The Daily Stoic - How Ryan Holiday is Preparing For The Next Four Years

Episode Date: February 23, 2025

The next four years will be chaotic—just as every four-year period in history has been. From wars to disasters, economic turmoil to political unrest, uncertainty is the only constant. So how do we stay strong through it all? In this episode, Ryan Holiday shares how he's future-proofing with timeless Stoic wisdom so you can do the same.📚 Check out the Virtue Series 3-Book Bundle which includes Ryan Holiday’s books: Courage is Calling, Discipline is Destiny, and Right Thing, Right Now 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ 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. You just realized your business needed to hire someone like yesterday. With Indeed, there's no need to stress. You can find amazing candidates fast using sponsored jobs. With sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the people you want faster. And just how fast is Indeed? In the minute I've been talking to you, 23 hires were made on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $100 sponsored job credit

to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com slash WonderyCA. Just go to indeed.com slash WonderyCA right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash WonderyCA. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring? Indeed is all you need. Indeed.com slash wonder ECA terms and conditions apply hiring. Indeed is all you need.

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, audio books 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. Obviously, I can't predict the future, but I'm pretty confident in predicting that the next four years are going to be crazy, partly for political reasons. I've talked about that before, but we don't actually need to agree about that at all. I know I'm right because I don't think you can find a four year period in history that wasn't filled with chaos and upheaval and uncertainty. This is one of the things the Stoics tell us. We should never forget, Seneca says, that fortune has a habit of behaving exactly as she pleases.

And I think it's crazy to think that the next four years would be an exception to this rule. There's no normal in this life. We should always expect disruption and change and surprise. I mean, just look at the last five weeks. We're five weeks into the year and there's already been horrendous wildfires. There's an ongoing pandemic bird flu thing.

There's been earthquakes. There are wars ravaging all over the world. My kids have already gotten sick. I've already gotten sick. And the year is still young. I mean, just think about 2020 to 2024, 2016 to 2020, or how about 1940 to 1944. Think of the first four years of Marcus Aurelius' reign, which saw a series of brutal wars, a devastating plague that killed millions of people,

one of the worst floods in Rome's history, which left the whole city in famine. So the question then for us as Stoics, as citizens, as human beings is not how do we avoid these challenges, but how do we prepare for them? How do we set ourselves up not to be broken and destroyed and disrupted and surprised by them? So given what I think about the next four years, does that mean I'm building a bomb shelter? Am I stockpiling supplies that mean I'm building a bomb shelter? Am I stockpiling supplies?

Am I looking at a second passport? No, not really. I don't think I'm doing anything quite so severe, but I am thinking about how to future-proof myself, what the Stoics can teach us about how to prepare, not with panic and paranoia or some sort of escape plan, but with some practical timeless ideas that the Stoics by the way, tested in crises

and circumstances, both very different and very much the same as ours. And how these strategies can help us with our turbulent times, just as they have helped people in turbulent times throughout history. For starters, you know what I'm doing? I'm focusing on what I can control. Epictetus, who was a slave in the Roman Empire, who experienced exile and torture and about

every other form of difficulty you can imagine. He said that our chief task in life is to separate things into two categories, what's up to us and what isn't up to us. He said we have to get clarity on what's up to us and what isn't up to us. And so like a way to think about this, like what Putin does, inflation, tariffs, my mother's health, weather, like none of that is up to me.

But you know what is up to me? Like my attitude, my emotions, my wants, my desires, my focus, my response to all those things, what those other people do and say, the consequences of what they do and say, how I respond to that, that is up to me. Who I am is up to me. So that's what I'm focusing on.

And that's what the Stoics want us to focus on. One of the things I'm doing is I'm reading old books and I'm reading old books instead of watching the news. As I was saying, like, if you wanna understand the next four years, just try to understand any four year period in history. If you wanna understand current events, often the best way to do that is not via breaking news. It's to find a book about a similar

event in the past. Like read history, read psychology, read biographies, go for information that has a long half-life that's not going to be contradicted in the next week by the next scientific breakthrough, by the next bit of investigative reporting. That's something I think the Stoics are really good at, right, the Stoics have endured for 2000 years. So the chances that they're gonna become irrelevant in 2026, suddenly disproven is very unlikely.

