Transcription
Obviously, I can't predict the future, but I'm pretty confident in predicting that the next four years are going to be crazy. I don't think you can find a four-year period in history that wasn't filled with chaos and upheaval and uncertainty.
We're five weeks into the year, and there's already been horrendous wildfires, an ongoing pandemic bird flu thing, earthquakes, and wars ravaging all over the world. My kids have already gotten sick; I've already gotten sick. So the question then for us, as Stoics, as citizens, as human beings, is not how do we avoid these challenges, but how to prepare—not with panic and paranoia or some sort of escape plan, but with some practical, timeless ideas that the Stoics, by the way, tested in crises and circumstances both very different and very much the same as ours. And how these strategies can help us with our turbulent times, just as they have helped people in turbulent times throughout history.
For starters, you know what I'm doing? I'm focusing on what I can control. Epictetus, who was a slave in the Roman Empire who experienced exile and torture and about every other form of difficulty you can imagine, said that our chief task in life is to separate things into two categories: what's up to us and what isn't up to us. We have to get clarity on what's up to us and what isn't up to us. So, like a way to think about this: what Putin does, inflation, tariffs, my mother's health, the weather—none of that is up to me. But you know what is up to me? My attitude, my emotions, my wants, my desires, my focus, my response to all those things; what those other people do and say; the consequences of what they do and say; how I respond to that—that is up to me. Who I am is up to me. So that's what I'm focusing on, and that's what the Stoics want us to focus on.
One of the things I'm doing is I'm reading old books. I'm reading old books instead of watching the news. As I was saying, if you want to understand the next four years, just try to understand any four-year period in history. If you want to understand current events, often the best way to do that is not via breaking news; it's to find a book about a similar event in the past. Read history, read psychology, read biographies. Go for information that has a long half-life, that's not going to be contradicted in the next week by the next scientific breakthrough, by the next bit of investigative reporting. That's something I think the Stoics are really good at. The Stoics have endured for 2,000 years, so the chances that they're going to become irrelevant in 2026, suddenly disproven, is very unlikely. The chances that the insights that Epictetus uncovered about the human condition in torture, or that Marcus Aurelius discovered about power and fame and success—it's very unlikely that by 2028, none of that is going to hold up. And so while I do think 2025 is going to be crazy and weird and tough, probably not any more than 1925, or the year 25 AD, or the year 125 AD, or the year 165 AD when Marcus becomes Emperor. And what this means is there are lots of books, lots of ideas, lots of history that can help us with what lies ahead, because it'll rhyme with what lies behind. This is something Churchill talked about as war was breaking out in Europe; he was working on this big epic history. He said it's helpful sometimes to put a couple thousand years between you and the present moment; it gives us perspective, it gives us clarity, and it also gives us wisdom about this moment. So, whether we're navigating personal trials or upheavals or moments of great success and abundance, books are one of the most reliable tools that we have to help us prepare for that, help us handle that.
I remember I interviewed Morgan Housel here when we were doing the Daily Stoic podcast, and he said something like he thinks back ten years ago, he can't really remember any articles, any news reports he heard from that time, but he can remember a lot of books that he read from that period. Those books had ideas that helped him over that ten-year period. And I think that's true for the books that you can read now, and that's why I'm reading more books than I am consuming the news. I just did a video about some books that I think you should read: read Viktor Frankl, read Taylor Branch's series on Martin Luther King, read the Stoics, read fiction, read great epic novels, reread the Odyssey, read The Iliad, read Stockdale's *Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot*. I've been reading that recently. Anyways, you can check out my other video if you want some book recommendations, or get the reading list newsletter where you can watch the books that I'm reading every month, not just this year, but for the next four years.
