The Daily Stoic - When Are You Going To Get This Together? | Count Your Blessings

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

It doesn’t matter how old you are, it looms before you. Not death–although that’s always there–but the future itself. The future when you’re not going to be so young anymore, when you’re not going to want to be hustling entry level jobs anymore, or doing this or that kind of work anymore. When you’re going to have things you want to do–a house you want to buy, kids to send to college, trips you want to go on, a potential retirement.Look, at some point, you’re going to have to get it together. You know this.---And in today's Daily Stoic Journal excerpt reading, Ryan examines why the Stoics believed it was so valuable to regularly remind yourself of the unique blessings that fill your life.💵 Visit dailystoic.com/wealth to sign up for The Wealthy Stoic.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee 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 stoic intention for the week,

something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you're happy to be doing. So let's get into it. When are you going to get this together? It doesn't matter how old you are, it looms before you. Not death, although that's always there, but the future itself, the future when you're not going to be so young anymore, when you're not going to want to be hustling entry-level jobs anymore, doing this or that kind of work anymore, when you're going to have things you want to do, a house you want to buy kids to send to college trips you want to go on. A potential retirement. Look, at some point you're going to have to get it together. You know this. You're going to have to get your spending under control. You're going to have to get your savings together.

You're going to have to get your spending under control. You're going to have to get your savings together. You're going to have to get your investments started. But when? When? As Marcus really writes in meditations, we know what we need to do to be good today. But instead we choose tomorrow. We throw our lot in with the fools that Seneca talks about. The ones who are always getting ready to start.

But they never do. You never do. How long have you been saying some version of this to yourself about money and finance, about how you need to sit down and read that book or fill out that paperwork for that account or follow up with that person or learn the difference between a Roth and an IRA and a 401k or cancel those services that keep showing up on your credit card or do something about those credit cards themselves, the ones with the debt on them, the debt that keeps increasing and increasing.

Discipline, growth, success, these things are about starting. It's not magically transforming yourself. It's not one big thing. Now all growth, all mastery comes slowly. It comes as a result of process, but it can only come if one begins. If one takes the first step, starts the clock, gets serious. Not later, not tomorrow, now. Because the sooner you start, yes, the sooner you'll get results, but also as any finance expert can tell you the bigger the results will be, because time and the compounding returns inherent therein is one of the most powerful forces on earth. Use it to your advantage or don't. Get it together today, which is actually what I've been working on here at Daily Stoke. I think it's one of our most important and urgent courses that we've built. This is the wealthy stoic, a daily stoic guide to being rich and free and happy, which will set you on a path to happiness and prosperity. Using the wisdom of the

stoics as well as the experts we've interviewed in the course as well as my own entrepreneurial and financial journey to wrapping your heads around money, around defining financial security, about taking the steps, doing the things you need to do to have that financial security. It's an awesome course, it's nine weeks. We're gonna dive deep every single week. Emails for me, almost a book's worth of content. We're gonna look at how a slave became the richest stoic,

how the richest man in Rome was actually one of the poorest stoics, the ambitions and the motivations that fueled the stoics and their understanding of money, how the stoics spent and saved, what they prized more than money, how they dealt with setbacks and adversity and uncertainty and risk. All of these things are in the challenge. I'm really proud of this one. I think it's great. There's live video sessions with me. There's a bunch of resources that come along with it. If you've done any of our courses, you know, we always over-deliver

and we're going to do that in this one. Today is the launch. It's going to start in just a few weeks, but you got to sign up now to secure your spot. It's a live course. We're all going to be doing it together. I want to see you in there. If you've said any of these things to yourself that we were talking about, like, Hey, I know I got to get started. I know I should do better. Bob, Bob, stop, stop, right?

Just get started. Take this with us today. I think it's going to be awesome. I can't wait to see you in there. The wealthy stoic, a daily stoic guy to be rich, free and happy. Can't wait to see it in the course. Also, remember if you sent it for daily stoic life, a daily stoic guy to be rich, free and happy. Can't wait to see it in the course. Also remember, if you sent it for daily stoic life, at dailystoiclife.com, you get this course

and all our courses for free. It's a way to save money and also invest in yourself. And I'll see you in the course. I'll link to it in today's show notes, more from us on the course soon, but sign up now while there's still spots. It's funny, I talked to lots of people and a good chunk of those people haven't been readers for a long time.