The chances that the insights that Epictetus uncovered about the human condition in torture or that Marcus Aurelius discovered about power and fame and success, it's very unlikely that by 2028, none of that is gonna hold up. And so while I do think 2025 is gonna be crazy and weird and tough, probably not any more than 1925 or the year 125 AD or the year 165 AD when Marcus Aurelius becomes emperor.

And what this means is there are lots of books, lots of ideas, lots of history that can help us with what lies ahead because it'll rhyme with what lies behind. And this is something Churchill talked about as war is breaking out in Europe. He was working on this big epic history that he was doing. And he said, it's helpful sometimes to put a couple thousand years between you and the present moment. So it gives us perspective, it gives us clarity, and it also gives us wisdom about this

moment. So, you know, whether we're navigating personal trials or upheavals or moments of great success and abundance, like books are one of the most reliable tools that we have to help us prepare for that, help us handle that. Again, I remember I interviewed Morgan Halsall here when we were doing the Daily Stoke podcast and he said something like, he thinks back 10 years ago, he can't really remember any articles, any news reports he heard from that time, but he can remember a lot of books that he read from that period. Those books had

ideas that helped him over that 10 year period. And I think that's true for the books that you can read now. And that's why I'm reading more books than I am consuming the news. I just did a video, it should be coming out soon, about some books that I think you should read, but read Victor Frankel, read Taylor Branch's series on Martin Luther King, read the Stoics, read fiction, read great epic novels, reread the Odyssey, read the Iliad,

read Stockdale's thoughts of a philosophical fighter pilot. I've been reading that recently. One thing I'm trying to remind myself of is what my job is. Because things aren't gonna go the way that I want them to go. There's gonna be uncertainty and upheaval and unfairness, as we were saying. But when the dust settles, like after a crisis,

after a setback in the middle of disappointment, as you're reacting to what's happening, as you're speculating and wondering, you're going to be thinking like, what happens next? Or what if it gets worse? And while these are important questions, I think for the most part, it doesn't change what's expected of you. One of the things Marx really says is, you know, how does this stop you? He says like, how does anything stop you from acting with courage and justice and discipline and wisdom? His point was that was your job.

He said, your job is to be a good person. Like no matter what happens, good or bad, or fair or unfair, whether there's order or disorder, our job is the same. It doesn't matter who's president. It doesn't matter if they're being a good president or a bad president. It doesn't matter who's president. It doesn't matter if they're being a good president or a bad president. It doesn't matter if the economy is good or bad.

Doesn't matter if unemployment is high or low. It doesn't matter if you are employed or unemployed. Your most important job is still your job. Like your obligation is still your obligation. And Mark Sruly said that that job, he says, what anyone says or does, I'm bound to the good. He said, I'm like an emerald, right?

My job is to show my true colors, to be an emerald. And he was saying that that's what our job is. But at the most basic level though, right? Like we do have certain obligations in our professions. Maybe we sworn oath, maybe there's a code of conduct, maybe there's a set of standards, like if you're a journalist or a doctor or a lawyer. And we have to understand that, again,

what anyone says or does, whether this behavior is celebrated or punished, criticized or appreciated, our job is to do our job. There's a stoic named Helvidius, and the emperor Vespasian sort of warns him to stop speaking out, and that if he didn't, he said he'd be removed from the Senate. And Helvidius looks at him and he says,

look, it might be in your power to allow me to be a member of the Senate or not, but he says, as long as I am in the Senate, I have to be a senator, I have to do my job. And Vass Passian says, I don't think you understand. If you do that, I will put you to death. And Helveteus looks at him and he says, look, you do your part and I'll do mine.