One thing I'm trying to remind myself of is what my job is, because things aren't going to go the way that I want them to go. There's going to be uncertainty and upheaval and unfairness, as we were saying. But when the dust settles, like after a crisis, after a setback, in the middle of disappointment, as you're reacting to what's happening, as you're speculating and wondering, you're going to be thinking, like, "You know what happens next? Or what if it gets worse?" And while these are important questions, I think for the most part it doesn't change what's expected of you. One of the things Marcus Aurelius says—you know, how does this stop you? He says, like, how does anything stop you from acting with courage and justice and discipline and wisdom? His point was that was your job. He said your job is to be a good person, like no matter what happens—good or bad, fair or unfair, whether there's order or disorder—our job is the same. It doesn't matter who's president; it doesn't matter if they're being a good president or a bad president; it doesn't matter if the economy is good or bad; it doesn't matter if unemployment is high or low; it doesn't matter if you are employed or unemployed. Your job, your most important job, is still your job. Your obligation is still your obligation. And Marcus really said that that job—he says what anyone says or does—I'm bound to the good. He said, "I'm like an emerald; my job is to show my true colors, to be an emerald." And he was saying that that's what our job is. But at the most basic level, though, right, like we do have certain obligations in our professions. Maybe we swore an oath; maybe there's a code of conduct; maybe there's a set of standards, like if you're a journalist or a doctor or a lawyer. And we have to understand that again, what anyone says or does, whether this behavior is celebrated or punished, criticized or appreciated, our job is to do our job. There's a Stoic named Helvidius, and the Emperor Vespasian sort of warns him to stop speaking out, and that if he didn't, he said he'd be removed from the Senate. And Helvidius looks at him and he says, "Look, it might be in your power to allow me to be a member of the Senate or not, but as long as I am in the Senate, I have to be a senator; I have to do my job." And Vespasian says, "I don't think you understand; if you do that, I will put you to death." And Helvidius looks at him and he says, "Look, you do your part, and I'll do mine." Our job is to do our job, which is to be good, and then also to do the thing we were trained to do, to do the thing that we know is important, as meaningful, that we promised to do when we took up this responsibility. And so like the consequences, the recognition, the pay—all that can change, but the duty remains. The duty remains. That's what a Stoic would say. No matter what happens these next four years.
I'm trying to look for the helpers. There's a Mr. Rogers quote that I love: he says, you know, when he was a boy and he was scared, there were scary things on the news, that his mother would always say to him, "Look for the helpers; you will always find people who are helping." And when you watch a major American city get destroyed by wildfires, you can choose to focus on what awful people are saying and doing online; you can look at the incompetence of our politicians; or you could focus on the people flying those planes. You could think of the prisoners who, despite their lives and despite their existence, are putting it on the line to stop the fires, to help people whose houses they would never be able to live in. You can focus on the people who are trying to make a positive difference. You can focus on the chaos or the dysfunction and the selfishness and the awfulness, and that will make you cynical and that will make you despair. But if you look for the people who are stepping up, you'll find them everywhere: the doctors and nurses working through exhaustion in the middle of a pandemic; the neighbor who mows the lawn of a family they know is struggling. These are the things that restore your faith in humanity. And I'm not saying you just sit on the sidelines and go, "Other people are handling it." No, the idea is to not take comfort from these helpers, but to take inspiration and obligation from them.
I'm keeping a journal, as I always have, because in keeping a journal, it keeps me… you know, the Stoics, they lived in turbulent, chaotic, dysfunctional times. There was Nero and Domitian and Claudius; there was Commodus who came after Marcus Aurelius. I think it's an interesting question: how did they stay clearheaded and principled? How do they not lose their minds? And the answer to that is hard work, and the place they did that work, the place—one writer would say the stockade where they waged their spiritual combat—was on the pages of their journal. That's where they got perspective; that's where they shook off misinformation and noise; it's where they sort of boiled things down into truth; it's where they fought for control of the greatest empire—like themselves. Marcus Aurelius is fighting to be the person that philosophy tried to make him, and where is he doing that? He's doing that in *Meditations*. *Meditations* is the byproduct of Marcus Aurelius writing a journal in a chaotic period, a period as chaotic as the one we're in now, one that made as little sense to him as this one might make to you. But he used the pages of the journal to help it make sense. Orwell said that, you know, "To see what's in front of your nose needs a constant struggle." He was talking about totalitarianism and authoritarianism and state control in the 20th century, but he actually said that a journal was something that helps towards that. He said to keep a record of what you're thinking, of what's happening; it's something you can hold fast to that can help you make sense; it can even help you hold yourself accountable to your own opinions. And I guess what I'm saying is that if you're not examining your mind, who is? If you're not dumping your frustrations out on the pages, like, who are you dumping them on? If you're not using a journal to gain self-awareness, to cut through all that noise, how are you going to see what's in front of you? And you have to do that. You can use the Daily Stoic journal, for instance—this is mine; it has a little leather cover—and it's a reminder: make time. I want to make time every day; I want to sit down with some questions; I want to sit down and create some distance between me and the present moment, root myself in deeper principles, bigger ideas, go to clarity. And a journal is something you've got to be doing in this day and age.
