Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key sto...
courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.
“Nothing can get in the way of the mission.”
We have our job, we have our goal, we have whatever it is that we're trying to do, and then we have other people. We have circumstances, we have freak events and freak weather, and these things can get in the way they can disrupt that goal, mess up our plans, even eliminate our job.
But our mission, that can never be prevented, because our mission is dealing with obstacles.
Our mission is to be a good person, no matter what happens. Our mission is excellence, always. What this means, what Marx really is trying to say in meditations, is that when something gets in the way of the mission we've been given a gift, fate is offering us fuel. It's not hindering us, and the least because our mission is bigger than this than in front
of us. Our mission is, by definition, flexible and adaptable, and yet also unchanging. That mission might be raising your kids with character, might be serving your community with integrity, might be building something, company, and on-profit, a body of work to write way.
Maybe it's rebuilding after a setback, telling the truth when it's inconvenient, or simply refusing to let bitterness take root in your heart.
Rolls shift, titles change, but the mission never does.
Our mission is to show up, our mission is to be good, our mission is to be excellent. So while circumstances can change what that looks like, nothing and no one can actually get in the way of it.
“And if you want to go deeper into meditations, along with me and thousands of other”
stoics all over the world, well, this is the time, because it is meditations month here at Daily Stoke. April is a month marks, really, this was born, and in honor of that wonderful birthday, almost 20 centuries ago, we're going to be diving into meditations as a community, doing a kind of book club about it.
And if you want to grab that guy, we'll actually throw it in for free. You can join me in the live session. We're going to be doing about it in all of that if you grab a leather edition of meditations. And look, I'd love to see you in there. Grab the meditations month bundle.
I'll see you in there. Let's do a deep dive together into one of the greatest books of all time. If you're running a business, you know the deal with most CRMs. They are packed with a bunch of features.
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It's also kit and pet friendly. Get bugs out of your house with Pesty, just go to Pesty.com/doek for an extra 10% off or that's Pesty.com/doek for an extra 10% off. Test your impressions. This is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoke Journal, 366 days of writing and reflection
on the art of living, which I myself just worked on this morning. I do the journal every morning. One of Epictetus's key teachings was all about testing our impressions.
The experience perception or circumstance that was in front of us, and it use...
to emphasize this practice 10 times in discourses in once in the opening of the ingredient. And the word carries the meaning of the essayer, one who tests fine metals and coins to verify their authenticity. In one of the most memorable uses Epictetus compares our need to test impressions to what is done with coins and how the skilled merchant can hear a counterfeit coin cast upon a table
just as a musician would detect a sour note. So this week, go through the process of saying everything that comes before you, assuming it all to be counterfeit or misleading until we can prove otherwise.
“And you know, it's funny, I think I really first wrap my head around this idea of to”
assay or the word essay, because at Sarah Gord, you may have heard my interview with Brent Underwood, who's one of my long time, I guess he's formerly my intern and great guy who works at Brass Check is one of the partners and he's helped build Daily Stoke and some when I talked to him on the phone almost every day. And a few years ago, he bought this ghost town in the mountains of Southern California,
called Saragordo and he's been trying to turn it into this resort. But anyways, when I went out and visited, he showed me this building and it's called the assay office. So the miners would pull this silver out of the ground in the ore, whatever, and sometimes they know, I don't know exactly how it works, but they would take it to this office and
this is where like the guy with a brain, the dispassionate observer, the money man would test it and let them know just what they found, how rich it was, how valuable it was, what percentage it was this or that or this, this was like the filter through which all the rocks pulled out of this mining town were filtered through and just because you thought it was valuable, didn't matter unless the essay office came through and said,
boom, boom, boom, and stamped it and gave it, you know, another funny little thing is that the brothel was located immediately next door. So you'd find out you'd just become a rich man and then of course to go to your business.
“But the idea is, you have to put everything to the test and that's what Epictetus is saying.”
He says, when it comes to money where we feel our clear interest, we have an entire art where the tester uses many means to discover the worth, just as we give great attention to judging things that might steer us badly, but when it comes to our own rule and principle, we yon and doze off, accepting any appearances that flash by without counting the costs. That's from discourse as 120.
And then he says in 2.18, first off, don't let the force of an impression carry you away.
Say to it, hold it up a bit and let me see who you are and where you are from. Let me put you to the test. And then in Corridon, he says, from the very beginning, make it your practice to say to every heart's impression, you are an impression and not at all what you appear to be. Next, examine it and test it by the rules you possess.
The first and greatest of which is this, whether it belongs to the things in our control or not in our control, and if the latter prepare to respond, it is nothing to me. So look, if you went and got your rocks tested, it's a reward and they found out to be worthless stones. You wouldn't be like, but I want them to be what they are.
I'm going to continue to pretend, right? You wouldn't spend money that you just found out you don't actually have.
So this process of testing ones perceptions and one's facts is a really essential part of
the process. You can't just go through life pretending things are what they are or taking them at first glance because there are so many factors that play from cognitive biases to your upbringing to just misleading appearances.
“You have to put everything to the test, you have to see things as they actually are.”
And this process of assaying everything that's in front of you is a key still to exercise. And I hope you can build on this practice this week, slow down, take a minute, put it to the test. Feel your account of it, see if it's what everyone else wants you to see or, as Marks really says, see what is really there.
Hey, it's Ryan, thank you for listening to the Daily Stoke 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. Mark, please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.