Our job is to do our job, which is to be good. And then also to do the thing we were trained to do, to do the thing that were trained to do, to do the thing that we know is important, as meaningful that we promised to do when we took up this responsibility. And so, like the consequences, the recognition, the pay, all of that can change, but the duty remains, right? The duty remains, that's what a Stoic would say, no matter what happens these next four years. And obviously we have multiple remains, right? The duty remains. That's what a Stoic would say,

no matter what happens these next four years. And obviously we have multiple jobs, right? And one of the jobs I'm trying to do well is raise my kids well. I might be disgusted with how other people are behaving. I might be disappointed in the world. And I might despair at my ability to sort of impact, shape the future,

but I have the opportunity to have multi-generational impact in my own home. Like I think about the way that my life is shaped by choices that my father made, things that he taught me, and then things that he should have done and didn't do. And I think about how his father shaped him. I think about how on a daily basis,

my life is shaped by things that my grandfather did. And on and on, right? This is our chance for multi-generational impact. And one of my favorite things to do is I write the Daily Dad email. I do the Daily Stoic and we also do Daily Dad. I do videos and I write this sort of bit of parenting wisdom every day,

drawn from history and science and literature and ordinary people to sort of pass along a parenting lesson every day, drawn from history and science and literature and ordinary people to sort of pass along a parenting lesson every day. It goes out to almost a hundred thousand people all over the world. But mostly I'm doing the Daily Dad for myself because I'm always researching and writing and collecting ideas on how I can be better at what is really my most important job because I want to be more patient. I want to set a good example. I want to help my kids become what they're meant to become and that's something I don't control it completely but it's somewhere where I have a lot of influence right and raising our kids is one of the most important things we'll

ever do and yet how many people just sort of trust their gut they just kind of go along they're so caught up in the day-to-dayness of it, they're not consciously trying to do what they can do. And so I try to study it the way that I study philosophy, either history or business, because I want to do it well. And so if you are frustrated with the direction of your country, of the world, of your neighborhood,

of so many things, right? And you could feel that for a variety of reasons. Well, one place you can direct that is in your own home, right? It starts at home. So raise your kids right. Raise your kids to make a difference. I'm keeping a journal as I always have

because in keeping a journal, it keeps me. You know, the Stoics, they lived in in turbulent, chaotic, dysfunctional time. There was Nero and Domitian and Claudius. And there was Commodus who came after Marcus Aurelius, right? I think it's an interesting question. How did they stay clear-headed and principled? How did they not lose their minds?

And the answer to that is hard work. And the place they did that work, which one writer would say the Stokes, where they waged their spiritual combat was on the pages of their journal. That's where they got perspective. That's where they shook off misinformation and noise. It's where they sort of boiled things down into truth.

It's where they fought for control of the greatest empire themselves. Marcus Aurelius is fighting to be the person that philosophy tried to make him. And where is he doing that? In meditations. Meditations is the by-product of Marcus Aurelius writing a journal in a chaotic period,

a period as chaotic as the one we're in now, when it made as little sense to him as this one might make to you, but he used the pages of the journal to help it make sense. Orwell said that, you know, to see what's in front of your nose needs a constant struggle. He was talking about totalitarianism and authoritarianism and state control in the 20th century. But he actually said that a journal was something that helps towards that.

He said to keep a record of what you're thinking, of what's happening, it's something you can hold fast to that can help you make sense. It can even help you hold yourself accountable to your own opinions. I guess what I'm saying is that if you're not examining your mind, who is? If you're not dumping your frustrations out on the pages, like who are you dumping them on? If you're not using a journal to gain self-awareness to cut through all that noise, how are you gonna see what's in front of you? And you have to do this. You can use the Daily Stoic Journal for instance, like

this is mine, it has a little leather cover in it. It's a reminder, make time. I want to make time every day. I want's a reminder. Make time. I want to make time every day. I want to sit down with some questions. I want to sit down and create some distance between me and the present moment. Root myself in deeper principles, bigger ideas, go to clarity, and a journal is something you've got to be doing in this day and age. something you've got to be doing in this day and age. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit?

No business or profession is risk-free. Even the smallest business needs insurance. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today, starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com, Canada's leading small business insurance provider. Be protected.

