The Daily Stoic - Don’t Let It Make You A Liar | Practice Silence

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. You said you were going to take care of it. You said you'd be done by the deadline.

Starting point is 00:01:04 You told them not to worry about it. Maybe you even made plans in your head. You set aside the time you had every intention of doing it. But what happened? You got distracted. You fell prey to perfectionism. You weren't feeling it. Whatever it was, you procrastinated.

Starting point is 00:01:22 You didn't do it. You let it make you a liar. Really, two stoic virtues are at play here. both discipline and justice. We give our word to someone or ourselves. Do we have the willpower to keep it? Do we have the honor to keep it? Or do we let stuff get in the way? Do we make excuses? Do we not take our promises the fact that others are counting on us seriously? Do we betray them or our potential? You get the sense that Cato and Marcus Aurelius took this commitment the most seriously of all the stoics. They did what they said. They kept their end of the bargain,

Starting point is 00:02:04 even when it was hard, even when they were tired, as Marcus writes, even when they were cold, whether it was appreciated or not. And here is where the Stoic virtues of courage and wisdom also come into play. Do we push through the discomfort of difficult tasks and hard conversations? Do we manage our time effectively? Do we understand our limitations and ask for help when we we need it. Do we follow through when the path becomes challenging, or do we retreat into easier activities or distractions? That's what virtue is, showing up, being consistent, doing the thing, even in the face of temptation, even when life intervenes, even if there was resistance. It's not about meaning well. It is doing well, because you said you would, because you are not a liar.

Starting point is 00:02:54 As I've been saying in the Stoic Virtue series, virtue is not a noun, it's a verb, it's something you do. It's a day-to-day thing. There's a day-to-dayness to it. I've been working almost every day for the last six years on this Stoic Virtue series. Four books dedicated to these virtues. Courage is calling, discipline is destiny,

Starting point is 00:03:18 right thing right now, and now wisdom takes work. All these virtues are incessing. and yet distinct. As you see, they all inform each other. They all add another critical element. And so with the fourth book, Wisdom Takes Work, which is out in less than one month, you can pre-order that at DailyStoic.com slash Wisdom. We also have a special collector's edition of all four books signed and numbered. There's just a few dozen of those left. If you want to grab those, go to Dailystoic.com slash Stoic virtues. I'm just really proud of this series. As I said, It took a lot of discipline.

Starting point is 00:03:55 I don't want to say it took courage, but it certainly felt like a big swing, like it was biting off more than I could chew when I started it. And I think I've done some important work here, and I think you're really going to like it. Certainly, I would not profess to have any wisdom, but I have gotten wiser for working on this series. And I think you'll get wiser for reading it. You can check out Wisdom Takes Work at daily stowaic.com slash wisdom, pre-orded an audiobook, e-book, or signed a numbered first editions. And then, as I said, we've got a set of all four, which you can grab at daily stoic.com

Starting point is 00:04:26 slash stoic virtues. It would mean a lot to me if you could support the launch. I've gotten anything out of this podcast over the years. It would be a big help. And I would appreciate it. So I can't wait for you to read this thing. Talk soon. By the time you know you need someone new on your team, you're already behind, right?

Starting point is 00:04:49 You don't need to hire someone tomorrow. You need to hire somebody new. yesterday. So how can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen. Indeed's sponsor jobs helps you stand out and hire fast. And with sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed, data sponsored jobs posts directly on Indeed, have 45% more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. And Plus, with Indeed-sponsored jobs, there's no monthly subscription, no long-term contracts,

Starting point is 00:05:25 and you only pay for results. People were hired on Indeed while you were listening to this. That's how fast it is. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get $75-sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Daily Stoke. Just go to Indeed.com slash Daily Stoke right now and support the show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.

Starting point is 00:05:51 Indeed.com slash Daily Stoic. Terms and conditions apply. Indeed is all you need. Practice silence. This is from today's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal. Social media teaches us to have an opinion about everything. Silence beckons us to speak. We live in a loud culture and we try to keep up by being louder in return. And how much trouble does this cause us? How much might we learn if we spent more time listening to others than trying to sandwich our opinions in at every turn. How much of what we say do we come to regret? So really, the truly loud thing to say is nothing. So spend some time writing your thoughts down this weekend. See how many of them you can keep to yourself. Be bold in your silence and how much you hold your tongue this week.

Starting point is 00:06:41 One of the benefits of philosophy is that it centers you come back to it. And so I'll give you four quotes today, two from Zeno, actually, that should help you and certainly helping me to think about. Zeno says, better to trip with the feet than with the tongue. It's inevitable, right? An actor goes on a press tour and they say something dumb because they're just forced to talk. They're forced to answer all these questions. But you get in trouble the more you talk. That's just something I found, as Robert Green says, always say less than necessary. Another quote from Zeno, to a youngster talking nonsense. Zeno said, the reason why we have two ears and only one mouth, so we might listen more and talk less. It's beautiful.

Starting point is 00:07:22 I love that. And then Plato, talking about Cato the Younger, says, Cato practiced the kind of public speech capable of moving the masses, believing proper political philosophy takes care like any great city to maintain the warlike element. But he was never seen practicing in front of others and no one ever heard him rehearse his speech. When he was told that people blamed him for his silence, he replied, better they not blame my life. I begin to speak only when I'm certain that what I'll say isn't best left unsaid. Beautiful. That's something I do try to carry forward when I do talks and stuff. People go, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? And I try to, on a pretty regular basis, maybe even once per talk, go, I don't know.

Starting point is 00:08:01 I don't know about that. Because you don't want to get the habit of forcing an answer about things when you don't know. If you don't know, it takes courage to be like, I don't know or I don't care. I have not studied that. I don't have enough information to be okay being thought dumb or foolish, as Epictetus says. Silence does that. Practicing silence is a discipline. It takes discipline. It is not easy. And you will sometimes look silly and you will sometimes hurt people's feelings, but I think you'll hurt people's feelings less by not talking than you will by talking. And that gets us to the final quote. This is from Seneca's play the Estes. He says silence is a lesson learned from the many sufferings of life. Another great quote I love from Seneca says, when I think of all the things I said, I envy the mute, meaning he wishes he couldn't talk because he said so much dumb stuff that when he thinks back on it, he's almost overwhelmed with shame or awkwardness.

Starting point is 00:08:57 And the hard part's about being right or having a social media presence is you know what's out there and you cringe, you think about it. There's always a tweet. There's always a dumb article. There's always a time you jumped out to take a hot take. You should have just left it there because you didn't know enough. didn't put the work in. You didn't actually care. You forced it. You let your ego get a hold of you. And that never makes good work. So let's practice a little silence this week. If you have

Starting point is 00:09:20 something to say, write it down in your journal. Don't say it on social media. Always say less than necessary. Try to say less than necessary. That's the Stoic way. Talk to you soon. 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. Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible. I understand as 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

Starting point is 00:10:34 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 an ad-free version of Daily Stoic. We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast completely ad-free. No interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for. and you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public,

Starting point is 00:11:12 and we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into Stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium, and we are offering a limited time discount of 20% off your first year. Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show, descriptions to make those ads go away.

The Daily Stoic - Don’t Let It Make You A Liar | Practice Silence

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