The Daily Stoic - This Will Sustain You | Make Honesty Your Only Policy

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

Each of us goes to work every day and deals with obstacles, with difficult people. We deal with stress at home. We have responsibilities in our community. Some of us have other problems still: A divorce. A looming bankruptcy. Maybe we’re on deployment. Maybe we’ve just done a stint in jail.✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of stoke, 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 it. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. This will sustain you. Each of us goes to work every day and deals with obstacles, with difficult people.

We deal with stress at home, we have responsibilities in our community. Some of us have other problems, still a divorce, a looming bankruptcy. Maybe we're on deployment, maybe we've just done a stint in jail. In 1513, Makiyevali was in a tough spot that few would envy, but many can relate to. He was an exile. He had been stripped of his livelihood and social status. His country was a political mess. He was unsure of his next move.

What did he do? He did what Seneca did in a similar position. He did what Marcus really is did in the camps of the Roman frontier He did what Xeno did after the shipwreck Machiavelli found a way as Marcus said to wash off the dust of earthly life He found it in books as Machiavelli wrote when evening comes I return home and go into my study on the threshold I strip off my muddy sweaty workday clothes and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this grave or dress, I enter the antique courts

of the ancients, and am welcomed by them. And there I taste the food that alone is mine and for which I was born. And here I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they in their humanity reply to me. And for the space of four hours, I forget the world. Remember no vexation, fear, poverty, no more, tremble, no more at death. I pass indeed into their world. We have talked so many times about the importance of having a reading practice of returning to philosophy when you find yourself adrift or lost. This is why it can sustain you. It can reassure you it welcomes you with open arms, build you back up, guides and repairs you. So whatever is happening in your life, whatever you're going through, when you return home today, go as Machiavelli did into the

proverbial study across the threshold, into the world of books and ideas, the greats of history, rest, and recharge. And it let it make you brave. Obviously, this is what stillness is about. I think Marki Vellie is talking about how reading gives him stillness. This is what I was talking about in stillness is the key. But really, this is why I love books. It's why I have a place that I read in my house. It's also why I read on planes when I'm stressed out, when I'm working. Books are a magical retreat, a place to guide us, a place that welcomes us, a place that stabilizes us even when the world is crazy. And if you don't have a reading practice, I think

you're missing out. And if you want to have a better reading practice, that's why we built the Read to Lead Daily Stoke Reading Challenge. Since it first launched in 2019, it's been our most popular challenge. It's been taken by over 10,000 people all over the world. It's a five week course. We teach you how to get the most out of your reading, how to find books that can change your life, how to think critically, how to find time to read, how to digest books above your level. We just wrapped up a live cohort of participants of the challenge in June, which exceeded our

expectation. So, now you can get access to all the live sessions we did with those students and fellow stoic readers. It's two emails a week for five weeks, five Q&A video sessions that you're really going to enjoy, and you can sign up now at dailystowach.com. Slash, read, delete or find it at store.dailystowach.com. And as always, if you're a daily stoic life member at dailystowachlife.com, get this challenge and all our challenges for free. But I'd love to see it in the read to lead challenge. The reviews have been amazing.

And I think you're really going to like it, and I want you to have that experience that Machiavali was talking about. Make honesty your only policy. 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. I actually do this journal every single day.

There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, and 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 Stoke Journal anywhere books are sold. You can also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoke store at store.dailystoke.com. As Emperor Marcus Aurelius did not see the best of humanity, leaders never do. At court, there would have been backbiting people who sold their

friends out when they saw an opportunity to advance themselves, Averis and DeSite. He especially didn't like faux attempts at honesty. His point, if you have to say, I'm going to be honest with you here, what you're casually saying is that honesty is an exception for you and not the rule that you're making a special effort to tell the truth here because you usually don't. And how sad is that? It's time to think about what these little statements say about us and how to make sure that our default policy is honesty and straight forwardness. And then the two quotes we have from Marx and Reliases Meditations and then from Seneca's Moral Letters go as follows.

How rotten and fraudulent when people say they intend to give it to you straight. What are you up to friend? It shouldn't need to be your announcement, but be seen readily as if written on your forehead heard in the ring of your voice, a flash in your eyes, just as the beloved sees it all in a lover's glance. In short, the straightforward and good person should be like the smelly goat. You know it when they're in the room with you.

I love that quote, that's so great. I calculated, give it to you straight as like a dagger. And there's nothing worse than a wolf befriending sheep who should avoid false friendship at all costs. If you are good, straightforward and well-meaning, it should show in your eyes and not escape notice. That's from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 1115. And then Seneca's moral letters 109, he says, it is in keeping with nature to show our

friends' affections and to celebrate their advancement as if it was our very own. For if we don't do this virtue, which is strengthened only by exercising our perceptions, will no longer endure in us. Look, I think this idea that honesty is your best policy is really important. And obviously we should cultivate a reputation for candor, for straight forwardness, for not holding back, for not being too faced. If you have an opinion, you put it out there, you don't say one thing in private, another thing in public, right?

But I would say, you know, and we had Randall Stuttman on the Daily Stoke podcast and in the Daily Stoke Leadership Challenge recently, and he did push back on this trend of radical candor, you know, that often it can be an excuse for being a jerk. You know, the Stokes take their original roots from the cynics, you know, d'Ajones who sort of walks the streets of Athens, just saying whatever he thinks. But I don't particularly admire him. I see him as sort of anti-social. So I think what Marcus is saying, cultivator reputation for straightforwardness, this is in context of the other Stoeck virtues. It takes courage to be clear and to voice unpopular opinions and to say what people don't want to hear, but it also takes moderation and an understanding of justice

to know what opinions to voice, how to voice them, how not to be a jerk about them. You know, radical candor in Wall Street firms, Randall was saying is, again, often excuse for asshole bosses to be more of a jerk. And that's not the excuse they need. We want to be both straight forward as well as restrained. And I know that seems a little contradictory, but, well, life is complicated. And it's about balance. So when we say we want to be the smelly goat in the room, I don't think we want, and

someone who owns goats. Let me tell you, man, goats can stink. I can sometimes only neighbor scots. He's like a half mile away. I'll catch a whiff of it in the win. A male goat, this where musk they have, man, it is repulsive. It's disgusting. I don't think that's what Marcus is saying. I think he's being a bit exaggerated. He's just saying that I'm going to be level with you here, or when we say, I don't mean any offense, or no offense intended.

You really did mean, you can almost expect that the next words out of this person's mouth are going to be really poorly thought out, not so nice things. And so I think we should take some time here to think about this balance. This is what temperance is really about, right? Just in the way that courage is a midpoint between cowardice and recklessness.

I'd like to think that honesty is a line somewhere between omission, not saying things and saying too many things or something like to that regard. If you get what I'm saying, it's that, yes, we have to tell the truth, but you don't have to tell someone that you find them repulsive today. You don't have to tell them that you really hate the sound of their voice, right? There are things you can keep yourself. And I guess I just wanted to add a little color to this week's meditation that being a stoic and there was an interesting lawsuit

recently a workplace lawsuit where a man claimed that stoicism was his religion and therefore the offensive things he said at work the way he comported himself and behaved even some of his hygiene habits, he could not be fired for them because they were his religious beliefs. But when you really look at the remarks that he was defending the way that he's behaving, it's true that he's actually just a jerk. And that's not what we're talking about. So all things in moderation, including this kind of honesty that we're talking about from Marcus Relius, have an identifiable scent that you are an honest person that don't

be a stinky goat. 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 add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday,

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