Be Zen. One of the things I am doing is using my platform to support what I think is important. I have a platform, Daily Stoic reaches millions of people, the Daily Dad email reaches hundreds of thousands of people every single day. Daily Stoic email goes out to a million people every single day. Our videos do millions of views. We have millions of social media followers. That's a responsibility. And I have a little note card next to my desk and it says, am I being a good steward of stoicism?

And with whatever success or reach or influence you have, you have to ask yourself, how are you using it? Are you amplifying ideas and voices and causes that matter? Or are you sitting on the sidelines because you don't want to offend anyone or you don't want to lose money? Or are you saying stuff that you don't really believe in or you know is probably not good for the world, but it gets a lot of clicks, right?

I know way too many podcasters will just have anyone on their show, even if their ideas are toxic or ridiculous, or that person's just a monster in their private life, done really shitty things. And they do this because they know controversy drives views and downloads. And I've just decided like, that's not who I want to be. And there's a Solzhenitsyn quote that I think of often. He says, look, there's always going to be evil and awfulness and stupidity in the world.

And he says, but we have the power to say not through me. We choose what we propagate, what we are a conduit through or for. So I make a decision that costs me money that I don't give a megaphone to trolls or conspiracy theorists or bad actors or people that I don't respect. If I don't respect them, if I don't think their work is good, if I don't think they're

making a positive difference in the world, I don't care how much engagement that episode is going to do. I don't care how many views it's going to do. I can't control that they're not going to just immediately go on some other bigger show, right? I don't control that, but I do control whether it comes through me. And so I guess the question is you think about who you're gonna be over this period is like,

what are you valuing? Are you valuing attention? Are you valuing reactions? Are you valuing money? Or are you valuing being a positive difference maker, right? And so look, we don't control what other people spread and say, but we can say not through me. And better yet, if everyone sat down and said,

hey, I wanna put good stuff out there. I wanna do helpful and essential stuff. I wanna make a positive difference. Well, we'd live in a very different world. Another thing I'm doing is I'm focusing on the things that don't change. In a very famous letter, Jeff Bezos wrote to the shareholders of Amazon way back in 1997, I think.

He said that he was going to be focusing on the things that don't change. That's how they were going to measure success at Amazon. They were thinking for the long term. The problem is so often we are chasing what's new, what's popular, what's trendy, what everyone is talking about right now in this very moment. And there's always pressure and there's always temptation to do that. But what Bezos understood is that, you know, for the most part, what customers want and how they want it, that doesn't change.

And the more you focus on the things that don't change rather than the trends of the moment, the better off you're gonna be. So again, this goes to the idea of not following the news, but it also goes to not following what everyone else is doing. Seneca's idea of euthymia, about being on the path that you're on, not being distracted by the paths that crisscross yours,

this is that, right? I wanna be going in this direction, provided that this is a good long-term direction, not I'm chasing this until it runs out that I'm chasing that. No, you're gonna get distracted, you're gonna get worn down, and chances are you're gonna be putting time and energy

into things that are gonna become irrelevant or insignificant as time goes on. That's one of the benefits of talking about an ancient philosophy that's 2's 2000 years old is again, it's probably gonna still be relevant a couple of years from now, even potentially a couple of centuries from now. I guess what I'm saying is a lot of people

are gonna spend the next four years like fixated on fads and trends and minor gaffs and controversies and outrages. But how many of those things are still gonna matter in five or 10 or 50 years? And the truth is that the things that really do matter, character and discipline and patience, the value of hard work, making things that are of value to people,

these are gonna be constants, treating people well, demanding the best of yourself, getting to the core problems that human beings have, the sort of core myths and arcs of the human experience. That's what you want to root your art in. That's what you want to root your products in. That's the kind of thing you want to make. And this is going to be important and valuable

two months from now, two years from now, 20 years from now. Doesn't matter who's in office. It doesn't matter what's happening technologically. I try to structure my life around those things. That's what I try to focus on. And it's what I try to tackle in my writing and in my videos. And here's something that I think stands the test of time that I'm working the test of time

that I'm working on. I wanna treat people well. I don't control the cruelty in the world. I don't control how others act. I don't care how unfair or thoughtless or selfish most people are or are being in this moment. But I control how I run my team. I control whether I show up for my family.

