Stoic Quotes to Start Your Day
Welcome to the one day at a time podcast with your host and the future leader of The Republic Of Wales, Sveldfjer. Now this might be the only podcast in the world where you actually have to reduce the speed instead of increasing it. However, what I wanna get over to you is that the past is gone. The future doesn't exist. So if you wanna make the most of your life, you've gotta make the most of these moments every single day.
Speaker 1:And this podcast is gonna help you live a healthier, more fulfilled life, hopefully, giving you some wisdom to take away every single day. So I'm gonna shut up now so you can get on with listening to the next episode. Good morning you lovely people. Let's get straight into some motivation for you on this Monday morning. Some of you might be feeling a bit hungover from the weekend.
Speaker 1:Some of you might be thinking, ah, that Scott guy's in Ibiza. Look, he's an orb. Must forget about him. He's in he's in Ibiza right now, wasting his time drinking. But we're gonna have a great start this Monday.
Speaker 1:We're gonna fight through it. We're gonna build momentum. I'm gonna do it from a few quotes by an author called William Irvine. So he was one of the guys, right, that wrote one of the first books on stoicism in the modern era. So stoicism, a philosophy of life, you know, back in the ancient Greek and Roman times was a way to live.
Speaker 1:Philosophy these days is seen as like boring. They just go over one word, oh my god, what does this word mean? I don't care mate, just tell me what it means, just stop going over, what's the world, how are we living better? We're not meant to be just reading lectures, questioning a word, we're gonna go out and apply it to life, Right? What what the hell has philosophy turned into?
Speaker 1:So that's why philosophy these days got a bad rep because it does suck. It is really, really shit. But the old philosophy, they were, how can we apply it to live? And the stoic school was one of the most popular ones for about five hundred years because it's helping people to how to live. And also the teachers are really good.
Speaker 1:They led by example, and that's why people looked up to them. And it's a shame that it kind of died down for, like, over a thousand years, had a mini resurgence, and now it's coming back. Thanks to people like William Irvine to write about it. So you have 30 quotes from his book on, how to live the good life, the stoic how to to live with stoic joy. So the first one, at spare moments in the day, it a point to contemplate the loss of whatever you value in life.
Speaker 1:It can make you realize if only for a time how lucky you are, how much you have to be thankful for almost regardless of your circumstances. This is, like the negative, like kind of loss versions. Like, instead of thinking what you don't have, right, think of what you do have right now and think that you've lost that. Right? So whatever you value right now that you do have imagine you lost it right now.
Speaker 1:Oh, shit. But you haven't lost it. You know when you wake up from a dream when you think you've done something really bad, like, you know, maybe you've done something bad. You know, like the carpet had dry in. I'm off to jail.
Speaker 1:I wake up. Shit. What's happened? I haven't I didn't do it all my days. I'm not going to jail.
Speaker 1:Thank God. And he's like, thank God. That's kind of what the feeling you're after. Number two, when it comes to desiring, we are all experts. If there were an Olympics of desiring, we would all make the team.
Speaker 1:We desire a lot. But what William Irvine says in one of the books, one of the best ways to live is instead of to desire more things and trying to achieve them is to desire less things. So to if you if you desire less, there's less things pulling you. And you you know, if you can live off a lower income and be happy with it and you know, not having a million pound house and and and a flashy new car stuff like that and it doesn't pull you, then you're sound. But some people, even if they do have a flashy house in the car, they want an even flashy house and leave a flashy car.
Speaker 1:Never happy. They keep desiring more and more. Quickest way, let's reduce some desires. Okay. This is a quote that I have.
Speaker 1:If we are overly sensitive, we will be quick to anger. More generally says, Seneca, ourselves, if we allow ourselves to be corrupted by pleasure nothing will seem bearable to us and the reason things will seem unbearable is not because they are hard because we are soft. Yes, okay. Throughout the millennia and cross cultures those who have thought carefully about desire have drawn the conclusion that spending our days working to get whatever it is we find ourselves wanting is unlikely to bring us either happiness or tranquility. That's true.
Speaker 1:Like I just said, cut down your desires. Cut down your like instant like I want this now desire. Get into that. You're a kid. I want this now.
Speaker 1:Wanna tie you up. No. No. You're a rational wise human adult okay it's not how it works. Stoicism understood properly is a cure for a disease.
Speaker 1:The disease in question is the anxiety, grief, fear and various other negative emotions that plague humans and prevent them from experiencing a joyful existence. And Donald Robson says about this as well stoicism is more of like a prevention tool. So start with it now. Read about the stoics. Read about the philosophies.
