Can You Believe We Can Do This? | Only Fools Rush In

We’re doing better than it sometimes feels. Let us marvel at the cooperation that is possible—considering the flawed and petty humans it depends on. 📚 Books Mentioned: Zero to One by Peter Thiel https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/zero-to-one-notes-on-startups-or-how-to-build-the-future?_pos=1&_sid=7b492c308&_ss=r Lives of the Stoics https://store.dailystoic.com/products/lives-of-the-stoics-signed-edition by Ryan Holiday Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/business5?_pos=2&_sid=03217af8d&_ss=r The Daily Stoic https://store.dailystoic.com/products/the-daily-stoic-leatherbound-signed-edition by Ryan Holiday 🎥 Watch Dr. Laurie Santos' episode on The Daily Stoic YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8OARstQGfM 📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work":https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/?hl=en: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast 🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/ 📱 Follow us: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/,Twitter https://twitter.com/dailystoic,YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic,TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic?lang=en, andFacebook https://www.facebook.com/dailystoic See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  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 little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  Can you believe we get to do this? It is depressing how disconnected and unkind we are to each other, how dysfunctional our political system is, how broken our roads and institutions are, the problems we cannot seem to solve. We could do so much better, we just know it. And yet, the Stoics remind us that every situation has two handles, that there is more than one way to look at everything. When Dr. Laurie Santos was on the Daily Stoic Podcast, you should know who she is. Her happiness course at Yale is one of the most popular in the 300-year history of the school. It's a must-listen episode. She lamented the problems with today's society. And then, drawing on that exact exercise from Epictetus,

• 1:39Ryan Holiday?

  she noted that "human beings do manage to cooperate at a level that essentially no other species has ever managed." "Consider a group of other predators," she pointed out, "locked in a metal tube called an airplane for several hours. Think of the bloodbath." And of course, remember that they could not have invented airplanes or the incredibly complex international organizations that manage air travel. So yeah, yeah, we could do better. We could use more bipartisanship and neighborliness and cooperation, and it is our Stoic duty to model that behavior as individuals. But human society also deserves some credit. Modern society deserves some credit, too. For all the problems and failures of the pandemic, Marcus Aurelius' Rome did much worse

• 2:22Ryan Holiday?

  in every single way during the Antonine Plague. For all the failures of our modern politicians, the founding fathers steeped in classical virtue could not have even imagined the international allies and coordination we take for granted today, nor were they capable of eradicating slavery and other injustices that we have rightfully addressed. We are doing better than it feels sometimes. So let us marvel at the cooperation that is possible, considering the flawed and petty humans that depend on it. Let us be grateful for the problems we have solved. Let us embrace and build the connections and kindness that is there. And do listen to the episode with Laurie Santos. It's really good. Let me, let me just bring you a little chunk of it, and then I'll link to the rest of it in today's show notes.

• 3:05Ryan Holiday?

  Worth downloading and listening to for sure.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  It is amazing that we have one that we get to be in one of the few species that that all that happens is somebody says a nasty thing to the flight attendant.

• 3:15Ryan Holiday?

  By and large cooperate and cooperate with each other.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, so even in like the O'Hare terribleness, you can find, you know, these moments of awe. But as we were just saying, it's hard. And it's hard in part because our mind is built with this negativity bias. We instantly go to the terrible things. It takes no work whatsoever to find like how mad I am about O'Hare, the flight's delayed, right? But it takes some work to notice the neutral stuff or the good stuff. But this is what I think that the kind of training and the practice is about, right? Is that you you build up the ability to do that better and better.

• 3:55Ryan Holiday?

  Only fools rush in. This is today's entry in the Daily Stoic. A good person is invincible, Epictetus says in Discourses 3:6, for they don't rush into contests in which they aren't the strongest. If you want their property, take it. Take also their staff, profession, and body. But you will never compel what they set out for, nor trap them in what they should avoid. For the only contest the good person enters is that of their own reasoned choice. How can such a person not be invincible?

• 4:28Ryan Holiday?

  And then the entry is, "One of the most fundamental principles of martial arts is that strength should not go against strength. That is, don't try to beat your opponent where they are strongest. But for some reason, that's exactly what we try to do when we undertake some impossible task we haven't bothered to think through, or we let someone put us on the spot, or we say yes to whatever comes our way." Some people think that choosing your battles is weak or calculating, but how could reducing the amount of times we fail or minimize the needless injuries inflicted on us be weak? How is that a bad thing? As the saying goes, discretion is the better part of valor. Stoics call it reasoned choice. That means be reasonable. Think hard before choosing and make yourself unbeatable. A book I've recommended many, many times, I sell it here at the Painted Porch, is Zero

• 5:13Ryan Holiday?

  to One by Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel says, "The whole point of business in life is to find where you have a monopoly, where you're the only one doing that thing." There's another book that I rave about that we carry here in the store called Blue Ocean Strategy. There's another one called Blue Ocean Shift. I actually did the marketing for it. But the idea is, red oceans is where there's lots of competition. That means being like everyone else, wanting the things that everyone wants, focusing on what's out of your control like everyone else. It's a far better thing to focus on what is in your control, on being you and your unique self. And the Stoics actually have a lot about this, right? Agrippinus, we talk about in Lives of the Stoics, he says, "I want to be the red thread

• 5:55Ryan Holiday?

  in the sweater, not like the other threads. I want to stand up." And that's the idea. Epictetus says, "Walk alone, right? Look around you. Be who you are." To me, what he's saying is that when you try to be like someone else, you lose. When you want the things that other people want, you lose. When you enter something where you are trying to be like someone or something that you're not supposed to be, you lose. But when you are yourself, when you stand for what you stand for, when you do what you know is right... That's when you win, even if you quote unquote lose. There's an interview I was reading with the architect Frank Gehry.

• 6:38Ryan Holiday?

  And he would, he would say, when he was talking to architects who were just starting out, he'd get them to all get out a piece of paper. And he would say, write your signature on this paper. And then he'd spread them out and have the whole class looking up. And he'd say, they all look different. That's you. That's you. So stay with that forever. And I think that's what Epictetus is saying here. You are a unique person. You have a totally unique set of DNA and experiences and values. And you are that red thread. So don't make yourself like the others. Don't sell out. Right? When you are, when you stick to who you are, when you're true to that, you win no matter what.

• 7:21Ryan Holiday?

  You have a monopoly on you. Don't give that monopoly away. Don't forfeit it. Don't lose it. Another rendering of that Epictetus quote, he says, you can always win if you only enter competitions where winning is up to you. When your focus is, Mark Cirelli says, on what other people say or do, on getting approval, on having certain gatekeepers accept you or open things up to you. Well, that's when you have set yourself up to be defeated. And even if you win, you've still lost in some sense that you've given up something that was uniquely you and uniquely yours. I think that's a shame. And so that's what I want to leave you there. Stick with what's up to you. Stick with who you are. Go where you have that monopoly.

• 8:05Ryan Holiday?

  Competition is for losers, as Peter Thiel said. So go where you're a winner.

• 8:14Ryan Holiday?

  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.