The Daily Stoic - Don’t Forget To Practice This

Episode Date: December 1, 2024

Those of us who have been blessed—whether it be love, time, or resources—have an opportunity and responsibility to share it with others. The more we give, the more we will receive.Join us in our annual Daily Stoic fundraiser for Feeding America! Every year instead of contributing to the corporate indulgence of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we encourage our listeners to make a donation. Every $1 donated helps provide at least 10 meals, just head over to dailystoic.com/feed.📕 Grab a signed copy of Right Thing, Right Now by Ryan Holiday | https://store.dailystoic.com/✉️ 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.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcast. I've been traveling a bunch for the tour that I'm on and I brought my kids and my wife with me when I went to Australia. When I'm going to Europe in November, I'm bringing my in-laws also. So, we're not staying in a hotel. We're staying in an Airbnb. The first Airbnb I stayed in would have been in 2010, I think. I've always loved Airbnb, that flexibility, size, location. You can find something awesome. You want to stay somewhere that other guests have had a positive experience. I love the guest favorites feature that helps you narrow down your search to the most popular, coolest houses. I've been using Airbnb forever. I like it better than hotels. So I'm excited

that they're a sponsor of the show. And if you haven't used Airbnb yet, I don't know what you're doing, but you should definitely check it out for your next family trip. Welcome to the weekend edition of the daily Stoic podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on, on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Sunday episode of the daily stoic podcast. Uh, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. One of the things I'm working on in my life is I'm just trying to be more generous and like it is something you can work on. Aristotle talked about virtue, not as this thing that you have or were,

but it's something you did. And he actually talks about generosity specifically in this regard. He says, it's like playing the flute or being a carpenter. Like you get good at it by doing it more. And so I've been working on that. And one of the ways I started a couple of years ago, I just I don't know. I just don't like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

I really don't like them. I don't have a problem that the other stores on Main Street here in this little town have Black Friday sales. I get it. It just never sat right with me doing that for something like Daily Stoic. And so a couple of years ago, I just said, well, if I'm not gonna take advantage

of Black Friday or Saturday or Monday, maybe there's an opportunity to flip it on its head to do like something generous. So we just decided to use that space, one of the most valuable sort of marketing slots of the year for all businesses, like just sales of everything spiked on those days. I thought, well, what if we used that platform for good? What if we raised money instead of tried to make money? And so we

started doing this fundraising drive for Feeding America, which is the big national food bank here in the United States, like not national and that's run by the government. It's just this big sort of organization that works with these smaller food bank chapters all over the US. There's one like a couple blocks over from where the painted porch is. I go buy it on my walks most days. They're super, super efficient. Like every dollar you give to Feeding America provides at least 10 meals. So when we did the first Feeding America thing like three or four years ago, I think we raised enough money for a million meals. then we upped it to two. Last year we were shooting for three. I don't know if we quite got it, but still we provided

cumulatively. Like we, I mean the Daily Soap community, all of you have provided meals for literally millions of families. Like millions of people have benefited from this. I love that. If you think of generosity as a habit, you get better at it and you get stronger at it. And then I have a chapter about this in Right Thing Right Now, which I'm gonna play for you in a second. But in the meantime, I would love for you to participate.

We're trying to raise $300,000 this year. I'm gonna put up the first 30,000, then we're gonna use some daily stoic slots here to try to push people to do it. You can donate at dailystoic.com slash feed. Literally just put in a dollar and you have provided 10 meals. Like just pay forward the delightful Thanksgiving you had or just pay forward any bit of generosity you've experienced in your life. This is just an awesome time to do that. As I said dailystoic.com slash feed.

I'll link to that in today's show notes. But this chapter give give give in right thing right now is about this idea of generosity As a habit I tell this delightful story about this guy who built it as part of his writing practice. I just love this So today we're gonna talk about generosity as a practice and I'm giving you a chance to practice And all you have to do is go to dailystoke.com slash read donate a dollar donate $10 I'm putting up $30,000 if you beat me, well, I'd be very impressed, but literally any dollar counts. Let's make this a selfless day, a generous day, rather than a selfish day and a materialistic day.

You can do that, dailystoke.com slash feed and enjoy the chapter from Right Thing Right Now. Give, give, give. When Rabbi Harold Kushner sat down to write a book, he tried not to procrastinate. He tried to get right into it. No hesitation, no overthinking. He allowed only one small ritual

to precede his act of daily discipline. Before his pen touched the page or the notepad, it went first to his checkbook where Kushner scrawled out a small donation to one of the charities that he and his wife supported. In the way that the ancients might have prepared for battle with a sacrifice to the gods or the muses, the rabbi waged the war of art by first striking with an act of kindness. He warmed up for a day of good writing by writing down some numbers

he knew would do some good. Generosity is something we admire. It's something many of us wish we could be better at. As it happens, there's only one way to get there, to do that. And it's the same way one gets better at writing or any other craft, by doing it. Not later when we're better off, not only when someone really needs it, not in one or two big or flashy moments, but consistently, regularly, as a matter of course, so it becomes part of who we are, so it becomes kind of a North Star in and of itself. Anne Frank's motto, which she learned from her parents, was that no one ever became poor by giving. It's true, charity is edifying and profoundly rewarding.

