Now That You Know, Do Better | Wants Make You A Servant

We look back on things we clearly messed up. We were too preoccupied. We were too harsh. We were wrong. We didn’t know. And because we messed up, we feel guilty. We regret what could have been. We’re mad at ourselves. We wallow in pity or shame. Dr. Edith Eger, the Holocaust survivor, cut through all this with her graceful bluntness on the Daily Stoic podcast recently (she’s been on twice, both episodes are must listens). “I’ll give you a sentence,” she said. “If I knew then, what I know now, I would have done things differently.”---And in today's excerpt from the Daily Stoic, Ryan explores why "the highest power is no power if you desire nothing." ✉️ 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.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from The Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  "Now that you know, do better." We look back on things that we clearly messed up. We were too preoccupied. We were too harsh. We were wrong. We didn't know. And because we messed up, we feel guilty. We regret what could have been. We're mad at ourselves. We wallow in pity or shame. Dr. Edith Eger, the Holocaust survivor, cut through all of this with her graceful bluntness on the Daily Stoic Podcast recently. She's been on twice. Both episodes are must-listens. As she said,

• 1:12Speaker 01

  "If I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently."

• 1:18Speaker 00

  "That is the end of that," she said. "And so it must be for us. Give yourself the gift of the present moment," Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations. "Seize this second chance. Don't waste it on guilt, because, as Dr. Eger said, guilt is about the past. And the past is the one thing we cannot change. All we can do is do better now. We can take the feeling we have now, be it shame, or regret, or the heavy price of consequences, and use it as evidence as to why we must make the right choice today. All we can do is do things differently going forward."

• 2:03Speaker 00

  Wants make you a servant. This is the April 28 entry in The Daily Stoic. "The Highest Power." This is a quote from one of Seneca's most brutal and fascinating plays, Theestes, which is worth reading and I've talked about in a couple of different entries of the podcast, one with, one of my favorites, of course, with James Rom. But here's the quote again. "The highest power is no power. If you desire, nothing." In the modern world, our interactions with tyranny are a bit more voluntary than they were in ancient times. We put up with our controlling boss, even though we could probably get a different job if we wanted one.

• 2:48Speaker 00

  We change how we dress or refrain from saying what we actually think because we want to fit in with some cool group. We put up with a cruel critic or customers because we want their approval or their business. And in these cases, these powers exist because of our wants. You change that and you're free. The late fashion photographer Bill Cunningham occasionally declined to invoice magazines for his work. When a young epstart asked him why that was, Cunningham's response was epic. "If you don't take the money, they can't tell you what to do, kid. Remember that taking the money and wanting the money makes you a servant to the people who have it. Indifference to that," as Seneca puts it, "turns the highest power into no power, at least as far as your life is concerned."

• 3:33Speaker 00

  I've said before that my definition of success is spelled autonomy. I want control over my own life. If I don't have that, it doesn't matter how much money I have, how respected I am, how powerful I am, I'm not that powerful because I can't do what I want. I don't control my day. My wants control my day. My needs control my day. What I've agreed to, what I've signed up to, controls my day. And I don't like that. It doesn't make me feel good and it reminds me that I'm wasting this precious resource. And I love seeing people who have to make this decision at a much bigger level. Rory McIlroy, actually, I think it was, he read this entry of The Daily Stoic and then he was asked to join this new golf league. And he quoted that Bill Cunningham line that he got from the book.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  He said, "If they don't, if you don't take the money, they can't tell you what to do." You want to find what you want to do in life, the place you want to be, and then you have to be able to say no. You know, they talk about this idea of fuck you money. Fuck you money is when you have so much money that you get to say what you really think. You know, you get to be rude about it. Um, there's that great line in the first episode of Billions, uh, Brian Kopp, who's just such a great writer, but the, the line in that show, he says, what's the point of having fuck you money if you never say fuck you? And, uh, sorry, I know it's a lot of cursing in this episode, but the point is, I actually don't think you need fuck you money. You just need like polite no thanks money. You just need the power of being content with what you have. Uh, there's a, there's a Stoic

• 5:00Speaker 00

  line, we quoted on Daily Stoic, sometimes people sometimes don't like it, it sounds very privileged. I believe it's Seneca, he's saying, you know, poverty isn't having little, it's wanting more. I think he's saying that obviously as a very rich, successful person. What he means is he sees the people who can't say no, maybe he's even speaking to himself. He wanted to be in the center of things. He wanted to be in the room where it happened. He wanted to throw big parties. He wanted to have beautiful estates. And this puts him in a position where it's hard for him to say no. He doesn't have as much control over his life as you'd think someone in that position is. So the point is tyranny is not just a tyrant telling you what to do. It's not just, you know, living in Vladimir Putin's

• 5:43Speaker 00

  Russia. Tyranny is not just slavery. Tyranny is also often self-imposed. Slavery is often self-imposed. We put ourselves on a treadmill. We put ourselves in a position of vulnerability. We put ourselves in a position of dependency because we want, we want to get this, we want to get there, we want to have access to this, we want to be like these people. And that makes us have to agree to do certain things. That makes us need to spend a certain amount. That makes us need to dress a certain way.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  The people who don't give a shit about any of that, the people who are content with what they have, people who have enough, that's a position of real power. And I tell that story in Stillness is the Key, and we have a pretty viral video about it. That, you know what? I'll just play it. We have this great story. This is one of the most viewed TikToks we've ever done. I'll just play it for you because I think it really captures exactly what Cunningham is saying, captures exactly what Seneca is saying, that the ultimate power, freedom in life, is to have enough. There's an amazing story about Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller, who wrote Catch 22 and Slaughterhouse-Five. They're at the party of this billionaire. Vonnegut is teasing Heller, and he says,

• 7:02Speaker 00

  "This billionaire, whose house we're at, he made more money this week than your book will make in its entire life." And Heller says, "But I have something that he doesn't have." Vonnegut says, "What's that?" And Heller says, "I have some idea of what enough is." He says, "I have enough." This idea of enough is so powerful. Seneca, who quotes Epicureus, says, "If you don't regard what you have as enough, you will never be happy, even if you rule the entire world." Right? Enough is never enough, the Epicureans and the Stoics say, for the person who enough is too little. And if you can get to a place of enough, "What I have is good, everything else is extra, then everything you get is a bonus, and the rest of your life is amazing." But if you tell yourself you'll only be happy if, "If I'll feel better when,"

• 7:47Speaker 00

  you'll never get there. The finish line will move, I promise you. Enough is enough.