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And you can use code dailystoic right now at eight sleep.com slash daily so for up to $200 off the pod six and you get 30 days at home to try it. Pre returns if it's not for you. Welcome to the daily stoic podcast designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice and wisdom into the real world. This comes to us from Epic TDC says it's the chief task of life, which is focused on what you control is it up to me? Is it not up to me?
If it is up to you, it gets 100%. If it's not up to me, it gets to zero percent. We focus on what we control because that's where our energy effort and emotions actually make a difference. The next one is related to the first one, which is we control how we respond to things as Epic T that says, we don't control what happens, but we control how we respond to what happens. So by ignoring all the things that are not up to us, by refraining from regret or complaint or blame and focusing on this happened, what am I going to do about it?
This is how we move forward. And this is what all great leaders, artists, human beings do. They focus on what they control and what the control is how they respond to what happens in life. The next is a question from Mark's really says, ask yourself in every moment is this essential? Because the truth is most of what we do, most of what we spend time on, most of the things that other people do and spend time on are not essential.
And he says, when you eliminate what's inessential, you get the double benefit of doing the essential things better. Do I need to do it? Yes or no? And if I do need to do it, then because it is essential, I'm going to get everything to happen. Are you meditating on your mortality?
I carry a coin in my pocket. This is momentum. Morrie. You could leave life right now. Mark's really says life is short.
Don't waste time. Don't focus on things that don't matter. Going through our life with a clear sense of our mortality is essential. Now you time more than money and possessions, right? You can earn more money.
You can get more land. You can get more opportunities with. You can't get is this moment back. Seneca says the time that passes belongs to death. So don't think of death as something in the future.
Think of death as something that's happening right now. And everything you do, you are choosing to purchase with your life. You have to remember you're a product of your habits. Epictetus says, if you want to be beautiful, make beautiful choices. If you want to be excellent, make excellent choices.
Make them habitually day in and day out. They add up. It's easy to get upset by things, which is why the stoics say that we have the power to have no opinion. You can just think nothing about something. If you didn't know it existed, you wouldn't have an opinion.
Now that you know it exists, great. You don't have to say it's positive. It's negative. You don't have to say it's anything. It just is seeing things objectively withdrawing judgments from them is really important.
As Epictetus says, it's not things that upset us. It's our opinion about things. We control our opinions. Well, we done is half done, as they say. So own the morning.
If you want to have a good day, have a good morning. You want to have a good life? Have a good day. So it all comes back to how you start the day. Own the morning.
It's a great passage of markets release. Where he's arguing with himself about getting up at a bed in the morning. And he says, look, what you meant to huddle into the covers and stay warm? He says, no, get to work. Early.
Seneca's rule was put the day up for review. Ask yourself, what could I have done better? Where did I fall short? Who do I want to be? Was I being that person?
So every day the law is put your day up for review, evaluate yourself, interrogate yourself. That's how you get better. Seneca says, we suffer more in imagination than reality. And that gives us the next law, which is don't suffer imagined troubles. The stuff that you're worried about, it'll happen or it won't.
Worrying doesn't affect it, right? So Seneca says, don't feel more than you have to deal with that when it comes. For now, focus on what's in front of you, focus on what you need to do. Don't add to your suffering by anticipating it, by suffering in advance. That's only adding humanively up to more suffering.
You got to see the good in people. That's an important law. Yes, the stereotypes were pragmatists. Yes, they were realistic. They were even a bit pessimistic, but Marcus really famously tried to get the most out of people.
He tried to see the good in them. He knew that yes, there's a certain amount of bad people out there, but he always tried to find something good in everyone he was dealing with. If you don't do this, you're going to be miserable and unhappy. Marcus really didn't want to be emperor. So it's interesting that in meditation, he gives this rule to himself.
He says, never be overheard complaining, not even to yourself. Complaints are for losers. Complaints solve nothing. Focus on what you're going to do. Focus on the goodness situation.
