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Chapter 1: What do the founders pledge their sacred honor to?
Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.
As the founders signed the Declaration of Independence, they knew that this wasn't some painless petition. This wasn't some minor political stand.
No, they knew as they wrote that they were mutually pledging their life, fortune, and sacred honor. It was a cause they were willing to give everything for, even die for. This idea of sacred honor, of full commitment, is worth considering today here on Memorial Day as we honor and think about those men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.
Chapter 2: How does modern society compare to the past in terms of commitment?
Because here in the modern world, it's never been easier to jump on a bandwagon with a hashtag or post a picture. It's never been easier to spout off on this argument or that one. It's also never been more common to declare oneself a victim of cancel culture or of persecution when one undergoes even the slightest consequences for their actions.
People stormed the United States Capitol because they were angry about losing a free and fair election.
Chapter 3: What lessons can we learn from Stoic figures about commitment?
And even so, they tried to invoke the mantle of the founders. Not only were they wrong and evil, but then they whined like babies when they were maced by officers who really were pledging their lives to defend democracy.
Chapter 4: What does it mean to fully commit to a cause?
The Stoics knew about pledging one's life, liberty, and sacred honor. Thracia and Helvidius, as I tell in Lives of the Stoics, they gave everything in their defiance of Nero. Cato committed everything to preserve the Roman Republic.
Rutilius Rufus lost his job, his home, his standing in Rome, rather than participate in corruption.
They didn't take these stands lightly, nor did they attach themselves frivolously to whatever the mob was angry about at the moment. The question for you today and always is what do you pledge your sacred honor to? What are you fighting for? Are you aware of the costs? Are you fully committed? This is not something to be done lightly. Honor matters.
You should listen to our interview with Tamler Summers. But it also matters what you make a matter of honor. Fight on. Fight hard. Fight for the right things. Happy Memorial Day, everyone. Be good.
Chapter 5: How can we gain a broader perspective on our problems?
Be well. Be safe. Maybe you've been hearing the buzz about live shopping lately. I know I have. And it makes sense. Like people are already on their phones. They're hanging out.
Chapter 6: What insights does Marcus Aurelius offer about perspective?
They're looking for stuff to do. So why wouldn't business want to meet people where they're at? If you're hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk into your store, I know a little bit about that. You're setting yourself up for disappointment on whatnot. You can go live and sell directly to people in real time. They see what you've got.
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Chapter 7: How does taking a 'view from above' change our outlook?
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I just heard this stat that shocked me, given that I... hear from the sales staff at my publisher quite a bit. The stat is sales teams spend about 50% of their time on admin work instead of selling, relationship building, closing deals, which means they're not selling, right? And that's where today's sponsor comes in, Pipedrive. It's a simple, intelligent CRM tool for small and medium businesses.
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Chapter 8: What actions can we take to apply Stoic principles in daily life?
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No credit card or payment needed. Just head over to pipedrive.com to get started. That's pipedrive.com to be up and running in minutes. The view from above. This week's entry from the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 days of writing and reflections on the art of living. It's our companion to the Daily Stoic.
So you can listen to it and hopefully it can influence your journaling in whatever form you decide to write down and think about your thoughts. As Epictetus says, every day and night, keep thoughts like these at hand, write them, read them aloud and talk to yourself and others about them. And so today's entry is about taking the view from above.
The way to escape petty concerns and the worries of daily existence requires taking some time and getting what the Stoics like to call the view from above. This was something Marcus Aurelius reminded himself to do regularly. He had learned from Heraclitus that everything in the world was constantly changing and that remembering this can eliminate so many stresses and concerns.
So this week, don't just look at what you're dealing with in your life up close. Try to see it from far away too. Try to describe what another larger perspective would look like of your problems, of your worries, and of your obsessions. And Marcus Aurelius quotes here from Plato.
He says, how beautifully Plato put it, whenever you want to talk about people, it's best to take a bird's eye view and see everything all at once. Of gatherings, armies, farms, weddings and divorces, births and deaths, noisy courtrooms or silent spaces, every foreign people, holidays, memorials, markets, all blended together and arranged in a pairing of opposites. This is from Meditations 748.
Watch the stars in their courses and imagine yourself running alongside them, Marcus also says in Meditations. Think constantly on the changes of the elements into each other, for such thoughts wash away the dust of earthly life. And then we have Heraclitus. He says, Look, it's easy when you're thinking about something, when you're dealing with something, when you're way deep in something.
for it to feel like the most important thing in the world, for it to feel unprecedented, for it to feel overwhelmingly big. But when you zoom out, when you're in an airplane and you look down and you see these enormous fields or these whole cities, or you even see the town, sometimes when I'm flying in Austin, I can see the road I drive to get to my house and I could see my tiny little house.
you know, it just shrinks everything down into its proper proportion, which is to say it makes it really, really small. Because we are really, really small. We are ants. You know, you look at ants on an ant mound fighting over, you know, little seeds and tiny things, and it's easy to think, oh, these silly little creatures, but that's us. We are them. We are tiny.
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