Can You Fight To See Their Side? | Ask DS

One gets the sense that Seneca, like many smart and active people, was often frustrated by other people. It is inevitable that someone like him—someone creating art, actively participating in government, managing properties, etc—would have regularly found his interest and his will thwarted. Perhaps a neighbor opposed some changes he was making to his land. Or an intriguing enemy at the palace sought to undermine him with the emperor. Maybe his brother jostled for an inheritance. Maybe he bumped into a rude person in the street. These are timeless and common occurrences. And, quite naturally, they are prone to make us angry—especially if we impute the least charitable motivations on the other party.---And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan answers questions about Stoicism at Andrews Air Force Base, The topics he covers include how Stoicism can be applied to a wide variety of professions, using Stoicism to embrace your emotions, and the Stoic view on work/life balance.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. While on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording. Thank you for listening, and we hope this is of use to you.

• 0:45Ryan Holiday?

  One gets the sense that Seneca, like many smart and active people, was often frustrated by other people. It is inevitable that someone like him, someone creating art, actively participating in government, managing properties, etc., would have regularly found his interests and his will thwarted. Perhaps a neighbor opposed some change he was making to his land, or an intriguing enemy at the palace sought to undermine him with the emperor. Maybe his brother jostled for an inheritance. Maybe he bumped into a rude person in the street. These are timeless and common occurrences, and quite naturally, they are prone to make us angry, especially if we impute the least charitable motivations on the other party.

• 1:29Ryan Holiday?

  My neighbor is trying to screw me over. So-and-so wants my job. My brother is up to his old tricks. This guy is a selfish jerk. When we think this way, we get angry. It's hard not to, which is why Seneca, from experience, said that we have to try to resist. Instead, we should try to go through life like a lawyer, or rather, a public defender. "We must," he said, "plead the case of the absent defendant despite our own interests." That is, really take the time to think about what is motivating other people. Take the time to act as if we were trying to help them escape punishment from the judge and jury that is the emotional and vindictive part of our mind.

• 2:14Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, he really just wants what's best for everyone. My brother doesn't know any better. This guy didn't mean to bump into me. He's just having a hard day. Don't just fight to see the worst. Fight to see their side. When we do this, when we give people the benefit of the doubt, the presumption of innocence instead of the presumption of guilt and ill motives, everything relaxes. We can forgive, can find common ground. We can focus on what is actually important. Our own behavior.

• 2:53Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's great to be here. Thank you all. If you want to stand, just show people who's best.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  Either choice or nothing.

• 2:59Ryan Holiday?

  I'll stand. All right. How do we want to start this?

• 3:03Speaker 02

  I'll go ahead and get kicked off. In your opinion, how does Stoicism differ from profession to profession? For instance, sports versus the military?

• 3:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I think the core Stoicism, Epictetus, the great Stoic, he says, you know, the chief task in life is a separate thing from the two categories, what's in our control and what's outside of our control. So I think whatever profession we're talking about, what those externals are, what's in our control is going to differ from one to the other. But the fundamental task of saying, hey, I don't control what happens. I control how we respond to what happens. This is the task. This is the job. So I think when I'm talking to sports teams or military or insurance salesmen, you know, the domains are going to differ very widely. But at the end of the day, I think, you know, sort of performance is performance.

• 3:57Ryan Holiday?

  Maximizing one's potential is maximizing one's potential. Focusing on what one controls is the chief task. So I see Stoicism. I think part of the reason it works so well is that it's not dependent on what you do exactly, but how you adapt the principles or the ideas to what you do. Thank you. Yeah.

• 4:23Speaker 03

  Uh, I have a question, Ryan.

• 4:24Ryan Holiday?

  Alright.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  I think when you were talking about, um, you know, how we stoicism being how we control how we respond. Um, and I think we live in a society now where people very much embrace, um, kind of feeling your emotions and embracing your emotions. So how do we align stoicism with, um, I guess embracing those emotions, um, which we have instead of how to tamper them down?

• 4:44Ryan Holiday?

