The Daily Stoic - Find A Way To Use What Life Hands You | Ask DS

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

Change is a constant in life, and embracing it is key to living a fulfilling and meaningful existence. The Stoics recognized this fact and encouraged us to be adaptable and flexible, no matter what life throws our way.It can be tempting to resist or fear the unknown. However, the Stoics taught that change is not something to be feared, but rather, it is an opportunity for growth and self-improvement.Marcus Aurelius wrote, "The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it." By focusing on our thoughts and our perspective, we can choose to see change as a positive and embrace it with open arms.---And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions after a Stoicism seminar at the Andrews Air Force Base. Topics covered include how Stoicism applies to parenting, as well as whether any of the Cardinal Virtues is more important than the others.✉️ 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.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics. We're trying to apply this philosophy just as you are.

Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with daily Stoic life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happen to be someone there recording. But thank you for listening. And we hope this is of use to you.

Find a way to use what life hands you. Change is a constant in life. And embracing it is key to living a fulfilling and meaningful existence. The Stoics recognize this fact and encouraged us to be adaptable and flexible, no matter what gets thrown our way. It can be tempting to resist or fear the unknown.

However, the Stoics taught the change is not something to be feared, but rather it is an opportunity for growth and self-improvement. Marcus really wrote that the universe has changed and our life is what our thoughts make it. By focusing on our thoughts and perspective, we can choose to see change as a positive

and embrace it with open arms. And actually, today's episode is an example of that very idea, because it was written in part, although not completely, by chat GBT, an artificial intelligence bot that can apparently do a remarkable job of mimicking and generating what a writer does, what I do. And yet I'm saying written in part because although what the program spit out was largely usable and without grammatical errors,

it wasn't perfect, it didn't sound exactly right. Things had to be moved around stuff had to be deleted. In his fascinating book, Average Is Over, which was published in 2013, the economist Tyler Cowan podcast guest also predicted the rise of products like this, but instead of despairing that we'd all be replaced, he simply suggested that talented humans would have to figure out how to use these tools to be better at their jobs. And this itself is a very stoic idea because change, disruption, new technologies, they happen, and we have to adjust and adapt to them instead of feeling threatened by them. We have to find ways to be improved by them to benefit from them as we do with all that

fate hands us. Embracing change also requires us to let go of our attachment to the past and the things that may no longer serve us. It may mean letting go of old ways of thinking, trying new things, even stepping outside our comfort zone. But by embracing change, we open ourselves up to new possibilities and experiences that can enrich our lives.

So let go of your fear of change and embrace it with open arms. Remember that change is a natural part of life and by adapting and growing, we can live our lives to the fullest. It's funny, I talk to lots of people and a good chunk of those people haven't been readers for a long time. They've just gotten back into it. And I always love hearing that and they tell me how they fall in love with reading. They're reading more than ever and I go, let me guess, you listen audiobooks, don't you?

And it's true. And almost invariably, they listen to them on Audible. And that's because Audible offers an incredible selection of audiobooks across every genre from bestsellers and new releases to celebrity memoirs, and of course, ancient philosophy, all my books are available on audio, read by me for the most part. Audible lets you enjoy all your audio entertainment in one app, you'll always find the best of what you love, or something new to discover, and as an Audible member you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalogue, including the latest bestsellers and new releases. You'll discover thousands of titles from popular favorites, exclusive

new series, exciting new voices in audio. You can check out stillness is the key, the daily dad I just recorded. So that's up on audible now coming up on the 10 year anniversary of the obstacle is the way audio books. So all those are available and new members can try audible for free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500 500. That's audible.com slash daily stoke. A text daily stoke to 500-500, that's audible.com slash daily stoke. A text daily stoke to 500-500.

So I know you have a new book, I have a parent date, but I was just wondering, you're taking, I speak to how a stoke isn't applied to anything directly. Yeah, if you wanted to think about things that are outside of your control, apparently these are things that remind you of that.

I thought it was interesting, again, to be tend to think of philosophers as these sort of solitary figures, it's usually an old-day white guy's, or it's your classic university professor. But the stoets were parents of the Marxviews at 12 children. Six of them died before adulthood. So you think, you know, you get to think of meditations as this work of philosophy or this work of an empire. It's also the work of a grieving parent in the middle of a the grieving parent in the middle of a pandemic, which was the anti-mine plague.

