Don't Lose Your Connection to the Outdoor/Build Up, Don't Tear Down

This week we launch a new feature—every Monday, Ryan sets an intention for the week based on his book The Daily Stoic Journal. In addition to the weekly intention, Ryan also reads today's email, which exhorts you to take the time to go outdoors and connect with nature. This episode is brought to you by Warby Parker, the online vision care boutique that delivers glasses right to your front door. Warby Parker has an amazing selection of the most stylish frames for your glasses. And with their free Home Try-On program, you can try out five of your favorite frames for five days before you make a purchase, with no obligation. Whether you’re looking for stylish sunglasses or blue-blocker glasses for your computer, Warby Parker is the place to shop for your next pair of glasses. Try five pairs of glasses for free by visiting warbyparker.com/stoic.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:32Ryan Holiday?

  Don't lose your connection to the outdoors. Many of the most beautiful passages in Seneca's writing come from the time he spent outside, outside Rome, in the country, outdoors. Whether he's talking about his estate in the countryside, the power of taking long walks, or perfectly capturing the joy of a child building sandcastles at the beach, we can feel the joy coming through the past and onto the page. Epicurus, for his part, talked about cherishing country life, an idea to which Seneca clearly nodded his head. Cato the Elder wrote only one thing: on agriculture. Depending on how busy or overwhelmed your life is these days, reading the descriptions in Seneca or Cicero, who famously said that all a man needed for a happy life

• 1:16Ryan Holiday?

  was a library and a garden. This evocative imagery about nature can strike a strange feeling in us today. There's a great line in one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's stories where he writes that a character had a little flicker of envy that city people feel towards the men who live in the open. Isn't that exactly right? We hear about someone who lives a few miles from town, who has a nice porch they can sit on, who has space to move and stretch, and we feel jealous because we know it's a more natural way to live than these cramped, dirty, noisy quarters that most of us live and work in. Well, no one says it has to be that way. A philosopher, for all their love of books, knows that there is something special about the outdoors. That's why Marcus Aurelius hunted. It's why Seneca took his walks.

• 2:00Ryan Holiday?

  It's why Epictetus never returned to Rome after his banishment. It's why Rutilius Rufus didn't either. We must cherish this connection to country living, even if We live in the city, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it's the most responsible thing to sequester ourselves from other people to prevent the spread of the virus. It's still important, perhaps even more so, to continue to spend time in nature, both because of the safety of the outdoors and to retain some of the freedom of which we have been robbed. We must remain in constant dialogue with nature, taking regular forest baths, observing wildlife, visiting natural wonders, playing sports outside. This restores our happiness. It gives us joy.

• 2:43Ryan Holiday?

  It humbles us and it makes life worth living.

• 2:49Ryan Holiday?

  Build up, don't tear down. Is there a worse environment to work in than one where bullying and one upsmanship is the norm? Sometimes leaders seem to think that that is a part of the job description, that they are there to regulate and keep people in line. In truth, tearing people down is incredibly counterproductive. Pete Carroll, coach of the Seattle Seahawks, poses a question. If self-confidence is so important for players, why would a coach ever do anything to damage it? Marcus Aurelius, who had the power to take anyone down at will, almost never did. Instead, he reminded himself that it was better to build up, be community-minded, modest, prepared, and tolerant of others.

• 3:33Ryan Holiday?

  "We are made for cooperation," he said, "and to render works held in common." Let's think about that going forward this week. How can we help build the self-confidence of others? How can we help find some of our own in doing so? And that's what Marcus Aurelius is talking about when he says, "So someone's good at taking down an opponent, but that doesn't make them more community-minded or modest or well-prepared for any circumstance or more tolerant of the faults of others." That's from Meditations 752. And then he also says, "Wherever you have trouble getting up in the morning, remind yourself that you've been made by nature for the purpose of working with others, and it's our own natural purpose that is more fitting, more satisfying."

• 4:18Ryan Holiday?

  That's Meditations 812. I've been thinking about this expression lately. I think I'm going to write about it in the next book. But I was saying that what a great leader does is make people bigger. John Wooden was saying, I don't care how tall you are. I care how tall you play. And I was thinking about that recently. It's like, how tall do you make the people you work with? How tall do you make the people around you? I think what's so incredible about Marcus Aurelius is how great he's made people through his writings, how the historians tell us that he got the most out of flawed, even problematic subordinates. Also, think about Junius Rusticus, Marcus Aurelius's mentor. Think about how great Junius was able to make Marcus.

• 5:02Ryan Holiday?

  And think about how Epictetus made Rusticus better, who in turn made Marcus better. So this idea of our impact on other people, that it's not about us, but it's about what we make other people capable of. That's something I find myself asking the people that work for me pretty regularly is like, what can I do for you? How can I help you? That's my job as the leader. It's not to tell them what to do, but it's to help them do what they are supposed to be doing, to help them get better at it. So I think for this week, let's spend some time thinking about not just how we're contributing to the common good generally, like, are we being a good person? Are we letting someone go in traffic? Are we donating money to charity here or there if we can? Or just generally being courteous and kind?

• 5:45Ryan Holiday?

  But how are we making the people immediately around us, our colleagues, our coworkers, our subordinates, even our bosses? How are we making those people better? And I think, obviously, in Ego is the Enemy, I talk about the idea of the canvas strategy, the idea of finding canvases for other people to paint on, finding opportunities for them, helping them. The idea of give and take is really important. So our Stoic intention for the week is to focus on how we can help others, what we can do for others, and how we can build up as opposed to just tear down, which unfortunately is all too common today. So I'll leave you there and get after it.

• 6:29Ryan Holiday?

  If you like the podcast that we do here, and you want to get it via email every morning, you can sign up at dailystoic.com/email.