And as it happens, the Hebrew word for charity actually means justice. Of course, there's some part of us that knows that giving money away is a good way to go broke. Plus we hustled and sweated and earned what we have. We know how money might compound and grow if properly invested. And we can't help but think of the fun things we could do with it or some moment in the distant future when we might badly need it. Yet, aren't all these reasons to be generous with it? We worked hard because it was our job, because we wanted to

realize our potential. The financial compensation is something we're glad to get, but also understand on some level is extra. We earned it once, we can earn it again. And what kind of person values their fun or redundant security over the alleviation of someone else's suffering. If you've been blessed, be a blessing. And it should be said there are many ways to do this. We can be generous with our time as Florence Nightingale was, dedicating her life to service instead of high society. We can be generous with credit, generous with praise. We can be the kind of person whom people come to for help, the kind of person whose door is always open, the kind of person who smiles at strangers, who fixes friends up, who checks on people who are lonely, who is there when you need

them with a nice word. We can use our power and influence to fight for people who have little, as Theodore Roosevelt did. We can be generous with our access and advice. Kindness is a form of generosity we can always afford. It doesn't matter how much money you have, how much power you have, or how little, nothing is stopping you from being generous in some form or some way. How are you doing? Do you need anything? Great job. I appreciate you. These are expressions of generosity that don't cost a thing. We've got a bit of a commute now

with the kids and their new school. And so one of the things we've been doing as a family is listening to audio books in the car. Instead of having that be dead time, we wanna use it to have a live time. We really wanna help their imagination soar. And listening to Audible helps you do precisely that. Whether you listen to short stories, self-development, fantasy, expert advice, really any genre that you love. Maybe

you're into stoicism. And there's some books there that I might recommend by this one guy named Ryan. Audible has the best selection of audiobooks without exception and exclusive Audible originals all in one easy app. And as an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. By the way, you can grab Right Thing Right Now on Audible. You can sign up right now for a free 30-day Audible trial and try your first audiobook for free. You can get Right Thing Right Now totally for free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. Nothing Immensity of the Problems

Nothing is stopping you from being generous right now. The immensity of the problems or the needs of the world do not absolve you or prevent you from making a small step towards solving them, doing something for someone who is suffering from them. During the Depression, wanderers and hobos would often stop at the Carter House, which was not far from the railroad tracks. Carter's mother would always fix them something to eat. One neighbor noted how thankful she was that there were never any of these people hanging

around her house. Later, Jimmy Carter would learn that the community of homeless people during the Depression had a series of symbols to communicate which houses were decent and kind and which were heartless and cruel and to be avoided. This kind of mark of earning it from those in need stayed with Carter all his life. It's why into his 90s, he was still donating his time and money to help others, even building houses for those who could not afford their own.

It's funny, Ralph Waldo Emerson is famous for his essays on self-reliance. But in reality, he was an incredibly generous man, not just with his money, but with his time and his encouragement. The scene he cultivated in Massachusetts has no parallel in history. People all over New England knew they were welcomed at Emerson's home, where unofficial meetings naturally began to form what later historians came to call the Transcendental Club. He mentored and helped forge the careers of countless artists and intellectuals. It was, after all, on Emerson's land at Walden Pond that Thoreau was allowed to live and

build his cabin. He supported his family members financially. Emerson was an unstoppable champion of education, a vocal and financial supporter of public libraries and access to knowledge. Great, Emerson later said, is the person who confers the most benefits. The more successful you are, the more self-reliant you are, the more leftover you have to help others become the same. To whom much is given, much is expected. And we've all been given so much, each of us, all of us. What will we do with it? Who will we help? What will we give? An

answer, enough that it hurts, enough that it challenges you, enough that there is sacrifice in it. Why should we get to keep it all to ourselves anyway? It's not really ours to begin with. Who owns the patent on your vaccine? Jonas Salk was asked on television as he rolled out the first protections against the scourge of polio. Well, the people, I would say, he answered, aware as he was that his research had been funded by charitable donations and built on the backs of so many other scientific breakthroughs. There is no patent. Could you patent the son?

He said. Marcus Aurelius, reflecting on the whole of his life, would write that he felt lucky to have never needed to ask for money, but luckier still that whenever anyone else needed it, he was never in a position to say that he couldn't afford to help. It's not only the right and fair thing to do, but it makes us great. So we must make a start of it, a habit of it. The point is not how or how much, it's that we are a blessing to others in whatever form we can be, in whatever way is possible.

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Wondery.com? Did you know that after World War II, the US government quietly brought former Nazi scientists to America in a covert operation to advance military technology? Or that in the 1950s, the US Army conducted a secret experiment by releasing bacteria over San Francisco to test how a biological attack might spread without alerting the public. These might sound like conspiracy theories, but they're not. They're well-documented government operations that have been hidden away in classified files for decades.

I'm Luke Lamanna, a Marine Corps recon vent, and I've always had a thing for digging into the unknown. It's what led me to start my new podcast, Redacted Declassified Mysteries. In it, I explore hidden truths and reveal some eye-opening events, like covert experiments and secret operations that those in power tried to keep buried. Follow Redacted Declassified Mysteries with me, Luke Lamanna, on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. To listen ad-free, join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app.