The Daily Stoic - We Must Be Antifragile

Episode Date: August 3, 2020

"As Hemingway writes in one of the most beautiful passages in A Farewell to Arms, the world eventually breaks all of us. 'Afterward,' he says, 'many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills.'"Find out about the power of antifragility in today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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 Stood Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. 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. music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Daily Stoic. For each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's

greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystowoc.com. We must be antifragile. The world is a cruel and random place. Our plans are dashed. Our systems are broken. People we love die. We lose what we have built and what we have so

carefully saved and invested. We try to be stoke, we try to be strong, but sometimes we falter. Is this weakness? No, this is a good thing. As Hemingway writes in one of the most beautiful passages in a farewell to arms, the world eventually breaks all of us. Afterwards, he says, many are strong at the broken places, but those that will not break, it kills. Let us be clear about what Stoicism is. In simple terms, it is a philosophy designed to make you stronger so that you don't break easily. It is not, however, a philosophy to make you unbreakable, at least not in the most easily understandable sense of that word, because only the proud and the stupid thing that that

is even possible. Instead, Stoicism is there to help you recover when the world breaks you and in the recovering to make you stronger at a much, much deeper level. So much of what happens is out of our control, pandemics, the markets, supply chains, world leaders, what our neighbors do. We are drafted to fight in wars to bear huge tax or familial burdens.

We are forced to admit defeat about the thing we wanted to win so badly. This hurts. There's no denying that. A stoic heals by focusing on what they can control, their response, the repairing, the learning of the lessons, preparing for the future. It is in this that we become as Naseen Taleb has said in his wonderful book by the same name, Antifragil. We become better for what we went through better than if we had resisted and never been broken in the first place.

In this we have true strength because those that cannot break cannot learn and cannot be improved for what has happened. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast app and If you don't get the daily stoke email, go to dailystoke.com slash email. 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, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondery that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident

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