This is the Mindset For Life | Show, Don’t Tell

“You clean and then it gets dirty. You do the dishes and then five minutes later, the sink is full again. You made it through your inbox in the morning and by the time late afternoon strikes, you’re already digging yourself out again.”Ryan explains the nature of continual change, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. This episode is also brought to you by Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is a custom formulation of 75 vitamins, minerals, and other whole-food sourced ingredients that make it easier for you to maintain nutrition in just a single scoop. It tastes great and gets you the nutrients you need, whether you're working on the go, fueling an active lifestyle, or just maintaining your good health. Visit athleticgreens.com/stoic to get a FREE year supply of Liquid Vitamin D + 5 FREE Travel Packs with subscription. ***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 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.

• 0:33Ryan Holiday?

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• 1:17Ryan Holiday?

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• 1:38Ryan Holiday?

  This is the mindset for life. You clean, and then it gets dirty. You do the dishes, and then five minutes later, the sink is full again. You've made it through your inbox in the morning, and by the time late afternoon strikes, you're already digging yourself out again. Literally, before you've even finished putting the dog's toys away, they've splayed them out across the floor. Just as you put the finishing touches on that big project, another is dropped on your lap. You finally organize your kid's clothes, and now they've grown out of all of them. This can drive you nuts, or you can learn to love it. In Tibet, Buddhist monks make beautiful mandalas out of sand. They spent hours, even days crafting these complex geometric designs,

• 2:22Ryan Holiday?

  only to wipe them clean and start over as soon as they're finished. And isn't that a way that we might see all the work we do? Might that be a way to go through life? It's not about cleaning the house, or finishing this, or that. It's about the mandala, an unending ephemeral process that we begin again, and again, and again. In fact, that's what Marcus Aurelius said, again, and again, and again. "The universe is nothing but change. Everything is constantly in flux. Nothing lasts. Some things are rushing into existence, others out of it," he reminded himself. "Some of what now exists is already gone. Change and flux constantly remake the world, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity."

• 3:05Ryan Holiday?

  The dishes, the desk, the dog's toys, your inbox, the weight you lose and gain and lose. These things are never done, or cleaned, or organized, or set. No, entropy is always at work. You are at work. Your growth is at work. So we should not feel exasperated or frustrated by it. We should love the flow of it. It's not work we're doing. It's art. Finish. To be finished would mean the end of this, the end of our lives. No, we like that it's a little bit like Groundhog's Day. Because it means a chance to wake up and live again, to do it beautifully, to do it well.

• 3:43Ryan Holiday?

  Show, don't tell. This is this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal. "366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living." "The art of living isn't a set of teachings or a formula we can memorize. It's a practice that requires constant work." Epictetus was constantly reminding his students not to parrot back what they learned in the lecture hall or read in books, but to put that work into practice. He knew that progress you could see was better than any proclaimed. "Let your journaling and thinking this week exhibit what you have done and what you are doing, not what you plan to do or think you are. Let it be a catalog of your actions, good actions."

• 4:27Ryan Holiday?

  As Epictetus says, "Those who receive the bare theories immediately want to spew them, as an upset stomach does with its food. First, digest your theories and you won't throw up." Otherwise, they will be raw, spoiled, and not nourishing. After you've digested them, show us the changes in your reasoned choices, like the shoulders of gymnasts who display their diet and training, and the craft of artisans show what they have learned. That's Epictetus's Discourses 321. First, practice not letting people know who you are. Keep your philosophy to yourself for a bit. In just the manner that fruit is produced, the seed is buried for a season, hidden, growing gradually, so it may come to full maturity.

• 5:11Ryan Holiday?

  But if the grain sprouts before the stalk is fully developed, it will never ripen. That is the kind of plant you are, displaying fruit too soon, and the winter will kill you. You know, this is a theme the Stoics talk about quite a bit, the idea of conceit being the impediment to improvement, that ego is the enemy. And, you know, when I look back, you know, I was first introduced to the Stoics now like 15 or so years ago. I look back at some of my early writings, and I'm doing exactly what Epictetus is talking about. I'm just regurgitating things that I'd heard. I mean, that exercise itself was educational, but I didn't even begin to comprehend what I was talking about. It took time, it took experience.

• 5:55Ryan Holiday?

  As Plutarch says, it's not that words that give us the meaning of experiences, but experiences that give us meaning of the words. And so I wish I'd taken a bit more time. Now, this is obviously what some of these social media and blogging platforms do. It's a way of thinking out loud. But I actually wish I'd taken more sort of quiet, reflective time to myself. And I think we do this whenever we discover something. We get some product we like, or join a movement or a cause we like, and suddenly we become this evangelist for it. And I think part of that is out of insecurity, right? We want other people to like it. We don't, we're not quite sure what we think of it ourselves. So by bringing other people on, we feel less insecure. We go, see, I'm not crazy.

• 6:38Ryan Holiday?

  Other people like it too. But let's just slow down a little bit. If you're listening to this podcast for the first time, if you're new to Stoicism, let it stew a little bit. Think about it a little bit. Look at it critically. Find out what's wrong. Go read more about it, right? Find people who love Stoicism, people who hate Stoicism, consume it in different mediums. But, but just explore it. You don't have to convert. You don't have to identify yet. You know, just, just keep thinking. Let it, let it remain underground. Let it germinate. Let it, let it, let it solidify there. And then when it comes out, it'll, it'll be in a, in better shape and in better form. And so as you work on your practice, you know, you don't have to put on airs.

• 7:22Ryan Holiday?

  Epictetus talks about this. Don't put on airs about your self-improvement. He says, be humble about it. You know, I, I definitely wish there was things that I hadn't said, that I thought about longer, uh, that, that I took time to think about privately more. And, and that's probably most of my regrets on any social media platform is I, I jumped, I leapt out with my opinion instead of sitting on it, stewing on it, thinking, letting it germinate. And, and I think that process is just really valuable. So slow down. That's the advice of this week's meditation. Slow down, think, really mull it over. Turn it over in your mind and, uh, the, the plant will be stronger for it. You will be stronger for it. Your wisdom will be better for it. That's what we're working on.

• 8:05Ryan Holiday?

  Anyways, stay at it. Keep listening. I'll talk to you again next week.

• 8:11Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could leave a review for the podcast, we'd really appreciate it. The, the reviews make a difference. And of course, every nice review from a nice person helps balance out. The crazy people who get triggered and angry anytime we say something they disagree with. So if you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.