Don't allow yourself to complain. Zeno gives this rule two ears, one mouth for a reason. Always listen more than you talk. There's always something you can do. We talked about this earlier.
It's focused on the response. There's always something you can do, some way to move forward, some little bit of progress that you can make. Zeno says well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. So start small focus on the little thing you can do in this situation. Marcus really talks about envy, right?
Did Roosevelt says that comparison is the thief of joy. Comparing yourself to other people is focusing on something you don't control. It never makes you feel good. It either makes you feel irresistible or makes you feel crappy. Only focus on what you do.
Don't compare yourself to other people. Hold yourself to your own standards as Cato did that are higher than other people. So when you're succeeding, you focus on how much further you have to go. And when you're failing, you ask yourself, did I live up to my own standards? That's what matters.
Live as if you have died and come back to life. Seneca says that if you go to bed every night saying, my life is over. I've lived my life. I went through it all. Then when you wake up in the morning, it's extra.
Anyone who's been to a casino knows it's more fun when you're playing with house money. Marcus really says the best revenge is not to be like that, right? People are going to be awful. People are going to do bad things. How do you get even?
How do you prove what a good person should be like by being a good person, by being the opposite of those people, the best way to be the cheater, as I say, in the way it would be famous to not be like one. Yes, the Stoics had high standards. Yes, they worked very hard, but they had this rule be tolerant with others, strict with yourself. Cato says, I can forgive any error, but my own. It's called self discipline.
It's what you ask of yourself, what other people say or do the mistakes they make. Leave it to them. Put every single impression you have to the test, right? We have our initial reactions, the Stoics say, our initial impressions, our snap judgment. Great.
Maybe you're right. But you also could be wrong. You can make a minute pause between the stimulus and the response, as Victor Frankl famously says, wait a second, choose who you're going to be. Choose what you want to feel. Choose what you want to do.
Don't just react emotionally, but every impression, every impulse to the test. You can learn something from everyone. Ralph Waldo Emerson says, everyone I meet is better than me at something and that I want to learn from that, right? So focus on what you can learn from every single person, even people you don't like, even people you don't respect, even people who suck. Focus on what you can learn because everyone is better than you at something.
And even if they're not better than you at something, you can learn from them in the cautionary tale. So you can learn from everyone. We always want to be learning. That's where wisdom comes from. Outcomes are not in our control process and effort is.
So the stoics say focus on effort, not outcomes, even where the results focus on what's in front of you. I have to do this with my books. I want to write the best book possible. I want to try as hard as I can on the marketing. I want to do the absolute best I can.
Everything after that is extra. It's not out to me. Success is internal. Did I do what I set out to do? Everything else is irrelevant.
Define what success means to you. Success should be giving your best, having impact, really trying, really pushing yourself. What other people say or do as a relevant? Mark's Rims says, we love ourselves. But for some reason, we care about other people's opinions, more than our own.
No, you have to define what success means to you. Not what everyone else says is the most or what everyone else is the most impressive or what everyone else is doing. Set your own standards for success. It'd be much more likely to meet them. You have to find a way to love everything that happens.
This is the stoic idea of a more fatty. The stoics aren't resigned to what happens. It's more than that. They embrace it. They say, this isn't something I have to do.
Something I get to do. This isn't something that happened to me. It's something that happened for me. Mark's really says, everything you throw on top of a fire becomes fuel for the fire. That's what the idea of a more fatty is.
They embrace. They love everything that happens because they know they can use it and they know that it's what destiny had in mind for them. Seek out challenges. Do one thing every day that scares you as the cliche goes. We become better for what we struggle with just as the way you have to lift weights to get stronger.
Seek out challenges, tackle hard things, push yourself. If you want to write a mighty book, Ralph Ellison says, choose a mighty theme. Challenge yourself. That's how you get better. Don't run away from challenges.
