'll talk very soon. I guess my question is, it's very interesting, you being a clearly more left-leaning person in the self-help space that it's not inherently political, but I feel like these days more and more kind of, there's sort of a kind of stigma around it, like it being more kind of right-leaning,

Starting point is 00:07:03 like the grind-set mentality, I guess, if you know what I mean. I'm just curious, like, how does that impact your work and how does that impact the way that you try to present yourself, I guess? Yeah, I don't think that much about it. I just try to say what I think and do what I think, think is right. I have tried not to be radicalized by what's happening in the world and also not radicalized by what I read and see on the internet. I feel like I haven't changed that much, except for maybe the way that stoicism slowly works on you. I think I came to stoicism for the reason

Starting point is 00:07:42 that a lot of young men come to it. Maybe you came to it about how it can make you stronger, faster, smarter, whatever, all of that. But there is a, as I said, a strong ethical component. It's ethical core is this idea of justice, this idea of the common good, this idea that we're made for each other,

Starting point is 00:08:01 this idea that if it's bad for the world, it's bad for us, and vice versa. And how do we think about this? I don't have a good answer for why that is left-coded these days. It seems pretty basic, like a basic part of just being a not-shitty person, but I don't see myself as a particularly political person.

Starting point is 00:08:25 I think most of what I talk about has to do with like basic social contract stuff, like just what our obligations are to our fellow human beings, what our basic constitutional rights and freedoms are. That's kind of what I think about it. I'm not like, we should vote for this law and that law and this policy. That's not usually what I talk about. Sometimes I do if I'm talking to my friends or whatever,

Starting point is 00:08:46 For the most part, I'm talking about these at the, I think, the high level are philosophical obligations. That's kind of how I think about it. But thank you. Stoicism seems to explore the mind and body connection. So I'm curious, when you're speaking, do you make a distinction between when you're speaking from your head and your heart? That's a good question. I don't know. I guess I wouldn't know exactly what the difference is.

Starting point is 00:09:11 I don't think about it that much. So maybe that means I'm in my body, not in my head. I do think that when you are in a flow state, when you are locked in, you know, that's where good performance comes from. It's not a super conscious, deliberate thing, but it is also the result of the deliberate practice and training that precedes it. And I think that's true, both like on a basic performance level, we're talking about writing or playing music or, you know, shooting a basketball, but I think it's also true for these

Starting point is 00:09:41 ideas of virtue, too. Like, what do you do in the moment? You don't sit down and weigh all the options. Like, that was what I was curious when I was talking to, Kyle, how much thinking went in to the decision to jump on a grenade? And the answer usually is not much at all, because he's not just trained for it literally, but there's a spiritual tradition and an idea

Starting point is 00:10:09 and a mindset that they learn about and hear about and come deeply to believe in. And the idea is that in the moment, you do the thing. Epictita said, like, the whole point of philosophy is so that whatever happens in life, you can go, this is what I trained for. But I think it's actually not even that. That's like afterwards. You go, oh, I trained for that.

Starting point is 00:10:31 But in the moment, you do what the training says you should do. In your opening, when you're talking about courage, one of the things that you raised was the need to be our authentic selves. even if it comes to us at a cost and gave example of the person standing up to Nero, I forgot the name already. How does that apply? What is your perspective on establishing close personal relationships? Is that a different standard or...

Starting point is 00:11:07 I don't know how close a personal relationship can be if it's not based on your authentic self, right? if you're pretending to be someone for someone else's sake, that's probably not a good foundation of a relationship. But, you know, it's funny, in the UK a few years ago, there was this guy who was just kind of a jerk. He didn't bathe. He didn't take care of himself.

Starting point is 00:11:27 He was rude to his coworkers. He said inappropriate things at the office. And then finally he was fired, and he sued. And in his lawsuit, he said, you know, he was being discriminated against for his religion, which was stoicism. and he was just indifferent to all these things. Although the Stoics do have a bit of the cynic tradition in them,

Starting point is 00:11:50 sort of not caring about certain conventions or superficial things, the Stoics were functioning members of society and being in a functional relationship. I don't think you always say everything that pops into your head, especially because this is, I think, a big part of Stoicism. It's not that you don't. don't think it. It's that you think it in this moment because you're upset, because you're worried, you're frustrated, you're reacting. And I think stoicism is this idea of like, I can have the opinion, the impression, the initial thought, but I don't have to do it. And maybe I'm not going to do it if it's not actually important and it's going to needlessly hurt someone's feeling. So I think the stoics are functioning members of society, which means empathy and compassion and connection and wearing clothes and things like that.

Starting point is 00:12:44 Hi, Ryan. What do you feel the difference is between wisdom and intelligence? Yeah, I think that's kind of the ultimate question. There are obviously lots of really smart people who are good at one thing or good at a handful of things. And then I don't know if we would classify them as wise. There are obviously also ways in which wise and smart people can do very stupid. things. And one of the ideas in the book is like, okay, here's all the ways that we acquire

Starting point is 00:13:17 and move towards wisdom. And then the middle part of the book is all about how we acquire or move towards stupidity, all the ways that we make ourselves foolish by the information that we consume, things like ego, things like not taking care of ourselves. It doesn't matter how smart and studied you are. If you're not sleeping, at some point you're, you know, cognitively equivalent to a drunk person. If you are burning yourself out, you're obviously not going to be wise. If you, we all, our mind is our friend. It's how we get wisdom. And then our mind is also riddled with cognitive biases that we have to be aware of. And then, of course, there's this idea of self-awareness also. You can be aware of a lot of things. But if you don't have self-awareness,

Starting point is 00:14:03 that's a big problem. That's what was inscribed at the Temple of Apollo, right? This idea of knowing myself. So how many people can you say you've ever met in your life who you would define us truly self-aware? It's kind of a rare, elusive thing. So to me, intelligence is important. It's very necessary. And then wisdom has to be somewhere beyond that. Just like, you know, all the virtues I think exist on kind of a spectrum, as Aristotle would say. So just as maybe there's a distinction between bravery and courage and heroism, right, spectrum, I think wisdom we want to say It's the end of the spectrum, and it's the hardest and rarest of them. Just to let you know, I'm going to be doing three more live dates in the coming months.

Starting point is 00:14:53 I'd love to see you in Seattle, Washington on December 3rd, San Diego on February 5th, and Phoenix, Arizona on February 27th. The talk in Austin sold out. My tour last year sold out. So grab these tickets while you can. I did a wonderful talk back in Seattle with Robert Green, which was one of my favorites. So I'm going to be there. You can ask me questions, and I'll be talking Stoicism and the ideas in the new book. Just go to Daily StoicLive.com. Hey, it's Ryan.

Starting point is 00:15:31 Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic 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 years 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. a content creator, why they need to exist. That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like the Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show but not listen to ads, well, we have partnered with Supercast to bring you a...

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The Daily Stoic - Do You Have That Dog In You? | Ask Daily Stoic

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