This Is Your Job As A Citizen | Why You Should Do Something Scary Every Day

The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we have control over and what we don’t. Epictetus said,“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…”✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

• 0:31Speaker 00

  This is your job as a citizen.

• 0:36Speaker 00

  The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we have control over and what we don't. Epictetus said, "The chief task in life is simply this, to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own." Well, today, we are calling on you to perform your chief task in life. You don't control the dark money that has flooded politics. You don't control the mediocre or awful candidates out there. You don't control that more than 50% of the population doesn't bother voting. You don't control the gerrymandering

• 1:20Speaker 00

  and the voter suppression. You don't control who ultimately gets elected. But the act of casting a ballot is in your control. You control whether you engage in the democratic process. And the Stoics are explicit on this point. The philosopher, they say, is obligated to contribute to the polis, to participate in politics. And this is actually the essential difference between the Epicureans and the Stoics. Seneca says that Epicurus would say that "a wise man will not engage in public affairs except in an emergency," whereas Zeno says he will engage in public affairs unless something prevents him. Well, it's hard to argue with the statistics that any individual's vote makes a difference. Think about how dangerous it would be when that logic is extrapolated out.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  Almost no difference is made by the individual who decides to do the right thing, to do an act of kindness, to insist on the truth, when a falsehood is easier, to be a good parent, to care about the quality of their work. Is that a reason to be a liar, a cheat, an asshole, a bad parent, or a poor craftsman? Of course not. And imagine what the world would look like if everyone insisted it was. "A better world is built action by action," Marcus Aurelius said, "vote by vote." We vote, we do good things, not because it has a noticeable or significant impact on the world, but because it is our duty. We make our tiny contribution to the common good today, in the next election, in every election. We perform our chief task in life today, tomorrow, and every day.

• 2:49Speaker 00

  I voted here, in my small rural county in Texas. I voted in, Texas has like a early voting period, so I voted a week before the election. I didn't love all the candidates. I voted independent for some and Democrat for others. I didn't vote for one specific party and won't until it purges from its ranks insurrectionism and certain anti-democratic lines of thinking. But, look, I'm not telling you to vote for this party or that party. I'm just telling you to participate in the process. The system is what it is. It's as bad as it is because people don't. Most people are reasonable. Most people want the same things.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  Here in Texas, for instance, which is overwhelmingly a Republican state, the people who vote in the Republican primary, just 3% of the population, determine basically our entire elected officials. It's the opposite of democracy in that sense, not because the system is broken, but because people are not participating in the system. And you've got to participate. It's a very small contribution you're making. But as we said, what would it look like if everyone failed to do their duty? You've got to do your job as a citizen. You've got to do your job as a stoic. As Zeno says, we engage in public affairs unless something prevents us. Nothing should prevent you from doing this. And the fact that people might want to prevent you from doing it is a reason you should stick with it, push through and do it. Take the time, you know, protect your children's interests,

• 4:18Speaker 00

  your interests, the interests of our future and just encouraging you all to vote. And hopefully we'll get through this strange, terrible period of American history and we're going to do it, I think, by voting and by voting for people who are not crazy fascists. And I'll leave you to decide who and what that means for you.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I've got this new cold plunge. I think I talked about this. The folks at Plunge sent me one. And I've been using it like all the time, four or five times a week. I usually try to go for my run and then I do that and then do the cold plunge and then I go home. So instead of like needing like a coffee or a pick me up or something in the evening, as I'm going home for my second shift, if you will, I use the cold plunge and I just feel super invigorated after. And I'm liking this sort of challenge of pushing myself to do an uncomfortable thing for longer and longer. I started with a minute. I'm up to about three, three and a half minutes.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  It lets me adjust the temperature and stuff too. It's been awesome. And I was just, I just did a talk in San Diego and I was talking about the muscle that you're developing, whether it's in the cold plunge or the, like I was using the metaphor of cranking it in the shower. I was talking about the, the strong, the muscle there is the muscle of cranking the shower knob, which is then transferable to all other facets of your life. Which actually ties into what today's episode is about. It's why you should try to do something scary every day.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  And in fact, we have to build into our life, the practice of doing something hard, scary, intimidating, uncomfortable, difficult, unpleasant, every single day, which is actually a stoic practice, as you will see in today's episode. Enjoy.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  There's a great Sports Illustrated article by Greg Bishop about the Los Angeles Rams on their, on their way to the Super Bowl this year. And he was talking about Les Snead, who I've gotten to know, I've interviewed him on the Daily Stoic Podcast, he's a practitioner and fan of Stoicism. And he was talking about Les's habit of doing a cold plunge in the Pacific Ocean each morning. So when the Rams made it to the Super Bowl in 2018, they made it all the way to the top of their game and then they fell short. They had to not rebuild, but they had to make a lot of difficult decisions to get back to where they wanted to be. And the big part of, of the Rams' strategy is that most teams hoard draft picks, thinking that draft picks are going to help them find undervalued talent.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Well, the Rams' strategy is different. He makes big moves in the season, goes after big free agents, makes short-term deals for players that he thinks can get him where he wants to go. Now, this is anathema to almost all the wisdom and conventional practices of the NFL. Every time he does it, he gets attacked, he gets criticized, he gets doubted. And when they lost in the Super Bowl, and then the couple, the two-year period where they were really struggling, people piled on. They said, you don't know what you're doing, this is not going to work, you're mortgaging the future of the franchise. So it's so cool to see this Sports Illustrated article by Greg Bishop, he's saying that inspired by Seneca, Les decides to do this plunge into the ocean each morning.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  And then when you see where it gets him, it gets him to a place where he can make huge off-season and mid-season moves that Again, everyone doubted that got him where he needed to be, that helped them win the Super Bowl this year. And it's an incredible achievement, but it starts by doing that scary thing to build up a habit and a tolerance for doing scary things. There's a, there's a story about the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. And he had this fascinating habit as he would travel. He would sometimes show up in a new city and pretend that he just kind of washed up there. He would, he would go look for a job. He might even apply for a job or interview for a job. Even though he, he came from family money, even though his books had been very successful,

