The Daily Stoic - Life Is Predictably Unpredictable | Trust But Verify

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

Grab your signed copy of Brent Underwood's Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley at the Painted Porch today.✉️ 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.

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And we are the hosts of Red Handed, a weekly true crime podcast. originals. Listen now on Audible. shorthand, which is just an excuse for us to talk about anything we find interesting because it's our show and we can do what we like. We've covered the death of Princess Diana, an unholy Quran written in Saddam Hussein's blood, the gruesome history of European witch hunting, and the very uncomfortable phenomenon of genetic sexual attraction. Whatever the case, we want to know what pushes people to the extremes of human behavior. Like, can someone give consent to be cannibalized? What drives a child to kill? And what's the psychology of a terrorist?

Listen to Red Handed wherever you get your podcasts and access our bonus short hand episodes exclusively on Amazon Music or by subscribing to Wondry Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app. 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 literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics

with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works. Life is predictably unpredictable. In March 2020, uncertainty gripped the world as the COVID-19 pandemic spread rapidly. The markets were crashing, businesses were shutting down, schools and universities closed their doors. As strict lockdown measures confined millions to their homes, Brent Underwood, who I've

been telling you about recently, my partner here at Daily Stoic, thought he'd found the perfect place to ride out the pandemic, small ghost town in California. It was safe and isolated, beautiful and quiet for a second. Then a freak series of snowstorms trapped him there for weeks with dwindling supplies and no running water. His retreat turned suddenly into a prison. Then he had a bout with appendicitis that required him to drive himself two hours to the closest clinic. As we've said here many times, life comes at you fast.

And once it starts coming, it doesn't stop coming. The rest of the snow melted, work progressed on the town, media attention poured in, the New York Times profiled him in the town in a long-awaited piece. And then before he even had time to send the article to his family, the town's crown jewel, the American Hotel, burned to the ground exactly 149 years to the day it had opened, from triumph to disaster in a matter of hours. Seneca himself tells the story of Rome burning to the ground and how the city of lions came to her aid

with a large donation. Little did lions know that within a year, Rome would be returning the favor because lions had burned. Life is unpredictable yet somehow very predictable. It comes at us fast, it doesn't stop. It puffs us up, it brings us slow. It blesses us and curses us. All we can do is be ready.

All we can do is be generous to others when they fall and struggle. All we can do is pick up the pieces and keep going. Anyways, this is a story Brent tells in Ghost Town Living, Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley, which I was lucky enough to work on. It's a book I love.

I love the Sarah Gorda story. It's why I've been talking about it so much here at Daily Stoke. If you haven't checked it out yet, you should. It debuted on the New York Times bestseller list. And it's just an awesome book. I think you'll really like it. You can grab that.

We have some signed numbered first editions over at the Painted Porch. I'll link to that in today's show notes. Check it out. Trust but verify. This is the April 5th entry in the Daily Stoic. Today's quote is from Epictetus's Discourses 2.1.8. He says, first off, don't let the force of an impression carry you away. Say to it, hold up a bit.

Let me see who you are, where you are from. Let me put you to the test. Hold up a bit, let me see who you are, where you are from. Let me put you to the test. One of the wonders of your mind is the quickness with which it can comprehend and categorize things. As Malcolm Gladwell wrote in Blink, we are constantly making split second decisions based on years of experience and knowledge, as well as using the same skill to confirm prejudices,

stereotypes, and assumptions. Clearly, the former thinking is a source of strength, whereas the latter is a great weakness. We lose very little, though, by taking a beat to consider our own thoughts. Is it really so bad? What do I really know about this person? Why do I have such strong feelings here? Is anxiety really adding much to the situation? What's so special about?

By asking these questions, by putting our impressions to the test, as Epictetus recommends, we're less likely to be carried away by them or make a move based on a mistaken or biased one. We're still free to use our instincts, but we should always, as the Russian proverb says, trust, but verify. You know, it is funny, right? I think the impression of the stoics is that they have no emotions, that they're unfeeling, unflinching. I don't really think that is it at all.

I think they're just, they're not as immediately reactive or emotional because they do this. They stop and they think about it. They stop and they question, they put it to the test. One of the things my therapist has said, you know, you start to say something and she cuts me off. She goes, no, preface it with what I make up about that is, right? Because like it's so easy to take what we're about to say or what we think has verifiable

indisputable fact when it's really opinion, when it's really an assumption, when it's really a stereotype, when it's really an extrapolation and inference. It's not real. And once you put it to the test, you go, oh yeah, this isn't really based on anything. I've made this up. I'm guessing. I'm basing it on past experience. And when I stop and, and go, Hey, is this really so bad? It's really what I think it is. What do I know about this? Yeah. Hey, buddy. Sorry, my son just came out of his room to the bathroom. So I'll let this pause a little bit. Hey, Sam, Clark, can you go in your room?

I'll send mom in. This is making for super entertaining, super entertaining episode. I think I'm gonna leave this all in for you. So you guys get a taste of what my life is. You know, even stuff like that, right? I try to, you know, maybe sometimes your first instinct is, oh, this is an inconvenience.

Oh, this is annoying. Oh, this is not how it's supposed to be. And then you stop and you go, but is that true? Actually, is it an opportunity? To me, that's what Mark Sturlus is reminding himself with that idea of the obstacle is the way, right? You go, okay, yes, I can see it this way as a problem. It's not how I want things to be

as an inconvenience or whatever. And then actually we can stop and think, no, it's this chance to do something. It's a chance for things to go differently. It's a chance to do it again. Like, as I'm seriously, I'm going to wrap this up here in just a minute. And then I'm going to go in and get a second chance to lay with my son as he goes to bed. And that's not annoying. That's not a problem, right? Like bedtime is not real. And this is important. These are arbitrarily made up things to begin with, right? But that's not how I always think about them. That's not how I necessarily think about them naturally. But

it's taking this second to put it to the test, to think about it, to question it. And that's true for the email that you just got that had a rude tone. Did it have a rude tone or did it have no tone at all? And that's what you thought was rude. Did it have a rude tone because that's the voice in your head, not what was coming across? What did this person mean? What's a nice way to interpret it, right? You can put all these impressions, assumptions to the test and you should.

And the more that you do that, the better and happier you will be, the more stoic you will be. Now, sometimes that initial instinct is correct. That's what that expression trust but verify means. You verify. Sometimes you're right, sometimes you're not, but you've got to do that work. And you understand that, you know, your mind is not always your friend and your impressions are not always right. When you go, I trust my gut. Do you deserve to trust

that gut? Right? Have you done the work that warrants that? Or with just a little more investigation, a little pause, a little more thinking, would that actually make everything better? I think that it would. So with that, I'll close up today's episode. I'm not gonna record anymore. I'm gonna go get a second crack at bedtime

with my wife and son. And I hope that you are probably listening to this in the morning. So I'll wish you a good day and 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. The early 2000s was a breeding ground for bad reality competition series from shows like Kid Nation, CBS's weird Lord of the Flies

style social experiment that took 40 kids to live by themselves in a ghost town to The Swan, a horrifying concept where women spent months undergoing a physical transformation and then were made to compete in a beauty pageant. Hi, I'm Misha Brown and I'm the host of Wondery's podcast, The Big Flop. Each episode, comedians join me to chronicle one of the biggest pop culture fails of all time and try to answer the age-old question, who thought this was a good idea? Recently, on The Big Flop, we looked at the reality TV show, The Swan. The problem?

This dream opportunity quickly became a viewing nightmare. They were isolated for weeks, berated, operated on, and then were ranked by a panel of judges. Follow the big flop on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.