They've just gotten back into it. And I always love hearing that and they tell me how they fall in love with reading. They're reading more than ever and I go, let me guess, you listen audiobooks, don't you? And it's true. And almost invariably, they listen to them on Audible. That's because Audible offers an incredible selection of audiobooks across every genre from bestsellers and new releases to celebrity memoirs, and of course,

ancient philosophy, all my books are available on audio, read by me for the most part. Audible lets you enjoy all your audio entertainment in one app, you'll always find the best of what you love, or something new to discover, and as an Audible member you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog, including the latest best sellers and new releases. You'll discover thousands of titles from popular favorites, exclusive new series, exciting new voices in audio. You can check out Stillness is the key, the daily dad, I just recorded so that's up on Audible now. Coming up on the 10-year anniversary of the obstacle is the way audio books.

So all those are available and new members can try Audible for free free for 30 days visit audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500 500 that's audible.com slash daily stoke or text daily stoke to 500 500 count your blessings this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoke Journal, 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living by yours truly and my wonderful collaborator, Steve Enhancelment, who I also worked on the Daily Stoke with. This week's entry begins with the following meditation. It's easy to complain about things missing in our lives and so much harder to appreciate what we already have.

Santaica reminded us that everything we need to be happy is right in front of us. While the luxuries we might be missing could themselves come at a great cost, the cost of what we already have. Marcus agreed and reminded himself to count those blessings present in our lives and try to imagine what it would be like to not have them and how much we'd miss them. So take a minute and list some of your blessings this week. Take a conscious note of what you are fortunate to have and enjoy so you can see clearly as epictetus put it, where they come from, feel a sense of gratitude for that. The first quote is from Mark Cerely, this is Meditations, 727.

He says, don't set your mind on things you don't possess as if they were yours, but count the blessings you actually possess and think about how much you would desire them if they weren't already yours. But watch yourself that you don't value these things to the point of being troubled that if you should lose them. That wasn't really helpful exercise for me about envy.

You can look at all the things that other people have that you'd wanna have. But it gives you a whole nother perspective. If you take them in and think about all the things that you have that other people would be jealous of. And it is funny how often we lust or crave things that other people not only don't like, but they would lust or crave for our life.

And that should give you some sense that this is all crazy. This is all some freakish evolutionary drive that's made this miserable. Focus on what you have. Be grateful for that. Instead of craving what you don't have. But of course, don't be so obsessed and grateful for the things you have that you would miss them if you lost them.

The founder, this is from Seneca's moral letters, the founder of the universe who assigned to us the laws of life provided that we should live well, but not in luxury. Everything needed for our well-being is right before us. Whereas what luxury requires is gathered by many miseries and anxieties. Let us use this gift of nature and count it among the greatest things. Seneca is a bit of a hypocrite here. He's a very, very rich man, famously has something like 300 tables that he uses for entertaining. But the point is he knew even richer people

and he knew people who were not as rich but craved what he had. And he saw that marble and gold, you know, he said marble and gold are forms of slavery that the people who live under them are slaves. He said that these things are one at the cost of life. And so when we're not counting our blessings, what we are doing is by definition is chasing other people's blessings or more blessings or other blessings. And this is preventing us from being satisfied with what we have right now in front of us. And then we have a quote from Epic Titus his discourse is 1, 6, he says,

it is easy to praise Providence for anything that may happen if you have two qualities, a complete view of what has actually happened in each instance and a sense of gratitude. Without gratitude, what is the point of seeing and without seeing what is the object of gratitude? And look, it's not just gratitude about possessions. It's not just focusing on material items,

but it's also just grateful that you were born here to these parents, to this or that, that grateful for your set of experiences because they made you who you were, and that it's impossible, for instance, to have had different parents or be born to a different nationality or to have had this or that. And it not changed the whole course of your life, right? You can't just pick and choose. You have no line item veto over

the things that happened to you in life. So in that sense, you have to be grateful for the whole of it because all of it made you who you were, all of it shaped who you are and will become. And so this sense of gratitude for everything, for the whole of it because all of it made you who you were, all of it shaped who you are and will become. And so this sense of gratitude for everything, for the stuff we have, as well as the stuff we haven't had, as well as the experiences we've had, and as the different experiences that were out of reach or didn't happen to us, or the things we thought we wanted, but we didn't get, right? Gratitude for all of it, gratitude for what it is because

it made you who you were. And it couldn't have been any differently. The Stokes would say, this is what fate chose for you. This is how it worked out. There's no reason to feel anything, but gratitude for this. And that's what a more faulty is really about. I spend a lot of time journaling about this this week. I hope you do as well. Enjoy focus on gratitude. Enjoy what you have instead of lusting over the things you don't have. Keep working on it. We'll talk to you soon. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music,

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