  No, it's a tension and I think, uh, unfortunately when we hear the word stoic, we tend to think of the lowercase word stoic, which means sort of has no emotion, invulnerable, robotic, etc. One of the great tragedies of both the word stoic and the word Capocurian in, in the English language is that it's a total perversion of what the actual philosophies would, which would be about. So we make a distinction between lowercase stoicism, which is maybe even the character that all of you deal with is sort of lowercase stoic. I stuff it all down, I suppress the emotions, um, don't feel things, I just endure. Uh, we, we contrast that with the uppercase stoicism, which is the actual philosophy, which is based

• 5:28Ryan Holiday?

  around the four virtues of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. It's a robust, uh, way of living and, and when we think about who the actual stoics were, these are people that got married, these are people that decorated their jobs, these are people that raised children, these are people that wrote great works of literature and art. So they weren't, you know, just sort of nothing matters, I don't care, I sort of take things as they come. That's not what the actual stoics were in practice. And so I, I do think it's important that we, one, push back on the stereotype and then, two, that we make another distinction, or one I try to make, which is having the emotion and then acting in the sway of that emotion.

• 6:12Ryan Holiday?

  So being angered or outraged by something, um, is different than, you know, sending the angry email, right? Or acting or reacting emotionally in the moment, not fully thinking through the consequences of what one's doing or how one is going to feel about this later. So I think if we're gonna make a distinction between feeling the emotion and then acting, uh, out in that emotion.

• 6:39Ryan Holiday?

  We, I think we're getting closer to what maybe the sort of modern conception of what Stoicism should be. And I tend to think of it as, um, how do I process those emotions? So I'm feeling X, why am I feeling X? What is the best or the healthiest or the most appropriate, uh, the most effective, um, way to deal with that emotion? And it's usually not, you know, vomiting it all over the person next to you or sort of flying off the handle. And so I don't think the Stoics, um, you know, were emotionless, but they did try to be driven less by emotion. And that distinction is a really important one.

• 7:22Ryan Holiday?

  Um, and the problem actually with never feeling stuff and stuffing it down is that I find it eventually does come out, it comes due, but you know, there's interest attached or it's even less control than it, than it, than it should have been. And so I don't think Stoicism as being, you know, emotionless, but I do try to think about it as, as being less driven by emotion. Certainly less destructive emotions, right? Or, or, um, you know, the, the, the Stoics refer to these as the passions and being in the sway of the passions is usually never the place where, you know, afterwards where like, I'm so glad I did that.

• 8:05Ryan Holiday?

  Hello?

• 8:09Speaker 04

  Hello. Um, so one of the biggest challenges in the military is the work-life balance. We hear this talked about a lot, so I was wondering if you could just kind of speak to the Stoic viewpoint of that.

• 8:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a timeless issue, but there's actually a line in meditation. So Marcus Aurelius, the most powerful man in the world, 2,000 years ago was writing these notes to himself. He goes, you know, "Stop being bounced around." And he says, "Stop being all about business." Right? And so it, it, I think we can go in two directions. We can be all about business or we can have no space for business because our personal lives are a mess or a muck. Um, I do like the idea of balance. I like the idea of tension. Um, I think people tend to have...

• 8:57Ryan Holiday?

  Professional goals, I want to get to this rank, I want to make this amount of money, I want to have this kind of life. I think we're less likely, unfortunately, or less prone to creating goals for our personal life. So, one of the other interesting parts in meditation is, as Marcus says, you know, you're trying to be a better wrestler, but not a better friend. He says, "Not a better forgiver of faults, not a better friend in tight places." And so I think the idea of like, well, what are you working on? Are you working only on your professional development? Or are you also working on your personal development? And I tend to find that when we're working on both, they help each other.

• 9:38Ryan Holiday?

  And I probably argue that personal development helps you professionally more than professional development transfers over personally. So I kind of think about my goals, or who I want to be, or how I want my life to look as kind of a couple of things that are in tension with each other. But understanding that if I go too far in one direction, it comes at the expense of another one, which ultimately, you know, harms me in all capacities. So, you know, if my personal life is ordered, and peaceful, and productive, and happy, like when I sit down to write in the morning, I'm coming at that from a better place.

• 10:20Ryan Holiday?

  But also, if I'm procrastinating, putting off, you know, not being my best self professionally, I bring those feelings of inadequacy, or frustration, or guilt, I bring those home. And so I kind of, I think about it that way as a tension. And I kind of, as opposed to having just some really clear professional goals, I have a sense of like, what I want my life to look like day to day. And I try to keep that in balance with each other, if that makes sense.