Speaker 1:Really, really helpful. Besides advising us to avoid people with vices, Seneca advises us to avoid people who are simply whiny, who are melancholy and bewail bewail everything, who find pleasure in every opportunity for complaint. Even two thousand years ago, we had the same people as we do today. The mourners, they mourn, mourn, mourn, mourn, mourn. They get a pleasure from the mourning, and we should avoid these people because they do they do robophon us.
Speaker 1:The profound realization thanks to the practice practice of stoicism, they're acquiring the things that those in my social circle typically crave and work hard to afford will in the long run make zero difference in how happy I am and will in no way contribute to my having a good life. This is bang on, bang on. How many of your socials like want the new Mercedes m one, Mercedes a three? Oh, I want the new iPhone 13 in orange. I want this.
Speaker 1:Right? So how many of your friends like I want this new handbag, want this new dress. If you keep chasing what you're doing just to one up each other, honestly, you're gonna realize one day and you're sitting in the chair, it's a cold it's a cold afternoon, you're sitting in the chair, you're home for some reason, whatever, you're on your own, you're contemplating, you're looking at your bank balance going, fuck. I've spent thousands trying to impress people I don't care about, and they don't care about me. And it's a shallow relationship, and I could have gone into having just cashed my bank now.
Speaker 1:Won't spend it on this. So spend it on hour. You see a bill and you go, god. I could have paid that bill off. You just see these useful materialistic stuff around you and you're like, is that bag?
Speaker 1:It's literally useless. It's what is it? It's a bagman. You know, I love how Marcus Realis is the opposite. Wine.
Speaker 1:Oh, old grapes. God, we're gonna pay $10 for some old grapes. I'm stupid. Oh, purple robes. Wow, gray robes or some shellfish like liquid or whatever smashed all over it.
Speaker 1:That's why you got the purple. Yeah. You got all these fancy foods and names just like, yeah, just you go you go and be like, just dead pig mate. What do mean to say? He's dead pig.
Speaker 1:You're paying hundreds of pounds for it. What are you doing? That that watch on your wrist, $25, a piece of a fucking piece of metal. Literally, a piece of metal found in the ground with a mechanical clock on it that's got no practical purpose in the twenty first century. These things man you've got to detach from them they'll pull you in all the time, all the time.
Speaker 1:All right let's get on this guys just like we need we've got a few more to go let's go I'm not gonna keep you all along just wanna know just wanna stretch your mind a bit this morning. Right okay let's go down here. Most of us are living the dream living that is the dream we once had for ourselves. Oh my god I actually spoke with my friend in the day. After weekend drinking like right mate we're all thinking boys who's still feeling a bit of thing like yeah I'm still feeling it.
Speaker 1:I was like do you know what's funny Sean? I sent him a voice note. When we were in uni together, we were 21 19 years old, we had no money. We had no idea where we're going in life. We lived in shitty accommodation and we go out and drink.
Speaker 1:The next day, we wouldn't feel down, down because of hangover. We'd we'd knock her off and go back out later on the day. And we had nothing. The only thing we had is that going out. I went zero else going for us.
Speaker 1:We didn't know where we were going. Today, look at us. I said you, you got a new house Sean, bought a house with girlfriend, got a job you've always wanted. I'm in London in a flat, loving it, working on a business I love, another business I love. Yet the alcohol can make us feel so down worse than we were back then when we had nothing.
Speaker 1:So we have to remember how far we come because we tend to that's tough now. Hey, go and ask your go and ask your 21 year old self if you've been happy where you are now. Likelihood is they would say yes. So we do need a reminder of that because otherwise we take everything for granted all the time. We got a fifty, sixty, 70, 80 and we go, oh, I never took it.
Speaker 1:I never made a most of that. And you look back you go, why waste? What's that quote? The youth is wasted on the young, is it? Is that the quote?
Speaker 1:You you wanna connect the wisdom of the old with the youth. We have to connect it okay. If we can connect that you are a superhuman. The problem is the youth think they know everything the older are obviously older and they would love to be younger with the wisdom. They're trying to pass it down and no one's listening and it's just all nonsense.
Speaker 1:We're trying to get people to listen and I'm trying to get you all to listen. I'm trying to get it through to me, get it through to you, but we are living our dream life that we we were thinking earlier. So we remember that. We remember what we're grateful for. We'll have better days.
Speaker 1:Remember that. Right. Okay. That was open. That was open.
Speaker 1:My system. Okay. One more to go. Okay. What's the one here?
Speaker 1:Okay. The problem is the bad men obey their lusts as servants obey their masters and because they cannot control their desires they can never find contentment. True. True. People just hate Guys, we don't let your emotions control you.
Speaker 1:Do not let them control you. Okay, one more I wanna give you guys. There's a lot of good ones here. Our goal should therefore be to become indifferent to other people's opinions of us. He adds that if we succeed in doing this we will improve the quality of our life.
