The Daily Stoic - Life Is Emotionally Abusive | No Shame In Needing Help

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

One day everything is easy. The next, everything that can go wrong, does. One minute, everyone tells you you’re great. The next, they’ve all ganged up against you. Life is too short…and interminably long. Things move insanely fast…and also take forever.Look at Marcus Aurelius’ life. He loses his father…and is then adopted by two powerful stepfathers. He’s suddenly thrust into power…then forced to wait 19 years to wield it. He’s blessed by enormous wealth…and haunted by tragedy after tragedy. Even his job is emotionally manipulative and impossible–at one point Marcus Aurelius describes being emperor as a kind of deranged world where one “earns a bad reputation by good deeds.”When the Stoics talked about the need for an even keel, this was why.---And in today's Daily Stoic excerpt reading, Ryan discusses why the Stoics encourage us to reach out for help when we need it.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, including the Daily Stoic Stillness Key, 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. On Friday, we do double-duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the Daily Stoic. My book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and a literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, I will give you a quick meditation from the Stokes with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words to works.

Life is emotionally abusive. One day everything is easy, and the next everything that can go wrong does. One minute everyone tells you that you're great, the next they've all ganged up against you. Life is too short, it's also in termably long. Things move insanely fast. They also take forever. Look at Marcus Relius' life. He loses his father, and then he's adopted by two powerful stepfathers. He's suddenly thrust into power, then forced to wait years to wield it. He's blessed by enormous

wealth, and then haunted by tragedy after tragedy. Even his job is emotionally manipulative and impossible. At one point Marcus really describes being emperor as a kind of deranged world where one earns a bad reputation by good deeds. So when the Stoics talked about the need for an even keel, this was why when Antoninus hands power over to Marcus's final word was equanimity for a reason. When you're in a volatile relationship, when you're being gasslet, it's incredibly important that one has a strong sense of self, a strong sense of inner peace. It was Marcus really says inner citadel that he relied on to get through the abuse

that life threw it at him. It was his ability to be like the rock that the waves crashed over that allowed him to endure each onslaught of praise or adversity. What about you? How will you endure what is in store for you? What emotional stillness are you going to be able to rely on? That's my key set that I used to get into my office. And I've got the one big key that I turn

to get into my office here at the painted porch. And it's my stillness key, right? And so it's actually got that rock on it. The markets are really just talking about the rock with the big wave crashing over, but it stays still. It's a reminder to me, actually, as I turn the key into my office,

one that stillness unlocks the kind of creativity and productivity and focus that I need to do what I do. And as I slide that key into the key set, it's a reminder that stillness unlocks the creativity, productivity, connection, focus that I need, the presence that I need to do what I do. It's obviously what I wrote a whole book about. Stillness is the key, which came out in 2019.

You can grab that book anywhere. Books are solely got signed copies of the painting. Then you can actually get your own version of that stillness key, which I'm super proud of. It comes with a school box. It makes a great gift for someone who's stressed out or, you know, deserves or needs some stillness in your life. You can check that out at store.dailystill.com. I'll link to it in today's show notes. I think it'll really like it. It also comes with a cool action guide related to the book. So a bunch of awesome stuff there. Grab your own stillness

is the key or just remember that very important idea idea which I also have tattooed on my arm stillness is the key. Life can get you down, I'm no stranger to that. When I find things are piling up, I'm struggling to deal with something, obviously I use my journal, obviously I turn to stochism, but I also turn to my therapist, which I've had for a long time, and has helped me through a bunch of stuff. And because I'm so busy and I live out in the country, I do therapy remote, so I don't have to drive somewhere. And that's where today's sponsor comes in. Toxbase makes it easy to find a therapist that you like. It's convenient.

It's affordable. By doing everything online, Toxbase makes getting the help you want easy and affordable. So why wait? And Toxbase can help with any specific challenge you might be facing. That's why it's the number one online therapy platform with license therapists and over 40 specialties. It's secure and private and in network with most major insurers as a listener of this podcast you can get 80 bucks off your first month with talk space when you go to talkspace.com slash to make with a

license therapist today go to talkspace.com slash to get 80 bucks off your first month and show your support for the Daily Stoic. That's Toxbase.com slash Stoic. No shame in needing help. This is today's entry in the Daily Stoic June 16th, which also happens to be my birthday, so a little message on that coming up here shortly. It's actually one of my all-time favorite quotes from Mark's Realises Meditations, Meditations 7.7. Mark says, don't be ashamed of needing help.

