Empower Yourself with This | Why You Need to Get In the Arena

courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

It's the most empowering thing. We all have those days when we'd rather just not. Days when we'd rather not deal with an annoying coworker or a petty family member, days when we'd rather not bother with all the work we have to do all the responsibilities we have to manage. Days where the awfulness and corruption of the world gets to us and we'd rather just knock it out a bit that day. And Marcus really is, and all the stoics, of course,

new days like this. Life was one thing after another for them, too. Think of Mark's really this is life. We have a plague. We have famine. We have backstabbing. We have wars. He does not meet with the good fortune he deserved, one ancient historian noted, as his whole reign was a series of troubles. It would have been easy for him to give up trying to retreat into luxury or pleasure. It would have been easy for him to allow the indelible stain of

power to ruin him as it had for so many emperors beforehand. Yet within the pages of meditations, we witness Marcus really is doing something very different. We see him fighting to be the person philosophy tried to make him. No role is so well suited to philosophy as the one you are in right now. He writes in meditations. He was saying that we don't just talk about philosophy. We have to apply it to our daily lives whatever profession and place we happen to occupy.

“And that's why if you're interested in stoic philosophy or philosophy in general,”

meditations by Mark's realist is the first thing to read according to Arthur Brooks. When he came on the day was stoic podcast, it's the most empowering thing I've ever read. He said,

especially since I read it when I was young. He said, it's always been incredibly important to me.

And the reason that he and thousands of other people say this is because in meditations, Marcus is showing us that it doesn't matter how rich or powerful or famous we are. Life will still include pain and suffering. Life will still throw obstacles that seem difficult to at us. What matters is how we respond to those things. We shouldn't assume that something is impossible because we find it hard Marcus writes and meditations. But recognize that if it's

humanly possible, you can do it too. And it's ideas like this that explain why meditations has been

“this sort of secret of leaders and ordinary people for almost 2,000 years.”

That people, whether they're military leaders or students or entrepreneurs or artists or stay at home parents or championship athletes, they've turned to meditations for guidance. And it's it's why for over a decade here at Daily Stoke for almost 20 years in my life, I've been trying to make this work accessible to people. And it's why we're doing meditations month here at Daily Stoke in honor of Marcus's birthday. We're doing this deep dive

into meditations. What it means, we put together this really cool sort of guide book club that we're all doing together. We're doing a Q&A about it. It's free for anyone who grabs the guide. Plus we've got the leather bound addition of meditations. Meditations month has been awesome. I'll link to that in today's show. It's or you can just go to dailystoke.com/meditations to get the bundles of all that stuff I was just talking about. We're just go to your local library

and grab a copy. I don't care. Just bring Marcus into your life. It's one of the most

“important and empowering decisions you will ever make.”

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WHATNOT.com/sell. Whatnot.com/sell? Hey, it's Ryan, welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoke Podcast. You know about my experiences and meditations? Well, at one point in my life, I didn't. And it was a faithful book recommendation that turned me onto the stove. And I still have my Amazon receipt from October something or other 2006 when I've got more experiences and meditations and also a biography, a theater Roosevelt, the rise of theater Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, one of my all-time favorite

biographies were carried at the paint porch. It's a lovely book and it started started my journey down two different rabbit holes. But turn out discovering much later in that rabbit hole that they connected at some point that the rabbit hole is intersected. And that's actually queues up what we're going to talk about in today's episode. Because today on this day, 116 years ago, theater Roosevelt delivered his famous citizen in a Republic speech in Paris.

Maybe you don't know that name, you know what my famous speech is at. This is what we in America refer to as the man in the arena speech. That's the passage that is most well known.

