The Daily Stoic - This Is The Most Important Virtue | A Hard Winter Training

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. Courage is a pretty obvious choice for being the most important of the foretoe of virtues. It was Aristotle who said that courage was the mother of all the rest.

Starting point is 00:01:11 In a world that's not virtuous, in a world that's scary, in a world that's difficult, it takes courage to go out there and do what needs to be done. Self-discipline is another obvious choice because, well, you can't do anything without it. And as Aristotle pointed out, courage that isn't checked by temperance, quite easily veers into recklessness. And yet, Marcus Aurelius himself said that justice was the source of all the other virtues. As Stoics were clear, the point of philosophy, the point of life, is to direct a person towards doing what's right. Courage and service of injustice, discipline aimed at selfish ends, that's not what Marcus or Epictetus or Zeno would have called the good life.

Starting point is 00:01:54 But the fact that you can argue for any of these three as the most important virtue, as I myself have done, hey, it's Ryan here, I did this when I announced courage's calling. I said courage was the most important. And when discipline is destiny was coming out, I said discipline is the most important. And when right thing right now came out, I said justice was the most important virtue because it guides and balances the others. But it is in fact wisdom that is the most important virtue. Because what situations call for courage? When is discretion the better part of valor? When do we know to push ourselves harder or hold back from overdoing it. What's the right thing to do? And how do we even do it? Courage and discipline and

Starting point is 00:02:35 justice, they all descend first from knowing what's what. That is to say, wisdom. It's wisdom that gives us perspective, uncovers truth, shows us how the world works, and guides us where to go. And it's this critical and all too rare ability. Discernment is not something anyone is born with. and yet all the virtues are born from it. Wisdom is cultivated. Wisdom is earned. It is essential. And there is no one or no thing that can give you this wisdom.

Starting point is 00:03:10 No, wisdom is cultivated. Wisdom is earned. And it's earned with a timeless methodology. The methodology that the Stoics used, a methodology that remains available to us now. And this is why we say that wisdom takes work. That's the fourth and final book in the Stoic Virtue series that I have been working on myself now for the last six years.

Starting point is 00:03:37 My argument is that wisdom is a byproduct of doing the right thing and the right way at the right time over the course of your life. It's mentorship, it's teachers, it's reading, its experiences, it's travel, it's all these things and more. And my goal in writing wisdom takes work was to not only show, that wisdom, but to show you what it looks like in practice. And to remind us, of course, that nobody gets their wisdom for free. As Seneca says, no man was ever wise by chance. And, you know, I've loved getting to do this work myself, getting to write these emails to you

Starting point is 00:04:15 over the last nine years. If you've gotten anything out of them, it would mean so much to me. If you could pre-order the new book, it's how publishers decide how many copies to print, how many copies, bookstores are going to order, whether it's going to appear on a bestseller list or not. The first week is sort of everything. So we came up with a bunch of awesome pre-order bonuses. I think you're really going to like this book in and of itself. But if you want some bonus chapters, you want the music. I listened to when I wrote it, you want signed pages from the manuscript. You want to have dinner with me to discuss the book. All that is available if you go todailystoic.com slash wisdom and grab your copy. We have signed and numbered

Starting point is 00:04:53 first editions. It's the only place you can get those. We even have a box set of all four books. Anyways, it's coming out in October. If you could pre-order it now, that would mean so much to me. Enjoy. School just started, and one of my kids is already sick. It's just a reminder that the somewhat chill low-key days of summer are gone. And some of the things we've neglected or not and taking care of are coming back into view. If you want to get ahead of cold and flu season, make sure you're doing what you can, increase your immunity and your overall health. Consider today's sponsor, Function. Function is the only health platform that gives you access to the kind of

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Starting point is 00:06:22 credit towards their membership. Visit functionhealth.com slash daily stoic 100 or use code Daily Stoic 100 at sign up to own your health. A hard winter training. The art of living has three levels of discipline, study, practice, and hard training. Reading the Stoics are listening to them, that's study, trying out the lessons and reflecting on them in a journal, the friend, that's practice. What's left, though, is hard training. Epictetus liked to use the analogy of the Roman Army's practice of training hard in the off months of winter so that they could be prepared to meet any challenge when they return to battle in the spring.