One of the things I am doing is using my platform to support what I think's important. I have a platform; Daily Stoic reaches millions of people; the Daily Dad email reaches hundreds of thousands of people every single day; Daily Stoic email goes out to a million people every single day; our videos do millions of views; we have millions of social media followers. That's a responsibility. And I have a little notecard next to my desk, and it says, "Am I being a good steward of Stoicism?" And with whatever success or reach or influence you have, you have to ask yourself, how are you using it? Are you amplifying ideas and voices and causes that matter, or are you sitting on the sidelines because you don't want to offend anyone, or you don't want to lose money, or are you saying stuff that you don't really believe in, or you know is probably not good for the world, but it gets a lot of clicks? I know way too many podcasters will just have anyone on their show, even if their ideas are toxic or ridiculous, or that person's just a monster in their private life, done really shitty things. And they do this because they know controversy drives views and downloads. And I've just decided, like, that's not who I want to be. And there's a Soulja Boy quote that I think of often: he says, "Look, there's always going to be evil and awfulness and stupidity in the world," and he says, "But we have the power to say, 'Not through me.'" We choose what we propagate, what we are a conduit through or for. So I make a decision that costs me money: that I don't give a megaphone to trolls or conspiracy theorists or bad actors or people that I don't respect. If I don't respect them, if I don't think their work is good, if I don't think they're making a positive difference in the world, I don't care how much engagement that episode is going to do; I don't care how many views it's going to do. I can't control that; they're not going to just immediately go on some other bigger show, right? I don't control that, but I do control whether it comes through me. And so I guess the question, as you think about who you're going to be over this period, is like, what are you valuing? Are you valuing attention? Are you valuing reactions? Are you valuing money? Or are you valuing being a positive difference-maker? And so look, we don't control what other people spread and say, but we can say, "Not through me." And better yet, if everyone sat down and said, "Hey, I want to put good stuff out there; I want to do helpful and essential stuff; I want to make a positive difference," well, we'd live in a very different world.
Another thing I'm doing is I'm focusing on the things that don't change. In a very famous letter Jeff Bezos wrote to the shareholders of Amazon way back in 1997, he said that he was going to be focusing on the things that don't change; that's how they were going to measure success at Amazon; they were thinking for the long term. The problem is so often we are chasing what's new, what's popular, what's trendy, what everyone is talking about right now, in this very moment. And there's always pressure, and there's always temptation to do that. But what Bezos understood is that for the most part, what customers want and how they want it—that doesn't change. The more you focus on the things that don't change rather than the trends of the moment, the better off you're going to be. So again, this goes to the idea of not following the news, but it also goes to not following what everyone else is doing. Seneca's idea of *eudaimonia*, about being on the path that you're on, not being distracted by the path that crisscrosses yours—this is that I want to be going in this direction, provided that this is a good long-term direction, not "I'm chasing this until it runs out," that I'm chasing that. No, you're going to get distracted; you're going to get worn down; and chances are you're going to be putting time and energy into things that are going to become irrelevant or insignificant as time goes on. That's one of the benefits of talking about an ancient philosophy that's 2,000 years old: it's probably going to still be relevant a couple of years from now, even potentially a couple of centuries from now. I guess what I'm saying is a lot of people are going to spend the next four years fixated on fads and trends and minor gaffes and controversies and outrages. But how many of those things are still going to matter in five or ten or fifty years? And the truth is, the things that really do matter—you know, character and discipline and patience, the value of hard work, making things that are of value to people—these are going to be constants. Treating people well, demanding the best of yourself, getting to the core problems that human beings have, the sort of core myths and arcs of the human experience—that's what you want to root your art in; that's what you want to root your products in; that's the kind of thing you want to make. And this is going to be important and valuable two months from now, two years from now, twenty years from now. Doesn't matter who's in office; it doesn't matter what's happening technologically. I try to structure my life around those things; that's what I try to focus on, and it's what I try to tackle in my writing and in my videos.
