There Is Always Something Else Going On | You Can Do It

“One of the things you figure out quickly with kids, and as we’ve talked about a bunch over on our Daily Dad email and podcast, is that there is always a reason they’re behaving a certain way. Your kid is acting crazy because they’re tired. They’re having a meltdown because actually they’re starting to get sick. Bedtime isn’t happening because naptime got skipped. They’re biting because they’ve been ignored and they know this will get a reaction.”Ryan explains how most people are trying their best, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. The new Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. You can add the Cover to any mattress, and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. Go to eightsleep.com/dailystoic to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout.***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/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic See 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.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, then some analysis from me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works. There's always something else going on.

• 0:48Ryan Holiday?

  One of the things you quickly figure out with kids, as we have talked about a bunch of times over on our Daily Dad email and podcast, is that there is always a reason they're behaving a certain way. Your kid is acting crazy because they're tired. They're having a meltdown because they're actually starting to get sick. Bedtime isn't happening because naptime got skipped. They're biting because they've been ignored and they know this will get a reaction. And because they're your kids, you love them and feel for them about this. You don't get upset. You just patiently correct. You give them some food and the tantrum stops. You get back on the routine and the acting out fades away. It's the life of a parent. You don't look at the symptoms of the problem. You empathize and understand the roots. But what if we could treat our fellow humans this way?

• 1:33Ryan Holiday?

  What if we could try to think, as Marcus Aurelius did, about the secret pain that most people had? Or if we could try to remember, as he does in his famous opening passages about obnoxious people, why they are the way they are? Because they don't have the training, because they don't know what's good. Epictetus talked about always grabbing situations from the right handle. Well, which one is better? Getting upset about some flash of behavior or taking time to see what's causing that behavior? You give your kids the benefit of the doubt. You understand that one meltdown or one bad meal doesn't make them a monster. What would happen if you could apply that patience and love to your siblings, to your colleagues, to the people you see in the news? Most people are good. Most people are trying their best. So there's always a reason they're not living in accordance with nature.

• 2:18Ryan Holiday?

  When they're not being their best, there's almost always something going on, from mental health to lack of education, to the fact that it's been a tough day. Understand that. Empathize with it, try to help.

• 2:33Ryan Holiday?

  You can do it. This is the June 10th entry in the Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, written by yours truly and my wonderful friend and agent, Stephen Hanselman. You can get an audiobook of it on Amazon, digital version on Amazon. You can even get a leather bound edition of it in the Daily Stoic store. I hope you'll like it. We're going through one day a week. We read an entry from the book. I guess in several years I'll have made it all the way through the book, but for now, we're just doing one day a week. So here we go. If you find something very difficult to achieve yourself, don't imagine that it is impossible. For anything possible and proper for another person can

• 3:17Ryan Holiday?

  be achieved as easily by you. That's Marcus Aurelius's Meditations 619. There are two types of people in this world. The first looks at others who have accomplished things and thinks, why them? Why not me? The other looks at those people and thinks, if they can do it, why can't I? One is zero sum and jealous. If I win, if you win, I lose. The other is non-zero sum. There's plenty to go around. And it sees the success of others as inspiration. So which attitude will propel you onward and upward today? Which will drive you to bitterness and despair? Who will you choose to be?

• 3:58Ryan Holiday?

  What I like about this sort of distinction is the alternative, right? So we often look at what other people have done and we feel this sort of jealousy. We feel this envy. We feel this indictment. And that's a miserable way to live. There's a great line from Joseph Epstein. He says, envy is the only one of the seven deadly sins. It's no fun at all. And I think that's right. So when you look at other people and you see the world as zero sum, like, oh, they got a book deal. Why don't I get a book deal? Oh, this person made money doing this. Why didn't I get this? This person is happy. Why? Why do they get to be happy and not me? That implies that there's not enough to go around, but of course there is. I think the better way to do it is to see these things as inspiration. Like, look, when you look at things historically, right?

• 4:43Ryan Holiday?

  When you look at a statue of a great person, you don't go, why do they get a statue and not me? Although famously Caesar weeps at the statue of Alexander. No, you're, you're, you're, the statue is there to inspire you to say, look, look what humans are capable of. And I think what Marcus is saying and why I think this is such a great pick-me-up is that he's saying that if a person can do it, you can do it. And I've, I've found this to be one of my favorite pick-me-ups. And actually, I wanted to leave you today with a little pick-me-up I made. We, we set up a TikTok for Daily Stoic. We do TikTok video every day. Go to tiktok.com/daily_underscore-stoic.

• 5:27Ryan Holiday?

  And I riff here a little bit on this quote exactly from Marcus Aurelius, how we decide to see things as an inspiration. And it's just a pick-me-up I like to repeat to myself every single day. So here you go, more from Marcus Aurelius. And don't forget to follow us on TikTok.

• 5:48Ryan Holiday?

  Sometimes when I need a pick-me-up, I think of one that Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself in Meditations. He said, "Of course you can do it." He said, "If you concentrate like a Roman, if you do this like it's the last thing you're doing in your life." And I think about the most powerful man in the world struggling with something. We don't know what it was, but, but he's telling himself that, yes, it is possible. And another place in Meditations, he says, "Remind yourself that if it's humanly possible, know that you can do it also." And so I think that we all need these reminders, the idea of self-talk. Like, I'm going to talk myself into this. I'm going to remind myself what I'm capable of. I'm going to remind myself to concentrate now in this moment.

• 6:31Ryan Holiday?

  I'm going to remember what's humanly possible and that as a human being, of course, it's possible for me. And I'm, I'm going to do this as if it's the last thing I'm doing in my life. I'm going to do it as if it matters. To me, that's what Stoicism is about. And that's a reminder I gave myself today, and I hope you give it to yourself today also.