This is the Main Thing | Ask Daily Stoic

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

This is the main thing. There's nothing wrong with success, there's nothing wrong with power, there's nothing wrong with living a nice life with achievement or admiration. Certainly many stoics did precisely that. Sanica, Cato, Arcus Realists, they were important and well-known. They were admired, they were influential. But you know what? They would have shrugged all that off. They appreciated the success, but it wasn't something they coveted. It may have impressed

others, but it wasn't how they defined themselves. The main thing Walter Wade says in Walker Percy's stoicism inspired novel The Movie Doer, the main thing banks is to be humble, to make golden fleece and be humble about it. It might have meant a lot to others,

“you would say, but it didn't mean anything to him. That's how we might assume that Marcus”

really is felt about a lot of what was thrown at him. In fact, one of the lines in Meditations suggests as much, where he says that he measures himself not by how many honours he's received, but how many he's turned down. He didn't make golden fleece, but he did remind himself that the purple cloak of the Emperor was nothing more than an ordinary one died by shellfish blood. Clearly, he still tried to do things. Clearly, he was still active in the world.

He just measured himself by his humility, by his indifference, more than he did by his achievement or status. And so must we. We can still try to climb the ladder of success.

We can be powerful. We can live a nice life. The main thing, though, is to do this and be humble,

even so. Humble even if you have achieved an impressive amount, even if you have done many impressive things.

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town lake, took a shower, went to the airport, flew to Las Vegas, drove about 45 minutes outside Las Vegas, gave a talk at Hotel at 7 o'clock, finished at 8, went straight to the hotel room,

They told me it would be like 4 hours, it was like 5 hours and there's also a time change in there. So I got in it like 2 in the morning, I crashed and then I had to get up at 7 a.m. I gave a talk to the Chicago Cubs, then a talk to the Arizona Diamondbacks, then I had a talk to you guys to Daily Stoke fans at a theater in Phoenix. Actually, my parents came and then we had dinner after I crashed, woke up at like 5 a.m. flew home in time to take my kids to see a

“Harry Potter live orchestra thing. That was more than 36 hours I think. I don't know, I can't keep”

crap. I couldn't keep track of it. It was crazy, but it was lovely. I got to do basically four

talks and 24 hours, got to see a bunch of you, and it was also prep for a busy summer and fall that I have coming up. I'm going to be in Portland and San Francisco and June, Minneapolis, Chicago and Detroit in August. And then in October, I'm going to be all over Australia and New Zealand. You can come see me dailystokelive.com. But in today's episode, I wanted to bring you some of the Q&A that the people in Phoenix asked me. I think you'll like that. And hopefully it's a nice little

preview of a conversation. We might be able to have there in Australia or California or Oregon or Illinois or Minnesota or Michigan. Wherever you want to come see me, I will see you there soon. All right, let's get into it. Through something, too. So that sounds like a first or question. Some sorry.

What we can say they would not do is shrug it off or say that it's nothing, or you would never

feel it. That's, again, the stereotype of this joke. So you know this because, and if it all just pointing to this, it's better than it is, or I would be here. Center for rates three incredibly moving essays on our group. They're actually called his consolation series. One of them is consolation to his mother after he's been exiled and she's devastated. It is right, I'm to move reassure her, but you can tell it's really trying to reassure himself. He writes to the daughter of a friend of

his who is grieving her father, she's devastated by grief. And then I don't forget who the other one is, it's poor, but, but, second up, there's still a class where the class was supposed to not be affected by things or ravaged by emotions or whatever. Three of his best writings are only about dealing with this fundamentally devastating and overwhelming thing. He's saying, you know, you don't shrug it off. There are ways to think about it, there's ways to process it,

there's ways to do it, but it's also a part of life. It's one thing we all have in common because we all have that other thing in common, which is that we're warning. They're right. Yeah, so I've seen your crazy stack of Lincoln books and just trying to figure out, are there any helpful hints for how to read more on a reading? Lots. Yeah, you speed read, how do you do it all? Okay, so

“it's important that it weren't realized that speed rating is a scam. There's almost nobody who reads a lot”

of, you know, who read a lot of, spend a lot of time reading. And they spend a lot of time reading 'cause reading is far and to do about it, spend time on it, but also people who like reading, like spending time reading. And so why would I try to read as fast as possible, name another question, and then try to get over as quickly as possible. So I spend a lot of time reading. I think about it as my job, right? It is. My job is

a little sore and I write notes, but I spend a lot of time reading because it makes my life better, and it's one of the highest ROI activities that I have. And by our liking, professional and personal, makes me better as a human being, makes me better at my job. It also is enjoyable and lovely and it makes me happy. So I spend a lot of time doing it. Should you spend as many hours as I spend reading books about, maybe it's probably not, I maybe want to do it and say the