I control how I treat strangers. The world control whether I show up for my family. I control how I treat strangers. The world is always gonna have its share of rude people and dishonest people and indifferent people. I mean, look, Mark Swieles, he opens book two of meditation by saying to himself, the people I will deal with today are gonna be meddling and ungrateful and arrogant and dishonest and jealous and surly.

This is what people are gonna be. This is the way they always have been. We don't control that, but we control whether we're like them. He says, we control whether we let them implicate us in their ugliness, right? We don't have to contribute to it. We can be kind and patient and fair.

This is something that's always in my control. That's one of the wonderful things about being an entrepreneur, but also about being a consumer. You decide what you're going to do with your wallet. You decide how you're going to run your business. You decide your policies. I decide what vendors I use for the things we make for Daily Stoic.

I control what companies I do business with. I control the benefits that I offer. I control my tone of voice. I control my stuff. We should focus on treating people well. This is where we can have a positive impact. As I said, it's a noisy, difficult, crazy world. So I'm prioritizing stillness.

You know, it's funny, I wrote a book called, Stillness is the Key, back in 2019, right before the world shut down or fell apart or whatever, right? But also this was when I had two young kids and my life was crazy and chaotic and overwhelming and noisy just as the next four years are gonna be, just as life always is.

And to be able to navigate that well, we need to be able to think clearly, we need to not be reactive, we can't be emotional all the time, we have to have perspective and intention. And the only way to cultivate that is with stillness, right? The time we spend with a journal, the hobbies we cultivate, the way we set up our lives and our information diet,

like what inputs we allow in. Because it is from stillness that insight and perspective and contentment and happiness and clarity, all this stuff comes from. A friend of mine, Randall Stutman, who's coached some of the biggest CEOs in the history of Wall Street, he talked to me once about how he noticed

that all these high performers tended to have a hobby that didn't involve a lot of voices, right? They would listen to classical music. They went fly fishing. They did long distance bike races, or they ran, or they did archery. These people who are perpetually busy, there was endless demands on their time.

They were talking to people constantly. They had to cultivate stillness in their routine, in their life that allowed them to reflect, that allowed them to sift through things, that allowed them to connect with themselves so then they could go back out in the world and connect with other people. And ultimately that's what stillness is the key is about.

But if we're not cultivating what the Stoics call ataraxia, and I opened the book with a scene from Seneca in the midst of his life falling apart, in the midst of Nero losing his mind. You know, Seneca is trying to do some writing and he's having to tune out all the sounds around him, the chaos of the city. He's trying to lock in and if we can't cultivate that stillness, we're not going to be what we need to be and we're not going to be able to do what we need to do.

Look, you don't control the chaos of the world, but you do control whether you get sucked into it. You do control whether you have a retreat or an escape from it. You do control whether you bring stillness to it, whether you are disturbed amidst all the disturbances. In a world where we feel powerless and despondent, one of the things we can do is contribute to our communities. America, like communities all over the world,

have been hollowed out. There's big box stores and, you know, digital replaces physical. So much of modern success, I feel like, is subtractive. It's about extracting and optimizing and doing more with less. And I made a decision about five years ago, right at the beginning of the pandemic, to do the opposite. In 2021, my wife and I were sitting at a diner across the street from this building right here

in this little town we live in. And we had a crazy idea to open a bookstore, which we did in the teeth of a pandemic. We understood that community, that physical stuff was important. You know, the majority of my book sales, videos, podcasts, this is all, it's all wonderful that I can reach millions of people, but there's something not tactile, something not human about it. And bookstores are important. Stoicism is founded in the Athenian Agora. Agora, when Zeno destitute and broken, he's lost everything. He's walking through the Agora and he chances upon a bookseller and the book

that he finds there, it changes the course of his life. And that's why we dumped a good chunk of our life savings into building out this bookstore. It's why we could have a remote company with people all over the world. Be cheaper to have freelancers, but instead we have an office where people come together and the team works together and helps each other and gets to know each other and community is important.

