The Daily Stoic - Who Could Have Seen It? | 9 Stoic Lessons From Running Every Single Day

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

Everything seems fine. Everything seems better than fine. Your life is going great. You’re happy. You’re in love. Your finances are great. But will it last? Or will Fortune, as Seneca said she is wont to do, surprise you with a reversal?---And in today's Daily Stoic video excerpt, Ryan shares why running is an excellent activity to use to practice Stoic, from its mental and physical endurance benefits, to its strengthening of resilience.✉️ 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.

Ghosts aren't real. At least as a journalist, that's what I've always believed. Sure, odd things happen in my childhood bedroom. But ultimately, I shrugged it all off. That is, until a couple of years ago, when I discovered that every subsequent occupant of that house is convinced they've experienced something inexplicable too. Including the most recent inhabitant who says she was visited at night by the ghost of a faceless woman. And it gets even stranger. It just so happens that the alleged ghost haunted my childhood room might just be my wife's great-grandmother. It was murdered in the house next door by two gunshots to the face.

From Wondry and Pineapple Street Studios comes Ghost Story, a podcast about family secrets overwhelming coincidence and the things that come back to haunt us. Follow Ghost Story on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes at free right now by joining Wondry Plus. Oh God. His daughter. No! He's in the hands of a madman. What are the police have been looking for me? But nothing can stop a father. We want to find her just as much as you do. I doubt that very much. From doing what the law can't.

And we have to do this a bad way. You have to. I don't. Bosch Legacy. Watch the new season, now streaming exclusively on Freevy. Watch the new season now streaming exclusively on FreeV. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual

lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy. Who could have seen it? Everything seems fine. Everything seems better than fine. Your life is going great. You're happy, you're in love. Your finances are great, but will it last? Or will will Fortune, as Senika said, she is want to do, surprise you with a reversal. Could you have seen, had you been walking on Amsterdam Avenue and cut sight of the

bridal party that day, how utterly unprepared the mother of the bride was to accept what would happen before the year 2003 had even ended. Joan Didian writes hauntingly in her beautiful book, Blue Nights, which you should absolutely read. The father of the bride died at his own dinner table, she writes, the bride herself in an induced coma, breathing only on a respirator, not expected by the doctors, in the intensive care unit to live the night. The first in a cascade of medical crises that would

end 20 months later with her own death. No one can see what fortune has in store for us, the Stoics remind us, and that's the point. We are in the dark. We are not in control. We live in an unwalled city. We are vulnerable. Seneca knew this firsthand, exiled once by unexpected illness, another time by the whim of the emperor and the third time a knock on the door, signaled that his death sentence had been handed down. We cannot take the present moment for granted, because the future that lies before us is uncertain. Life itself is uncertain.

Live accordingly. Or rather, as Seneca said, live immediately. So the most philosophical part of my day is also the most physical. So when I get off my ass, I go outside, I put on my shoes, and I go for a run. Four miles, five miles, six miles, sometimes ten miles. Sometimes it's hot, like today, it's over a hundred degrees. Sometimes it's freezing, sometimes it's snowing. Sometimes it's early in the morning, sometimes it's in the afternoon. It doesn't matter, but it's that I take the time to push myself physically, and then in that time

when the mind is asserting dominance over the body, when I can't do anything but sort of think, but also at the same time be present, that's when I'm practicing stosism. And we know that's what Marcus Aurelius and Senica and Epictetus and Crecipis and Clientes and so many of the other stoics did. They were wrestlers, boxers, runners, weightlifters, gladiators. They were pushing themselves physically as part of their philosophical pursuit.

In today's episode, we're gonna talk about the physical practice that I do the most, running, and the lessons that long distance running, pushing myself physically, have taught me not just about stoicism, but about life, and what stoicism has taught me about how to be a better runner and athlete. I think you just do one hard thing a day.

That puts you in good shape, that's a win, right? One of the things about running is that it's always a win for me. It doesn't matter if it's a couple miles, it doesn't matter if it's a lot of miles. What matters is that I didn't want to do it, I know that I should do it and then I did do it. It's about serving that dominance that we talked about. It's about seeing what's on the other side of that sacrifice and that difficulty, right? And what's usually on the other side is a greater capacity

realized that you're stronger than you thought you were. You have more endurance than you thought you did. You just have more in your period than you thought you did. And that's what running is all about to me. I just finished my run in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Remember what Santa said? We treat the body rigorously, so it may not be disobedient to the mind. You get up early, you put in work,

even though it's cold, even though you're tired, even though you'd like to stay under the covers, as Mark is really says, you put in the work, so you remind your body who is in charge, that you're in charge, that you decide how this is gonna go throughout the course of the day and throughout the course of your life. You're in charge, you treat the body rigorously,

so it's not disobedient to the mind. You have to search for this idea that struggle is difficult, or the title of your book, the obstacle is the way. Like getting through things is how you build a stronger foundation. It's how you develop characters. How the mind understands how to manage difficult situations. When I think it's a transferable skill, so like, you're doing it in the cold plunge

or running or fighting or whatever, and then when I'm working on a book and books are hard, and they're halfway through, I'm like, this isn't coming together, this sucks, should I stop? I'm like, I know this feeling very well. And I know that you don't listen to this feeling, so, like, fuck off.

