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W a Y F A I R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Wayfair, every style, every home. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Bailey Stowak podcast.
On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the stoic texts, audio books that you like here, recommend here at Daily Stowak and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to actual life. Thank you for listening. Hey, it's Ryan.
Welcome to another Sunday episode of the daily stoic podcast. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. One of the things I'm working on in my life is I'm just trying to be more generous and like it's something you can work on Aristotle talked about virtue, not as this thing that you have or were, but it's something you did. And he actually talks about generosity specifically in this regard.
He says it's like laying the flute or being a carpenter. Like you get good at it by doing it more. And so I've been working on that. And one of the ways I started a couple years ago, I just, I don't know.
I just don't like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I really don't like them. I don't have a problem that the other stores on Main Street here in this little town have Black Friday sales. I get it.
It just never sat right with me doing that for something like Bailey Stowak. And so a couple years ago, I just said, well, how if I'm not going to take advantage of Black Friday or whatever, maybe there's an opportunity to flute it on its head to do like something generous. So we just decided to use that space, one of the most valuable sort of marketing slots of the year for all businesses, like just sales for everything spiked on those days. I thought, well, what if we used that platform for good?
What if we raised money instead of tried to make money? And so we started doing this fundraising drive for Feeding America, which is the big national food bank here in the United States, like not national in the government. It's just this big sort of organization that works with these smaller food bank chapters. All of the yes, there's one like couple of walks over from where the pain of porches I go by on my walks most days.
They're super, super efficient. Like every dollar you give to Feeding America provides at least 10 meals. So when we did the first Feeding America thing, like three or four years ago, I think we raised enough money for a million meals. Then we up to two.
Last year, we were shooting for three. I don't know if we quite got it, but still we provided cumulatively like we, I mean, the daily so community, all of you have provided meals for literally millions of families, like millions of people that benefited from this. I love that. If you think of generosity as a habit, you get better at it and you get stronger at it.
And I have a chapter about this in right now, which I'm going to play for you in a second. But in the meantime, I would love for you to participate. We're trying to raise $300,000 this year. I'm going to put up the first 30,000 and we're going to use some, some daily soic slots here to try to push people to do it.
You can donate at dailystoke.com slash feed literally just put in a dollar and you have provided 10 meals, like just pay forward the delightful Thanksgiving you had or just pay forward any bit of generosity you've experienced. And you're like, this is just an awesome time to do that. As I said, dailystoke.com slash feed. I'll link to that in today's show notes, but this chapter give, give, give in right thing right now is about this idea of generosity as I have.
And I tell this delightful story about this guy who built it as part of his writing practice. I just love this. So today we're going to talk about generosity as a practice and I'm giving you a chance to practice. And all you have to do is go to dailystoke.com slash feed, donate $10.
I'm putting up $30,000 if you beat me. Well, I'd be very impressed. But literally any dollar counts, let's make this a self list day, a generous day, rather than a selfish day and a materialistic day. You can do that dailystoke.com slash read and enjoy the chapter from right thing right now.
Give, give, give. When Rabbi Harold Kushner sat down to write a book, he tried not to procrastinate. He tried to get right into it. No hesitation, no overthinking.
He allowed only one small ritual to proceed his act of daily discipline. Before his pen touched the page or the notepad, it went first to his checkbook, where a Kushner scrawled out a small donation to one of the charities that he and his wife supported in the way that the ancients might have prepared for battle with a sacrifice to the gods or the muses, the Rabbi waged the war of art by first striking with an act of kindness. He warmed up for a day of good writing by writing down some numbers. He knew would do some good generosity is something we admire.
It's something many of us wish we could be better at as it happens. There's only one way to get there to do that. And it's the same way one gets better at writing or any other craft by doing it. Not later when we're better off, not only when someone really needs it, not in one or two big or flashy moments, but consistently regularly as a matter of course.
So it becomes part of who we are. So it becomes kind of a north star in and of itself. Anne Frank's motto, which she learned from her parents was that no one ever became poor by giving. It's true charity is edifying and profoundly rewarding.
