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Saturday, October 1, 2022
Your Saturday Stoic Review — Week of September 26 - October 2
PASSAGE OF THE WEEK:
It is the opening lesson of Meditations. The two most important words, what everything great follows from: "character and self-control." If there is a key to life, it is to "love the discipline you know," Marcus said, "and let it support you." Let it tether you to this moment, not to some potential rewards in the far-off future. Let it predicate your success—if you are about the work, if you love the discipline you know…you already won. Everything is extra.
In one of the most watched videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube Channel this week, watch Ryan Holiday's two-year process of writing Discipline is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control. It begins on July 16, 2021 when Ryan starts to organize all of the research. Then there's the moment Ryan figured out the structure for the book, the day he started a master folder in Google Docs, when he moved the individual docs into one Word document, how he handled working on the book when on the publicity tour for Courage is Calling, the first time he printed out a draft of the book, when it was submitted to the publisher, the call with his editor to make the final decision on the title, and the day he found a helpful notecard he had written to himself:
"I was going through the notecards and I found one that I think is illustrative of the process. I don't know when I wrote it but I wrote to myself in red Sharpie, 'trusting the process. Keep doing your notecards. When you check this in June, if you've done your work, there will be a book here.' This is exactly what I needed to see because like two weeks ago, it did not feel like there was a book here. And it's very obvious now that there's a book here because I trusted the process, I did the work, I chugged away at it, and here we are."
In one of the most listened to episodes of the Daily Stoic podcast this week, Ryan Holiday speaks to World Series Champion Ryan Lavarnway about how pro athletes apply philosophy to what they do, the connection between presence and elite performance, how baseball can be a vehicle to understand ethics, and focusing on how you swing the bat and not where the ball goes:
"When it comes to baseball, you hit the ball then it's 9 versus 1. There's 9 defenders. You could hit it 106 miles per hour, you could hit it where it's a hit 99% of the time—but the defensive alignment just happened to be standing right where you hit it…Dads will call me and say, 'hey, little Johnny is hitting the ball really hard, but he keeps hitting it straight to the center fielder. What can he do different?' And my joke is, 'his aim is terrible.' And they ask, 'how can he fix his aim?' He can't. Once it leaves your bat, it's totally out of your control. You can put a good swing on a good pitch, you made solid contact, and now it's out of your control. And you gotta take it as a win if you hit a line drive, if you hit a rocket somewhere—that is a win, regardless of whether it's a hit or an out…Sometimes, you just have to say, 'good swing, bad aim.'"
"Good things take time to come to fruition. Patience is an advantage in athletics, business, creativity, science, and relationships…Cultivating patience serves as a buffer against getting caught up in frenetic energy and angst. It helps offset the temptation to seek novelty always and constantly change course. It invites us to show up reliably and thoughtfully, even when things appear to be moving slowly. It encourages us to take a longer view, to recognize when it's wise to let situations unfold in their own time."
"If someone succeeds in provoking you," Epictetus said, "realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation."
He meant that whatever other people do and say is on them. Whatever your reaction is to what other people do and say—that's on you.
No one can make you angry, only you have that power. Someone can certainly say something offensive or stupid or mean, but no one can make you upset—that's a choice.
This newsletter is brought to you by Ten Thousand. Renowned for their premium training gear and "Better Than Yesterday" mantra, Ten Thousand shares Ryan Holiday's passion for exploring Stoic philosophy and its impact on building a resilient, high-performance mindset.
As an official team Captain, Ryan and Ten Thousand co-created an original series entitled, "Stoic Grit" where they explain the interconnected relationship between the Stoic philosophy and the modern training mindset.
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