So I've always been fascinated by people who've done the thing that you're doing before you. And as it happens, most of the people that we also get our philosophy advice from have also done this thing, sometimes with success, sometimes not a success that I hope in the day of the day which is the new book, and I do a parenting email every day called, Daily Dad, which is really free, Daily Dad, I come.

But there's a story where this kid comes to live with Plato, the Plato sort of mentoring and teaching him, and then he goes back to it. The hits house, and his dad who's this is tempered about something, you know, and he gets very upset. And then the boy just looks at him and goes, you know, I never saw Plato act that way. And the idea of, you know, to me this is a great example of the idea of something we say it's what we do.

And I just love the idea of, you know, playing a primary impact on this person is not complicated teachings or theories about government. It's that he was a controlled person who didn't do business temper. So I just try to basically, the premise of the email is like what really smart people throughout history thought about his basic parenting principles? And I think one of the problems I found with the parenting books, which everyone gives you when you have kids, is you're reading this book

about this thing that you're not even at yet. Or you're going to be what to expect and you're expecting and you're like, how much does a thing about what I'm supposed to do six months from now, let alone 16 years from now. And so what I found that it is still, and some of the most I read, there's something really powerful about one little thing to think about today,

and ideally, it is a process that you're engaged in, you're doing it on an ongoing basis. And so that's the idea. It's one piece of parent-convict that I've ever seen. Go back. Yeah, thanks for having me. I just wanted to talk to you about this. So, I know you're working with the Cardone Virtue series.

Yes. You're two down two go. What's looking in your band now is one easier way about than another and then there is one more important right now. Yeah, so I'm doing a series on the Cardinal Virtues, so since I'm in Christianity, I share the same Cardinal Virtues, which is Courage, Discipline, Justice, and Wisdom. Cardinal actually doesn't have a religious connotation

because of the Latin Cardos, which means pivotal or inch. And so I've been doing this series, I did courage first, I did discipline, I just finished the Justice Book, which actually is gonna be pushed a year. So I've been out in the 20s and 24, and then I have to write the wisdom one. I've partly reason I pushed it is the wisdom one

seems like the hardest one. And I'm well intimidated by it. But I've written in the discipline book I tell the story of Joyce Carol Oates, the novelist, and she had this, just as had it, when she writes a novel, she finishes it. And then she puts it in her drawer for a year, just to sort of let her talk about being emotional.

She wants to have an unemotional, unattached view of an interagent one. So they'll step back and think, you know, what a kind of change, better, you know, it pays the way I wanted it to. And that seems like impossible to me. I've never been able to do that. So I have finished discipline. My second on Roach Justice, I decided that would be a impossible to me. I've never been able to do that. So after I finished discipline, and I sat down and wrote just this, I decided that would be a challenge for me.

So the book was basically done, the Ruck Racket Finishing December, and I was supposed to come out in September this year. And I said, you know what, I'm gonna do that. It was a scary new for me, but that's been sitting in the drawer now for four or four months. And I'm sort of waiting to think, I'm trying. I think it's actually an hardware-free not-door about it, then it has been to order on it. So I think wisdom is probably the trickiest one,

or the most intimidating, it's the one that probably seems the most pretentious talking about all sorts of things about that for sure. And then, actually, I don't know if any one of them is hardest, but the challenge on the project has been for all of my other books, even though some of them ended up kind of being a part of the series, I've always just taken it one thing at a time. So, this is a book that I'm writing on the same where I'm thinking, with the use of material in front of me, and then I'll think about what happens next. This has been the first project break to think about the relationality between the material. And if I put something in the courage book that later I decided

to be better in the wisdom book, it's like, you know, too late that should be sale. So, I've had to think much more about that. So, I'm really writing my four books in the wisdom book, it's like too late as your best sale. So I have to think much more about that. So I'm really writing about four books at the same time, or each time is one less obviously, but having to think about how, you know, is this an example of courage, is this an example of disciplines, is an example of discipline, is an example of justice, and then realizing, of course, I think the natural conclusion to all that is that the virtues are actually inseparable, right? You know, courage in pursuit of injustice is missing

the point and having to know what to be courageous about, you know, this is where wisdom comes in and so having to have to draw this sort of artificial box around what each of the virtues is, or isn't aware of one begins with or the other, that's been the real challenge of the human series. But let's just say I'm looking forward to not being ready to not read any of these books. I would like to meet kind of very sure. Thanks. Yeah. 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 there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Codopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together they discuss their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty.

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