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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice and wisdom into the real world. Hey it's Ryan. Hope you are well. I am just working on my talk. I'm going to be giving a talk in San Francisco and Portland in mid June. I'd love to see you there. You can grab tickets@dailystoiclive.com if you're not on the west coast. You want to see me in the Midwest or on the east coast to Tickets are up Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit, Boston, D.C. i'm forgetting another one. And then I'm going to be in Australia in October as well. All Those tickets@dailystoiclive.com. What you need is a Small Crisis it was one thing after another for Marcus Aurelius. Floods and famines, wars and coups, disorder and destruction, matters of life and death. These crises are instructive, naturally, and more specifically opportunities for virtue. But they are also, in their overwhelming and tragic nature, often much more than we need for those purposes. No one would choose something like that. No one would choose to go through what Zelenskyy has gone through, or Churchill, or to trade places with Queen Elizabeth during her annis horribilis. What is valuable, however, are those small crises, those wake up calls, those close calls. It's these situations that are significant but hardly mortal that can make us focus, that can drive creativity and connection and clarity. They are serious, so we have to get serious. They are challenging and challenge us to rise up and meet them. They can make us better if we insist on it. In the moment. They may seem like they are great, greater than we can imagine. And yes, we might lose some things in the process. Yes, there might be some consequences, but in the grand scheme of things we are alive and that was never really in doubt. And if we are alive, then we can learn. It's in fact often when we don't pay attention to and learn from these small crises that the world sends the big ones our way. The ones that come crashing down on us, to finally get these lessons through our thick skull. When we stop resisting and start learning, the obstacle becomes the way. And obviously that's the idea behind the Obstacle is the Way, which I wrote about over 10 years ago now, having not been through too much. I was in my early 20s when I sat down and wrote that book and I've been through some bigger stuff since then. But the idea is about how we respond to those day to day obstacles and how we see them as an opportunity for growth. We have a 10 year anniversary edition. A new edition of the Obstacle is the way available. I'll link to that in today's show notes if you want me to sign it. If you want to give it as a gift to someone, you can grab all that@store.dailystoic.com. When we open the bookstore, we have Tracy's down the street. One of the things that happens when you have a business is like you get all these people that are trying to sell you these different products and services. Oh, this is the right platform, this is the right tool. This is what you should use. Most of it's not good. Most of it's a scam. Most of it doesn't help. But the most important choice we made with the Painted Porch, other than physically where we were, was using Shopify. We have used Shopify for over a decade, first with Daily Stoic, now with the Painted Porch. It's a choice we've never regretted. It's a major part of the business and we wouldn't have succeeded without it. They've grown with us over the years. We've grown with them for almost 10 years now. It's great. And we're not the only ones using it. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses and brands all over the world. They do 10% of the E commerce in the US from household names to gymshark and allbirds to little brands just getting started and little things in between like Daily Stoic. Everything is all in one place, making your life easier and your business operations smoother. And if you get stuck, Shopify is always around to share advice with their award winning 24. 7 customer service, which we have used many times at Daily Stoic and with the Painted Porch. It's time to turn those what ifs into sales with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com stoic go to shopify.com stoic shopify.com stoic so generally I get to wear whatever I want, which is usually if you see me it's running shorts and heavy metal T shirt. But you know, sometimes we have a fancy guest on I want to dress up or I'm giving a talk and I've got to dress up or I'm going to be on TV and I got to dress up. And lately I've been wearing a lot of quints. I've loved their sweaters. What I try to do is find staples like things that I really like and I'll get multiple colors or you know, I'll just go through that brand or that company's catalog and get a bunch of stuff I like. And I'm so glad that Quint has been a sponsor because they saved me a bunch of money. Although I'll end up paying for it because now I'm hooked and I'm going to end up buying a lot of the stuff. Quince has all the wardrobe staples for spring. They've got linen shorts and shirts. They've got, as I said, sweaters, which I'm wearing all the time. 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 middleman, so you're getting premium materials without the markup. Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head over to quinn's.com stoic for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N C-E.com.au stoic for free shipping and 365 day returns. Hey, it's Ryan. Today's episode is from The Daily Stoic. 