And as it happens, the Hebrew word for charity actually means justice. Of course, there's some part of us that knows that giving money away is a good way to go broke. Plus, we hustled and sweated and earned what we have. We know how money might compound and grow if properly invested.
And we can't help but think of the fun things we could do with it or some moment in the distant future when we might badly need it. Yet aren't all these reasons to be generous with it? We worked hard because it was our job because we wanted to realize our potential. The financial compensation is something we're glad to get, but also understand on some level is extra.
We earned it once. We can earn it again. And what kind of person values their fun or redundant security over the alleviation of someone else's suffering? If you've been blessed, be a blessing.
And it should be said, there are many ways to do this. We can be generous with our time as Florence Nightingale was, dedicating her life to service instead of high society. We can be generous with credit, generous with praise. We can be the kind of person who people come to for help, the kind of person whose door is always open, the kind of person who smiles at strangers, who fixes friends up, who checks on people who are lonely, who is there when you need them with a nice word.
We can use our power and influence to fight for people who have little as Theodore Roosevelt did. We can be generous with our access and advice. Kindness is a form of generosity we can always afford. It doesn't matter how much money you have, how much power you have or how little nothing is stopping you from being generous in some form or some way.
How are you doing? Do you need anything? Great job. I appreciate you.
These are expressions of generosity. Don't cost a thing. So generally I get to wear whatever I want, which is usually to be see me, it's running shorts and a 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've got to dress up. And lately, I've been wearing a lot of quince. I've loved their sweaters. What I try to do is find staples like things 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 quince has been a sponsor because they save me a bunch of money, although I'll end up paying for it because now I'm hooked on them and they 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 wear and 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 it over to quince.com slash don't for free shipping on order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too.
That's QU and C-E dot com slash don't for free shipping and 365 day returns. Nothing is stopping you from being generous right now. The immensity of the problems or the needs of the world do not absolve you or prevent you from making a small step towards solving them doing something for someone who is suffering from them. During the depression wanderers and hobos would often stop at the Carter House, which was not far from the railroad tracks.
Carter's mother would always fix them something to eat. One neighbor noted how thankful she was that there were never any of these people hanging around her house. Later Jimmy Carter would learn that the community of homeless people during the Depression had a series of symbols to communicate which houses were decent and kind in which were heartless and cruel and to be avoided. This kind of mark of earning it from those in need stayed with Carter all his life.
It's why into his 90s he was still donating his time and money to help others even building houses for those who could not afford their own. It's funny Ralph Waldo Emerson is famous for his essays on self reliance, but in reality he was an incredibly generous man not just with his money, but with his time and his encouragement. The scene he cultivated in Massachusetts has no parallel in history. People all over New England knew they were welcomed at Emerson's home where unofficial meetings naturally began to form what later historians came to call the transcendental club.
He mentored and helped forge the careers of countless artists and intellectuals. It was after all on Emerson's land at Walden Pond that Thoreau was allowed to live and build his cabin. He supported his family members financially. Emerson was an unstoppable champion of education, a vocal and financial supporter of public libraries and access to knowledge.
Great Emerson later said, is the person who confers the most benefits, the more successful you are, the more self-reliant you are, the more leftover you have to help others become the same to whom much is given, much is expected. And we've all been given so much, each of us, all of us, what will we do with it? Who will we help? What will we give?
An answer? Enough that it hurts. Enough that it challenges you. Enough that there is sacrifice in it.
Why should we get to keep it all to ourselves anyway? It's not really ours to begin with. Who owns the patent on your vaccine? Jonas salt was asked on television as he rolled out the first protections against the scourge of folio.
Well, the people I would say he answered aware as he was that his research had been funded by charitable donations and built on the backs of so many other scientific breakthroughs. There is no patent. Could you patent the son? He said Marcus, really, is reflecting on the whole of his life.
Would write that he felt lucky to have never needed to ask for money, but lucky or still that whenever anyone else needed it, he was never in a position to say that he couldn't afford to help. It's not only the right and fair thing to do, it makes us great. So we must make a start of it, a habit of it. The point is not how or how much it's that we are a blessing to others in whatever form we can be in whatever way is possible.
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 would really help the show. We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode.