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 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example and to start your day off, the little dose of courage and discipline and justice in wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com. This also cannot be taken, only given up.
There was Nero, there was Vespassian, there was Tiberius and Caesar and Sola and many others. The Stoics lived in the time of tyrants. They lived in a time of chaos and dysfunction and danger. They had real reasons to worry about their property being confiscated, about losing their job to an emperor or events, but being sent into exile.
They knew all this was largely out of their control, but as we talked about recently, they understood that they still possessed many things that could not be taken away, only given up. One of those things was their dignity and self-respect, epictitus kept it even in slavery, thoracia and agrippenus kept it during the reign of Nero. There is another thing that we always have the capacity to possess, something not associated with Stoicism often enough, but just as important, and that is happiness and joy. Why should the Stoics have let the awfulness of the world make them feel awful?
Why should they have let someone else's darkness darken their own life? When Marcus really spoke of getting revenge by not being like that, this is partly what he was referencing. How do you strike back against a cruel and deranged leader? How do you undermine a morally bankrupt regime or times?
By being good and feeling good, by loving your children, by loving literature and art, by smiling to your neighbor, by helping a sick animal you find on the side of the road, by laughing at the absurdities, both at the administrations and at the absurdities of life. Do not let them touch your inner citadel. No one can steal your happiness. No one can take your joy.
This is ours to keep or give up. Choose wisely. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stole Podcast.
On Thursday, we do Q&As. You do this long enough, and it all starts to blur together. It's crazy to me. So I was in Salt Lake City a couple of months ago.
I gave a talk to YPO. It's pretty cool. And then I had to get on a plane early that morning and fly from Salt Lake City to Phoenix, where I was going to talk to Dean Graziosi's mastermind group, which is called Zenith. And here I am now, back in Salt Lake City.
Actually, I flew into Salt Lake City now and in Sundance, I drove about an hour, got a nice run-in. I sit down to record this intro, which is clear of my producer prep for me, and I go, oof, you really do come full circle. I'm going to bring you today a chunk of that Q&A, which we've been doing the last couple of weeks. And the idea that I was like, I knew when I landed in the airport in Salt Lake City, I was like, oh, see recently, right?
When was that? Was I passing through? Did I leave the airport? I'll meet the driver, whatever.
It's like, oh, yeah, I remember. I go down here and water. And it just all starts to blur together, which is both, I think, a good and a bad sign. It means you're doing a lot.
It means you're doing cool stuff. It also means you're becoming a little bit jaded. It's kind of just fading into the background. And so I did, as I was driving out here, just trying to really soak in the insane scenery.
I'm going to make sure I do that on the way back. It can be so easy to be like house, plane, hotel, restaurant, room, conference room, car, airport, home. And you want to slow down and you want to soak it in. And that's actually something I talked about in the talk with Dean.
It's about what we do every day. It's not saying, oh, this doesn't matter, or this is an important or, oh, it's all adding up to something. It's about what we do every day. Thanks to Dean for having me come talk to Zenith.
He was a very nice hostigator. I want to copy ego as the enemy. And now I get to bring you a chunk of that Q&A. So enjoy.
Kids don't do what you do or tell them to do, or they become who you are, or by example, lead by example. So I'd love to know from you, what are some of the things maybe you would love to teach them, but you're not sure if the teaching or the reading would do it, but you shifted your life because you know it would be a good example. Well, my wife likes to joke that one of us writes about stoicism and then the other is the stoic. Yeah.
So I struggle with all of these things, but I actually think that's one of the things I want my kids to understand. You talked about going upstairs and apologizing when you've screwed up, or I'm going to try that again. I can remember my parents apologizing like twice in my whole life. Do you know what I mean?
I'm glad you got to. Yeah. I don't even know if I would bring up something for my childhood. They would have to be talking to me.
You know, even now, if they could be like, hey, when you were six, you know, I would feel better about it. Exactly. Don't move on my part. It would still make me feel better.
Right. And so I do try to get better. I'm a big fan. Do you guys know who Dr.
Becky is? She's amazing. She's a perfect parent. Try to get better at repair.
Right. Like fixing it after. And that's that's one of the things I'm trying to do by example. And I got this email from my son's teacher yesterday, I was like, almost in tears about it.
He was running across the playground and he smacked into someone. And she sent us this note about how we'd hurt this other kid and he was checking on them and he went and got the nurse. And it was and that's something he's kind of struggled with. He sometimes when he gets embarrassed or he screws up, he has shame and it makes him not want to address what happened and think about it and we all do that.