Here's something that I think stands a test of time that I'm working on: I want to treat people well. I don't control the cruelty in the world; I don't control how others act; I don't care how unfair or thoughtless or selfish most people are or are being in this moment. But I can control how I run my team; I control whether I show up for my family; I control how I treat strangers. The world is always going to have its share of rude people and dishonest people and indifferent people. I mean, look, Marcus opens *Meditations* with this, like, talk about things that don't change. He opens Book Two of *Meditations* by saying, "The people I will deal with today are going to be meddling and ungrateful and arrogant and dishonest and jealous and surly." He's like, "This is what people are going to be; this is the way they always have been." We don't control that, but we control whether we're like them. He says we control whether we let them implicate us in their ugliness; we don't have to contribute to it; we can be kind and patient and fair. This is something that's always in my control. That's one of the wonderful things about being an entrepreneur, but also about being a consumer: you decide what you're going to do with your wallet; you decide how you're going to run your business; you decide your policies; I decide what vendors I use for the things we make for Daily Stoic; I control what companies I do business with; I control the benefits that I offer; I control, you know, my tone of voice; I control my stuff. And we should focus on treating people well. This is where we can have a positive impact in a world where we feel powerless and despondent.
One of the things we can do is contribute to our communities. You know, America, like communities all over the world, have been hollowed out. There's big box stores, and you know, digital replaces physical. So much of modern success, I feel like, is subtractive; it's about extracting and optimizing and doing more with less. And I made a decision about five years ago, right at the beginning of the pandemic, to do the opposite. In 2021, my wife and I were sitting at a diner across the street from this building right here, in this little town we live in, and we had a crazy idea to open a bookstore, which we did in the teeth of a pandemic. We understood that community, that physical stuff, was important. You know, the majority of my book sales, videos, podcast—this is all… it's all wonderful that I can reach millions of people, but there's something not tactile, something not human about it. And bookstores are important. Stoicism is founded in the Athenian Agora, when Zeno, destitute and broken, he's lost everything, he's walking through the Agora, and he chances upon a bookseller, and the book that he finds there changes the course of his life. And that's why we dumped a good chunk of our life savings into building out this bookstore. It's why we have a… we could have a remote company with people all over the world; be cheaper to have freelancers. But instead, we have an office where people come together, and the team works together and helps each other and gets to know each other. And community is important. You can sit back and wait for someone else to make the community you want to live in, or you can contribute to that community; you can make that… We have a little grocery store up the street called Tracy's Drive-In that's been in business since the '40s, and if we hadn't bought it, it probably would have gone out of business. So I just think about how to cultivate community, how to contribute to your community. And you don't have to do that as an entrepreneur; you can show up at a city council meeting; you can participate in a parade; you can talk to someone on the street; you can get to know your neighbor; you can start a book club. Like, how can you cultivate community where human beings are coming together, talking to each other, doing things together? That's an essential part of rebuilding—not just the economy, not just middle America and sort of destitute communities all over the world—but also rebuilding the bonds that connect human beings, the fraying of which is responsible for so much of the dysfunction and polarization that we currently have.
I'm trying to have fewer opinions. Marcus Aurelius reminds us that we always have the power to have no opinion; that we don't have to turn this or that into something; that we don't have to let this or that upset us; that things are not asking to be judged by us. He writes in *Meditations*, in this world that we are living in, where we have an… we have access to an overwhelming amount of information, and we also can see what so many people are doing who otherwise would be strangers or unknown to us, we just have too many opinions. We have opinions about people's relationships, how they live their lives, what they do in their own bedrooms, about scandals—none of this is our business, and we need to have fewer opinions. I'm trying to have fewer opinions about what my kids like or dislike, how their room looks or doesn't look. I try to… you know that expression about not yucking other people's yums? That's that same idea: just have less opinions; you'll get along with people better; you will be happier. So what if somebody's a vegetarian or whatever, right? Let them be who they want to be; let them do what they want to do. Things are not asking to be judged by you, as Marcus said; leave them alone. Especially because so many of our opinions are negative; they're making us miserable. We have to remember it's not things that upset us, as Epictetus said, it's our opinions about things. And when you have fewer opinions, particularly about other people and things outside your control, not only will you be happier and nicer, but it frees you up to have opinions about the things that actually matter. I'm not saying we should be totally disconnected; we should not care; oh, live and let live, when someone's doing something deeply harmful or violent or unjust. My point is that if you have fewer opinions about TV shows or celebrity scandals, you can have better, more well-informed opinions and more energy to right that wrong about the things that actually matter. If we're spending our energy having opinions about every trivial annoyance, we're just not going to have anything left for the things that matter.