• 8:37Speaker 01

  he wanted to imagine what it would be like to start over in a new place. Could he do it? Was it possible? This is kind of like Seneca's practice of, of practicing poverty, of getting comfortable with that discomfort. Seneca said that as he would practice poverty, the idea was to, was to look around at, at the mattress on the floor he's sleeping on or the rough cloak that he's wearing and be able to say, this is what you're afraid of? You can handle this. And you think about Zweig, the idea that he could rebuild his life, that he could move to a new place and get a new job and, and, and build new relationships and support himself. And he does have to do this. World War I and World War II both send Zweig out as a refugee. And he has to rebuild his life, not, not quite as dramatically as he practiced.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  But the point was he knew he could handle it because he practiced handling it. One of the reasons that scary things scare us is that we exaggerate them in our mind. We make them bigger than they actually are. We extrapolate out all the way to the end. You know, Marx was, he says, don't let your life be crushed by your imagination. Don't get too far ahead of yourself. He says, stick with the situation at hand. It's not nearly as unbearable as you think it is. And so I think one of the ways we can handle scary things, like a life of scary things, is by practicing these little scary things. Jerry Seinfeld has this joke that the number one fear for people is public speaking and like the number two fear is death.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  And he's saying that that means that at a funeral, someone would rather be in the casket. Than delivering the eulogy. Cato, the famous Stoic, would would wear unusual clothes. He walked around bareheaded and barefoot. He knew people were judging him. You have to cultivate this ability inside yourself to be indifferent to what other people say or do or think about what you're doing. That skill of like getting up in front of an audience, making a video, you have to cultivate that indifference to what other people think about you. If you're looking for something scary to do, look for something public. Go up and talk to a stranger. Wear something that that's going to draw a little attention to you, right? Cultivate that that not being afraid of how this is going to look to other people

• 10:47Speaker 01

  or what might go wrong or the awkwardness or the vulnerability of that. Because that's a super powerful asset to have. But look, the idea that that you should do something every day that scares you, what is the point of all this? I realize that it's a bit tautological, that you should do something that scares you because it scares you. But that's the point. You're trying to get up close and personal. You're trying to get comfortable with it. You're trying to get to a place where when something's scary, you have the power to say, I don't care, I'm doing it anyway. We're treating the body rigorously, as Sankara said. When we have doubts, when people are criticizing us, when something seems unpleasant, we want to cultivate the willpower, the strength that allows us to push through it, that almost looks forward to it.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  So when I crank that knob in the shower, I'm not doing it for the health benefits, although I hope they're there. I'm doing it because I want to be the kind of person that pushes through what I'm afraid of. In fact, that does the things that I am afraid of. And that's why you need this practice in your life, too. I hope you like this video. I hope you subscribe. But what I really want you to subscribe to is our Daily Stoic email. One bit of Stoic wisdom, totally for free to the largest community of Stoics ever in existence. You can sign up at dailystoic.com/email. There's no spam. You can unsubscribe at any time. I love sending it. I've sent it every day for the last six years and I hope to see you there at dailystoic.com/email.