This Is How Champions Are Made | Find Yourself a Cato
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Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to The Daily Stoic early and ad-free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Therapy is great. It's important. It can make your life a lot better. So why don't more people do it? Why don't we do it as often as we should? It's because a lot of therapists are out of network. It takes time to drive across town. It's uncomfortable. So we make excuses all

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Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-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 with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com.

Most people assume that someone like Tom Brady is obsessed with winning. How else do you win all those Super Bowls? How else do you become the best at what you do? After the recent Super Bowl, in fact, there was a bunch of speculation that he must have been happy to see Kansas City lose because it put to end the debate over whether Patrick Mahomes was catching up to his legacy.

But the truth is that Brady isn't obsessed with winning or being considered the greatest winner of all time. What Tom Brady is actually obsessed with, as he said, is just constantly trying to be a little bit better each day. He wanted to improve the accuracy of his throws a little bit. He wanted to get the ball out a little bit faster. He wanted to make his reads a little bit better. He wanted to be a little bit better as a leader. He wanted to recover after games a little bit faster.

Because he knew that it's in getting a little bit better every day, compounded over a long enough time, that's what makes you great. That's what made him a seven-time Super Bowl champion. Not something as superficial as just being obsessed with winning.

And by the way, because he is obsessed with sharing what he's learned, he has this new newsletter that's come out called 199. And you can sign up for 199, which is Tom Brady's personal code for mindset and motivation and mastery over at TomBrady.com. Brought to you by the folks here who do the back end of the Daily Stoic newsletter. That's the folks at KIT.

And it's something I understand, too, that we think about. Stoics knew the value and importance of trying to get a little bit better each day. And they believed that it was the little things that add up to wisdom and virtue. Well-being is realized by small steps, Zeno would say, looking back on his life. But it's no small thing.

And that's why we want today and every day to focus on those little things, the little habits, the discipline, the refusal to make excuses, the inputs that you allow in. No single action is significant on its own, but over time it accumulates and this determines what you can accomplish and most importantly, who you become. A life is assembled, Marcus Aurelius writes, action by action. Progress is made one decision, one choice, one improvement at a time.

And no one can keep that from happening, he added. People can beat you, but no one can stop you from improving. Every day, every moment, we have a chance to get a little bit better than we were yesterday. And compounded over time, that's what leads to greatness. And it is how champions are made.

Find yourself a Cato. Today's entry from the Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. You can check out the leather edition at dailystoic.com slash leather. Or if you just want the cloth-bound, lay-flat version, the standard hardcover, you can pick that up anywhere books are sold and also at store.dailystoic.com and I'll sign your edition as well.

We can remove most sins if we have a witness standing by as we are about to go wrong. The soul should have someone it can respect, by whose example it can make its inner sanctum more involuble. Happy is the person who can improve others, not only when present, but even when in their thoughts. Seneca's Moral Letters, 11.9

Cato the Younger, a Roman politician best known for his self-discipline and his heroic defense of the Republic against Julius Caesar, appears constantly throughout the Stoic literature, which is interesting because he didn't write anything down. He taught no classes. He gave no interviews. It was his bold and brave example that made him such a commonly cited and quoted philosopher.

Seneca tells us that we should each have our own Cato, a great and noble person we can allow into our minds and use to guide our actions, even when they're not physically present.

The economist Adam Smith had a similar concept, which he called the impartial spectator. It doesn't have to be an actual person, just someone who, like Seneca said, can stand by and witness our behavior. Someone who can quietly admonish us if we are considering doing something lazy, dishonest, or selfish. And if we do it right and live our lives in such a way, perhaps we too can later serve as someone else's Cato.

or a spectator when someone else needs it. The line from Adam Smith is in the wonderful book by my friend Russ Roberts, which you should check out. It's called Adam Smith Can Change Your Life. We carry it at the Painted Porch. It's a must read. But it's like, you know, in the cartoons, there's the angel on the shoulder and the devil on the shoulder and who are you going to listen to? Or

Or if you remember those bracelets, what would Jesus do, right? The idea is to have that person in your mind, whether it's Cato or Marcus Aurelius or your grandfather or Abraham Lincoln or Harriet Tubman or whoever it is for you. Who is your hero and what decisions would they make in those situations?

When I interviewed Annie Duke for the Leadership Challenge, she was talking about like getting to the outside of a problem, right? When you're in it, when it's you, you can get tied up in what you want to do or what your impulses say or what's easiest, but you want to get to the outside of the problem. And this idea of the spectator or the Cato or the hero, it allows you to think about it from someone else's perspective. So not like what would you allow yourself to get away with, but what would so-and-so expect of you in this situation?

The other version you can think about this is like, what would you do if your kids were watching, if they understood?

John Wooden was fond of a poem and the line said, a little fellow follows you. And this is a similar idea, right? What would you do if your kids were watching? What would you do if anyone was watching? But allowing those standards to hold you to a higher standard than you might otherwise let yourself get away with. But then I think this is really the important part, this last sentence about if we do it right, if we live our lives right, perhaps we could be that way. So reaffirming

Remember, stoicism is about putting your own spin on it. It's about being the ideas. I think getting to a place where you yourself

have lived your life in such a way, produced work in such a way, made brave or virtuous decisions in such a way that you yourself can serve as a model for other people, right? So maybe even using that as your own standard, who do I want to be, right? Who am I aspiring to be and what would that person do in this situation? Would they take the shortcut? They phone it in. Would

Would they do the expedient thing? Would they do the short-term thing? What would they do? And pushing yourself to be that person, that's to me what Stoicism is about. Again, the example of Cato is so inspiring because for literally hundreds of years, Cato was that example. Cato was that for Thrasia and for Seneca. For countless Stoics on down, Cato was the inspiring example. When I had Tom Ricks on the podcast, who's

Another great book, I highly recommend First Principles, which we also sell in the bookstore. Cato was Washington's Cato. Washington built his whole life around living up to the example of Cato. And he didn't always get there, but he pushed himself to get there. And so again,

Try to find that towering example. That's the first part. And let them guide your behavior. Let them call you, hold you accountable to what you're capable of being. And then strive to be that in such a way that you yourself, for your children, for your colleagues, for your neighbor, for whomever, you yourself can serve as a kind of example for them.

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 the couple of 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.

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