Starting point is 00:07:05 Seneca would spend time each month exposing himself to tougher than usual conditions. He too used a military analogy, pointing to the way that soldiers are tasked with hard jobs so they could be strong when the enemy eventually came. So what are you doing in your life to push yourself beyond mere study and practice? 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.

Starting point is 00:07:38 I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, then there's these sort of 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 Stoak Journal anywhere books are sold. You can also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoak store at store.dailystoke.com. This idea of keeping the thoughts at hand really ties into this week's entry. We've got two quotes from Epictetus and one from Seneca.

Starting point is 00:08:09 We must undergo a hard winter training and not rush into things for which we haven't prepared. that's Epictetus in his discourses. Here's Seneca in Moral Letters 18. Here's a lesson to test your mind's metal. Take part of the week in which you have only the most meager and cheap food, dress scantily and shabby clothes, and ask yourself, this is really the worst you feared. It is when times are good that you should gird yourself for tougher times ahead. For when fortune is kind, the soul can build up defenses against her ravages. So it is that the soldiers practice maneuvers in peacetime, erecting bunkers with no enemies in sight, and exhausting themselves under no attack so that when it comes, they won't grow tired. And then finally, Epictetus says, when a challenge confronts you, remember that God is matching you with a younger sparring partner, as would a physical trainer. Why? Because becoming an Olympian takes sweat.

Starting point is 00:09:02 I think that no one has a better challenge than yours. If only you would use it like an athlete would use a younger sparring partner. So a couple things here. one, I sometimes get this question, should I seek out adversity? If adversity is such a good teacher, should I seek it out? I say, look, for the most part, life is going to give us most of the training we need. Life's going to throw most of the adversity we need at us. So you don't need to go like getting yourself into trouble so you can know what a prison cell feels like, right? I don't think that's really what it is. As Epictetus is saying, look, instead of bemoaning the

Starting point is 00:09:36 adversity when you do feel it, go like, hey, this is good. This is training I needed. I'm going to use this. So I think about that way. How are you, though, actively engaged in training that makes you stronger, more mentally tough, more physically tough? So to me, this is where like a strong physical practice comes in. It's also where getting up early, maybe intermittent fasting, maybe cold showers, but mostly working out, because I love working out, but still every time I have to convince myself to do it, right? I love running. It's almost painful not to run, but there's still lots of days when I don't want to do it and still be easier to go slower. I have to push myself every single time. But every time I do it, I get better at pushing myself, right? I usually do

Starting point is 00:10:22 some sort of weight training about four days a week as well. And so that is much less fun for me. And I really do have to push myself to do it. And that training, though, the act of pushing myself to do something that I'm uncomfortable with that's not fun that challenges me, this doesn't just make me stronger and more fit and better at chasing my kids around the house. What it really does is make me better at overriding that impulse that I don't want to do something because it's hard or that I'm afraid or that it's going to be exhausting. And you think I don't wake up so many days and I don't feel it. I don't want to do it. It's hard. What if I phone it in today? Is anyone really watching? Will anyone know? Well, I've trained for exactly that kind of insidious opponent

Starting point is 00:11:06 as Stephen Pressville talks about, I know the resistance well, I have built up a lot of muscles that make me stronger than the resistance, and that's where this training comes in. And I think that's a metaphor for all forms of adversity, difficulty, resistance, weakness in life. And so I hope you have some sort of active practice. Use the adversity, train against it when it's there, but also build some active daily practices or weekly practices in your life as well. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to The Daily Stoog 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

Starting point is 00:12:29 when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast, podcast producer and has 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. 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.

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The Daily Stoic - This Is The Most Important Virtue | A Hard Winter Training

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