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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. I don't know anyone whose inbox isn't a huge mess, who managing email isn't a day-to-day struggle. I'm looking at my email right now. How many unread emails do I have? I've got here 298 in my main email, and I've got
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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 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a
with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com. Will they forgive you? They got themselves into quite a mess. They screwed things up big time. Or maybe they didn't. Maybe they're taking heat from the mob or got hit with a scandal that deep down most of us know is totally unfair. You could say something. You should say something. So they're not dangling out there by themselves. But...
But you don't. Because you don't want that mob to turn on you because you're busy, because you've got your own family to worry about, because you warned them that this was exactly what was going to happen. There's a fascinating letter at the end of John Williams' wonderful historical novel, Augustus. He just started carrying it at the painted porch. I hadn't read it. And then I did, and I love it.
where Philippus of Athens is writing to Seneca, sheepishly acknowledging that he had left him hanging when Seneca was exiled on bogus charges by the emperor Claudius. Thank you, he writes to Seneca, for overlooking the fact that I did not speak out on your behalf during that unfortunate time that you were forced to spend on the barren waste of Corsica.
You have understood better than most, I suspect, that a poor physician without worldly power nor even a hundred like him could have prevailed against the will of one so erratic as our late Emperor Claudius.
And surely the real Seneca must have had some version of this exact exchange many times. How many of his friends would have stuck up for him? How many risked their necks to intervene? How many even came to visit him? How many sent supplies or encouragement? How many bothered to apologize later for not being brave enough? Perhaps Seneca understood. Perhaps he forgave. Maybe your friends and colleagues will do the same.
Or maybe they won't be able to overlook your failures of courage and kindness. You are the project. This is today's entry, May 5th, for the Daily Stoic. The raw material for the work of a good and excellent person is their own guiding reason. The body is that of the doctor and the physical trainer and the farm of the farmer. This is Epictetus' Discourses 3.3.
Professionals don't have to justify spending time training or practicing their work. It's what they do and practice is how they get good at it. The raw materials vary from career to career, just as the locations and duration vary depending on the person and the profession. But the one constant is working on those materials, the gradual improvements in proficiency. According to the Stoics, your mind is the asset that must be worked on most.
and understood best. Something that hit me when I read one of my favorite books ever for the first time, this is Steven Pressfield's The War of Art. He talks about how in Hollywood, writers create what are called loan-out corporations. So you don't work for the movie studio or on the project. They hire your company, your LLC, and you like loan out your labor to that company. It's sort of a complicated industry thing that we don't need to get into. But the idea that you have to start a company and then you work for that company or that
You are that company is really important as you turn pro, which is Steven Pressfield's other book. And you should read The War of Art in turning pro. I carry them both in the painted porch. In fact, I think Steven just sent us a big box of signed ones if you're looking for one. But the point is a pro sees themselves as a business. So if you need a pair of headphones to function better at your job, like.
It's not like, oh, do I deserve a hundred dollar pair of headphones? It's my job requires a hundred dollar pair of headphones, right? Me running, if I don't take my walk in the morning or run in the afternoon, if I'm not actively engaged in some sort of physical practice, my writing suffers. So I'm not a professional athlete.
But if I am not investing in and actively spending time on running and working out, my professional life suffers. So it's part of my job, right? Reading is part of my job. I've always thought this way. My wife hasn't. Until we started this bookstore together, she thought reading was this fun thing she did on the side. But realizing, no, like me following what I love about books, me spending time reading, this makes the bookstore better.
It also makes me as a person better. And so I'm not going to feel guilty or self-conscious. I'm not going to shortchange that. I'm going to do it. It's part of my job. Look, it does say something that we make more allowances for our job, for our profession. We understand investing in, spending on, et cetera, in ways that we don't for just like pure personal development or, you know, acquiring knowledge or whatever. But
If that metaphor is helpful for you to see the silliness of that distinction, so be it, right? Seeing this stuff as your job, right? Like I think about this again, like if I'm sitting on my computer, that feels like work.
But if I lean back in the chair, kick up my feet and I'm reading, I'm like, is someone going to walk in and be like, oh, you're having a fun day. But that book, I might learn 10 times from that book what I would learn browsing, you know, ESPN articles when I should be writing books.
or whatever, right? Like, think about what's making you better. And are you seeing yourself as a project? Epictetus says this. He says, look, some people delight in improving their farm. Some people delight in improving their body. He says, me, I delight in improving myself day to day. So are you seeing yourself as a project? Are you willing to invest?
in the way that, yeah, like you'd say, hey, to start to open this store, to make, to buy this stock, I have to put up some money. I have to put up some time. I have to do some research. I have to do some development to put up a plan. Well, do that for yourself also, because you're worth it. And by the way, like once you pick the low hanging fruit of life,
It gets harder, right? The professional level is harder and you're going to have to invest and spend some serious time. So you are a project. And the Stoics marvel at how, you know, the things we're willing to do to have some, you know, physical pleasure or whet our appetites or, you know, make some more money, but how little we're willing to invest in ourselves and in our own personal development, even though that contributes significantly.
also to our personal development, but also to our happiness and fits in with our obligations as human beings and all that. So that's the prompt for you today. You are a project. You as the startup, you as the LLC, you as the corporation, invest, operate accordingly, take your obligations seriously accordingly. And I think you'll be very impressed and pleased by the results.
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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