You have a duty to fulfill just like a soldier on the wall of battle. So what if you are injured and can't climb up without another soldier's help? Then the meditation is, no one ever said you were born with all the tools you need to solve every problem you'd face in life. In fact, as a newborn, you were practically helpless. Someone helped you then, and you came to understand that you could ask for help. It was how you knew that you were loved. Well, you are still loved. You can ask anyone for help. You don't have to face everything on your own. If you need help, Comrad, just ask.

And the reason I love that quote is that it so pushes back on this sort of stoic stereotype or caricature of like, unfeeling robot, the one that's invulnerable, that never struggles. And also, as I've come to learn, Amisra talks to the military community, that there is this sort of warrior mindset that looks suspiciously on vulnerability,

on being vulnerable and asking for help, on saying, hey, I'm struggling, hey, I'm having a hard time. Hey, this isn't working for me, right? And I think it's really important to realize specifically, Marcus really stuck into those people, but all of us at the same time, when he says like, hey, we're all in this together,

we're on the same team. You know, Marcus talks a lot about the common good in meditations, about what we can do for the common good, but we can also have, we also have to realize we're a part about the common good in meditations, about what we can do for the common good, but we can also have, we also have to realize we're a part of that common good and we can ask for something back from it. And if we can't, I mean, what does that say about our friends and family and coworkers, right? Like, if, when somebody comes to you, they go, hey, I'm really struggling, I need your advice

or, hey, like, I don't know if I'm cut out for this. What do you think? Or like, worse, right? Like, I'm thinking of harming myself, really going through rough patch. What do we do? We drop everything. We're not only rushed to help them,

we feel like glad that they trusted us, that they came to us with that thing, right? It's beautiful and moving and, that they came to us with that thing, right? It's beautiful and moving and not only don't look at them badly for it, we're excited, we're thanks for coming to me. I appreciate it. Like, that means so much to me, right? And then for some reasons, I'm strange reason, we think that we're not going to get that

same grace from other people. Look, you might not always get it, but I think the vast majority of the time you will, right? And you can't get, I've come to say this in my talks, you can't get help, you don't ask for. Just like if you pretend to know something, you can't learn it. If you pretend, if you not only don't ask for help, but you pretend you don't need help,

you pretend to be struggling less than you are. I mean, you're pushing away help that you could so readily and easily benefit from. So this is just to me just a really important stoic message and a reminder that we're the team sport, we're all on this together, we should rely on each other, we should not only offer help readily, but be willing to accept help just as readily. Not feel guilty about either one of those things. Anyways, today's my birthday turning 36. I'm just putting the finishing touches on my birthday post,

which I'll go out here shortly. Stoics are always a good reminder of our mortality. So as I'm meditating on 36 lessons or so on the way to 36 years old. I'm excited to send this out to you. That'll go out to my email list here shortly. I'm sure it'll get posted on social as well. But I'm gonna take in the day off,

spend in the day with family, probably gonna go swimming, go for a run, and then just you know, just appreciate the morbidness, but also clarity of what Sennaka famously said, it's not in today's entry. It would have been a good one to put, although I guess we saved all the momentum or stuff for the end of the year. But the idea that that has time passes, it's gone forever. And it's interesting for me to think, yeah, sure, 36 is pretty young.

If I'm lucky, maybe I get, maybe I'm not even at the halfway point. But it's also interesting to think, 36 years gone by, right? Never to return. What do I have to show for them? I think I have a lot. Do I have as much as I could?

And I don't mean to sort of whip myself for not being productive enough. I'm just saying like, where did I waste time on things that didn't really matter? Where what took longer because I was afraid to ask for help or to open up, right, or to get advice, right? What did I do alone that I could have done as part of a team or with other people, right? What did I not need to be doing at all, right? What could I have learned from other people's experiences, saved myself some painful lumps on the head? And then where was I just angry about stuff, resentful about stuff?

You know, that's sort of the theme of today's post that's going out is just about, you know, letting things go, not comparing yourself to other people, focusing on what really matters. And that's what I'm thinking about today on my birthday. I appreciate everyone who subscribes, I appreciate all the nice things that people set on social media, and more to come from Daily Stoic, as always, talk to you all soon. 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 having be 100% paid for. FTX Founder's Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded with other people's money, but he allegedly stole. Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes and Vanity Fair. Some involved in crypto saw him as a breath of fresh air from the usual Wall Street buffs with his casual dress and ability to play League of Legends during boardroom meetings.

But in less than a year, his exchange would collapse. An SPF would find himself in a jail cell, with tens of thousands of investors blaming him for their crypto losses. From Bloomberg and Wondering 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.