And you can sit back and wait for someone else to make the community you wanna live in or you can contribute to that community. You can make that. We have a little grocery store up the street called Tracy's Drive-In that's been in business since the 40s. And if we hadn't bought it,

it probably would have gone out of business. So I just think about how to cultivate community, how to contribute to your community. And you don't have to do that as an entrepreneur. You can show up at a city council meeting. You can participate in a parade. You can talk to someone on the street. You can get to know your neighbor.

You can start a book club. Like how can you cultivate community where human beings are coming together, talking to each other, doing things together. That's an essential part of rebuilding, not just the economy, not just middle America and sort of destitute communities all over the world, but also rebuilding the bonds that connect human beings,

the fraying of which is responsible for so much of the dysfunction and polarization that we currently have. I'm trying to have fewer opinions. Mark Cirillis reminds us that we always have the power to have no opinion, that we don't have to turn this or that into something, that we don't have to let this or that upset us. That things are not asking to be judged by us, he writes in Meditations. And in this world that we are living in, where we have access to an overwhelming amount of information, and we also can see what so many people are doing who otherwise would be strangers or unknown to us. We just have too many opinions.

We have opinions about this or that. We have opinions about people's relationships, how they live their lives, what they do in their own bedrooms, about scandals. None of this is our business. And we need to have fewer opinions, right? I'm trying to have fewer opinions about what my kids like or dislike, how their room looks or doesn't look. You know that expression about not yucking other people's yums? That's the same idea. Just have less look. You know that expression about not yucking other people's yums? That's the same idea. Just have less opinions.

You'll get along with people better. You will be happier. So what if somebody's a vegetarian or whatever, right? Let them be who they wanna be. Let them do what they wanna do. Things are not asking to be judged by you, as Marcus said. Leave them alone. Especially because so many of our opinions are negative.

They're making us miserable. We have to remember it's not things that upset us, as Epictetus said, it's our opinions about things. And when you have fewer opinions, particularly about other people and things outside your control, not only will you be happier and nicer, but it frees you up to have opinions

about the things that actually matter. I'm not saying we should be totally disconnected, we should not care, oh, live and let live when someone's doing something deeply harmful or violent or unjust. My point is that if you have fewer opinions about TV shows or celebrity scandals, you can have better, more well-informed opinions

and more energy to write that wrong about the things that actually matter. If we're spending our energy having opinions about every trivial annoyance, you know, we're just not gonna have anything left for the things that matter. I'm trying to help the starfish. Do you know that story?

There's a story about a little boy coming to the beach one morning after a big storm and there's thousands of starfish washed up along the beach. And he starts to throw them back into the ocean, and this adult, you know, this adult who knows better comes up and he says, you know, you're never gonna make a difference. What are you doing?

This doesn't matter. And as the little boy throws another starfish in, he says, it matters to that starfish. There's a great line in Milan Kandera's book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, where this woman, they're living in a time of communism and repression, and she tells her husband that she thinks it's more important

to dig a half-buried crow out of the ground than send petitions to the president. And look, of course, politics matter, but I think so often we focus on national or global politics instead of how we can make a difference, not just even like in our small towns, but like we're passing litter by the side of the road. We're not trying to catch that dog

that we see running by the side of the road that probably belongs to someone. We're not asking someone who looks like they're struggling or in pain what they need. There's a story about Cleanthes. He's walking through Rome and he sees this man sort of beating himself up and he just stops him and he says, you're not talking to a bad person. That act of human to human kindness, that's a blow against the Nero's of the world. That's how you fight back against the cruelty of right-wing trolls on the internet. But not by owning them and arguing with them, but by doing the opposite to real people in real life. We sometimes think of these grand solutions or sweeping reforms or landing this enormous blow

against some awful cause, but really no change is possible without these smaller things, without these first steps, these first acts. When Zeno said that well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing, the same is true for change, the same is true for community, the same is true for community,