Run towards challenges. Don't follow the mob. Chris Sippa says, why would I become a philosopher? I'm just going to be like everyone else if I'm going to follow the mob. No, I think for myself.
It's the hardest thing in the world to think for yourself. As Mark Twain says, whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, pause and reflect. It's not that they're always wrong. They just sometimes are. You want to make sure you're deciding this for yourself, not just because everyone else is saying or doing it.
So again, the stoics, they're not contrarians, but they think independently. And so much to think about everything for yourself. If the mob is excited about it, if the mob is beating up on someone, if the mob is caught up in a fad or a passion or a trend, that's a good sign that you should step back, think for yourself and do what's actually right, not just what everyone else is doing. Benjamin Franklin said, time is money in 1748. That was his advice to a young man.
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Epic T that says one of the handles will hold weight. The other one, what handle are you going to grab at this situation? The one that empowers you or disempowers you, the one that makes you angry or gives you something to focus on and change. Right. So every situation has two handles, which one are you going to grab?
Grab the one that makes you better. It gives you something to do that challenges you ignore the other handle. Seneca says every person is an opportunity for kindness. And that's the role here. Every situation is an opportunity for kindness.
Kindness is the key to what moves us forward. Never pass up an opportunity to be kind to care, to be compassionate, to listen, to appreciate what someone is going through because that's the truth. Everyone is going through something. You have to say no a lot. This goes back to Mark Seveles.
Is this essential? If it's not essential, what do you do? This is the rule. You say no. You have to say no.
When I talk to NFL teams, it's something we talk about. I say, look, everything you say yes to means you're saying no to something else. And whatever you say, no to gives you more room, more time to say yes to what matters. In their case, being great at what they do. So what are you going to say no to this year?
You can say yes to the things that matter to the people that matter in your life as well. You can't be afraid to ask for help. I don't want you to think that the stokes are invulnerable, that they never show weakness. In fact, Mark's really says you're like a soldier storming a wall. If you have to reach up and have a Conrad help you out.
So what? I love this. So what? So don't be afraid to ask for help. I love the book, The Boy, The Fox, The Horse and the Mole by Charlie Maxie, who I had on the Daily Stokes podcast.
And he's a great line in that book. He says asking for help isn't giving up. It's actually refusing to give up. Don't be afraid to be vulnerable. Don't be afraid to ask for help.
Dare greatly, as Renee Brown says, be vulnerable. Ask for help. What is the path to wisdom? Seneca says it's finding one thing every day, one quote, one story, one conversation, one book, one insight. That's the idea.
You get better one thing at a time. That's actually why we do the Daily Stokes email, right? Every single day we send out a free email inspired by stoicism to the largest community of stokes ever in the world. Almost 400,000 people get this email and sign up at dailystoke.com slash email. But the point is you got to find something that delivers value for you every day.
You got to seek it out. One thing that makes you better every day. That's the path to wisdom. We're not in this alone to do harm to another person, to allow harm to come to another person is to allow harm to come to yourself. So Marcus really says in this rule, what's bad for the hives, bad for the beat.
The way I think about this is whatever I do say, however I let go, what would the world look like if everyone did this, right? And if the answer is things would fall apart, things would be bad. Then it's something I try not to do, right? What's bad for others is bad for me. It was good for me.
Should be good for other. We talked about being tolerant with others, strict with yourself. That means not judging. Seneca says the study of philosophy is about scrubbing off your flaws, not other people's right. Leave other people to their own mistakes.
Don't judge them, especially people you don't know, especially people who are going through things that you don't know about. Seneca is right. Focus on yourself. You strict with yourself. Don't judge other people.
Leave them to their own struggle. You have to study the lives of the greats. Seneca says, choose yourself a kato. Focus on someone who's going to make you better. As I say in my book, The Lies of the Stoics, we study the lives of the people who went before us so we can learn easily, but they learn with great difficulty.
