Don’t Let It Keep Slipping Away | The Philosopher's School Is A Hospital

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. Don't let it keep slipping away. It was not long ago that summer was just beginning. The months loomed before us. Long warm evenings, the morning before the heat came, time in the pool, trips, beach, picnics, fairs, barbecues, days without school. And then all of a sudden grocery stores have pumpkins out front. There are leaves on the ground. It's already Labor Day weekend. What happened? When did that happen? As the Taylor Swift lyric goes August slipped away into a moment in time. Maybe you missed it because you were busy. Maybe you missed it because you were digging yourself out from under what had been a difficult winter in spring.

1:02Maybe you have been worried about something. Maybe you just weren't paying attention. Seneca, writing about people who dread the future or linger on what has already happened, said that they robbed themselves of what is in front of them right now. We deprive ourselves. He said of the ability to enjoy present things. August might be gone, but September is here. Or at least let's left of it. Be present for it. Violent threats against executives are growing at an alarming rate. And when a company experiences backlash, executives are the first people blamed. And when they're addressed and other personal details are sitting online, this backlash can lead right to their front door. The team at Ironwall knows this better than anyone. They've protected some of the most targeted executives and individuals on the planet for almost two decades.

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3:08Ultra soft organic cotton tees, Mongolian casualty sweaters, everything in between. Everything that Quince has is priced 50 to 80% less than what you'd find from similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories. Cuts out the middleman so you're getting premium materials without the markup. If you're still hanging on to the same worn out basics, Quince makes it easy to upgrade. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com-stoic. You can get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too, q-u-i-n-c-e.com-stoic. The Philosopher's School is a hospital. Men, the Philosopher's lecture hall is a hospital. You shouldn't walk out of it feeling pleasure but pain. For you aren't well when you enter it. That's from EpicTitus' Discourses and today's little riffing is from the Daily Stoic. 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance and the art of living. From yours truly, Ryan Holiday,

4:13my co-author and translator, Stephen Hanselman. You can pick up a copy of the Daily Stoic anywhere you buy books. We also have signed copies in the Daily Stoic Store and our Leatherbound edition, which I hope you check out. But let's talk about this quote from EpicTitus here. Have you ever been to physical therapy or rehab? No matter what the name implies or how ever many people you see lying around getting massages, it's not a fun place to be. Turns out that healing hurts. The trained experts know exactly where to exert pressure and what to subject to stress so that they can strengthen where the patient is weak and help stimulate the areas that have atrophied. Stoic philosophy is a lot like that. Some observations and exercises will touch you on your pressure points. It's nothing personal. It's supposed to hurt. And that's how you develop the will to endure and persevere through life's many challenges. I remember I was in high school and I was always a runner. So I was in a bad shape. I was in good shape, but I basically had no strength training ever in my life. And I was snowboarding,

5:14one winter and I ended up hurting myself in some accident. I took it to sort of jump and on a back country hill and ended up sort of rolling over on my head and I tweaked a vertebrae in my back or I don't remember, but I ended up going to physical therapy for it. And exactly as I'm saying in this entry, you sort of expect it's going to be cool massages or rehab or I don't know, some hot tub or something, jets of water working on you. I got there and they were like, oh, you just need to do a bunch of sit ups. And that's what I had to do for like several weeks of returning is they basically put me on a regiment of doing sit ups and other ab work. They were like, the reason your back is hurt is because it's not supported buttressed enough by muscles in the front. And I was like, well, this sucks, but that's what I had to do. And I feel like life is a lot like that. You know, you go, you want a magical solution, you want someone to do X, Y, Z for you, go to a financial planner and you want them to tell you, here's the magical things I can do that

6:16will make you more money. And in fact, they go, here's where you're spending too much money. Here's where you're not being smart enough with your investments. Here's where you're not being patient enough. Do all these things and check in with me in 30 years and you'll be good, right? That's how it is. We want a shortcut in there is no shortcut except for the work. And the work is not usually fun because if it was fun, it wouldn't call it work. They call it fun, right? When you read Marcus, really, so you're epictetus or senica, you're like, man, I feel attacked. Why'd you have to do me like that, Marcus? Why'd you to do me like that, epictetus? It's because they know, they know where you're sick and we're all sick and we're all weaker than we should be. We've let muscles atrophy. We were hoping for a shortcut. We were hoping someone would take care of it for us. And they can't. You got to do the work. Probably the first part of the work is accepting where you are not well. So I love this idea of the philosopher's lecture halls of hospital. And I see this, you

7:19know, on the daily stoke socials, people are like, you know, why are there not more quotes about love or happiness or fun or why is this series? Why'd you have to go and get political? It's isn't supposed to touch you in your happy place all the time. This isn't supposed to tell you what you want to hear. I wouldn't be doing my job if you didn't sometimes feel attacked by what I said. If you didn't disagree sometimes with what I said, if what I said didn't imply something that challenged you or even offended you. So remember that this is supposed to be hard and it's hard because it's touching you somewhere where you're soft, where you haven't done the work. And hopefully by feeling that it'll spur you to get where you need to go or at least in dealing with the challenge, you will better understand why you've chosen to do or say the things you've chosen to do. So with that, talk to you tomorrow.