The Daily Stoic - You Don’t Have To Do This To Yourself | Looking Out For Each Other

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

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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 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. There is so much to worry about. There is so much to be stressed about.

There is so much to consider so much you have to figure out. Or so you think. But do you actually? Like, do you have to be anxious and alarmed and miserable and hopeless? Or is that a choice? We've touched on this in a few daily stilic emails and episodes over the years. First, that often our worries that part of us that catastrophizes is a bad use of our creativity. As Marcus Aurelius reminds himself, we don't have to imagine everything that could or might happen

torturing ourselves with terrifying potential outcomes. Our anxiety medallion is actually a great tool for this. That's why I carry it with me. And second, although the Stoics did believe in the idea that we needed to look inward, they didn't say anything about that interior life being tumultuous and turbulent. Too many of us, as we've said recently, live in our heads and as a result live in a bad neighborhood. We can be present. We can be happy. We can be confident. We can be positive. We can do this even though the world feels and indeed looks like it is falling apart. What we have in front of us is enough

to focus on. We don't need to extrapolate. We can cross the next bridge when we come to it. We don't need to beat ourselves up. Fortune will take care of that for us. For now, let's just be here. Let's do what we can. Let's stay good and stay hopeful. Let's not be sucked in or corrupted by the cruelty and darkness around us. Let's focus on the things within our control. Make a difference where we can. Let's do the right thing right now and let that be enough. So something you might not know about me. I'm I live on a Halloween street here in Bastrop, like they close the whole street down and there's decorations everywhere. People go absolutely insane. Thousands of people from all over

this enormous county, mostly farm kids that can't trick or treat where they live, come out, and it's crazy. So we're already putting up our Halloween decorations. We're already going all out. And that's where today's sponsor comes in. Wayfair. Not only did we look at our Halloween decorations, but we already started looking at Christmas decorations too. Wayfair makes it easy to tackle your home goals this holiday season with endless inspiration for every space and budget. They offer free and easy delivery, even on the big stuff. No more huge delivery fees for furniture.

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I was actually just, I had an MRI and a cat scan, I had blood drawn. I've been doing a bunch of tests for a bunch of different things my doctor's been trying to figure out, but the problem is it just kind of goes into a, a black hole somewhere. That's why I was actually excited about today's sponsor, because Function is the only health platform that gives you access to all of your data, the kind of data most people never get, and then helps you with insights to start doing something about it. With function, you get access to test over 100 different biomarkers from hormones to toxins to markers of heart health, inflammation, and stress. And then also you can access MRI and chest CT scans,

all of it tracked in one secure place over time. It's a near 360 degree view to better see what's happening inside your body. And that's why top health leaders from all over the world are behind it. To learn more and join using my link, Function will help you with a near 360 degree view to what's happening inside your body. And a thousand of our followers will get a $100 credit towards their membership. Just visit functionhealth.com slash daily stilic or use gift code Daily Stoic 100 at Sign Up to Own Your Health. Looking out for each other, this is the October 6th entry in the Daily Stoic. It is in keeping with nature to show our friends' affection and to celebrate their advancement as if it was our own.

For if we don't do this, virtue, which is strengthened only by exercising our perceptions, will no longer endure in us. Seneca's moral letters, 109. Watching other people succeed is one of the toughest things to do, especially when we are not doing well ourselves. And our hunter-gatherer minds we suspect that life is a zero-sum game, that for someone to have more means that we might end up with less. But like all parts of philosophy, empathy and selflessness are a matter of practice. As Seneca observed, it's possible to learn to rejoice in all their successes

and be moved by their very failure. this is what a virtuous person does. They teach themselves to actively cheer for other people, even in cases where it might have come at their own expense to put aside jealousy and possessiveness. You can do that too. I was actually just talking to someone I work with, we were talking about the sort of pettiness of writers groups.

And I said they're all kind of frenemies, right? They see it as a zero-song game. And I said there's a joke I heard about academia that the reason the nyes are so sharp is because the pie is so small. If you think of the pie as finite, if you think about life as zero sum, it inherently makes everyone your enemy, right?

It means you're having to get what's yours, which means you're having to get it from them or get it before them, as opposed to seeing it how it actually is, how the Stoics want us to see it, which is a collective, a whole, an infinite game. I've had to do work, as a competitive person, to understand that the success of another writer has nothing to do with me.

It doesn't come at my expense. It helps me. More people reading is good, right? More people talking about stoicism is good. I'm sure there are people that see the success of my books as being somehow limiting to them or unfair or undeserved. Meanwhile, they're benefiting from the rising tide that's lifting all the boats, right? You've got to think about how you look at it, but you have to practice this up. Robert Green in his book, The Laws of Human Nature,

he talks about the difference between Schadenfreude, like wishing bad things with other people, in Mitten Freud, probably pronouncingly is horribly wrong. This is also a day we broke out in the Daily Laws,

which I was lucky enough to work on if you haven't read, you should. We'd carry it in the paint of porch. Anyways, there's another awesome daily book out there. like I remember Robert going, is that going to be a problem with your book? And I was like, no, this is amazing. More people reading something every day is good for the world and probably good for the category too.

Anyways, there's also a section of this in the Daily Laws. But Mittenfreude is the active wishing of success or goodwill towards people. I heard love once defined as willing the good of the other, like wanting good for the other, wishing them happiness, wishing them success. as an author wishing you the biggest first week sales you could possibly have. I want that for you. It doesn't come at my expense. And even if it did, who am I to root against you? I'm going to do my best. I'm going to put out my best work. I'm going to go into this already knowing that I'm playing with house money, that I've succeeded beyond my wildest dreams and expectations, that I've written something I'm proud of, that I think deserves to be read, that I have faith in the long term will do what it needs to do. So there's no pettiness in me. There's no need for you to do poorly.

I just wish everyone success. Are there moments where I get caught with a pang of jealousy where I might say something that, you know, if I played it back to myself later, I'd be like, oh, that's not a good look. Of course, this is something you have to work on. It's like ego. In fact, it's rooted in ego.

So it's something you have to constantly sweep away and push away. But it gets you to a place where you, You are happier and you are better. It's not just by wishing other people good. You're making them happy. Theodore Roosevelt is right. Comparison is the thief of joy. Joseph Epstein is right when he said that of all the deadly sins, envy is the only one that's no fun.

Living that way sucks. It punishes you most of all. Meanwhile, not being petty, not wanting to hold other people back, being happy, generally celebrating all the things that are good things that are happening to other people and not seeing them as somehow bad for you, well, this is a much happier and much more wonderful way to live, and I wish that for you. Hey, it's Ryan.

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