So we can pick up where they left off so we don't have to learn by trial and error. Find some heroes, study them, learn from them, learn what to do, but not to do. That's the journey I'm on with. Mark's really Seneca, Epictetus, what I write about lives of the Stoics. But the idea is who's lives are you studying and what are you learning from them?
Forgive, forgive, forgive. That's this rule. I heard a great expression that forgiveness is a gift that you give to yourself. Mark's really says the best revenge is not to be like that. I would add to that is also to not hang on to whatever that was.
You got to let go. You got to forgive. That's that someone's cheating in the ring with you when you're boxing. You got to act accordingly, but you can't hold on to grudges because they make you miserable. As we said before, find one thing a day, but I would also add to this, make a little bit of progress every day.
Become 1% better every day. That adds up. Zeno says, well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. Mark's really says, assemble your life action by action. No one can stop you from that.
A little bit of progress every day adds up. What is Stoicism, but journaling? That's what meditation is. The Journal of the Most Powerful Man in the World. But it's not been all notes about what he had for breakfast and how he worked out.
It's a conversation with himself about how to be better, how to become, how to fight to be the person that philosophy wants him to be, as Marcus says. That's what we try to do in the Daily Stoke Journal. 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living. But the point is sit down with the journal every morning. It's spiritual windshield wipers as Julia Cameron famously said.
Spend some time in the morning with the journal. Have a conversation with yourself. Do the evening journal too, Santa can talk about putting the day up for review. The point is have that conversation with yourself. Put it down on the page and Frank famously says that paper is more patient than people.
This morning I was frustrated with something. I sat down with the journal instead of dumping on someone and maybe better. So the idea is journal every single day like Marcus, you can do the Daily Stoke Journal, do a blank journal, you can do it on your phone. It doesn't matter, but every day spend a few minutes with the journal. Prepare for life setbacks.
Pre-Meditatashio on the Lord on this comes to us from Seneca. It says, exile war, torture, shipwreck. Be ready for them because they're going to happen. And he says, the unforeseen blow lands heaviest. And by anticipating things, we take power away from them.
So be prepared, be ready, think unpleasant thoughts. You can be pleasantly surprised if they don't happen, rather than unpleasantly surprised when they do happen. That's what Seneca says. The only unacceptable excuse is I did not think that could happen. One of the really beautiful things in Meditations is all the observations Marcus makes about nature.
The flex of foam on a boar's mouth. The way all of fall right from the tree. That the way that we bends low under its own weight. The furrowed brow of the lion. You know, he found beauty in the mundane.
In the everyday life he talks about the way that bread cracks open in the oven. Where does this come from? Why does it happen? Life can be dark, life can be frustrating, kick and break your heart. So if you focus on the good in finding beauty everywhere and seeing with the poet's eye, you'll find beauty everywhere.
You'll always have something that makes you smile. Talk about how it's bad for the hives, bad for the bee. Another way of expressing this is this rule, which is to do wrong to someone else, is to do wrong to yourself. We're all brothers. We're all one.
We're all connected to hurt someone else is to hurt yourself. Right. We do good because it's the right thing, but also because it's good for us. Robert Green one said to me, there's two types of time in life. A lifetime, dead time says, what are you going to choose?
You're going to live this moment. You're going to kill time and waste time. You're going to let that time die. A stoic always chooses a lifetime. They focus on what they control.
They focus on how they respond. They know that life is short. So they live every moment. They use every moment put before them because they know that the next one cannot be taken for granted. Associate with people who make you better.
You become like your friends. We are a reflection of our surroundings. The stoics sought out people that made them better. In fact, Seneca's conversation with Lucilius, who he writes to and letters from a stoic is about him associating with someone who made him better. Spend time with people who make you better.
I saw a great expression the other day. You can't change your friends, but you can change your friends. Look, this is a time of heightened political correctness of sensitivity of sugar warnings and microaggressions. But the stoics would say, like, look, we don't control what other people do. We control how we respond.
