The Daily Stoic - The Most Valuable Real Estate In The World | Ask DS

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

People spend a lot of money to buy nice land. They want to be in a good neighborhood with good schools. They want to have a beautiful view. Just look at what happened during the pandemic when people rushed to outbid each other for houses outside of major cities–because they wanted safety and space and change of scenery. For centuries, armies have clashed over territory–some of it valuable, some of it not–willing to pay in blood for control over a piece of dirt.Meanwhile, some of the most valuable real estate in the world sits, ignored. What’s that? We referred to it in The Girl Who Would Be Free as “the empire between your ears.” How many people spend an enormous amount to keep up their estates, but then let their brain fall into disrepair. How many of them protect their property, as Seneca said, but let people waste their time or influence their choices?-And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan talks stoics and answers questions in NYC on Obstacle is the way for 160 Hunter Douglas leaders from across the world. Hunter Douglas is the world’s leading manufacturer of window coverings as well as a major manufacturer of architectural products. ✉️ 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.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well on Thursdays we not only read the daily meditation but we answer some questions from listeners in fellow Stoics. We're trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with daily stoic life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happen to be someone

they're recording. But thank you for listening and we hope this is of use to you. listening and we hope this is of use to you. The most valuable real estate in the world. People spend a lot of money to buy nice land. They want to be in a good neighborhood with good schools. They want to have a beautiful view. Just look at what happened during the pandemic when people rushed to outbid each other for houses outside of major cities

because they wanted safety and space and a change of scenery. For centuries, armies have clashed over territory. Some of it valuable, some of it not, willing to pay in blood for control over a piece of dirt. Meanwhile, some of the most valuable real estate in the world sits ignored. What's that? Well, we referred to it in the girl who would be free

as the empire between your ears. How many people spend an enormous amount to keep up their estates, but let their brain fall into disrepair. How many of them protect their property, as Seneca said, but let people waste their time or influence their choices? Yes, land is valuable. They aren't making any more of it after all. And yes, you want to have a roof over your head, and yes, nations must protect their sovereign territory. But the Stoics remind us that the greatest empire is within us between our ears, inside that mushy muscle that is our brain. You have inherited an incredibly valuable piece of property. Will you rule it and cultivate it? Will you rule over it? That's hope so.

This is obviously the idea in the girl who would be free, which is about epictetus. Epictetus having so much taken from him, having so little control, in some cases, even over his physical body, that the greatest empire, the empire between his ears is really all that's left. And that's what that book is about. It's a fable.

It's supposed to teach this idea to young kids. I wrote it for my boys, but it's for boys and girls. And all of us who need a reminder of this sort of basic premise of stoic philosophy, you can grab the girl who would be free at store.dailystoic.com. And I think if you get a sign copy, I'll link to this in today's show.

If you get it, there's a thing you click, you get a sign copy, you can get the boy who would be king for like 75% off for it. Vice versa, the idea is these are two books meant to be read together, the boy who would be king, the idea is these are two books meant to be read together, the boy who would be king, the girl who would be free, epic cheetahs and Marx to realize their stories told in fable form for all ages, really proud of these two books.

And to check them out. I told this story before, but the first Airbnb I stayed in was 15 years ago. I was looking for places to live when I wanted to be a writer and we stayed at this house, I think outside Phoenix. And then when I bought my first house here in Austin, I would rent it out when South by Southwest or F-1 or all these events. My wife and I would go out of town and we'd rent it and it helped pay for the mortgage and it supported me while I was a writer. You've probably had the same experience.

You stayed in an Airbnb and thought, this is doable. Maybe I could rent my place on Airbnb and it's really that simple. You can start with a spare room or you can rent your whole place when you're away. You could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it. Maybe you set up a home office during the pandemic and now you don't need it because you're back at work. Maybe you're traveling to see friends and family even know it. Maybe you set up a home office during the pandemic and now you don't need it because you're back at work. Maybe you're traveling to see friends and family for the holidays. While your way, your home could be an Airbnb. Whether you could use extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home

could be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. Hey Canada, ever wish that managing your money could be a whole lot easier and way less stressful? That's why Coho is created. The financial app that's going to revolutionize the way you handle your hard earned cash and help you save even more. Coho is a company rooted in the belief that better financial solutions for all Canadians exist.

