The Daily Stoic - How Everything Can Change | Ask Daily Stoic

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

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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 who are 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 happened to be someone there recording. Thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you How everything can change it's been this way for a while and there's no other way to say it It's not been working. You're not happy. You're not healthy You're not what you're capable of being and the weight of this can hit you hard

It can make you want to despair, but you don't need to because it doesn't have to stay this way. As Bon Iver puts it in their new song. Oh, how everything can change in such a small timeframe. You can be remade, you can live again. As it happens, Marcus Aurelius said something very similar. Now, they see you as a beast, a monkey, he wrote, but in a week, they'll think you're a god if you rediscover your beliefs and honor the logos.

And there is no better time to accept and embrace this possibility than right now, right at the beginning of a new year. You're not beholden to the you of 2024. You can change, but you must make the choice to start. That's what I try to do at the beginning of each year. That's what thousands of other Stokes all over the world do. That's what we're to do at the beginning of each year. That's what thousands of other stoics all over the world do. That's what we're going to be doing as a community

during the 2025 New Year, New You Challenge. Thousands of stoics all over the world are going to try to get back to the core ideas of this philosophy, rediscovering our beliefs, honoring the possibility of what we can become. And we're going to hopefully make a big change in a small timeframe, right? Be remade in the process.

Think about what that would be worth. Think about the habits you'd like to give up, the routines you wanna develop, and let's not do it later, let's do it now. We're all gonna start on January 1st. It's gonna be awesome. You can sign up right now at dailystoic.com slash challenge. You don't need perfect conditions

or absolute confidence to move forward. You just need to take that next step. The Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge is that step. It's 21 days of challenges, three live Q&As with me. There's a course calendar, there's a private community. As I said, it's going to be lots of us all over the world doing this together. And since we created the Daily Stoic New Year New Year Challenge seven years ago, thousands of people all over the world have done exactly that.

People from all walks of life, teachers and executives, stay at home moms, students, retirees and everyone in between. As somebody said last year about the challenge, they said it was genuinely transformative. They said they tried all different types of New Year's resolutions, but this one was novel and challenging. They said they learned things and it helped center them and change the way they thought about things, which is awesome for me to hear.

I know I feel the same way, making it, participating in it, it's been awesome. And I can't wait to see you in it. If that's the kind of change you want, join us for the 2025 Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge. It's going to start on January 1st, but you got to sign up now at DailyStoic.com slash challenge. Hey, it's Ryan.

Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. As you know, on Thursdays we do Q&A's. It's kind of a crazy time here. My speaking slows down. My kids get out of school. I'm sort of figuring out what am I going to do with this time. You start to think about the new year, who you want to be in the new year. My wife and I are talking a bunch about changes we want to make in our lives. You know, because you're just coasting on fumes at this point and you're like, okay, just coasting on fumes at this point and you're like, okay,

gonna get a little bit of time off here. I'm gonna come back. I wanna do this differently. I wanna do this differently. I wanna work on this. I wanna stop feeling this way. So anyways, that's what we're talking about in our, you know, wrapping up,

we're just decorating the Christmas tree, all the last minute stuff. And one of the things that I know is coming up in January for me is the Daily Stoic New Year New Challenge, right? We kick off the year with 21 consecutive days of Stoic inspired challenges. But on Thursdays where we do the Q&A is where this all ties in is we do these live Q&A sessions with Stoics all over the world who are all doing the challenges together. So for today's questions, I wanted to give you some of my favorites.

These are some questions from back in 2023. You know, we've been doing it for seven years now. So we've had thousands of people all over the world. I've answered every question I could possibly imagine. Some funny, some weird, some big, some small, some over and over again. But it's one of my favorite parts. I get to talk to you,

you get to hear what other people are working on. I've gotten a bunch of great ideas from people's questions. Anyways, the point is, here are some questions from the New Year New You Challenge. And if you want to join us, kicking the year off with some challenges, you can sign up for the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge at DailyStoic.com slash challenge.

Starts on January 1st. If you're thinking about doing it, just do it. Stop procrastinating. It's always funny to see the people rushing to try to sign up on the second or the third because they already got the year off on the wrong foot. But maybe I will see you in the Q&A or in the community forum and all that stuff. I hope to see you in there. But in the meantime, let's get after some questions from the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge. Hey, thank you so much. Of course, I just want to say briefly that stoicism has been pivotal to recovery, pivotal to my recovery. Thank you so much for that. I've been with stoicism for a little over a year right now and recovery for seven, but here's my question. Is in the frontal lobe of our brains, we have so much information and you do all the right thing

and you continue on doing the right thing, but all of a sudden something triggers you. And then you go into that reptile way of thinking. And a lot of times, you know, I can breathe, I'm a meditator, I do all the right things with all that. But sometimes it's just hard to get out. And I have a very stressful job. And sometimes it's just so my question is, is what do you recommend to get out of that

