The Daily Stoic - The Thing We Never Want To Do | Ask DS

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

We know what Seneca thought of Alexander the Great. We know what he thought of Marius. We know what he thought of entitled and gluttonous Romans. We have his seething satire of Claudius.His prolific writings condemn and judge—rightfully so—these hypocritical and often miserable folks. We have hundreds of his letters (a must read!), dozens of essays, volumes on natural history, multiple books that explore countless topics at incredible depth. But you know what we don’t know much about? What Seneca thought about himself and his job at Nero’s right hand.It’s like that line from the Taylor Swift song “Anti-Hero”—Seneca would apparently rather stare directly at the sun than look in the mirror. He’s got volumes for other people. He’s got an eagle eye for elsewhere. But his own struggles, his own contradictions, his own flaws? Well, he never seems to touch on that.--In today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan talks stoics and growth hacking over virtual for HP. “Advance Compute and Solutions”. HP produces some the worlds most powerful PCs used by Creatives, Designers, Engineers, and Analytics teams. So we’re dealing with the leading edge technology and partner with the likes of companies like Intel, AMD and Nvidia.✉️ 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 and 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. We know what Seneca thought of Alexander the Great. We know what he thought of Maryus. We know what he thought of entitled and gluttonous Romans. we have his seabing satire of Claudius. His prolific writings condemn and judge, rightfully so, hypocritical and often miserable folks. We have his hundreds of letters, which are a must read. We have dozens of essays, multiple books that explore these lives and other topics at incredible depth. But you know what we don't know much about?

What Sennaka thought about himself and his job at Nero's right hand? It's like that line from Taylor Swift's song, Antihiro, Sennaka would apparently rather stare directly at the sun than look in the mirror. He's got volumes for other people. He's got an eagle eye for elsewhere, but his own struggles, his own contradictions, his own flaws. Well, he never seems to touch on that. And most of us are just like him in that way.

We don't want to look in the mirror. We don't want to put ourselves up for review. We can see what everyone else is doing wrong. They're obvious issues and compulsions, but our own. That's where we turn away. I've said this before, but that's one of the things I get the most from ego is the enemy. People want to deal with other people's egos

and how often do we focus on our own. And I mean, you could say, I'm guilty of that also. Obviously, I can see very clearly where ego and issues have held Santa Quebec, but how often do we apply that same lens, that same introspection to ourselves? That's the real struggle and the real journey and the real work.

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 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-host. Hey, it's Guy Ross here and on my podcast, how I built this, I talked to the founders behind some of the world's biggest companies and together, we discuss all of the skills they learned along the way, like confronting big challenges head on and

how to lead through uncertainty. So check out how I built this on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey it's Ryan, welcome to another Thursday episode of The Daily Soap Podcast. If you were interested in my stoses and stuff, you probably haven't read my book on growth hacking, because stoses of men growth hacking don't really seem like they have anything in common, because I had the fact that I did and do try to use some of those ideas that I learned about in this book that I wrote before I did any of my stoke books in how I've grown daily stoke over the years. That may be ultimately how you ended up discovering the podcast knowingly or not. But anyways, I gave a talk back in June to some folks at HP. The talk was

ostensibly about marketing and growth hacking. This was to about a hundred or so employees in the go-to-market team. And I did talk about marketing and I may bring you that talk some other time, but afterwards I did a Q&A. We ended up talking about Stoic stuff and that's what I'm bringing you in today's Q&A episode. Here are some questions from the folks at HP.

I think you'll enjoy. I've been noticing recently that stoicism philosophy has been gaining popularity, especially after the pandemic, and versus other philosophies. I'm seeing it like everywhere around, talking about Bans, Pesh Mode, Momentum Ori, the name of their tour. Also a lot of our ELT folks have been discussing it about stoicism, even in our all-hands employee meetings, as well as occasional friends and family. Why do you think that after the pandemic, that this is becoming like so popular versus other philosophies? Yeah, well, it's funny that the guy behind you there, Mark Ceruleus.

Exactly. That was a test. Mark Ceruleus also lived through a pandemic. They actually named it after him. It's called the Antonin plague. It wasn't his fault, but it sort of happens on his watch and it sort of gets stuck with them. And last, not for like one or two years, but 15 years. I think there is, you know, there is first off just the fact that he, like most of the

ancients were not that different than us, right? They went through difficult times. There were crises, there was political unrest, there were divorces, there was grief, there was loss, there was mistakes, there were bankruptcies, there were ebbs and flows of different trends and things happening in the market or the global affairs. And so when you have what what meditation is, this is my copy here, meditation is effectively the most powerful man in the world just talking to himself about what he's going through, right? And so I think stoicism as a philosophy that's there to help us with the problems of life practically as opposed to theoretically is just timeless like we were talking about.

Mark Shrews says, at dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, I have to go to work, right? So there are almost 2,000 years ago, you have the most powerful man in the world talking about having a conversation with himself that's probably not that dissimilar to the conversations we all had this morning. Actually, here's another one speaking of mornings is clearly he had, he had to wake up like the rest of us. This is the opening of book two of meditation. He says, when you wake up in the morning, tell yourself, the people I will deal with today

will be meddling and ungrateful and arrogant and dishonest and jealous and serene. Right? Like probably maybe some of the people that you shared a commute with this morning, right? Or that you... Wow. I work from home, so. Maybe these are people that sent you emails while you're asleeping them. There you go. The point is people are people and they sort of always been this way. And I think what Marcus is doing in meditations of the Stokes are doing, is sort of tackling those core elements of the human experience that we've always been struggling with.