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$20 or more using the code daily stoic 20 again sign up for your free trial by downloading the coho app and receive 20 bucks off when you make your first purchase of $20 or more using the code daily stoic 20. Hey it's Ryan welcome to another Thursday episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. We're going to do our Q&A here. Back in September, I had a quick trip to New York. I was doing a talk for the folks at Hunter Douglas, the blinds and windows cover and the blinds and windows company. It's funny sometimes. Company can sneak up on you. Obviously, I heard the name Hunter Douglas. I don't think anyone who's ever owned a house probably has. But I don't think I would have pegged them as a hundred plus year old company.

So one of the things we talked about is just the amount of adversity that a company would have experienced over a hundred years and how the people there are the errors to that tradition, right? To come from a long line of survivors and adapters, they're by definition Brazilian, or they wouldn't still be in business. So anyways, it's a great talk. I may bring you the talk at some point,

but I did a nice Q&A at the end, and I'm gonna bring you some of those questions from the audience now. Enjoy. When it's enough thinking, and you move to action, sure, and when you have to stop action, then actually think a little bit so that you correct course. Yeah, it's a loop, right?

It's sort of you perceive it, you decide where the opportunity is, you take the action, and then decide what you're going to bring to bear on that, what you're going to endure, what you're going to put up with, what you're going to bring to bear on that, what you're going to endure, what you're going to put up with, what you're going to go through. And then finally, you're presented with new situations, new information, feedback loop. There's a thing, fighter pilots talk about called the Oodle Loop, which is the sort of loop of you're making a decision. You're seeing what the other fighter pilot is doing and then you're making a decision

and they're making a decision. And it's this loop that's going faster and faster. And the faster you can go through this loop from orientation to action to decision to action to orientation again, that's what separates the sort of the winners from the losers ultimately. And I think carving out time to do that every day and being fast moving without being reactive is sort of what the stills are trying to cultivate. You speak a lot about the disciplines that we as individuals can exercise and surely I guess

is all of us came together and each day we're exercise on this, we've seen a company level, for the corporate level that promotes these disciplines or even from our corporate level, that we do. Implements, these disciplines last at the individual with more of a company level. Yeah, that's a great question. How does Stoicism help us with what you might call a collective action problem, right? Of course, every organization, every country, every family, is a collection of individuals, and ultimately, we we mostly control ourselves So let's just sort of start there and I would say you know how the leaders Model this stuff is probably the most important bit of influence we have as far as setting a company culture

I think one of the things that happens is you know the CEOs or the leaders or the coach or the star athlete or whatever We're talking about whatever type of organization is the CEOs or the leaders or the coach or the star athlete or whatever we're talking about, whatever type of organization is, the trouble they get into is they talk about this stuff and they go, but of course it doesn't actually apply to me or in their sort of personal private decisions, they're not living up to it. So I think first off, we gotta start with sort of modeling, but I do think we can apply this stuff

at the individual level. So we're talking about sort of carving out time for reflection and space. You don't want to be a company that's sort of constantly having councils and meetings and whatever. That can suck things down. But it is, I think, important that we carve out the space to work through this stuff as a group, to sit down and go, okay, what are we dealing with? Like, I talked about negative visualization. A lot of sort of culture experts and sort of decision making experts have talked about

like doing a premortum as a team. So you're launching some new product or going into some new market. You convene all the people who are working really hard to make sure it's a success. and you sit down and you go, let's pretend that it failed. Why did it fail? And let's sort of work through that hypothetical. And so I think setting systems or sort of standing ways that you sort of work through these things as a group is, we're obviously all trying to do it as individuals, but we can come up with sort of rituals or set kind of meetings and exercises

that put those ideas into practice as a group. And that reinforces it. If Morphs Narelius was here today, what would he be telling us and how to handle social media, the 24-7 societies that we live in today? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to think that, you know, he's the most powerful man in the world. He's willing over an empire of 50 million people, millions of square miles. We probably get more information in an hour than he would have gotten in a year.

