The Daily Stoic - What Example Are You Setting? | Ask Daily Stoic

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 to 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. leaders. Why don't they do something? Why don't they just do the right thing? Why are they always putting profits over people? Why do they always hedge their bets? You say this as you sit there in a job

Starting point is 00:01:11 you've hated for the last five years. You say this when you avoid talking politics with your family because it's unpleasant. You say this when you make all sorts of compromises and tradeoffs that you know are not right. You say this while you're wearing clothes made in a sweatshop. Pay your employees less than you could afford to, travel to countries with horrible human rights records, drive cars that are horrible for the environment. It's not that you're a bad person, it's that you have a reason for all those things. We all do. We have a million reasons. Then we like to direct a very pointed, very black and white accusing finger

Starting point is 00:01:43 and everyone else who dares to do the same. Marcus Aurelius reminds us that what other people do and say is not important, or rather it's not as important as what we do and we say. What do we have control over, those politicians thousands of miles away who are just barely interested in our votes? Or our own decisions and actions on a day-to-day basis. Don't waste your time invaying against the hypocrisy of others. Start with the hypocrisy in your own home because there's plenty of it there. What are you doing today, tomorrow? What injustices are you resolving in your own life? What evil are you ceasing to participate in? What good are you doing? What courage?

Starting point is 00:02:26 are you showing? Your answers, not politicians or leaders, or your neighbors, or your bosses are what counts. Matters what you do. You do now. This is an ad by BetterHelp. I have a therapy appointment in two days. It's from 10 to 11. I do it remotely. So it takes from 10 to 11. I don't have to drive. I don't have to find parking. I don't have to worry about traffic. And I think this is really great because when we can have excuses or when there are impediments or friction to taking care of ourselves, we sometimes take the excuse to not take care of ourselves. And that's why I do online therapy. And that's where today's sponsor comes in with over 30,000 therapists. BetterHelp is the world's largest online

Starting point is 00:03:20 therapy platform, having served over five million people globally. You join a session with a therapist at the click of a button. That helps you fit therapy into your busy life. Plus, you can switch therapists at any time. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Talk it out with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash daily stoic pod. That's BetterH-E-L-P.com slash Daily Stoic Pod. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast.

Starting point is 00:04:01 I've been lucky enough I've talked all over the world. I've talked to special forces operators. I've talked to the White House. I've talked to big companies. I've talked to little companies. I've talked to hedge funds. I've talked at family offices for billionaires. I've talked at conferences.

Starting point is 00:04:19 I've talked everywhere. all over the world. It's cool. It's been a really cool experience. I hope it's cool for the people who come, but I would say it's the people it's not cool for is you. By that I mean, you can't normally come, right? Most of the events I do by nature of them being private events are not open to the public. Can't buy tickets. Couldn't get in unless you snuck in or you happen to work for those companies. So I'm really excited. I'm going to do two public facing dates here for sure. I think two more are being talked about, but I'm doing, on September 17th, I'm at the Westlake Performing Arts Center here in Austin. Then in February, I'm in San Diego, and the other ones are still

Starting point is 00:05:01 being worked out. You grab tickets to that. I would love to see you here in Austin. Tickets are at daily stoiclive.com. And I'll link to that in today's show notes as well. Last time I did live dates, where was I? I was in London. I was in Ireland. I was in the Netherlands. Before that, I did Australia. So when I do these live events, they're usually not in the U.S. So if you are in the U.S. and you want to come see me, I would love to come see you and I would love to answer your questions, right? That's often what I'm bringing you in these Thursday Q&As is some of the questions that I get to answer when I do talk. So if you want to ask me a question, if you want to come see me, give a talk, it's going to be one of the first times

Starting point is 00:05:44 I've talked about the ideas in the new wisdom book. Wisdom takes work. So again, grab tickets It's at Daily Stoiclive.com. And in the interim, here is some Q&A from a live event I did remotely, virtually. I was here in Texas. They were all over the world. I was talking to a company that's one of the world's largest staffing agency. So they had employees in countries all over the world. And they called in.

Starting point is 00:06:10 They asked questions. I answered them. And it was really interesting. So I'll bring you some of that Q&A now. And I hope to see you on September 17th here in Austin or in. or in San Diego in February, or stay tuned to the landing page for the other events coming up soon.

Starting point is 00:06:29 We'll probably get two questions, and then we'll let you go and thank you for your time, of course. Emotions often overrule our first action. So you talk about not sending that email, or maybe taking a second. What stoicism guides do you have to help manage those, anger, sadness, et cetera, before that action takes hold?

Starting point is 00:06:47 I think there's a magical, tool that the ancients invented and it's called taking a walk. And when I get outside and I get moving before I do the thing that I was inclined to do, I tend to chill out, right? And I get some perspective and I get a little bit of space. Of course, journaling is a similar practice. It's just this idea of maybe pausing a little bit or just questioning, you know, the Epicureans in the ancient world are sort of the rivals of the Stokes. But they get a bad rap too. We tend to to think of the Epicureans as these pleasure-loving hedonists. But actually, one of the things that Epicure says is that before you engage in any sort of pleasure, you have to ask yourself,

Starting point is 00:07:30 how are you going to feel the next day? And so his point is, like, drinking might be pleasurable, but if you have to weigh the hangover that you feel the next day against it, and I think that's a really important, the ability to go, hey, I want to do this. I'm thinking about doing, this or my emotions or my impulses are telling me to do this. But I also have the ability to think about how I'm going to think about it later. And I have to sort of weigh those things. And that gives us the ability to go, okay, actually, that's probably a bad idea. I love that. One final question. When you started this practice, Ryan, what was the biggest challenge you faced? And how did you overcome that? Well, I would say here that I didn't just start this practice. But I

Starting point is 00:08:19 I am currently engaged in this practice and very much a work in progress with this practice. I hope that it doesn't come off that I am a master of Stoic philosophy. I would say I am a student of Stoic philosophy. My wife likes to joke that one of us is a Stoic and the other writes about Stoicism. And so I remain flummoxed and I make mistakes and I get caught up by things. I hit send on that email plenty of times, perhaps more times than I don't. So stoicism is a work in progress. It is a philosophy that you're supposed to be studying rather than a philosophy that you have studied.

Starting point is 00:09:01 But I will say maybe just connecting to your guys' line of work, I spent most of my 20s as a marketer and I had a successful marketing career and then I built a successful marketing agency. I worked with all sorts of exciting brands and people and public figures. But I wrestled with as I think a lot of the people that you guys work with and perhaps many of the people on this call wrestle with, which is like just because you're really good at something or just because something is lucrative, that doesn't mean that's what you should spend your life doing. And how if you feel called to make a change, even inside, you know, a call from one company to the next or one position to the next to go from sales to a leadership role or a support role or. a traveling role versus a stay-at-home role. You know, there's all these changes we can make and wrestling with making that choice, taking that leap. But one of the Stoic virtues is the virtue of courage. And obviously, this is not the same as courage as running into a burning building or

Starting point is 00:10:02 onto the battlefield, but working up that courage to make a change in your life, to try something new, to put yourself out there, to go towards more what you feel called to do. That's a really hard thing. I think these, when we look back at our lives, those are the choices we're really glad that we made. Ryan, thank you so much. It's been really insightful to hear from you. And I can see in the chat that everyone has taken so much inspiration from your perspective. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoak 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 have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor.

Starting point is 00:10:48 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 forget. grudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a 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

Starting point is 00:11:41 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. 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. 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 - What Example Are You Setting? | Ask Daily Stoic

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