reptile type of thinking when it just goes in the back of your brain? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, to me, this is why the walks that we're talking about are important. This is why journaling is so good for me. You know, sort of sitting down and putting those things on the page is really, really important. And then I think structuring one's day

to have pockets of silence and solitude. You know, I look at certain people's schedule and it's just like one thing after another, then of course they make bad decisions or of course they're overwhelmed or of course they default to what's easiest or reptilian or whatever you wanna call it. It's like they're not creating space

to recharge and recover. Just like an athlete who's never taking breaks is eventually going to hurt themselves. If you think of the brain as a muscle, if we think of these sort of personality traits that we're trying to cultivate as a muscle, you know, we've got to be kind to ourselves and create space for us, you know, to do the thing that we want to do. Yeah, thank you. Yeah,

you talk about if it's up to us, it should get 100% of our effort. If it's not up to us, it gets 0%. Well, that's quite something to live by. I want to know specifically in terms of keeping up with current events, reading news. I want to be an engaged citizen. I want to know what's going on with the world. I do, but I can go down a rabbit hole of following the latest whatevers of some, you know, toxic personality in our political world or whatever it might be. So what does Stoick say and what do you do as far as keeping up with the, but not letting it control you. Yeah, this is a great question. So I think a couple of things here. So the the still looks are obviously quite black and white when they say it's either up to us or it's not. And a couple of more modern stove creators I think William Irvine and Massimo Pigliucci have said, well, there's really a third category here which is stuff we can influence but we don't necessarily have control over. So voting is a good example. You don't control who gets elected, but you do have a very small say.

And if we all abdicate that say, well, then it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and none of us have a say. So I think it's worth noting that there are things in this kind of middle category. Like as an author, right? I don't really control whether my books sell or not, right? But I also kind of do, right?

If I decide not to market them, if I decide not to put energy towards them, if I just say, it's not up to me, it's up to the gods or luck or the market or whatever. Well, they probably won't sell. And so this is, I think, a tricky middle ground. Being an informed citizen participating in politics, etc. I think is a good example of this. Seneca famously says that the

difference between the Stoics and the Epicureans is that the Epicureans only get involved in the events of the world and in politics if something forces them to. And he says the Stoics only don't get involved if something forces them not to, right? So the idea is that the default for the Stoics is that you are engaged, you are informed, you are active.

And this is different than the Epicureans, you sort of retreat to the literal and metaphorical garden and just sort of, you know, focus on their own happiness or exploration or equanimity. So I like that. I think a stoic is engaged. I think a stoic does know what's happening. And certainly almost all of the stoics,

the famous ones anyway, were involved in politics in some form or another, if not actively as politicians themselves and certainly having opinions on how things were happening. Now, what I would say is that being an, if being an informed citizen is your obligation in a democracy or a republic or whatever, the question is what is the best way

to be an informed citizen? Is mainlining cable news or constantly pulling down the Twitter feed to see the latest sort of news or chatter, is that actually being informed or Or is this kind of a form of entertainment or in some cases, an addiction? Like, I think a lot of us consume too much news and don't know enough history. And so I would just urge you like I talked about this a lot in some earlier challenges and in my writings,

like in the early days of the pandemic is following what Fox or MSNBC or CNN is saying in real time, the best way to be informed or could you read John M. Barry's The Great Influenza or could you, you know, are there basically better ways to be informed than following the news in real time? Often the answer is yes. So I think your obligation is to be informed. It shouldn't come at the expense of your mental health. It shouldn't be disruptive or addiction, addicting or all consuming.

And we do have influence over the world that we live in, and we should take that responsibility seriously. We just don't need to become information addicts. I did see a good question in here about the so-called third thing. I'm gonna have a chapter about this in the Justice book, which will be the third book in this Dope Virtue series. But basically, for people aren't familiar with what that's referring to,

Marcus Aurelius talks about not asking for the third thing being you do a good deed, it helps someone, right? And then the third thing being wanting recognition or appreciation or gratitude or a favor in return for that third thing. I think connecting to this idea of what's in your control

and not in your control, the other way is like, you do, you work really hard, you do all the things that are required to be successful, and then are you successful or not, right? The third thing is expecting a payoff for what you have put in. And I was just talking about this, I'm in New Orleans right now, I gave a talk in it to a large group here in New Orleans yesterday. And we were talking about this one of my favorite quotes in the Bhagavad Gita, where

basically, he says something like, you are obligated to do your duty, you are not obligated to receive the fruits of doing said duty. And that's what I think about as a writer, it's what I think about as a person, like you're obligated to do the right thing, to do your work, to do what you're supposed to do, are to help other people when you can,

are you obligated or owed being repaid for that? No, you're not. And to expect it is to often set yourself up for disappointment or frustration. And that's sort of how I think about that. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. that. word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on Wondery.com slash survey. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery

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