The Daily Stoic - It Doesn’t Matter What You Do, It Matters How You Do It | Practice True Joy

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

Ryan talks about the why the Stoics stress the importance of taking action, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal.If you want to become a great reader, the Stoics can help. We built out their best insights into ourRead to Lead: A Daily Stoic Reading Challenge. Since it first launched in 2019, Read to Lead has been our most popular challenge, taken on by almost ten thousand participants. Today, we’re excited to announce that, for the first time ever, registration to jointhe 2022 live cohort is officially open.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow 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.

Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoke podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes illustrated with stories from history, current events and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoke, intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderies Podcast Business Wars.

And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things I'm always jealous of when I read the ancient says, their proficiency in other languages. Mark's really speaks Latin, but he writes, meditations in Greek, to himself, beautifully. One thing that I think humbles us, it also makes us better, is learning languages. Babel, the language learning app has sold more than 10 million subscriptions for this reason.

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price of three. Just go to BabelBABBL.com and just promo code Stoic, Babel.com code Stoic Babel Language for Life. It doesn't matter what you do, it matters how you do it. The occupations of the three most well-known St stilloks could not be more different. Senaika was a playwright, a wealthy landowner, and a political advisor. Epic Titus was a former slave who became a philosophy teacher. Marcus Aurelius would have loved to be a philosopher, but instead found himself wearing the purple cloak of the emperor. Zeno was a prosperous merchant. Clientes was a water carrier.

Kato was a senator. The modern Stoics include James Stockdale, a fighter pilot, and Tim Ferris, a writer and technology investor. These jobs have very little in common. The lifestyles they support are vastly different as well. So are the opportunities, the temptations, the frustrations, and the stresses which they produce. But none of that matters. Neither does your job or the lifestyle it provides. What matters is how you do that job and how you

respond to the situations it puts you in. Marcus Aurelius wrote himself that it was possible to live a good life anywhere, including in the complicated and intoxicating halls of power. He mostly proved that true. Sadly, Sena often fell short in the same hallways. It doesn't matter whether you're a janitor or a junior senator. It doesn't matter whether you're negotiating a multi-million dollar deal or negotiating traffic on the way to your unpaid internship. What matters is what you do with this. What matters is how you

do it. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, it's possible to live a good life, to be a good stoic. It's not easy, but it's possible. Practice true joy. This is this week's meditation from the Daily Stewart Journal, 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living. There is no audiobook of this journal. So the weekly podcast episode is the only way to hear this sort of weekly meditation that we do inside the journal. And it's always been weird for me. I don't know if I should call the journal that I wrote a book. It's 20,000 words. It's got writing in it. should call the journal that I wrote a book. It's 20,000 words. It's got writing in it.

Is it a journal? Is it a book? In any case, here is today's meditation. The Stoics held joy to be one of the good passions. Worthy of practice in everyday life. But Stoic joy isn't about the delights of the senses or material pleasures. To mark its realies, Joy was being kind to others. To Seneca was freedom from fear or

suffering and death. Let's laugh with Democritus, as Seneca says, and engage in our proper human work with Joy. So consider making your study of philosophy this week around the idea of where you might find joy and what good you might find to do with it. And here's Mark's Relious on Meditations. Joy for human beings lies in proper human work. And proper human work consists in acts of kindness to other human beings, disdain for the

stirring of the senses and identifying, trustworthy impressions and contemplating the natural order and all that happens in keeping with it. Then we have Seneca and his moral letters. He says, trust me, real joy is a serious thing. Do you think that someone can in the charming expression, blithely dismiss death with an easy disposition or swing open the door to poverty, keeping pleasures in check or meditate on the endurance of suffering? The one who is comfortable with turning these thoughts over is truly full of joy, but hardly cheerful.

It's exactly such a joy that I would wish for you to possess for it will never truly run dry once you've laid claim to its source. And finally, we have Seneca in on tranquility of mind. He says, Heraclitus would shed tears whenever he went out in public, demo-credits laughed. One saw the whole as a parade of miseries, the other of follies, and so we shall take a lighter view of things

and bear them with an easy spirit for it is more human to laugh at life than to lament it. There is this sense, right, that the Stoics are joyless, that the Stoics are humoralistness, that the Stoics don't appreciate existence, that they're just here, bece of burden, unfeeling, and ready to face death with barely a whimper.

But I think there's first off too much humor in the Stoics, whether it's Marcus Aurelius or Seneca, or of course, Cricipus, who allegedly died laughing at some inside joke who's meaning barely even survives to us. I just don't think that the Stoics were without joy. You could look at Seneca's enormous parties. You know, he famously has like 300 ivory tables

as hypocrisy, or it could be an insight to a side of the Stoics that perhaps doesn't appear in their writing very much, but clearly was a big part of their existence, which was, you know, socializing and connecting and having fun with people. But I think what the Stoics, what Santa Camos of all is trying to say here, is that joy is not hedonism, it's not just pure happiness and lightness. The joy comes from that place of resilience, from removing the unnecessary disturbances that cause misery. I'd probably define Stoke joy as the absence of misery that a lot of people experience whether it's fear or anything that made you unhappy. But then we have to add in Marcus Aurelius' wrinkle, which I think Marcus truly found,

although he seems to be an introverted, quiet person who loved his books, he clearly found joy in being of service, helping people of making the world better. And we have to see that as a key part of our role. As an introvert myself, I do empathize with that expression that hell is other people, that life is easier when you focus on your stuff. But this is also its own form of misery ultimately

because it makes you lonely, it deprives you of purpose, it deprives you of connection. This Dox did celebrate joy. They did believe it was an important passion, an important part of life. They just would have disagreed with the Epicurians who seemed to find joy in external things, external pleasures, external experiences. I think for this Dox joy was something deeper. It was a way of living.

It was a way of living. It was a way of thinking. It was a deeper emanation of self-sufficiency, but also connection, a locking in on one's purpose. Doing the work that one is put here to do when Mark really says, the fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good. I think he's also talking about what gives him joy and what makes him happy in this life. And I hope you find the same thing. Seek out joy. Certainly don't disdain joy and certainly don't think that this philosophy is about not experiencing the joy. I wish you much happiness and joy you deserve it. My life is better when I have it. And it's something that I actually actively have to work on and so do you. life is better when I have it. And it's something that I that I actually actively have to work on. And so do you. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke podcast. Again, if you don't know

this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Just go to dailystoke.com slash email. So check it out. 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. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for?

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Wondery comes Spellcaster, a new six-part docu-series about the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of FTX and its founder, Sam Beckman-Freed. Follow Spellcaster wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to episodes Add Free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. you