The Daily Stoic - You Become What You Give Your Attention To | The Real Power You Have

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

The Stoics were all about routine and repetition. They talked about fueling the habit bonfire. They would have agreed with Aristotle: we are what we repeatedly do. We become what we repeatedly study and focus on.📕 We created a premium leather-bound edition of Meditations - To learn more and to pick up your own copy of this beautiful new edition of Meditations, visit dailystoic.com/meditations✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook See 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 Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics 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 stoke, 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. 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. You become what you give your attention to. The Stokes were all about routine and repetition. They talked about fueling the habit bonfire. They would have agreed with Aristotle. We are what we repeatedly do. We become what we repeatedly study and focus on.

Epicetus, in fact, said just that. You become what you give your attention to, he said. If you yourself don't choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will. Santa could say that to study philosophy was to annex the past into our own time. He talked about repeatedly immersing yourself in the great text of history. You must linger under a small number of master thinkers and digest their works, he said, if you would derive ideas, which shall win firmhold in your mind. Marcus Aurelius, for his part, shows us in meditations that for all the matters of state that fell before him, all the people and places that he had to know and work with, what he

spent the most time thinking about was philosophy. What he paid the most attention to was virtue. Indeed, almost every page of meditations has some direct quote or allusion to epictetus, references to the works of panateus, chrysipus, xeno, euripides, and socrates. How does one develop recall like that? How did Marcus become so wise, not just on the page, but in life, by repetition and practice, by pouring over the same old texts until the ideas took firm hold of his mind, until they were absorbed, until they became muscle memory, infused into his own train of thoughts. Marcus would later talk about how the philosopher is one with their weapon, like a boxer, more

than a swordsman. A boxer just clenches their fist. A fencer has to pick something up. That's what we're trying to do as we study. We're trying to create a practice. Get the reps that fuses us with our philosophy that makes us one with it, that inserts into it our own train of thoughts. Make that your goal. It's not about skimming a couple thousand books. It's not about getting the gist of it as Marcus derided. It's about making it part of your life and part of your mind. It's about deciding who you want to be and then giving your full attention to the thoughts and ideas and master thinkers who will help you get there. That's one of

the reasons I keep meditations on my bedside table. And having done this for 16 or so years now, my copy is a little worse for wear. And that's why I wanted to make something like a Bible that could really stand the test of time. So we've been, we worked with this awesome printer in the UK. I bought the rights to the Gregory Hayes translation, which is the one I love the most. And now we have this premium leather edition of meditations

that you can get exclusively in the daily stoke store. It'll be sold in retailers eventually, but right now we're doing this pre-order campaign for it for the first couple thousand copies, which we want people to grab before they sell out and they will sell out, then we've gotta go make some more. But you can grab that at dailyststoic.com slash meditations. Genuine leather cover, it's got this foil stamped, gold foil stamped cover.

There's a ribbon, so you can mark your page. I had these illustrations done for each of the books and comes in this cool box. So it makes a great gift. And then I wrote a life of Marcus that we tack on at the end to complement Gregory Hayes' wonderful introduction. It ships this week if you want to grab it. We do have, as I said, some limitations in the quantity available. So grab one before we run out at dailysteelick.com slash meditations. I'll link to it in today's show notes as well. I hope you check it out. I'm really proud of this. And I was reading mine last night. I'll read

it again tonight. It's the perfect thing to sit on your nightstand. The new premium edition of Meditations of Marcus Aurelis, which you can grab at dailystoke.com slash meditations. The real power you have. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Steuert 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 then 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 for me in the Daily Stoke store. It's store.dailystoke.com. There is fleeting power, and there is real power. Fleeting power can be taken away while real power is in our minds and our bones. The former tends to be along the lines of wealth, fame, high position, and the leverage that all those things give us over others.

The Stoics thought that this kind of power was inferior to the real power that each person possesses. The power of our minds to reason and make judgments and choices based on the real worth of things. You can have both kinds of power too, but only if you keep the first kind of power subject, the kind of power that the Stoics actually cared about. So, Crescippus, who I talk about in the lives of the Stoics, as well, he says, this is the very thing which makes up the virtue of the happy person in a well-flowing life When the affairs of life are in every way tuned to the harmony between the individual divine spirit and the will of the director of the universe.

Then epititus says, Don't trust in your reputation, your money or position, but in the strength that is yours. Namely, your judgments about the that you control and don't control. For this alone is what makes us free and unfettered. That picks us up by the neck from the depths and lifts us eye to eye with the rich and the powerful. That's discourse is 326.

And then Marcus Aurelius in Meditations 1219 says, understand at last that you have something in you more powerful and divine that causes the bodily passions and pulls you like a mere puppet. What thoughts now occupy my mind? Is it not fear, suspicion, desire, or something like that? I think the fact that we can talk about Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus as peers, even though one was utterly powerless and the other possessed all the worldly power

there was, is an amazing illustration of what Epictetus is saying. When he says, for this alone is what makes us free and unfettered that picks us up by the net from the depths and lifts us eye to eye with the rich and the powerful. And in fact, you know, Epictetus works in Nero's Court. He is a slave of one of Nero's high ranking officials or secretaries. And in Epictetus' writing, we get a sense, we get him really realizing and trying to communicate later to his students that like, he realized that as a slave, he had a better life than many of these people, that he was freer. He watches at one point someone sucking up to Neuro's cobbler. Like the guy that makes Neuro shoes is getting flattery because the person wants to get

closer to the emperor. And an epictetus realizes that that person who's doing that is, of course, freer and richer and more privileged than epictetus in essentially every way. But is then voluntarily debasing themselves is a slave to their need for power or recognition or money or whatever it is, that person is willingly a slave. In Seneca, in that same court talks about this, He says, you know, nothing is more shameful than this sort of form of voluntary slavery. Nothing is more shameful than these people

who are addicted to a mistress, to their estates, to, you know, being the most famous or popular person in Rome. And so I just, I think it is a powerful statement that amongst the Stoics, some of the most powerful and influential and inspiring were the least powerful and recognized. Client, these is a manual laborer, but he's considered a peer of Hercules because of his ability to endure things, because of his judgments, because of his incorruptibility. Marcus Aurelius was not the greatest conqueror of the Roman emperors, but he was one of the most impressive because he conquered himself. He possessed the throne.

The throne did not possess him. And so this idea of being free of chasing the real power, which is power over oneself, power over one's wants, power over one's opinions, power over one's actions, power over those impulses that might drive you to do this or that, that's real power. There's a line in one of Stephen Pressfield's books where Alexander the Great is taunting this philosopher and he says, what have you done? I've conquered the world. The philosopher says, I have conquered the need to conquer the world. And I think Pressfield is saying the same thing, the Stokes are saying, the same thing that Epictetus is saying, he's probably drawing on Diodgeny's The Synod, but that there is a level of power above the level of raw power that people chase and debase themselves with. So that's your question, your thing to think about today.

What kind of power are you chasing? What are you pursuing? Are you really as powerful as you think you are? What is power? have power over you? Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. Hey, Prime Members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.

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