the same is true for remaking and improving the world. So I'm trying to think about the little differences that I can make, the real differences for real people right here, the burdens I can ease, the kindness I can extend. And part of that means deciding not to become cynical. That story about the boy and the starfish, that cynical adult was saying,

it doesn't matter, why bother? Encourages calling, I quote General Mattis, he has this great line, he says, cynicism is cowardice. It takes courage to care, to try to help that half dead crow in the road, to throw the starfish back in the water, to be nice, to try to do something,

even though you're overwhelmed and the odds are against you, to water, to be nice, to try to do something even though you're overwhelmed and the odds are against you, to believe, to be earnest when everyone else is full of doubt and cynicism. You know, as they say, losers have always gotten together in little groups and talked about winners. And the hopeless have always mocked the hopeless. And the nihilists have always tried to tell us that nothing matters, but it does matter.

And you can make a difference. And you have to earnestly and sincerely believe that. I'm trying to look for the helpers. There's a Mr. Rogers quote that I love. He says, you know, when he was a boy and he was scared, there were scary things on the news that his mother would always say to him, look for the helpers.

You will always find people who are helping. And when you watch a major American city get destroyed by wildfires, you can choose to focus on what awful people are saying and doing online. You can look at the incompetence of our politicians, or you could focus on the people flying those planes. You could think of the prisoners who,

despite their lives and despite their existence are putting it on the line to stop the fires, to help people whose houses they would never be able to live in, right? You can focus on the people who are trying to make a positive difference, right? You can focus on the chaos or the dysfunction and the selfishness and the awfulness,

and that will make you cynical and that will make you despair. But if you look for the people who are stepping up, you'll find them everywhere. The doctors and nurses working through exhaustion in the middle of a pandemic, the neighbor who mows the lawn of a family they know is struggling. These are the things that restore your faith in humanity.

And I'm not saying you just sit on the sidelines and go, other people are handling it. No, the idea is to not take comfort from these helpers, but to take inspiration and obligation from them. I'm not letting the sons of bitches, I'm not letting the assholes turn me into a son of a bitch, turn me into an asshole. I'm not letting cynical people make me cynical. I'm not letting cynical people make me cynical.

I'm not letting insane people make me insane. In some ways, I think this is kind of the hardest task in the world right now to not let them make you like them, to not let cruelty harden you, to not let stupidity make you bitter, to not let outrage pull you down. Marcus really says that the best revenge is to not be like that, to not be like them.

And so while I'm genuinely disappointed, not just in the world, but in like people I know, people I love, people I thought I respected, what they're doing and saying and thinking, it's not good, right? Instead of focusing on that, instead of trying to change them, which I have less impact and control over,

I'm focused on not following suit, not getting dragged down. As Chrysippa said, the whole point of being a philosopher is to not be part of the mob, to be above, to hold yourself to a higher standard, to not be corrupted and corroded by the time you are living in. And we live in one of those times

and we have to do the work to not be sucked into it. I'm doing difficult things. I got up early this morning, even though I didn't want to. I got in Barton Springs, even though it was cold, even though it was pouring rain, even though I knew that my stuff was getting wet and I'd have trouble drying off afterwards, but I did it because doing hard things is good for you.

I got in my cold plunge yesterday for the same reason. And by the way, doing the cold plunge yesterday made doing the swim this morning easier. It made writing this morning easier. It made doing this video easier. The Stokes talk a lot about kind of keeping yourself in fighting shape, not for appearances sake, but they understood that life was a battle.

Mark Shreves talks about being like a wrestler who's dug in for sudden attacks. They trained in boxing because it was both made them stronger and it was a metaphor. Like when we're not feeling good, we don't act good. Person who's disgusted with themselves is gonna have less patience for other people. A person who loses their breath easily,

I think it's gonna lose their temper and their courage or their self-control more easily. I got in great shape during COVID. I tried to run and bike and walk every day. I covered thousands of miles, tens of thousands of miles even. And as things kind of went back to normal, some of those habits waned a bit.