There's actually a new book coming out about this by Morgan Housel. He wrote this great book called The Psychology of Money. But the new book is called The Things that Don't Change, right? Basically, the idea is, it was just a similar, I think it's part of Jeff Bezos' philosophy, which is like, great business is focused on the things that don't change, right? And so what Stoicism does at its best

is it focuses on the parts of the human experience that don't change, right? And I think great businesses do the same thing. They don't chase fidget spinners or cryptocurrencies or whatever the thing of the moment is. They focus on the problems that people have had for a long time and likely to have for a long time. I've said this in talks before, but like,

the best book to have possibly written is probably what to expect when you're expecting, right? Like, that's a problem that's not going anywhere. There's a reason that book is sold millions and millions of copies. Great, thank you. Yeah. One question I have is, and it's obviously other than your books, what would be the three books you would have to take it as an island and read? Yeah, well, okay, so I'll put this translation of Marcus, I really said the top. This is the Gregory Hayes translation for the modern library. I've read it many hundreds of times over, you know, almost 20 years now, and so it

seems to continually give me something new each time I pick it up. I really like, let me see what's behind here. This is a great book by Doris Kurns Goodwin, Leadership and Turbulent Times. It's sort of a greatest hits album of all her It's sort of a greatest hits album of all her best biographies of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and FDR. I guess Lyndon Johnson's in here too. It's probably one of the best leadership books I've ever written or sorry, ever read. What else would I do? This is Victor Franco's Man Search for Meeting, which is pretty incredible.

They actually published a new book, which I think is destined to be a class that they found one of his old lectures. This is my copy. My aunt gave me this copy when I graduated from high school and I've come back to it many, many times. So again, the ideas that you come back to are what's important. But there's a new addition of Victor Frankl

called Yes to Life that I've been thinking a lot about recently and really enjoyed. So that might be three that I'd start with. I was just curious, and I put this, I don't know if you have the chat up or not, but the HP way is kind of a big thing to us here at HP. And I'm interested, you know, the HP ways kind of a big thing to us here at HP. And I'm interested, you know, that I was looking at the definition of stoicism

and one thing I saw was the fact that the practice of virtue is both necessary and sufficient to achieve a well-lived flourishing life. And I feel like our culture at HP, it kind of aligns with that. And I was just wondering if you comment on kind of how stoicism relates to that HP way I put in there. Well, I love the HP way.

I've heard it before, obviously. It's hard to find much to argue with in these values. The four values of Stoicism, as you mentioned the word virtue, virtue is obviously singular, but then it's also plural. It's made up of multiple sort of sub-virtues. The four virtues of Stoicism, I have the symbols of them tattooed on my wrist here. The four virtues of Stoicism are courage, self discipline, justice, and wisdom. And as I look at these 11 ideas in the HP way or in the ad you mentioned, I find that all of them illustrate one or more of those virtues, right? In some form or another, right? Believe you can change the world, that's courage.

So as radical ideas are not bad ideas, sharing, right? Trust your colleagues, this would pull up the virtue of justice, right? No one to work alone and when to work together. This is pulling at the idea of wisdom, make a contribution every day. When I think about self-discipline, I don't think about the idea of some radical self-transformation.

I think about the accumulation of small gains, right? Of observing the rules as best you can day in and day out. There's a great rule in writing, which I love. It's just two crappy pages a day, right? You're just trying to make a small contribution every single day. So I would say that as far as corporate values go, which are obviously going to be a little bit different than sort of personal values, because corporations ultimately have the bottom line stakeholder of the shareholder and needing to ultimately turn a profit for people in a way that perhaps the individual

does not. But as far as corporate values go, I think as close as we can get to the idea of these four virtues, the better and more sustainable we're going to be as a business and as an organizational culture. Hey, Ryan, I might let you just recommend it a book called The Gap and Gain. I don't know if you've got a chance to read it. Is this the Ben Hardy book? Yes. Yes, Ben. Something right now that kind of resonated.

I haven't, I mean, not'm not gonna have to do it, but it talks about how we're always pursuing this ideal, right? And we're always thinking about the gap against that ideal, which is a moment of our hate of times, right? So we're, the times that we're gonna reach it versus focusing on the gains that we have done, being a better person or a better whatever than yesterday. Yes.

Is celebrating those small wins, which is what two violators can give us a little bit more. I mean, I haven't finished reading it, so it probably had a little bit more perspective once you just said about that. Yeah, yeah. Well, so not to bring up one of your competitors, obviously, but I've gotten to know Michael Dell here a little bit

in Austin, and he was telling me this great acronym that I've been thinking about. It's basically sort of personal motto is, please, but never satisfied, right? And I think it captures the only way through that tension that we're talking about, which is like, if all your focus on is how you can get better, right? You never celebrate the win.

You never feel like it's, it means anything. You're sort of always moving the goalposts. And at the same time, if all you're doing is patting yourself on the back, celebrating how far you've come, you're unlikely to go much further forward, right? And so, you know, sometimes we see great athletes who are incredibly talented, they've accomplished so much, but all they care about is winning one more

right in this Teresapart family, is a Teresapart franchise, is it, you know, they stay in the boxing ring too long, right? And then, and then conversely, if, if all you're doing speak to further that boxing metaphor, if all you're looking at is how dominant you were in the last fight, that's where the hungry young upstart catches you on a wears. And so this idea of being both happy and not complacent, being ambitious, but also not insatiable, I think is the tension that we're talking about. And the still it's sort of rendered that as the virtue of temperance, right, or the right amount, moderation. And I think that's obviously the balance that we're

all trying to strike in every human we do. strike in everything that we do. Thanks 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.

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