Embracing Difficulty and Hard Work

Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world This is the most valuable thing They're all the things that wealthy people buy with their money They buy nice cars in enormous homes They stay in luxury hotels and fly on private aircraft They accessorize with jewels in high fashion pay for access They hire help There is one thing they cannot buy that indeed no one in Bae Centment It is interesting that for all the conspicuous consumption and competition between rich people One thing that is rare amongst them is equanimity the Stoics would have referred to as a good and well ordered life Oas the song we've been riffing on lately puts it A satisfied mind Tetus, an enslaved man had it. Nero, the emmperor did not Seneca, both a philosopher and an incredibly ambitious man. struggled after it ultimately finding that his power and money were hindrances in achieving it much like the proverbial camel through the eye of the needle If the rich cannot seem to possess this, does that not give us a sense of the value of this elusive state, this equanimity It is literally priceless cannot buy it can only earn it And you can only earn it by doing very difficult work by your daily reading and reflection. You do it by having hard conversations You do it by pushing yourself physically by questioning desires and passions. You do it by zooming out. You do it by questioning assumptions You do it through the training and practice of virtue You cannot inherit it You cannot have a personal shopper pick it out for you You cannot get it through your Ivy League tuition Both much cheaper and more expensive than that But again, In the end It's the most valuable thing in the world Customers don't want to wait around for a callback. They don't want to call three times. They don't like getting a message. They don't like not being able to get through to someone or do what they are trying to do, right? They're trying to book an appointment. They're looking for a quote. They just need a little help The point is if nobody answers, they're calling somebody else or they're going to forget about it. 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Start earning up to four point three percent variable APY today by heading over to wealthfront. com slash stic. Terms and conditions apply This has been a paid testimonial from a current wealth frront client, which creates a conflict of interest Client experiences will vary wealthfront brokerages not a bank Base APY is as of january thirtieth, twenty twenty six and subject to change. For more information, please see the episode description Hey, it's Ryan Hollidan. I hope you had a good fourth of July Let me read you a little entry from Seneca's Letters seventy six No one said it would be easy. peopleople, Seneca writes, will do what they find honorable to do even if it requires hard work. They'll do it even if it causes them injury. they'll do it even if it will bring danger Again, they won't do what they find base, even if it brings wealth, pleasure or power. Nothing will deter them from what is honorable. and nothing will lure them from what is baceed Doing good was easy, everyone would do it. And if doing bad wasn't tempting or attractive, nobody would do it The same goes for your duty, if anyone could do it been assigned to someone else But instead was assigned to you And thankfully, you are not like everyone You are not afraid of doing what is hard, you can resist superficially attractive rewards I gave a talk a couple of weeks ago and something I said. I was talking about how sort of hard the industry had been ravaged that these folks were in. We talked about the last couple years and how hard it had been and I said It's good. It's good that it's hard. Look if everyone could do this thing, it's selling a house or assessing risk for insurance, if it's beating the market, if it's, you know, delivering things from across the worldard, like if everyone could do the thing everyveryone would do it Right? And the fact that it's hard is what creates the margins of a business. like