Will You Prove Yourself Worthy? | Ask Daily Stoic
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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. Will you prove yourself worthy?

He was born rich. He was a citizen of a great nation. He was given the best teachers. He was selected for great things. And then one day Marcus Aurelius found himself the emperor of Rome, the head of an enormous army, the head of an enormous empire, the wielder of incredible power. Yet what was most impressive, one historian would write, was that Marcus Aurelius proved himself worthy of all this.

The power didn't corrupt him. The privilege didn't entitle him. The responsibility did not overwhelm him. Now, what about you? Almost certainly you have not been so enormously blessed, but you were born to technological and social progress that the ancients could not have imagined.

At even a public school, you were given access to ideas and breakthroughs that the brightest minds of antiquity could not have wrapped their heads around. Your average life expectancy is longer. Your quality of life is better. Your water does not come to you via lead pipes. You have all your fingers and toes. Your children will probably not die before they become toddlers.

All this privilege, all this good luck, what will you do with it? What will you make of it? What will it make you? Through nothing but an accident of birth, you have been blessed. Will you prove yourself worthy of it?

What is Holland for?

What do you mean, what is it? It's a country right next to Belgium. No, that's the Netherlands. Holland is the Netherlands.

then who are the Dutch? So I knew where Amsterdam was and then I don't know, is Amsterdam part of the Netherlands? Where's Holland? Who are the Dutch? Right? It's a little confusing. I'd been to Amsterdam three or four times. As I said, Amsterdam is where the sort of Tim Ferriss effect was visited upon stoicism because he bought the rights to The Obstacle is the Way when we were both there at a conference.

And there was another conference I was there where Casey Neistat sort of showed me the power of YouTube when he went wakeboarding through the canals of Amsterdam. So I have been going there a long time, but I've never been to Rotterdam. Anyways, in Rotterdam, it was lovely. I did a Q&A before the event for some VIPs and then a Q&A after. I'm going to bring you a chunk of those questions. Let's get into it. Super cool to see you here in Rotterdam, Ryan.

Thanks for being here. Yes. So the bad news is that I've been trying to formulate my question and I still haven't figured it out. So maybe you can help me out. We'll just do it live in front of all these people and swing it.

Yeah, I've been trying for a week now and it has to do something with the Stoic virtues for sure. And I think you're getting a bit more activistic in the recent years and I really like that. And also I think when you look at the Stoic virtues, there's this thing where you don't want to be too judgmental. You want to be strict with yourself, soft towards others.

Otherwise, you have a certain mission in life or a certain responsibility to take. Sure. So I find that super challenging to find a balance on that scale. Yes.

Could you maybe give some sort of advice on how to find a balance on that scale? That would be my question, I would say. Yeah, no, no, it's a great question. Yeah, a Stoic is engaged and involved. You have to be. Seneca says the key distinction between the

Stoics and the Epicureans is that an Epicurean gets involved in politics or causes only if they have to. And a Stoic gets involved unless something prevents them. So the default is engaged, involved, outspoken, etc. But yes, there is a tension, I think, and you're right to point this out, between being engaged and active and outspoken and being engaged.

judgmental or condescending or annoying or, you know, I have to think about this with the Daily Stoke email. The Daily Stoke email goes out to a million people all over the world. The idea that I would not speak about very real and very important things happening in the world for fear of upsetting some percentage of those people would be cowardly and injustice. At the same time, if all I talk about are those things,

That audience will get smaller and smaller and its influence will diminish to the point of not being able to have a positive impact. So I have to think about that balance. It's funny every time I talk about American politics or something like Trump and what the rise of fascism represents.

You know, people go, it's a bad idea to alienate half your audience. And it's like, you know, it's very American of you to think that my entire audience is American. You know, it's not. And I do tend to find when I talk internationally, people see these things much clearer as they have an outside perspective. And also, you guys have a bit more experience with what happens when you elect some of these people or some of these people take power, which is a lesson we learn.

seem to be forgetting where I'm from. If stoicism is just about getting stronger, faster, more productive, more self-contained, you know, it might be more popular, but it's also going to be hollow and somewhat empty. And I struggle. I don't think I always get it right. I think maybe early on, I was too focused just on what stoicism could do for me and you. And I

and not enough on what it asks of us and all of us.

And maybe sometimes I talk too much about those things. I don't know. I'm always trying to twist the dials and get it right. Yeah, I'm thinking about it. Certainly. I don't have a great answer. If I did, I'd spell it out, but I don't. So thanks. My question is about the mindset, courage mindset, winner mindset, warrior mindset. Okay. When things get challenging or tough, I noticed that my habit is more of a victim mindset. Like I'm not going to make it. It's too hard. Things like that. Okay.

So I'm now saying to myself, like, it's not as bad as you think it is. Keep on going. You're not the only one in the world who experience thoughts like this. Yeah. And my body also, you know, says a bit like it's too much. I get feelings like dizziness or something like that. Sure. So I realize now that I have to experience these things to get to act differently. Do you have some tips or advice for me?

One of the things I like about running is that you learn that your body's a liar, that you always have way more in the tank than you think you do, and that you have to push past that. That's what sort of both mental and physical toughness are about. And so when I'm

in the middle of a book project or my kids haven't slept or you know i've got some crazy big project or some big problem i can't see a way out of this is what i mean when i'm talking about trusting the process like you trust the process and not the feeling you feel in the moment because you've been through the process enough times that you know it's more reliable than these

feelings, that thing inside you that's screaming to stop or quit. Now look, sometimes that voice is right. You're about to, you know, pull a muscle or, you know, you desperately need to take an off day. There's a tension. You don't always, you know, blow past what your body's telling you, but you do develop the ability to sense, you know, what's really going on. And this is kind of what stoicism is about on another level, right? The Stoics talk about putting every impression to the test.

Sometimes you trust the impression, sometimes you don't. But it's, is this really true? Or am I just feeling it now in this moment? And you develop that in all senses. But the physical sort of, this is why I think having a physical practice is so important because you learn to sense that about yourself and you learn how much you can do if you push through that resistance or that part of you that wants to stop.

It's nice to hear you live. I normally hear you on my car, on the audiobooks. Oh, yeah. So I just have a very simple question, a practical advice to tap into stillness in a world of overload of information, doom scrolling, chaos coming. So I would like to hear a practical advice on this. Delete all the social media apps from your phone.

Number one, don't sleep with your phone in your room, right? So you're not, you're having a large block from it every day. Don't touch your phone for the first one hour that you're awake. Add a journaling practice, a physical practice like we're talking about that doesn't involve screens. Like people are like, oh yeah, I work out. And they're on a treadmill looking at a television screen, scrolling the worst news in the world, you know? Stillness is not this magical state of mind that you get...

By going like this, it to me, it is a discipline. It is a practice. It's something you have to build your day around. General James Mattis, who was the secretary of defense, four star general in the Marines. He carries Mark's realist, his meditations with him on 40 years of deployments. I think that he's carrying books with him on deployments is an interesting he's carving out time.

to read and think every day. When he was Secretary of Defense, he had an hour of reading time, reading slash lunch time, scheduled in the middle of the day. And the idea of carving out time and space for reflection, for quiet, for solitude, you know, for less voices, maybe even less of my voice, is, I think, essential. You just got to do it. And then the stillness comes from there.

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 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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