The Daily Stoic - Practice Everything. Be Ready for Anything. | The Real Power You Have

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

Ryan talks about the importance of practicing premeditation malorum, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.List your product on AppSumo between September 15th - November 17th and the first 400 offers to go live will receive $1000, the next 2000 to list a product get $250. And everyone who lists gets entered to be one of 10 lucky winners of $10k! Go to https://appsumo.com/ryanholiday to list your product today and cash in on this amazing deal.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 stoic 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 Wunderree's 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. Practice everything. Be ready for anything.

You go through your entire pre-speaking routine and then moments before you're scheduled to address the group, there's a last minute change, and you don't go on for another 30 minutes. You're in the middle of pitching your company to a group of investors, and Zoom freezes. You're throwing a no-hitter and as you walk out onto the mound for the ninth inning, lightning strikes, and you have to turn in and head to the locker room to wait out the weather. We've all had our routines disrupted.

We've had our plans dashed. We've been in the zone and then forced out of it. But this is why the Stoics had their pre-metatachio-malorum practices. They wanted to, as Sena said, practice for any and every possible disruption, be it exile or war or shipwreck or just a travel delay. A couple of weeks ago, NBC's Sunday night football analyst Tony Dungee himself, a Super Bowl champion is both a player and a coach spoke during the 75 minute weather delay between the bills and the chiefs. He speculated about what the two teams would and should be doing as they waited for play to resume.

And then he said, believe it or not, Danny Green used to practice this. When I worked for him, we had practices or he'd stop it for 25 or 30 minutes and then get started again to see who could adjust and get ready for everything. The pros prepare. The greats get ready for everything. The pros, prepare. The greats get ready for everything.

Martellis Bennett, who told us on the Daily Stoke podcast, that the New England Patriots even practiced this before the 2017 Super Bowl, actually going through the motions of the longer half time. So they wouldn't be thrown off by or get cold from the extra 15 or so minutes. How good are you if you need everything to go perfectly? How great are you if you can't handle change? You must practice everything and be ready for anything. That's the idea of pre-meditasha and malorum.

We have this really cool pre-meditasha malorum reminder to challenge going in the Daily Stoke store, which you can of course check out at store.dailystoke.com. The real power you have, there is fleeting power and there is real power. Fleeting power can be taken away while real power is in our minds and our bones. The former tends to be along the lines of wealth, fame, high position, and the leverage that all those things give us over others. The Stoics thought that this kind of power was inferior to the real power that each person possesses, the power of our minds to reason and make judgments and choices based on the real worth of things. You can have both kinds of power too, but only if you keep the first kind of power too, but only if you keep the first

kind of power subject, the kind of power that the Stoics actually cared about. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, and there's these weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand, write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them. You can check out the Daily Stoke Journal anywhere at Books or Sold. You can also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily

Stoke Store at store.dailystoke.com. So, Crescipus, who I talk about in the lives of the Stoics, as well, he says, this is the very thing which makes up the virtue of the happy person in a well-flowing life, when the affairs of life are in every way tuned to the harmony between the individual divine spirit and the will of the director of the universe. Then, Epictetus says, don't trust in your reputation, your money or position, but in the strength that is yours. Namely, your judgments about the things that you control and don't control.

For this alone is what makes us free and unfettered. That picks us up by the neck from the depths and lifts us eye to eye with the rich and the powerful. That's discourses 326 in meditations 1219 says, understand at last that you have something in you more powerful and divine that causes the bodily passions and pulls you like a mere puppet. What thoughts now occupy my mind? Is it not fear, suspicion, desire, something like that? I think the fact that we can talk about Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus as peers, even though

one was utterly powerless and the other possessed all the worldly power there was, is an amazing illustration of what Epictetus is saying. When he says, for this alone is what makes us free and unfettered that picks us up by the net from the depths and lifts us eye to eye the rich and the powerful. And in fact, you know, Epictetus works in Nero's court. He is a slave of one of Nero's high ranking officials or secretaries.

And in Epictetus's writing, we get a sense, we get him really realizing and trying to communicate later to his students that like, he realized that as a slave he had a better life than many of these people that he was freer. He watches at one point someone he sucking up to Nero's cobbler. Like the guy that makes Nero shoes is getting flattery because the person wants to get closer to the emperor. And an epictetus realizes that that person who's doing that is, of course,

freer and richer and more privileged than epictetus in essentially every way. But is then voluntarily debasing themselves is a slave to their need for power or recognition or money or whatever it is, that person is willingly a slave. In Seneca, in that same court talks about this, he says, you know, nothing is more shameful than this sort of form of voluntary slavery. Nothing is more shameful than these people who are addicted to a mistress to their estates, to, you know, being, you know, the most famous or popular person in Rome. And so I just, I think it is a powerful statement that the still ex, that amongst the still ex, some of the most powerful and influential and inspiring were the least powerful and recognized.

Client, these is a manual laborer, but he's considered a peer of Hercules because of his ability to endure things, because of his judgments, because of his incorruptibility. Marcus Aurelius was not the greatest conqueror of the Roman emperors, but he's one of the most impressive because he conquered himself. He possessed the throne. The throne did not possess him. And so this idea of being free of chasing the real power, which is power over oneself,

power over one's wants, power over one's opinions, power over one's actions, power over oneself, power over one's wants, power over one's opinions, power over one's actions, power over, you know, those impulses that might drive you to do this or that, that's real power. There's a line in one of Stephen Pressfield's books where Alexander the Great is taunting this philosopher and he says, what have you done? I've conquered the world. And philosopher says, I have conquered the need to conquer the world. And I think Pressville is saying the same thing, the Stokes are saying, the same thing that Epictetus is saying,

he's probably drawing on Diodgeny's the cynic, but that there is a level of power above the level of raw power that people chase and debase themselves with. So that's your question, your thing to think about today. What kind of power are you chasing? What are you pursuing? Are you really as powerful as you think you are or does power have power over 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. You just go to dailystoke.com slash email. So check it out dailystoke.com slash email.

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. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on Page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai And I'm Sydney battle and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast Disantel where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup why it happened and the repercussions What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama

But none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany.

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