Because you're gonna go through hard things in life, and you want to have cultivated a sense of, like, not quitting. Yeah. Things are hard. You have to run your own race. Seneca defines tranquility or peace or happiness as word euthemia as a sense of being on the path that you're on and not being distracted or misled

by the paths that Chris Crossworths. Like everyone's gonna be on their own journey. Everyone has their own potentials, their own limit. And so I think of athletics not being in competition with someone else, but being in competition with myself. I got out there, I'm running, I don't care if other people are passing me, I don't care if other people are in better shape than me,

I don't care about anything that anyone else is doing. I care about what I'm doing, I care about the race, I'm trying to run, I care about the path that I'm on, where I'm going, and I don't get distracted by the people or the paths or the footsteps, where the runners or the swimmers or whatever it is, that criss-cross mind. What is the most important thing to do?

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Their high speed plated road shoe, which delivers a revolutionary performance for everyday speed. It's an adaptable trainer that offers the comfort of a plated daily shoe and the speed of race, ready style. They test all their stuff. It's got this P-backs propulsion plate. It's perfectly balanced with advanced foam compounds and it's the ideal combination of propulsion and stability for everyday use. You can join us on the journey, embrace limitless possibilities. With Hoka run like race day every day, Hoka a joyful performance brand for every mover everywhere. brand for every mover, every way. People ask me as a runner if I'm like training for a marathon. I think people struggle with the idea of doing something because you enjoy doing the thing

and the thing makes you better. They want to have an external goal. They want to have some sort of validation or has to be a race or you're competing and trying to beat everyone else. To me, the marathon is waking up every day and doing the thing. As the stoic say, that's in my control. I control that. Even in an injury, I can push through that.

But if my metric is qualifying for something, beating other people, being accepted to something, well then I've handed over the control to something else. And I've also taken this thing that I enjoy doing and turned it into a thing that other people have influence or control. I turned it into a job, so to speak. I have no problem with people who race and do

those other things. If that's what motivates you, great. But for me, I try to keep my motivation intrinsic. Epictetus says, if you want to win, find a competition in which you are the only one in it. And that's how I think about physical fitness. That's how I think about running. That's how I think about exercise. And that's also how I think about riding and that's how I think about my work. And that's also how I think about writing and until I think about my work. There's a line from Musonius Rufus, he says, you know, when you do something weak to get pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame sticks around. But he says when you do something hard, when you push yourself, when you do something

that takes strength, the struggle passes quickly. But the virtue, the benefits, it sticks around, right? And so there's a point in every run, there's a point in every weightlifting session, there's a point in every physical thing that you do. Where you're wondering if it's worth it, you're getting all the consequences, you're paying all the cost up front. And you don't just get the benefit at the end when the endorphins kick in or whatever, and when you're a little bit proud of yourself, but you get the benefits way down the road,

right? When you have to jog up a flight of stairs to get something, when the day runs longer than you want it to be, when a project, when a book for me takes longer than I thought, I know what I'm capable of. I've practiced it running. The running was both building the muscle, but it's also the microcosm that's reminding me what I'm capable of, what I can draw on. That's what I take for my running practice. that I'm capable of, what I can draw on. And that's what I take from my running practice. There's a great video that Arnold Schwarzenegger did in the middle of the pandemic.

He was talking about people who were stuck inside, or people whose routines were disrupted, people were overwhelmed. He said, just that you do one thing every day. This doesn't have to be a lot. Just do one thing every day. And that's kind of how I think about physical fitness. Obviously, it's good to have goals,

obviously, it's good to push yourself. Obviously, it's good to do a lot of things each day thing every day. And that's kind of how I think about physical fitness. Obviously it's good to have goals, obviously it's good to push yourself. Obviously it's good to do a lot of things each day. But if you can start with just one thing, that's progress. Just do one thing every day. Senaq says that well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. The little things add up. So if you think about your physical practice, if you think about getting better, it's just doing one thing, one positive step every day. It's not everything, but it is a start. Get up and be active in the morning. That's the key.

You are building the muscle of doing when you get up early and you do something. I don't care if it's running, I don't care if it's meditating, I don't care if it's taking a cold shower, I don't care if it's just sitting and reading. But the point is, you get up early, own the morning, and by owning the morning, you own the day. Mark Serely says, what were you put on this plan to do to huddle under the covers and be warm? No, you were not. He says, go do what you were put here to do, do what your nature demands. That's how you own the morning. I think there are a few main things for me with running particularly.

First of all, it's just like a form of meditation for me. It's a way to be outdoors. Like, if I'm working on a writing problem, I've got some structural problem and that I can't figure out in my head. And then I'll go for a run. And it's like, I won't usually sell that problem, but something I didn't even know I was thinking about will like bubble up and I'll have some solution for that.

So, someone's actually worried when I got injured. Also, a while ago, I was worried I wouldn't even know I was thinking about will like bubble up and I'll have some solution for that So sometimes actually I worry when I got injured Also the wild goes worried I wouldn't be able to write because I wouldn't be able to run since that's where I solved a lot of my Structural problems like in college I was an 800 meter runner This is short race less than two minutes about a half mile And I would it constantly make these goals of oh, I want to run this time then you cross the finish line And either you've got that time or you didn't so you're happy if you didn't, you're pissed if you didn't. And I started to realize that that doesn't really help you do it. It just makes you happier, sad once it's done.

And so I started making much more actionable goals like, let me run the first lap under a certain time or make a big move with 300 meters to go. 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 ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. and bridge life takes energy.