The Daily Stoic - This is How To Be Smart (Or At Least Not Dumb) | Following The Doctor's Orders

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women help you learn from them. to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visitdailystoic.com. Not dumb. Look, some people are just not right. They didn't receive much of an education or they weren't much interested when they were getting one. Some people receive genetic gifts and others don't.

Starting point is 00:01:12 Some people get kicked in the head or a warner meets part of their brain. Maybe we ourselves are not exactly geniuses. But you know what? That doesn't really matter. Success and happiness in life doesn't require being a genius. It begins with not being a fool. This is one of the ideas at the center of the new book, Wisdom takes work, which is the fourth book in the Stoicester series about wisdom. In fact, the whole middle of the book is about avoiding the traps that make really smart people really stupid, which again is key. For instance, Marcus Reelis doesn't credit Rusticus, his philosophy teacher with making him brilliant. He thanks him for two things. for teaching him not to be satisfied with just getting the gist of things,

Starting point is 00:01:59 and for showing him how not to fall for every smooth talker. That is, to say, he helped him to avoid two timeless pitfalls in life, superficiality and grifters. If we can avoid ego, if we can cultivate a smidge of self-awareness, if we can try not to let our emotions blind us, we have already struck enormous blows against stupidity in life. We can avoid being swept up in the newest fad or the oldest con, and we can remain ever curious wanting to actually go deep into things and not just stay on the surface.

Starting point is 00:02:37 And if we can do that, we're already winning. By the way, we still have some signed first editions of Wisdom Takes Work. If you're interested, you can grab one right now at dailystowoc.com slash wisdom. We will run out. I will stop signing them here very, very shortly. And I would appreciate it if you supported the new book. Thanks to everyone who read it. Thanks to everyone who reviewed.

Starting point is 00:02:55 on Amazon. All that means so much to me. Thanks for supporting me on this crazy journey the last six years. I really appreciate it. And I hope you like the new book. The holidays are coming up. They can take a lot out of you. You've got family. You've got travel. Maybe you're not eating right. You're rushing to finish stuff for the end of the year. Maybe you're not noticing stuff that's happening in your body, markers or signs or indicators that something's wrong, that you need to be doing something. differently. You need to be sleeping more. You need to get this checked out. And that's all what Function helps you with. Function is the only health platform that gives you data that most people

Starting point is 00:03:34 never get. And most importantly, it gives you the insights to do something with it. With function, you get access to over a hundred biomarkers, from hormones to toxins, markers of heart health, inflammation, and stress. And you can even access MRI and chest CT scans all tracked in one place over time. It's a near 360 degree view of your whole health, everything that's happening in your body. Look, the holidays are a stressful time. There's a lot happening in the world. We all have a lot going on. Sometimes you don't notice the changes in your body. You don't notice the markers or the indicators that something's wrong. Function helps you track it so you can reset and actually feel present this season and be in peak health. Function is a 360 degree view in what's happening in

Starting point is 00:04:23 your body on 1,000 Daily Stoic followers will get a $100 credit towards their membership. Just visit functionhealth.com slash daily stoic or use gift code Daily Stoic 100 to sign up to own your health. Look, when you're hiring, you don't want just anyone. You need the right person with the right background who can move your business forward. And when I need candidates who match what we're looking for at Daily Stoic, for any of my businesses, we trust Indeed sponsored jobs because when you're hiring, Indeed is all you need. You can give your job the best chance to be seen with Indeed's sponsored jobs. They can help you stand out and hire quality candidates who can drive the results you need. And according to Indeed data

Starting point is 00:05:13 sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 90% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs because you reach a bigger pool of quality candidates. And you should join the 1.6 million companies that sponsor their jobs with Indeed. People are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute we've been talking, companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed. Spend more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes, less stress, less time, more results now with Indeed sponsor jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to help you get your job, the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash Daily Stoic. Just go to Indeed.com slash Daily Stoic right now to support the show by saying

Starting point is 00:05:57 you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash daily stoic terms and conditions apply. If you're hiring, do it the right way with Indeed. Following the doctor's orders, this is today's entry in the Daily Stoic. Just as we commonly hear people say that the doctor prescribed someone particular riding exercises or ice baths or walking without shoes, we should in the same way that nature prescribed someone to be diseased or disabled or to suffer any kind of impairment. In the case of the doctor, prescribed means something ordered to help aid someone's healing. But in the case of nature, it means that what happens to each of us is ordered to help aid our destiny. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 5-8. It is funny, right, to think about in the Roman days, someone being prescribed to walk without shoes or to ride a horse, also, I guess, better than being prescribed bleeding.

Starting point is 00:06:56 But we'll get to today's meditation. The Stoics were masters at analogies and use them as a tool to help strengthen their reasoning. Here, Marcus Aurelius observes how willingly we will put up with unpleasantness if commanded by the magic words, doctor's orders. The doctor says that you've got to take this nasty medicine and you'll do it. The doctor tells you that you have to start sleeping hanging upside down like a bat. You'll feel silly, but soon enough, you'll get to dangling because you think it will make you better. On the other hand, when it comes to external events, we fight like hell if anything happens contrary to our plans. But what if, Marcus asked, the doctor had prescribed the exact same thing as a part of our treatment.

Starting point is 00:07:36 What if it's as good as taking our medicine? What's so magical about those words the doctor orders is that feel like we don't have a choice. Of course, you don't have to listen to the doctor. I guess some people don't listen to their doctors. But you go, oh, well, they know better. They chose this for me. That's what the treatment of this disease, ailment sickness is. Who am I to object?

Starting point is 00:08:00 I will accept it and I will go along with it because I want to get better. But then when you're stuck in traffic or a job turns out to be harder than you thought or a relationship turns out to be more difficult than you thought, You have to do anything that you didn't expect, you didn't want, you don't like, because you feel like you have a choice in the matter, you don't want to do it. But what if, Marcus is saying, actually, this too is chosen to make you better. And in a sense, that's what the obstacle is the way as a philosophy is really about. It's this idea that these things aren't things we have to do. They're things we get to do things that were chosen for us.

Starting point is 00:08:41 you can see it as some sort of higher power if you want you can see it as fate if you want you can just simply see it as a thing but that it is something that's going to make you better that it was assigned to you right in meditations mark sir rose talks about how he goes it's unfortunate that this happened and then it catches himself no it's fortunate that it happens to me right he's saying oh no wait this was chosen for me i am right for this this is right for me. So stop fighting. Stop pushing against the thing and see it as a prescription. See it as part of the process. See it as an assignment you've been given. How will you handle it? Are you going to be a good patient or a bad patient, a good student or a bad student? This is everything. These things were

Starting point is 00:09:33 chosen for you and all you have to do in turn is choose them back. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to The Daily Stoag podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of 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. Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist. That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to.

Starting point is 00:10:38 But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to, to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in. It's a lot to keep something like the Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show but not listen to ads, well, we have partnered with Supercast to bring you a ad-free version of Daily Stoic. We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, completely ad-free.

Starting point is 00:11:10 No interruptions. just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for. And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into Stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium. And we are offering a limited time discount of 20% off your first year.

Starting point is 00:11:41 just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show descriptions to make those ads go away.

The Daily Stoic - This is How To Be Smart (Or At Least Not Dumb) | Following The Doctor's Orders

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.