“Where he talks about how what matters isn't the critic on the sidelines, but the person who is”

willing to step into the arena and try. And I guess that metaphor is particularly apt here. I do still. Where we talk about the Coliseum, we talk about gladiators. Mark Sereleus was literally and figuratively in the arena. He was seen sometimes writing. He may well have written meditations. Well, the gladiators fought in the Coliseum below. His son Thomas takes the wrong lesson from this and desperately wants to fight in the arena. It doesn't understand it as more

of a metaphor. Of course, Mark Sereleus' works have a bunch of gladiatorial metaphors in them, one of my favorites. So we talk about every new year. The idea of being like the gladiator who's torn to pieces of the games begging to be held over to be spared and to fight again. Mark Sereleus was famous for for dragging what we're told by one engineer in his philosophy teacher Ruse to his away from his books in into the real world that it wasn't content to allow them to be a pen

and ink philosopher. Basically he was saying exactly what Ruseville was saying. He dragged them into

the arena, turned them into participants in public life, had them hold public office, had them hold administrative power and responsibility. And that's really what the arena speeches about. It's not just like, oh screw you to the critics, it's about saying go be involved, go do something, don't just talk about it, be about it. Okay, so what is today's episode? Where does Dito Ruseville and the stoics actually convert? Well, did you know that Dito Ruseville took

a copy of Epictetus with him on his famous river of doubt expedition? Another lovely book, a river of doubt by Candice Millard, where I rave about, I love that book. The copy had been lent to him by getting major shipped in. There's a handful of people who are big readers, whose books I would love to flip through. Patons books I'd love to see through. I'd love to see Mark's really this copy of Epictetus. I definitely love to see Dito Ruseville's copy of Epictetus.

You can actually see a copy of this book on the website of the Dito Ruseville Center where he's sort of noting that who gave in the book and that he took it with him.

“And I mean, I would love to hold this book in my hand and say, what did he underline?”

What stood out to him? Did I get damaged? Was it wet? What pages seem to be the most warm

I thought I would share a passage from the speech, which I read. I read it for something else,

“which you'll be able to hear my small contribution to at a later date. But here is me reading”

that famous speech. It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, whose drives valiantly, whose heirs who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without air and short coming. But who does actually strive to do

the deeds, who knows great enthusiasm, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst,

if he fails at least fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those

“cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. It is not the critic who counts,”

not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, whose drives valiantly, whose heirs who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without air and short coming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasm, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause,

who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails,

at least fails while daring greatly. So this place shall never be with those cold and timid souls,

who know neither victory nor defeat. Anyways, as I wrapped this up, I deeply admire Roosevelt. It was not a perfect figure. He was a problematic figure in some ways. You get that when you read these big biographies. You see them fully for who they are. But I wrote about him a bunch, actually I wrote about him obstacles away, and then I wrote about him in discipline, it's destiny. But as I wrap up, I want to tell that story, which I first read in Edmund Morris's book

on Theodore Roosevelt. So here is a little riff on the idea of discipline as being the promises you make yourself. It's a famous story. It appears in all the great biographies of Theodore Roosevelt, two of my favorites are the rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris and mornings on horseback by David McCullough. It appears in discipline as destiny and the obstacle is the

way. A young, asmatic, Teddy, smart, but frail is approached by his father, who tells him that although the boy has brains, he hasn't got the body. He hasn't got the strength to make good on his intellectual gifts. All make my body Roosevelt said in response, and proceeded to lift weights, hike mountains, ride horses, wrestle, box, swim, laps, and even learn judo. But there's another perspective on this story that we often glide over for it was Teddy's sister, Carine, who witnessed the exchange

between father and son. What struck her about it years later, she said was, was that this was

her brother's first important promise to himself. Watching him work out in the gym and on the

porch of their brownstone, she was watching him fulfill that promise. Keeping it to himself.

“And that's what the virtue of discipline is about. Self-discipline is about the promises you keep”

with yourself, and not just the physical ones. It's about doing what you say and not doing what you say you won't. The decision to wake up early, the decision not to reach for the ball, but decision to show up on time. The decision to push yourself a little further, even though your body aches, the decision not to procrastinate, the decision to do your best. We all make promises to ourselves, set goals, set standards, and make plans. We don't all keep them.

I hope you enjoyed this little data Roosevelt themed episode. And again, what the stalades want us to do is step into the arena again, literally and figuratively be involved. And so I recommend both the rise of data Roosevelt mornings on horseback by David McCollot is lovely. I love the bully pulpit by Doris Crens. Goodwin. And then of course, the river of doubt by Candice Miller, all of those you'd grab at the painted porch. Let's go.