¶ Practice Dealing With Pain
Welcome to the The Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Use this as practice. You woke up with a sore throat, you've been vomiting all day, you got a fever that won't break, feels like you're going to die. You won't, almost certainly, because it's just the flu. But it sure feels like it.
Which is why you should use this as practice. Not memento mori practice, but practice dealing with pain, practice with dealing with a body that's being put through something that doesn't control and doesn't have much of a say about. Marcus Aurelius, who dealt with a series of chronic illnesses, tried to use these bouts as a chance to be philosophical. For times when you feel pain, he writes in Meditations, see that it doesn't disgrace you or degrade your intelligence or
doesn't keep it from acting rationally or unselfishly. And in most cases what Epicurus said should also help. that pain is neither unbearable nor unending, as long as you keep in mind its limits and don't magnify them in your imagination. Your symptoms will abate eventually. You'll get through this in a couple of days or a week.
That's the blessing here, that it's not more serious. In the meantime, though, use this as practice. Get your reps in, because none of us have any idea what life has in store for us in the future. We all experience injuries, pain. There's physical obstacles, things we can't do that hold us back. That is a part of life. But what we have ultimately is a choice about how we respond to those setbacks.
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Make sure you enter our show name at checkout so they can know we sent you helix sleep dot com slash stoic. Hello, it is Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Okay, so I was in Phoenix last week for the talk I was giving, and uh I was joking on stage that, you know, I feel like Phoenix doesn't really have uh
doesn't really have seasons. It's just like uh really hot and then there's that period of the year where it's not that hot. And I was pointing out that it's like it's kinda crazy that like spring is almost here. Like winter is almost over. I was saying they might have missed the signs. you know, uh, that it was happening'cause the the desert it has a a remarkable consistency to it there.
Um it's almost tropical, but then it's not. I don't know. There's something about Phoenix that doesn't feel real. But it also feels like not real to me that we're spring, that it's like officially March. And so what I wanted to talk about in today's episode was some stoic exercises
to help you get back on track. If this was a long winter for you, which it was for me, if you got a little bit knocked off, if you got pushed out of it, if you got distracted, if you fell off on some of your goals, Well we've got some stoic exercises that will help you create your best month yet, and I think hopefully even your best. season yet. Have a great spring.
This episode is narrated by Katie McGurl, who is the editor of Daily Stoke. I write the emails, I get them to her, she edits them and then gives them back to me to read. And uh I think you're gonna like this episode, just giving you a little bit of break from my voice. But if you do wanna get serious about having an awesome spring, I'd love to also have you join us. in the Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge. Ten days of
stoic inspired challenges. You're gonna do some Q and A's with me, bunch of stuff in the Daily Stoic community. And uh I think it's gonna be awesome. That that's actually what I was talking about when I was in Phoenix. Like how you How you reset, realign, and get back to the rhythm, as Marx Realist talks about, when you have been jarred by the crazy circumstances of the world. And uh I'd love to see you in there. We've got a special offer for Daily Stoic Podcast listeners.
20% off when you use code DSPOD20 at checkout. You can join me and thousands of other stoics in the Daily Stoic Spring Forward Challenge. Just head over to dailystoic.com/slash spring and enter code DSPOD20 to get 20% off. So, anyways, let's get into today's episode. Three Stoic Exercises that will help create your best month yet. For more than 2,000 years, wise men and women have relied on an ancient philosophy known as Stoicism to help them live their best lives.
It's been a source of guidance, wisdom, and practical advice for millions. It's been used by everyone from Marcus Aurelius and Seneca to Theodore Roosevelt and Frederick the Great, Montaine, and now coaches like Pete Carroll and athletes like Carrie Walsh Jennings to help them live better, more resiliently, and more peacefully. Here are three stoic exercises and strategies that will help you have your best month yet.
¶ Mastering Habits and Routine
Rise and shine. On those mornings you struggle with getting up, keep this thought in mind. I am awakening to the work of a human being. Why then am I annoyed that I am going to do what I'm made for, for the very things for which I was put into this world? Or was I made for this, to snuggle under the covers and keep warm? It's so pleasurable. Were you then made for pleasure? In short, to be coddled or to exert yourself. Marcus Aurelius Meditations.
Nobody likes Mondays, so it's comforting to think that even two thousand years ago, the Emperor of Rome, who was reportedly a bit of an insomniac, was giving himself a pep talk in order to summon up the willpower to throw the blankets off each morning and get out of bed. From the time we're first sent off to school until we retire, we're faced with the same struggle.
It'd be nicer to shut our eyes and hit the snooze button a few more times, but we can't. Because we have a job to do. Not only do we have the calling we've dedicated ourselves to, but we have the larger cause that the Stoics speak about, the greater good. We cannot be of service to ourselves, to other people, or to the world unless we get up and get working. The earlier the better. So come on, get in the shower, have your coffee, and get going.
The chain method is If you don't wish to be a hothead, don't feed your habit. Try as a first step to remain calm and count the days you haven't been angry. I used to be angry every day, now every other day, then every third or fourth. If you make it as far as thirty days, thank God, for habit is first weakened and then obliterated.
When you can say, I didn't lose my temper today, or the next day, or for three or four months, but kept my cool under provocation, you will know you are in better health. Epictetus Discourses. The comedian Jerry Seinfeld once gave a young comic named Brad Isaac some advice about how to write and create material. Keep a calendar, he told him, and each day that you write jokes, put an X.
Soon enough, you'll get a chain going, and then your job is to simply not break the chain. Success becomes a matter of momentum. Once you get a little, it's easier to keep it going. Whereas Seinfeld used the chain method to build a positive habit, Epictetus was saying that it can also be used to eliminate a negative one. It's not all that different than taking sobriety one day at a time. Start with one day doing whatever it is, be it managing your temper or wandering eyes or procrastination.
Then do the same the following day and the day after that. Build a chain and then work to not break it. Don't ruin your streak. How you do anything is how you do everything.
¶ Mindful Focus and Daily Reflection
Pay attention to what's in front of you, the principle, the task, or what's being portrayed. Marcus Aurelius Meditations. It's fun to think about the future. It's easy to ruminate on the past. It's harder to put that energy into what's in front of us right at this moment, especially if it's something we don't want to do.
We think, this is just a job. It isn't who I am. It doesn't matter. But it does matter. Who knows? It might be the last thing you ever do. Here lies Dave, buried alive under a mountain of unfinished business. There's an old saying how you do anything is how you do everything. It's true. How you handle today is how you'll handle every day. How you handle this minute is how you'll handle every minute.
A final trick for having a great month comes to us from the Stoic philosopher Seneca. In a letter to his older brother, Seneca describes a beneficial exercise he borrowed from another prominent philosopher. At the end of each day, he would ask himself variations of the following questions What bad habit did I curb today? How am I better? Were my actions just? How can I improve? We shouldn't just do this daily, but also monthly, quarterly, and yearly.
we should reflect on our lives and on our actions. What could we do better? How have we kept our chain of progress and good actions unbroken? Or indeed, where have we failed? And finally, have we done our proper job as people? Have we done the work we've needed to do? The more we think about this, the more we follow these habits, the better we will get at them.
Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in a couple years. Doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank.