The Daily Stoic - You’re in a Hurry and Don’t Know Why | A Hard Winter Training

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. You're in a hurry and you don't know why. It's never slow with us, is it? We're always rushing, rushing to get ready in the morning, rushing on the way to work, rushing through our lunch, zipping through our to do list, rushing to grab the kids from school, rushing to finish this phone call. rushing to get dinner cooked, rushing to an airplane or a train, rushing through a book we're reading, fast-forwarding through commercials, rushing through a bedtime routine.

Starting point is 00:00:46 It seems like we're rushing everywhere all the time. Sometimes it's because there are real deadlines, flights, or getting to a meeting on time, but even then, why do we act like it's the most important thing in the world? We are rushing always as if we're not rushing through our own lives, as if we're not filling ourselves and our families with stress and anxiety. We would do well to remember the Alabama lyrics. Slow down. Pause.

Starting point is 00:01:35 Take a breath. Because one day you'll realize you rushed through too much. of your life, too much of your loved one's life. You realize that as you were rushing, you were dying, as Seneca said. You were rushing through something you could never get back. You rushed through beautiful details that you might have otherwise noticed if you took your time, and the rushing you thought was urgent while someday seemed so small compared to the moments, the days, and the years of your life you missed out on because you were in a needless hurry. Violent threats against executives are growing at an alarming rate.

Starting point is 00:02:20 And when a company experiences backlash, executives are the first people blamed. And when their address and other personal details are sitting online, this backlash can lead right to their front door. The team at Ironwall knows this better than anyone. They've protected some of the most targeted executives and individuals on the planet for almost two decades. And as a white glove enterprise security service,

Starting point is 00:02:41 they protect your people with continuous personal. personal data removal, proactive prevention tools, and human-led emergency support. So when someone goes looking for your executive, Ironwall ensures they hit a dead end. So here's what you do. Go to ironwall.com slash daily stoic. Fill out the quick form. Request your free risk assessment. And their team will show you just how exposed your executives are and how to lock it down

Starting point is 00:03:06 before a threat reaches their front door. That's ironwall.com slash daily stoic. Learn how to stop online threats before they become real world. the tax. The link is in the show notes. I'm doing a bunch of dates for this Daily Stoic Live tour. Maybe you came and saw me on one of the previous ones. Chances I was probably wearing something from today's sponsor, Quince. They make great sweaters. They make great t-shirts. They make great buttonups, great pants. Just a great company. Their clothes are built to last, made with premium materials. And they're the kind of stuff you reach for every day. Quince specializes in everyday staples that work harder.

Starting point is 00:03:44 ultra-soft organic cotton teas, Mongolian cashmere sweaters, everything in between. Everything that Quince has is priced 50 to 80% less than what you'd find from similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories, cuts out the middlemen so you're getting premium materials without the markup. If you're still hanging on to the same worn out basics, Quince makes it easy to upgrade. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash doic. You can get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK to Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash Stoic. A hard winter training.

Starting point is 00:04:29 The art of living has three levels of discipline, study, practice, and hard training. Reading the Stoics are listening to them, that's study, trying out the lessons and reflecting on them in a journal. The friend, that's practice. What's left, though, is hard training. Epictetus liked to use the analogy of the Roman Army's practice of training hard in the off months of winter so that they could be prepared to meet any challenge when they return to battle in the spring. Seneca would spend time each month exposing himself to tougher than usual conditions. He too used a military analogy, pointing to the way that soldiers are tasked with hard jobs so they could be strong when the enemy eventually came. So what are you doing in your life to push yourself beyond mere study and practice?

Starting point is 00:05:19 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, then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictita 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 Stoak Journal anywhere books are sold.

Starting point is 00:05:49 You can also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoke store at store. dailystoke.com. This idea of keeping the thoughts at hand really ties into this week's entry. We've got two quotes from Epictetus and one from Seneca. We must undergo a hard winter training and not rush into things for which we haven't prepared. That's Epictetus and his discourses. Here's Seneca in Moral Letters 18. Here's a lesson to test your mind's metal.

Starting point is 00:06:13 Take part of the week in which you have only the most meager and cheap food, dress scantily and shabby clothes, and ask yourself, this is really the worst you feared. It is when times are good that you should gird yourself for tougher times ahead. For when fortune is kind, the soul can build up defenses against her ravages. So it is that the soldiers practice maneuvers in peacetime, erecting bunkers with no enemies in sight and exhausting themselves under no attack so then when it comes, they won't grow tired.

Starting point is 00:06:42 And then finally, Epictetus says, when a challenge confronts you, remember that God is matching you with a younger sparring partner, as would a physical trainer. Why? Because becoming an Olympian takes sweat. I think that no one has a better challenge than yours. If only you would use it like an athlete

Starting point is 00:07:00 would use a younger sparring partner. So a couple things here. One, I sometimes get this question, should I seek out adversity? if adversity is such a good teacher, should I seek it out? I say, look, for the most part, life is going to give us most of the training we need. Life's going to throw most of the adversity we need at us. So you don't need to go like getting yourself into trouble so you can know what a prison cell feels like, right? I don't think that's really what it is. As Epictetus is saying,

Starting point is 00:07:28 look, instead of bemoaning the adversity when you do feel it, go like, hey, this is good. This is training I needed. I'm going to use this. So I think about that way. How are you, though, actively engaged in training that makes you stronger, more mentally tough, more physically tough. So to me, this is where like a strong physical practice comes in. It's also where getting up early, maybe intermittent fasting, maybe cold showers, but mostly working out because I love working out, but still every time I have to convince myself to do it, right? I love running. It's almost painful not to run, but there's still lots of days when I don't want to do it and still be easier to go slower. I have to push myself every single time. But every time I do it, I get better at pushing myself,

Starting point is 00:08:13 right? I usually do some sort of weight training about four days a week as well. And so that is much less fun for me. And I really do have to push myself to do it. And that training, though, the act of pushing myself to do something that I'm uncomfortable with that's not fun that challenges me, this doesn't just make me stronger and more fit and better at chasing my kids around the house. What it really does is make me better at overriding that impulse, that I don't want to do something because it's hard or that I'm afraid or that's going to be exhausting. And you think I don't wake up so many days and I don't feel it. I don't want to do it. It's hard.

Starting point is 00:08:51 What if I phone it in today? Is anyone really watching? Will anyone know? Well, I've trained for exactly that kind of insidious opponent as Stephen Pressfield talks about. I know the resistance well. I have built up a lot of muscles that made me strong. than the resistance, and that's where this training comes in. And I think that's a metaphor for all forms of adversity, difficulty, resistance, weakness in life. And so I hope you have some sort

Starting point is 00:09:17 of active practice. Use the adversity, train against it when it's there, but also build some active daily practices or weekly practices in your life as well.

The Daily Stoic - You’re in a Hurry and Don’t Know Why | A Hard Winter Training

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.