366 Meditations on Wisdom Perseverance in the Art of Living probably annoying that I'm always saying the title, but you know what? Every time we post about this book on Instagram, people go, oh, what book is that? As if it's not the book that kicked off the whole thing. So I try to take the humility in remembering that even though I have lived and breathed this book and these ideas for a very long time, they're new to many people and maybe they're even new to you listening right now so you can grab the book Audiobook Physical we have a cool leather edition and so I'm going to bring you this entry which starts with a quote from Epictetus's discourses. He says those who receive the bear theories immediately want to spew them as an upset stomach does its food. First. Digest your theories and you won't throw them up, he says. Otherwise they will be raw and spoiled and not nourishing after you've digested them, show us the changes in your reasoned choices. Just like the soldiers of gymnasts display their diet and training, and as the craft of artisans show what they've learned. Many of the Stoic aphorisms are simple to remember and even sound smart when quoted, but that's not what philosophy is really about. The goal is to turn these words into works as Musonius Rufus that was Epictetus's teacher, as he put it, the justification for philosopher is when one brings together sound teachings with sound conduct. Today or any time when you catch yourself wanting to condescendingly drop some knowledge that you have grabbed and asked, would I be better saying the words or letting my actions and choices illustrate that knowledge for me? So a couple thoughts here as we kick this around. Number one, I think Musonius Rufus was a guy who walked the walk in addition to talking the talk. This is a guy, first off, who teaches Epictetus. I mean, he's a philosophy teacher. He's known as the Roman Socrates, a wise, powerful, important dude. And here he is teaching a slave. No discrimination, no judgment. In fact, he makes Epictetus into his greatest student. And he also teaches women. He was very ahead of his time and writes this fascinating essay about how women are just as capable of virtue as men and should be taught philosophy and excellence. But Musonius Rufus is exiled four times. Three we know for certain, four we speculate about. But he deals with injustice, he deals with difficulty, he deals with adversity. All these things he talks about, he has to put into practice. Epictetus, of course, we know this without question. But what I sort of think about when I think about the school, actually, I want to go back to something for a second too. You know, I. I said that they called in the Roman Socrates. We've talked about this before, but you know, Socrates doesn't write anything down. What he left behind was his example, right? His example is so compelling that it makes for great writing by Plato. But Socrates is a philosopher because of how he lived, because. Because of what he did in the room, in conversations with people, not what he. Not pouring over his notebooks and writing and rewriting and all of that. He was a philosopher because of how he lived. And in fact, the great Stoic, Cato gives us a similar example. Epictetus himself was a teacher, yes, but he doesn't write any books. It's what he told his students and how he lived that survives down to us into a form of lecture notes. That's what Marx, Aurelius reads, and that's what we have now in Discourses and in Caridian. But I just think about this with my own understanding of Stoicism. So I read Marx Realis in my late teens, 19, 20 years old, and I start writing about it immediately. I was immediately regurgitating it out because it was the smartest, most interesting, thought provoking, challenging, eye opening stuff I'd ever read. But it took many, many years for the ideas to firmly take hold. Seneca talks about ideas winning firm hold in your mind. Now the brilliance of the writing and the phrasing and the humor and the wisdom, all that immediately hits me. I get that immediately. But it takes a lot longer for it to worm its way into my DNA, into my life. And I talk about this in the. In right thing right now, the, the. The third book in the virtue series, the justice book. I don't think I could have written that book in my 20s. I don't even know if I could have written it in my early 30s. I don't even know if I could have written it three years ago. Right. It took a long time. It took hard won experiences. It took the. That's the thing about stoicism, I guess is one of the things I say in the afterward is it's working on you as you are working on it. And what Epictetus is saying and what ultimately the Stoics want you to understand is that studying stoicism, talking about stoicism, thinking about stoicism, reading about stoicism, all this stuff is great, it's part of it. But first off, it's going to take time and patience. And second, it's going to take work to turn those words into works, which is the whole point of the philosophy. It's supposed to translate down to the conduct. So interesting quotes from Marcus Aurelius about temperature or about anxiety, those hit me at 20. But it took a long time, maybe longer than it should have, but it took me a while to actually start applying that stuff, to start acting differently, to let it really get into my system. And so I would just. If you feel like you've been studying this stuff and talking about it and thinking about it for a while, and it's just, you don't know if there's a difference yet. Give it time. You know, it's working on you as you are working on it. And at the same time I would say keep working on it, right? Actually actively try to get it in there. I remember when I was doing jiu jitsu, I went one time I was working out at a Brazilian jiu jitsu gym in New York City and the professor said something like, you gotta come every day with something specific you're trying to work on, something specific you want to take out of it. I think if we think of stoicism that way too, what am I trying to get out of this? What am I really working on? What am I trying to translate into conduct today? I'm not trying to reinvent myself, change everything. But I'm trying to really get it into my system, and I want to try to act and behave differently as a result of what I'm learning here. That's what we're doing. That's what Epictetus is talking about. That's today's message. Have a good weekend. I'll talk to you soon.
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