Just the sheer volume of information that we have access to, this is an extraordinary advantage in many ways, but political scientists today talk about what's like the CNN effect. Like the job of leaders is to think big picture, to plan for the future. And yet they're besieged by this sort of 24 hour news cycle

worse with social media that's forcing them to think about every immediate thing as though it's more important than that larger plan. I think that's what causes some of the drift or the distraction I'm talking about. I always find it so interesting, yeah, whether I'm talking, I'm walking into the, a military commander's office or the coach of a sports team or executive or CEO, and you know, they have like a TV and their office is running the news whether it's

CNBC or ESPN or, you know, Sky News or whatever. They've got the news running in the background on you in their TV and I go, how could you possibly be focused to have this thing that's designed by definition to distract you and suck your attention from what you're doing to look at that. And so I think, you know, he probably, one of the things you'd be talking about is how do you create a little bit of a bubble or a little bit of space around yourself so you can think about what you need to be thinking about, not what everyone else wants you to think about.

And we can think about our mind, the sort of command center, as this contested bit of territory that advertisers want access to strangers on the street want access to people you care about, want access to your phone wants access. All these people are fighting for that. And you have to be disciplined and also put up some barriers that protects it, or you're going to be giving up the one thing

you can, you're going to be giving up control of the one thing you have control over to something that probably doesn't have the same interests as you in mind. And creating that is, I think, really important. And we know that's why he was writing in his little journal was that exact thing, carving out that space to think about what he wanted to think about, not what all the messengers and, you know,

sycophants and, you know, assistants wanted him to think about. Promote your thoughts from the sports and the learnings or what they believe. So one thing you can summarize the essence for the one that you like the most, or what they believe. So one, that you think can summarize the essence or one that you like the most. I don't know. I mean, I think the big one is that everything is an opportunity for excellence, right?

Or the Stokes would say virtue, right? And the four virtues for the Stokes are courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom. So everything's an opportunity to sort of be brave and to endure, right? To put yourself out there, everything's an opportunity to be strong, right? To sort of do what you should do and not do what you shouldn't do. It's always an opportunity to do the right thing, to help other people, right? To be a positive force in the world, and then it's always an opportunity to learn and grow. The idea then, if we could say that the essence of stoicism is that how do you start to

see all the situations big and small, you know, positive or negative as a chance to apply one of those four ideas or all of those four ideas because they're really inseparable. To me, that's the core of stoic philosophy. And how do you drain or brex for that? I think you just do it, right? You try to do it in the small situations to build the muscle memory so you can do it in the big situations. That's kind of how I think about it.

You know, when you talk about saying no, which to me is like I think a very difficult thing to do. In an environment where collaboration is so key in enabling you to get things done, how do you balance? Yeah, I mean, there are things we do want to say yes to, and we have to say yes to. And I think that's why we have to practice saying no. Because if you're saying yes to everyone, right, if you try to be everywhere, you ultimately end up sort of being nowhere. So I think it's a, that's obviously the million dollar question. If I could be like, here are the three rules to for what to say yes to and what to say no to, you know, that would be very, very valuable.

I don't think it's unfortunately that quite that simple. But it is, you know, like one of the questions I do have is, is this a thing that only I can do? You know, in economics, the law of comparative advantage. If you want to do what only you can do or what you are best at doing, and then you want to delegate outsource, collaborate on those other things. And so that's one of the questions

that I try to think about. Is this something that someone else could do? Is it ideally, is this something someone else could do cheaper than me? And I'm trying to get to those things that only I can do that are really, really important to me, professionally and personally. And that's one of the rubrics, like, I love writing.

That's why I became an author. One of the interesting things about being a writer is that it presents all these opportunities to do cool, potentially lucrative things that are not writing. And I have to be disciplined about what I say yes to, or I can end up in a situation where the reward for my success is that I don't get to do the one thing that I really like doing. And we say, hey, I'm doing this for my family, and it's like, well, if you never see your family, is it really for them? Knowing what's important to you, knowing what you can only do, I think these help you

decide what to say yes or are no two. Very good. Ryan. I'm so happy that you said yes to us. Yes, it was an honor. This is very cool. Really, I mean, being here and sharing all this knowledge, all this, those insights is very important for us.

And this moment that we're going through, a lot of transformation, a lot of challenge, a lot of choices. And I think that having some insightful thoughts based on philosophy based on real important amazing lives, it's incredible. Thank you so much for being here with us. Thank you so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show.

We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. 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. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it. Tomorrow sounds like hydrogen being added to natural gas to make it more sustainable. It sounds like solar panels generating thousands of megawatts, and it sounds like carbon being captured and stored, keeping it out of our atmosphere.

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