That's why Epictetus reminds us that when we are offended, we are complicit in the response. It takes two to tango. Yes, they said it, but you decide that it's rude. You decide that it was mean. You decide that you've been harmed.
Choose not to feel harmed by a remark. Marcus really says, and then you won't feel harmed. Fate behaves as she pleases, Seneca says. So act accordingly. Be ready for everything that happens.
Understand that it's not in your control and that what goes up must come down. You possess nothing in this life. You have to understand this. All our possessions are ours in trust only. Epictetus is robbed of a silver lamp.
He says, you can only lose what you have. And the next day he replaces it with a cheaper lamp. We don't possess our precious possessions. We don't possess our loved ones. They're ours for as long as we have them.
And they go away. You don't possess anything. Realize that everything you own is in trust and act accordingly. I think about this with my farm. I heard a great expression.
You don't own your house. You don't own your farm. I don't own mine. The bank just lets me make payments on it. It's not mine, but I can enjoy it while I have it.
Seneca says, I, at least I'm not a hindrance to myself, meaning I don't make my problems worse by bimoning them. Talk about complaining. Not only is complaining in effecting, it makes you miserable. It poisons the room, poisons the atmosphere. It's a cancer.
Don't make your troubles worse by complaining about how bad they are, how unfair they are, how not your fault they are, how impossible they are to overcome. Focus on what you control, focus on the good in them. That's plenty. What goes up must come down. As we said, Marx really says, remember to accept it without arrogance to let it go within difference.
That's the rule. Accept the good things while they're there. Accept the bad things while they're there. None of them change who you are and what you can do. You want to be good and gracious and resilient in success.
You want to be good and gracious and resilient in failure. You want to be humble when you're on high. You want to be humble when life has humbled you. Right? Be who you are, be the even teal.
Don't let your circumstances change you high or low. All of it is irrelevant to who you are. Don't identify with success or failure. Focus on who you are and what you control. The four virtues of stoicism, I carry coin in my pocket that says this courage, temperance, justice, wisdom.
There is no situation so good, so bad, so strange, so ordinary that it does not demand these four virtues from us. I always with courage, I always with moderation, I always in light of fairness and justice and honesty. And of course, you need wisdom to know how and when to do those three other things. Those are the four virtues of stoicism. Then the last three, I actually have tattooed on my body that this important to me.
The obstacle is the way. There's no problem so bad that there's not something you can't do because of it. You can't grow because of it. You can't learn because of it. That it doesn't open some opportunity that otherwise wouldn't have been there.
When God shuts the door, he opens a window. Right? What are you going to do because of this? What's the opportunity inside the obstacle? Ego is the enemy.
Erogance always makes things worse. Ego never makes things better. Be humble. Be open minded. Be willing to learn.
Don't be above or beneath anything. Be who you are. Be confident, of course. But believe in yourself because there's evidence, not because you think you're better than everyone else. Stillness is the key.
The secret to charging ahead is slowing down, seeing things clearly. My best work never comes when I'm doing 50 things at the same time. Mark's really talks about how we want to be the rock that the waves are crashing over and eventually fall still around. Can you tune out what's happening outside? Can you tune out the crowd?
Can you hit the game-winning shock? Can you focus on what you need to focus on? Can you see things clearly without the bias and the immediacy of the moment? That's why stillness is so important. That's why the stoics talk about it over and over again and why it's such an important rule of life.
I'll leave you with one last rule. The most important rule in all of stoicism. Which is that you don't talk about your philosophy, epic thesis, you embody it. I have a print on my wall right there from Marcus Realies. He says, waste no more time arguing what a good man is like, just be one.
All these rules are well and good as far as they go. But what matters is if you live them, if you apply them day to day, they're simple. I know that, but they're not easy. And I know that too. It's hard to apply them.
But every day, as we said, you want to make a little bit of progress, get a little bit better at living these ideas. That's the purpose of stoicism.