The Daily Stoic - Why You Should Never Stop Studying | We Are a Product of Our Habits

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

Ryan talks about the importance of constantly learning that which you do not yet know, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal.If you want to become a great reader, the Stoics can help. We built out their best insights into ourRead to Lead: A Daily Stoic Reading Challenge. Since it first launched in 2019, Read to Lead has been our most popular challenge, taken on by almost ten thousand participants. Today, we’re excited to announce that, for the first time ever, registration to jointhe 2022 live cohort is officially open.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and 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 happen to be doing.

So let's get into it. You should never stop studying. As you recover from his wounds, a young soldier named Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. began keeping a list in a black leather journal of all the books he had read. Books on law, philosophy, sociology, religion, history, economics, poetry, scientists, science. He read Montanhas, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Homer, Proust, Proust, Epictetus, an astonishing book he said, among many, many other books. And when Holmes died at the age of 93, the list held the names of more than 4,000 books. That sounds like a lot, but it's actually only a little more than a book a week

over the course of his life. Sennaka was right. Acquiring just a few bits of wisdom a day really adds up. Not just in terms of quantity, but also in terms of quality. Homes would become one of America's most celebrated jurists spending 50 years on the bench, 30 of those years, as United States Supreme Court justice. So yeah, you're busy. Yeah, it's hard to find time to read. I get it. But are you busier than Senicaka busier than Charles De Gaulle than Napoleon than all of her window homes one of the great judges of the 20th century? No, you are not. Yes, you are smart and you may well have already done a considerable amount of learning in your time on this planet But are you wiser than Marcus Aurelius the man who well into old age was still heading off to visit philosophers and teachers to learn that which he did not yet know. You are not. Learning

doesn't stop. Our journey to wisdom never ends. And thus our reading habit must be steady and consistent. Build up your wisdom step by step action by action. No one can stop you from that, step by step action by action. No one can stop you from that except for your own prioritization and procrastination. So get to it. You'll be imagined. You'll be amazed at what it can add up to. And if you're looking to be a better reader, we designed this daily stoic challenge or a course recently called the daily stoic read to lead challenge as Truman said, not all readers are leaders, but all leaders have to be readers. That's the idea. How can you be a better reader?

How can you get serious about this thing? How can you access all the wisdom that's out there in the world? How can you build a reading practice? And we built this awesome challenge. It's built off my reading practice, but also the practices of Seneca. Mark's to really send all the Stokes,

plus otherwise figures from history. Love to have you join us. You can sign up at dailystoic.com slash reading. And remember if you're a daily Stoic life member, you get the challenge for free and all our challenges. So you can sign up there at dailystoiclife.com. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like.

It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight.

Together, they discussed their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So, if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early, and add free, on the Amazon, or Wondery. We are a product of our habits. 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, and also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoke Store. It's store.dailystoke.com.

Journaling, of course, is a critical exercise to the Stokes. It's really hard to separate journaling from Stoicism. Meditations is Marcus Aurelius journaling and talking to himself, and so today's entry comes from the prompt and the sort of meditative part of the Daily Stoic journal for this week, and it's all about habits. The Roman Stoics put a heavy emphasis on dealing with habitual behavior in order to make progress in the art of living. The great Roman Stoic educator Musonius Rufus, his epictetus's teacher, held that all the theories in the world couldn't trump good habits, and it couldn't overcome bad

habits either. Epictetus followed Musonius in this focus on habit with an eye on not reinforcing bad habits, such as anger, and finding a way to replace them with better ones. We all recognize bad habits when they see them and others, but it's harder to see them in ourselves. So this week, meditate on the habits and recurring behaviors that are holding you back and even ask others around you for their view. And the first quote comes to us from Epictetus. He says, every habit and capability is confirmed and grows in its corresponding actions, walking by, walking and running by running.

You remember we talked about this earlier in the week. Therefore, if you want to do something, make a habit of it. If you don't want to do that, don't, but make a habit of something else instead. The same principle is at work in our state of mind. When you get angry, you have not only experienced an evil, but you've also reinforced a bad habit, adding fuel to the fire.

It's epic Titus' discourse is 218. Then he also says, if you don't wish to be a hothead, don't feed your habit. Try as a first step to remain calm and count the days you haven't been angry. I used to be angry every day and now every other day, then every third and fourth, and if you make it as far as 30 days, thank God, for a habit is first weakened and then obliterated. When you can say, I didn't lose my temper today or the next day or for three or four months, but I kept my cool under provocation, then you are in better health. That's again, but it kept my cool under provocation. Then you are in better health.

That's again, epictetus is discourses to 18. And then this is the funny one. He says, what assistance can we find in the fight against habit? Try the opposite. The point is the Stoics thought a lot about habits. They had to, right? It's not just enough to think philosophical thoughts to, to sort of have high principles or

standards, but how do you make them real in your life? How do you turn them into muscle memory, right? An athlete can watch videos, can be coached, can review painstakingly, their swing or their shot or their throw, and then they're going to get tweaks and thoughts. But then that has to become habit. That has to become part of the routine. That's why they sit in a gym and take, you know, a thousand free throws or a thousand jump shots. That's why they practice doing this or that so that under immense amounts of pressure under the stresses of life in the game, they can revert back to that training. They can do what they need to do.

And I love this little expression from Senna about how bad habits, the old way of doing it, first we weaken it, then we obliterate it. You don't just magically do the new thing, you weaken it. And he's saying one way to weaken it is to try the opposite. You know, it's like you have a piece of paper with a crease in it or a bend in it. You can fold it the opposite way and it kind of flattens it out. I just think that's an interesting way of thinking about it. But look, habits make the man, right? The habits that you do, the things you habitually do day in and day out, this is what we're talking about earlier in the week, that's who you are.

Who you say you are, who you want to be, who cares, right? The habits you habitually do, the choices you regularly make, that's what make be, who cares, right? Who the habits you, you habitually do, the choices you regularly make, that's what make you, who you are, that's what make you beautiful as we also talk about from Epictetus. We are a product of our choices, our routines, our habits. As a writer, how does it work? You create a routine, you create a structure,

you follow it every day, work comes out the other side of that. It's not about fits of inspiration, it's not about genius. And I think this is true for all crafts that one seeks out to master. It's about habit. But I've also found even as a parent, if you want to do good, if you want to manage this or that, you create habits, you create routines, you create structures. And then you stick to it. That's the key. So habits, we are a product of

our habits, the stokes believe that. And I hope you are working on your habits. You can check out the Daily Stoke Habits Challenge at dailystoke.com slash habits. Would you get free if you're a daily stoke life member? But the point is habits will make you happier. They will give you a better life. I'm not saying they're easy. They're very difficult but habit is everything and It's also the hardest thing, but let's keep working on our habits Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoog 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 downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you. 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. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page six or Du Moir or in court.

I'm Matt Bellissi. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears.

When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcasts.

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