Please enjoy this courtesy the team at the Daily Stoic:
PASSAGE OF THE WEEK:
We challenge ourselves not to improve our immune system. Not to increase our metabolism. Not to reduce anxiety. Those things might be nice ancillary benefits but they are not the point. The purpose is to become the kind of person that can do it. How do you expect to do the big things that scare you—that scare others—if you haven’t practiced them? Why do you think you can endure the cold reception of a bold idea if you can’t even endure cold water? How can you trust that you’ll step forward when the stakes are high when you regularly don’t do that when the stakes are low? What gives you any confidence you’ll do the hard thing when people are watching if you can’t do that even when no one is watching?
YOUTUBE TAKEAWAY OF THE WEEK:
In one of the most watched videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube Channel this week, Ryan Holiday explained Why You Should Do Something Scary Every Day. He tells a story of the Los Angeles Rams’ General Manager Les Snead, a practitioner of Stoicism, and the habit Snead borrowed from Seneca that helped him carry out a strategy that largely ignored all conventional wisdom and therefore invited all the Monday morning quarterbacks and living room GMs to attack and criticize Snead…before the Rams became Super Bowl champions. The habit? Every morning, Snead takes a cold plunge in the Pacific Ocean. He started taking cold plunges after learning that, as Ryan puts it:
PODCAST TAKEAWAY OF THE WEEK:
On the Daily Stoic podcast this week, Ryan Holiday talked to Scott Hershovitz about his new book Nasty, Brutish, and Short: Adventures in Philosophy with Kids, the ancient philosophical ideas kids seem to intuit, how great philosophers have an eye for comedy, the Stoic virtue of justice, and how to develop the moral courage one needs to stand up and do the right thing no matter the costs:
WHAT RYAN HOLIDAY IS READING:
— Yes to Life by Viktor Frankl
YOUR STOIC WEEKEND REMINDER:
Take a walk.
A philosopher, for all their love of books, knows that there is something special about getting outside and getting active. As Seneca said,
At Daily Stoic, we talk a lot about the Stoic idea of stillness being the key. When the Stoics talk about stillness, they weren’t talking about sitting in your house doing nothing. They weren’t even talking about meditation. They were actually talking about getting out and getting active. About soaking in the outdoors. About letting your heart and head slow down while your body moves.
(For more on this idea, watch this video!)
No comments:
Post a Comment