Do This (It’s Good For Your Sanity) | A Garden Is Not For Show

0:00Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Do this. It's good for your sanity. Not many of the Emperor's fared well. Something about power, something about wealth, something about temptation that in the end seemed to get to all of them. What was it? Well, certainly it's not good for anyone to be subjected to so much pressure, such sickofancy, such abnormality and isolation. And perhaps it was the latter that weighed on them the most. They lived behind palace walls and vacationed far away from average Romans. Their food was brought to them, tested for poison first. We talked recently about how the Emperor would have rarely gotten to take walks like a normal person, with the exception of the Emperor's shortcut, a hidden 300-yard passageway of zigzagging ramps from the palace down to the forum, separated from the streets of Rome.

1:06Indeed, if Marcus wanted to take a walk safely, he would have had to do it around the Emperor's private track on Palantine Hill, which for all its luxury was basically a prison yard for his personal use. Of course they went crazy. Meanwhile, we subject ourselves to a version of this voluntarily. We spend all our time in our house or at the office, in between in the safe cocoon of our car. We work out at the gym and our own little bubble. We get our food delivered, we order everything we need online. We work remotely, take meetings through screens, text instead of call, and increasingly arrange our lives so that we never have to be inconvenienced or talk to anyone. What we need to do is get outside. We need to be amongst people. We need to go for a walk on a busy city street. We need to bump into our friends or maybe meet new ones. We need to be social and outside our comfort zone. We need to be human. We are social animals. We need to be moving and active and challenged.

2:06Comfort and convenient are nice, but too much insulation comes at a cost. We aren't meant to experience life this way. We were meant to be outside. I don't know what your house is like, but at my house we beat the crap out of the stuff that we have. Kids, dog, wife, and I. If we have stuff at our house, it's gotta be sturdy. I love vintage historic stuff, but it doesn't last long at the holiday house. Sometimes you just need stuff that can be jumped on, knocked over, spilled on without falling apart. That's why we look for furniture on Wayfair. As on Wayfair, you'll find the stuff you need. Stuff that stands up to real life. They've got furniture and decor all of it built to last. When we shop with Wayfair verified, you get pieces that are hand-vetted by product specialists. Using a 10 point quality inspection, they test the materials, the functionality, the features, even how long it takes to build.

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4:12And this is something that today's sponsor Better Hell is great at and makes easier. Better Hell does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. There's got a short questionnaire that helps you identify your needs and preferences. In 12 plus years of experience and industry leading match fulfillment rate, they usually get it right the first time. But if you're not happy with your match, you can switch to a different therapist at any time. I got over 30,000 of them. Better is a feeling defined by you. And for Better Hell, it's a Better Hell therapist who really gets you. So sign up today and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash Daily Stoke Pod. That's BetterHELP.com slash Daily Stoic Pod. A garden is not for show. This is an injury from the Daily Stoke. 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living, holding a cloth edition here. But quote today is from Epic Titus' Discourses 48.

5:13He says, 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 buried for a season hidden, growing gradually so that it may come for full maturity. But if the grain sprouts before the stock is fully developed, it will never ripen. That's the kind of plant you are displaying fruit too soon. And the winter will kill you. You know, after you listen to this podcast for a while or follow us on Instagram, you might be tempted and say, oh, this is great. I get it. I'm a stoic. I've always been that way. But it's not that easy. Just because you agree with the philosophy doesn't mean the roots have fully taken hold, fooling around with books so you can sound smarter. Having intimidating libraries like tending a garden to impress your neighbors, growing one to feed someone that's a pure and profitable use of your time. The seeds of stoicism are long underground. Do the work required to nurture and tend to them so that they and you are prepared and sturdy for the hard winters of life.

6:21The idea is not that we get credit for working on a book that we get credit for doing this or that. It's that we are actually doing it. Right. The doing is important. And I deeply believe this that that talking and doing fight for the same resources and you have to cultivate a willingness to be misunderstood to be not fully appreciated to just be like, I'm working on my stuff, man, I'm developing. I don't need your approval. I don't need your recognition. Nobody likes it when they're not appreciated when they don't get a thank you. They don't get credit. But it's like that scene in madmen were Peggy's complaining that Don doesn't appreciate her. He never says thank you. And he goes, that's what the money is for. But the reality is sometimes the money is not there either. And this is why the stoics talk about not asking for the third thing. Mark sure says you've done something good and someone has benefited from it. That's the whole exchange.

7:21He says don't ask for the third thing on top recognition credit. The thank you because it's not coming and it shouldn't have been why you did it in the first place. He says you've done well and someone else has benefited from it. It's just why like a fool. Do you expect the third thing for someone to thank you for it or to do a favor for you in return? That's not why you did it. And look, the basis of stowsism is let's focus on what we control. We control the act. We don't control the outcome of the act, the recognition of the act, the appreciation of the act. And we're setting ourselves up for disappointment, frustration and resentment. We don't control what other people do. We don't control the thank you. We don't control whether they appreciate it. We don't control whether they even notice it. Epictetus also says if you want to improve, be content to be misunderstood and appreciate it. Be content to be foolish. Say I don't know about that. He means to not talk about being a stoic matter. Identify with being a stoic but to quietly work on being one to quietly get to work on that project, to put in the hours, to put your butt where it should be.

8:27Do the work. Leave the recognition, the understanding, the appreciation to someone or something else. That's not why you're doing it. That's not what's motivating you. That's not what is important. So I'm going to leave you here today. Let you get after it. Get to work. Turn this off. Go after it. Make some progress.