And I've been trying to push myself more physically. We treat the body rigorously, Seneca said, so that it's not disobedient to the mind. You know, we keep these practices physical, just like we keep the journaling practice, because it keeps us. It toughens us, gives us confidence in ourselves. It builds the metamuscle that says,

I'm in charge. I can get through hard things. I can endure unpleasantness. I can endure things that take longer than expect. Never a bad time to get in shape. And by the way, this is one of the things Socrates said. He said, no one is excused from keeping themselves in fighting shape. Right? He was talking about, you know, obviously being a man in Athens being able to fight in the army. But he was saying, also, don't you want to know what you're capable of? Right? You only have one body. You're not going to see what it's capable of, what you're capable of. You got to do those hard things. And the last thing I'm doing, although it's obviously infused in all of the ones

we've talked about here, I'm choosing to be philosophical. I don't mean in the sense that I'm reading a lot of Marcus Aurelius or Socrates or Nietzsche or whatever. I am, it's always good to read philosophy, but I mean it in the colloquial sense. Like to be philosophical, when we say someone's philosophical, what we mean is in the colloquial sense. Like to be philosophical, when we say someone's philosophical, what we mean is they see the big picture, they're calm,

they have wisdom, they have perspective, right? They're above or outside what is misleading or overwhelming or confusing or manipulating other people. That's what it means to be philosophical. Think about how many bad leaders there have been throughout history. Think about how many moments, eras, and epochs that were defined by chaos and dysfunction.

How many societies felt like they lived at the end of the world, that the sky was falling. That's a constant thread throughout history. And of course, that's what right now looks like and feels like because it has always looked like and felt like this. Like the 1960s were filled with war and assassinations and unrest. If you read Brian Burroughs' Days of Rage, it is a crazy stat in there. In 1968, there was a flu epidemic and 2000 terrorist bombings in the United States. It gives you perspective on this moment.

Gives you things to be grateful for. Also gives you things to be aware of, to not be so sanguine about, because you know how bad it can get. The Great Depression was not fun. It wasn't fun to live through Watergate or the Six-Day War or the 73 oil crisis or the Cuban Missile Crisis. Imagine Montaigne in the Reformation or imagine living through the Cultural Revolution or the Civil War or any Civil War. This shit was scary, it was weird, it was confusing, but that's what history is.

It's only the passage of time that turns down the volume on these moments that reduces them to some passage in a book. Like the fall of Rome must've felt like the end of the world, and yet also the world went on. The Roman Empire went on after the fall for hundreds of years. I guess what I'm saying is like, we don't choose whether we live in normal times or not. We do get to choose our attitude about these times,

our perspective on these times. The Stoics remind us that history is cyclical, that chaos is the rule and not the exception, but also through reason, through courage, through discipline, through perspective, through wisdom and truth, we can rise above it. So that's what I am doing. That's how I am preparing and future-proofing myself

for whatever the next four years, whatever the future, however long brings us. I wanna focus on what's in my control. I'm doing the work. I'm not gonna be broken by things beyond my power. I'm gonna focus on what is in my power. I'm gonna do my job. I'm gonna contribute to my community.

I'm gonna try to make a small positive difference for the people I can. And I hope this does some of that for you. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and would really help the show. We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode. If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery 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. Behind the closed doors of government offices and military compounds, there are hidden stories and buried secrets from the darkest corners of history. From covert experiments pushing the boundaries of science to operations so secretive that were barely whispered about. Each week on redacted, declassified mysteries, we pull back the curtain on these hidden histories, 100% true and verifiable stories that expose the shadowy underbelly of power.

Consider Operation Paperclip, where former Nazi scientists were brought to America after World War II, not as prisoners, but as assets, to advance U.S. intelligence during the Cold War. These aren't just old conspiracy theories. They're thoroughly investigated accounts that reveal the uncomfortable truths still shaping our world today. The stories are real. The secrets are shocking.

Follow redacted, declassified mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to redacted early and ad free right now on Wondery+.