Speaker 1:And this is another one as a psychologist called Adler who talks about interpersonal relationships everything I think he's right as well. If we're not chasing other people to like us and opinions and forcing that we're gonna be happier. There's a thing about people pleasing. I never saw this way of looking at people pleasing until I read his book called The Naked Truth. And he said that the people pleases, you think it's nice people.
Speaker 1:But what people pleases are doing is they're trying to force people to like them and to just to to like them and fall for them in a sense by going over the top and just doing nice they're basically manipulating someone with goodwill so they would % like them back and therefore they control how they view that person. Okay? And we do this a lot because we want certain opinions to think of us. But look, there's a call I saw as well. It's like, if there's two people in the room, there's actually six people.
Speaker 1:There's who you think you are, who they think they are. It's your perception of them, their perception of you. And it's your perception of the perception of you. Right? If that's blow your mind, good.
Speaker 1:But we live in perception Lulu land, who you think you are, I don't think nobody knows who you think you are. Nobody knows the version of you that you are probably and that's what Bruce Lee was saying he said self actualization is when who you truly are shines through so much everybody sees that as opposed to the perception and images you put forward. And this is where we want the opinions to change. We want to do stuff so we think that someone will think this way. It's just so many assumptions.
Speaker 1:If I do this they'll think that, they think that, that, that, and I get that, that. And then but deep down you don't wanna do any of it. None of it. And all for because you want someone's opinion of you to be good. Who cares?
Speaker 1:Honestly, older people literally do not care that's why they embarrass you when you go to school as kids they just don't they've literally they realize it doesn't matter but it's such a shame because if you had that mindset when younger it would be superpower, it would be a superpower. So I want you all today don't let other people's opinions bother you. They think, if they think you're an ob, retwat, whatever the word you need is let them. Okay, if you know you're doing good, you know you're a good person, know you're doing anything wrong and they're just playing in place, can say to them, you know, you can say straight up, you know, thanks for your opinion, but whatever, move on. Okay?
Speaker 1:Don't react, don't get angry, but don't change who you are for someone to like you. Someone you want people to like you for who you are, and of course we should devolve and develop as humans, of course we should do that, we should want to improve ourselves but we shouldn't force to change to someone we're not just for someone to say I like you. You're good bit nah, we shouldn't do that, that's when you're a slave, you're a slave to other people and if you're a slave to other people that's no good, that's like the same as being a slave back in the day, yeah you might have been physically saved but you're not mentally slaved, right, and the author Edith Egg I think her name is who wrote the gift says that meant the slave that mental jail is worse than the physical jail. She went to Auschwitz and she says it's literally worse that mental prison is worse than Auschwitz Okay? So if she's saying that we have to take that seriously again this is the old wisdom trying to creep through to us and anyone listening whatever it doesn't matter, you have to accept it and really take it seriously because if you're not taking it seriously I don't know what to say to you.
Speaker 1:If listen to this podcast, I'm not taking these things seriously. Don't know what to say. So today, what's your task? Your task is not let opinions get to you. Your task is maybe to look into stoicism.
Speaker 1:Again, go and listen to some audio books on it. Get you know, there's a lot to go on. There's a lot of books about it. There's a lot of books about it. And realize, and I want you all to just do this exercise right now, then I'm gonna leave you go.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna say the first quote again. At spare moments today make it a point to contemplate the loss of whatever you value in your life right now. It can make you realize if only for a time or a moment or a second how lucky you are, how much you have to be thankful for almost regardless of your circumstances. I want you to do that right now and then go and enjoy the day with a smile on your face. There's a lot to be grateful for so go and live your day.
Speaker 1:Enjoy it. Live one day at a time. And if you can maximize today, guess what? You maximize tomorrow and the day after. Happy days.
Speaker 1:But I'll be back tomorrow with another voice note, and I'll bitch about Ibiza Skalt again. No doubt. Adios. And that is it for today's episode. So hopefully you took something away from it.
Speaker 1:If you didn't, here's what you need to take away. Stop wasting time on social media. Stop wasting time gossiping. You've only got a day to live. Today's the only day you ever have.
Speaker 1:So if there's anything to take away from this podcast, even if you can't understand the word I say, even if you didn't resonate with the wisdom I try to deliver, this is a reminder of you daily to live one day at a time. Give your moments meaning today and don't be fooled by thinking you've got unlimited amount of days but if you can make the most of today I'm telling you you'll have a fulfilled life so enjoy your day and hopefully I'll see you back tomorrow. Do daily to live one day at a time. Give your moments meaning today and don't be fooled by thinking you've got unlimited amount of days. But if you can make the most of today, I'm telling you, you'll have a fulfilled life.
Speaker 1:So enjoy your day and hopefully, I'll see you back tomorrow.