And so I tried to model not doing that. Like, you can't you can't yell at someone out of that cycle, right? Because that's where it comes from. And so I've tried to get better at repair, not that he necessarily has ever showed that he's appreciated it or noticed it.
But then you get this thing and you're like, oh, it clearly worked at some level, right? And so I think not trying to be perfect, but having some semblance of self-awareness to be able to go, hey, I'm stressed because I'm trying to get everyone to the airport and on the plane at the right time because I plan this special thing for everyone. That's why I was being this way, which is defeating the whole point of us being together. But I'm having the awareness as soon as possible that's why I'm being the way that I was being and then talking about it and acknowledging it.
I think it would all be wonderful to have successful accomplished kids, but to have kids with self-awareness and rare feet. Yeah, I've said if it was my last breath and I said, I've created kids that have awareness and they're resourceful and they're happy. Yeah. I don't care about any of the rest.
Because they're going to figure it out. That's the whole toolkit, right? Yeah. And I do think I had a friend of mine who was a mentor when I was 15 years old and he was the first guy I'd ever known that had $100 million in your business.
I like, there's businesses that's $100 million. And I remember talking to him and he said, it was when my daughter was first born. She's 18. So it was 18 years ago.
He said, remember at the end of your life, all the things you accomplish, I want you to make sure million things. But I think the last thing you're going to think of is, did I do everything in my power to give my kids the tools to live a fulfilled life? Mm-hmm. And I think about that all the time.
Like sometimes you have a true North, that's my true North. Am I doing the things to make them resilient, to make them have, they'll have resources, but are they resourceful? If I could pick one, you can give your kids anything, but you can make them resourceful. Pick resourcefulness 100% of the time.
Well, it's interesting how timeless that is. There's this ancient writer named Plutarch, who's a great biographer, and he lives shortly before Marx realized. And he noted with some irony that people will spend a lot of time trying to craft the perfect will and the perfect executor for their estate, so the kids don't fight each other, so they don't get too much money or not enough money. And all the estate planning you do, and he was just like, what if you just raised kids that got along and could manage these things?
No, I can't. But his point is, you can try to have this perfect system for these imperfect flawed people, or you could just not screw them up, and they can manage it, right? And I think we just often end up prioritizing or spending our energy on the thing that's easier and we're more comfortable with, and that is such a good point. It's so funny when I, first generation of actually making money, you have to think about those things, trust them, how you're going to hand it off.
And I remember going through it, and I read a letter, and I have to find it, but I read a letter that was written by somebody who studied families, this is something hopefully all of you can benefit from, but it was families in Europe, in England that went many, many generations. I feel like I'm exaggerating to say 20 generations, but I'm already telling my four-year-old is that we're a baton family, and I ran the first leg of the race, and I would love to hand the baton off you to continue it, but if you don't want it, it's okay, but you're not just going to get handed, I want to give you opportunity. Right, are they inheriting the estate, just the products, the money or whatever, or they also inheriting a tradition, a set of values, and then hopefully a model, Bruce Springsteen has talked about this, says, are you going to be an ancestor to your kids or a ghost, right? An ancestor is this thing you look to that you're inspired by, that you want to make proud, and a ghost is like, oh yeah, I do that because my dad was like that, or whatever, right?
We're all haunted by these ghosts of five generations ago, right? Someone was an alcoholic, a pastor this, a pastor that, and so his point is like, do you want it to me? That's a really critical choice, and are you going to be someone that sort of builds up and inspires and calls to your kids, or are you going to be someone that haunts and plagues them, scares them, you know? So good.
But Ryan's got to run out of here and go jump on a plane. We got time for a question or two. Who'd like to ask? Go for it.
Your book, trust me, I'm lying. Yeah. Change my life. Oh, that is a crazy read.
And if you haven't read it, I'd recommend it. I'd just like to just all about marking, probably give us an office real quick to people. But give me an updated 2025 version of how much we are being deceived by media and marking with the political campaign pandemic. I'm just curious your thoughts, and with that frame on the world right now.
Yeah, I wrote a book about fake news and media manipulation in 2011, which I wish had been proven wrong, subsequently, and how right, you know, I think we're listening to living in the hellscape that I was predicting in that book, unfortunately. I think what we're coming to understand is that information is a public good, like air pollution or water or the oceans. And as we've allowed these different entities, some governments, some private actors, some foreign actors, some crazy people to sort of poison that. And as the media is, as their economics have changed, it gotten worse and worse at protecting that.
And we just so hard to know what's true and real and important these days. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the daily stoic podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it.
We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in a couple years. We've been doing it. It's an honor.
Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.