“trouble. But that's what I love doing. Nothing between more excited than finding out there's like”

a thousand big, you look about something. I'm really interested in it, written by someone who

who's an amazing writer. So that's what I love doing. But yeah, you spend a lot of time doing it.

that is the only way that it sounds to read facts. Like, do you want to read faster? No, a lot about this topic you're reading about. That is one way to read faster because you, you're not like, wait, what is that? And that's not going to look things up, they're hopping to you. You understand where this is going? You can speed up a little bit, but up other, I do really know the way to read faster other than by doing the work of having ran a lot of

help this subject in. And it's good work and it's worth it. So if you missed it earlier with the question about how to actually get this, then you want to start small. Something that really helped me was to just think about the next five seconds and think, okay, in five seconds, well that we're really happy about it if I did it right now. All the houses that get up, take a deep breath, fix your posture, something like that. And that's sort of the shame of the next things to do.

Yeah, I'm going to times it into how, like you said, like there's always more before you count them,

but in the face of like uncertainty about uncertainty, where you're not really sure how to do

“the counting, what kinds of things would still exist in what how to get started doing that?”

When it's not even clear how to plan, and the tools that you have to plan are really, there's no just what could be a precedent from what to do. So you're saying, why don't you do when you don't know what to do? Is that what your question is? How do you try to make a plan? Yeah, to do, we don't know what to do, when we don't know how to make that plan in the first place. I have a magic trick for you. Take a lot of walks. Maybe the single best thing would possibly

do to think better, to think more clearly, to get that sort of philosophical view and act perspective. I try to take to walk every single day. We, now let's talk on the side part of it, dump it, and make sure it's assured that it would do to walk, and maybe that's not enough of that alive. But like, I think the dog will walk, or really the dog is taking D for a walk, and really the dog is allowing you to do my thinking, right, to get that perspective. To review the day, or to prepare for the day.

“I think human beings were designed with it's a big, all the movement, right?”

Um, where the whole just evidence is that we had, which would be a bonus tournament, our foot steps in, when it say that it's national part of somebody traveling in this area, their young trials, probably a woman, your kid, and that, that off there on their, their path is crisscrossed by, like, giant swath tracks, and all these pieces of the dirty, just anymore. Like, that's what we were involved to do to travel on distances, and I think that's, there's something I want to kind of

jogging on. So, to me, my own philosophical and negative frackess is in several more of my, my walking practice, and when I'm jammed up, writing, or frustrating, or pissed off, I take a water and usually usually makes whatever that next small thing, a little bit clearer. I, uh, and said, there's a well-known method in my house that no one's allowed to talk to me after I

get back from a minor walk, though, first customers, they're stuck, I got right there. I don't know,

who's it? Don't say it or it. Yeah, I'm just saying, this is my introduction to stoicism, so I want to thank you, yeah, I want to help you. Yeah, I enjoyed it very much, thank you. Well, I picked up from there's a lot of information, but I picked up, and the biggest lesson, and what I learned is focus on what kid control and act on it, in fact, me and from wronging that. Yeah, but, um, the first week, I kind of thought of when I was thinking about it,

is, um, where is the line drawn, what you can, and when you can, you're really controlled, because we started over thinking, which I definitely was, and I see the line see the little letters. Yeah, I was just wondering about it. I wish there was a hearing coming to line between what was in Arkansas, what is it? I mean, there's some stuff that's, obviously not in our control, but by the word, or, uh, you know, with verbal grammar, how tall you are, it's like that.

But, there is a film round that, that story writers have talked about, you know, a very long time. There's that middle gray area of stuff we have, some influence over. And if you're super literal about what's in your control and what's not in your control, you can certainly neglect things, and, uh, there's a probability of doing it. If you do act fine, then you could have this impact. So, there is something, some gray area there.

I wish there was a, you know, a clear bucket of this, this side, and this side, it's,

“it's more complicated now, but I think, unfortunately, in formulas, we have to sort of”

stimulate, but there's a bunch of stuff that's outside our control and we spend a lot of time in the energy of set about those days, trying to change those days, blaming people for those days, wishing us things or otherwise, and that's all, courage that could be spent on the other stuff. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to The Daily Steel 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

word. Tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you. [Music]