The Daily Stoic - They Are Cut Off From Truth | A Little Better Every Day

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. When I travel with my family, I almost always stay in an Airbnb. I want my kids to have their own room. I want my wife and I to have a little privacy. You know, maybe we'll cook or at the very least we'll use a refrigerator. Sometimes I'm bringing my in-laws around with me or I need an extra room just to write in. Airbnbs give you the flavor of actually being in the place you are. I feel like I've lived in all these places that I've stayed for a week or two or even a night or two. There's flexibility in size and location. When you're searching you can

Starting point is 00:00:35 look at guest favorites or even find like historical or really coolest things. It's my choice when we're traveling as a family. Some of my favorite memories are in Airbnb's we've stayed at I've recorded episodes of a podcast in Airbnb I've written books one of the very first Airbnb's I ever stayed in was in Santa Barbara, California While I was finishing up what was my first book trust me I'm lying if you haven't checked it out. I highly recommend you check out Airbnb for your next trip recommend you check out Airbnb for your next trip. 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

Starting point is 00:01:33 it They are cut off from truth. Chances are you're not that angry at the victims of Bernie Madoff. You don't get mad at someone in a bad relationship, you help them get out. You feel sorry for someone who has been brainwashed into a cult or a multi-level marketing scheme. And yet when it comes to politics or culture war issues, specifically today's political demagogues, we act very differently. We call them names, we judge them, we blame them, as if it is not the exact same scenario, as if they haven't been fed a steady diet of lies and appeals to emotion. Not just recently, but for decades. In meditations, Marx-Reles quotes Epictetus, who himself

Starting point is 00:02:23 is riffing on Plato, to remind us that against their will, people's souls are cut off from truth. He was talking about the people that frustrated and disappointed him, the people that supported bad policies, who did and said untrue things. They were not wrong on purpose.

Starting point is 00:02:39 They thought they were correct, largely because someone had misinformed and even manipulated them. The same is true today. Millions of people have been cut off from truth. We can be sympathetic to this without assenting to it. We can understand that had our upbringing been a little different, our algorithm gone

Starting point is 00:02:57 a little differently, we might've ended up in the very same place. A little better every day. A little better every day. This is week four in the Daily Stoic Journal. This week's entry is, The Stoics saw their lives as works in progress. They didn't believe they were born perfect, but they believed that with work and dedication, they could get a little better every day. There is real

Starting point is 00:03:28 delight in this progress, as Epictetus quoted by Way of Socrates. Marcus Aurelius avidly pursued his own education and improvement, eagerly looking for advice for mentors and historical examples. Well, let's follow that example this week and see how you get a little better as each day passes. We must keep constant watch over ourselves and as Seneca phrased it, put each day up for review. Looking back on our day helps us to better understand where we may have fallen short and gives us tangible feedback for how to improve and grow. Only what you measure and record can be monitored. Only what you put up for reflection can be learned from. And our first quote is from Seneca's moral letters. I will keep

Starting point is 00:04:14 constant watch over myself and most usefully will put each day up for review for this is what makes us evil that none of us looks back upon our own lives. We reflect upon only that which we are about to do, and yet our plans for the future descend from the past. Marcus Aurelius from Rusticus said, I learned from Rusticus to read carefully and to not be satisfied with a rough understanding of the whole and not to agree too quickly with those who have a lot to say about something. And then Epictetus says, but what does Socrates say? Just as one delights in improving his farm and another his horse, so I delight in

Starting point is 00:04:50 attending to my own improvement day to day. This is Epictetus's Discourses 3.5. As I think about the decade and a half now I've spent studying Stoicism, I sometimes marvel at who I was when these ideas first hit me and how far I've come. Some ways I look at how not far I've come and how I'm still find myself making the same mistakes over and over again, which Marcus remarks about in meditations, he goes, you look, you're still an old man and yet here you are, you're afraid of death,

Starting point is 00:05:20 you're losing your temper, you're pricing the wrong things. But the truth is he had come very, very far. And I feel like I have come far. I'm not perfect, I'm not where I wanna be, but I can't deny that I have made progress. And so that's what Stoicism is, it's progress. What does that progress look like? Well, one of my favorite observations from Seneca says,

Starting point is 00:05:41 "'How do I know I'm making progress?' As Stoicism says, I'm a better friend to myself. Are you, right? I don't know when you first came into understanding these ideas, what you first read, but it's wonderful in those moments where you catch yourself and you go, this really would have rocked me before.

Starting point is 00:05:57 This really would have sent me off before. I really wouldn't have caught myself before. I think about this even with my marriage with my wife, like just things we were talking about something the other night and it's like, yeah, we're just coming around to realizing that when you do this, I do this or that I do this and you know, and so on the one hand, it's like, man,

Starting point is 00:06:16 things would have been easier if we figured this out earlier and yet it's also wonderful that we're figuring it out now and the time it's gonna save us and the frustrations it's gonna save us and the heartache it's gonna save us in the heartache. It's gonna save us, right? You delight in your improvement day to day you make little bits of progress Can be taken too far if you only look at what you can do better if you only look at where you fell short if Seneca's sort of putting yourself up for the review every day becomes a kind of torture That's not the idea. The idea is that we, you know,

Starting point is 00:06:46 we push ourselves to get better. We notice where we've made improvement. I interviewed Michael Dell on the podcast and he had this great acronym. He says, pleased, but never satisfied. That's how the company celebrates the success it's had, how he celebrates the success he's had or the improvements he made.

Starting point is 00:07:04 But that doesn't mean you rest on your laurels, that doesn't mean you call it. No, you're always trying to get better, right? And the person who focuses on where you can get better, who is pleased but not satisfied, that's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's how we get better, that's how we push ourselves. That's the idea. So if you think of Stoicism then as a day-to-day journey, a week-to-week journey, a year-to-year journey, right? It's not a magical transformation. It's something you work, as they say in sobriety circles. It works if you work it.

Starting point is 00:07:36 The ideas, if you work it, if you make small improvements, if you try to apply them here and now a little bit every day, it adds up, it adds up. Well-being is realized by small steps, Zeno said, but it's no small thing. So the little tweaks, little breakthroughs, little conversations, all the things that have happened for me over the years, they're not major.

Starting point is 00:07:57 Not any one of them is probably worth writing home about. That's why I don't tend to put myself in the books. But cumulatively, you know, it's changed the course, the bearings, the direction of my life in a really, really big way. And I know that's true for lots of you. And here we are at the beginning of the year. Let's set out to make some small improvements day to day

Starting point is 00:08:17 over the next 12 months and think about who you would be if you made 1% improvement every day for the next year, every week for the next year, every month for the next year, every year for the rest of your life. Right? That adds up. It adds up. Small steps, but it's no small thing. That's the message from the Daily Stoic Journal, which of course you can pick up store.dailystoic.com. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you.

Starting point is 00:08:54 It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you. If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on

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The Daily Stoic - They Are Cut Off From Truth | A Little Better Every Day

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