I'm trying to help the starfish. Do you know that story? There's a story about a little boy coming to the beach one morning after a big storm, and there's thousands of starfish washed up along the beach, and he starts to throw them back into the ocean. And this adult, you know, this adult who knows better, comes up and he says, "You know, you're never going to make a difference; what are you doing? This doesn't matter." And as the little boy throws another starfish in, he says, "It matters to that starfish." There's a great line in Milan Kundera's book, *The Unbearable Lightness of Being*, where this woman—they're living in a time of Communism and repression—she tells her husband that she thinks it's more important to dig a half-buried crow out of the ground than send petitions to the president. And look, of course politics matter, but I think so often we focus on national or global politics instead of how we can make a difference—not just even like in our small towns, but like, we're passing litter by the side of the road; we're not trying to catch that dog that we see running by the side of the road that probably belongs to someone; we're not asking someone who looks like they're struggling or in pain what they need. There's a story about Cleanthes; he's walking through Rome and he sees this man sort of beating himself up, and he just stops him and he says, "You're not talking to a bad person." That act of human-to-human kindness, that's a blow against the Nero of the world. That's how you fight back against the cruelty of right-wing trolls on the internet—but not by owning them and arguing with them, but by doing the opposite to real people in real life. We sometimes think of these grand solutions or sweeping reforms or, you know, landing this enormous blow against some awful cause. But really, no change is possible without these smaller things, without these first steps, these first acts. You know, when Zeno said that well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing—the same is true for change; the same is true for community; the same is true for remaking and improving the world. So I'm trying to think about the little differences that I can make, the real differences for real people, right here: the burdens I can ease, the kindness I can extend. And part of that means deciding not to become cynical. That story about the boy and the starfish—that cynical adult was saying, "It doesn't matter; why bother?" In *Courage Is Calling*, I quote General Mattis; he has this great line: he says, you know, "Cynicism is cowardice." It takes courage to care, to try to help that half-dead crow in the road, to throw the starfish back in the water, to be nice, to try to do something even though you're overwhelmed and the odds are against you, to believe, to be earnest when everyone else is full of doubt and cynicism. You know, as they say, losers have always gotten together in little groups and talked about winners, and the hopeless have always mocked the hopeful, and the nihilists have always tried to tell us that nothing matters. But it does matter, and you can make a difference, and you have to earnestly and sincerely believe that.
Obviously, we have multiple jobs, right? And one of the jobs I'm trying to do well is raise my kids well. I might be disgusted with how other people are behaving; I might be disappointed in the world; and I might despair at my ability to sort of impact, shape the future. But I have the opportunity to have multi-generational impact in my own home. Like, I think about the way that my life is shaped by choices that my father made, things that he taught me, and then things that he should have done and didn't do. And I think about how his father shaped him; I think about how on a daily basis my life is shaped by things that my grandfather did, and on and on, right? This is our chance for multi-generational impact. And one of my favorite things to do is I write the Daily Dad email; I do the Daily Stoic, and we also do Daily Dad; we do videos, and I write this sort of bit of parenting wisdom every day, drawn from history and science and literature, ordinary people, to sort of pass along a parenting lesson every day. It goes out to almost 100,000 people all over the world, but mostly I'm doing the Daily Dad for myself, 'cause I'm always researching and writing and collecting ideas on how I can be better at what is really my most important job, 'cause I want to be more patient; I want to set a good example; I want to help my kids become what they're meant to become. And that's something I don't control completely, but it's somewhere where I have a lot of influence, right? And raising our kids is one of the most important things we'll ever do, and yet how many people just trust their gut? They just kind of go along; they're so caught up in the day-to-day of it; they're not consciously trying to do what they can do. And so I try to study it, the way that I study philosophy or history or business, 'cause I want to do it well. If you are frustrated with the direction of your country, of the world, of your neighborhood, of so many things, right, and you could feel that for a variety of reasons, well, one place you can direct that is in your own home. It starts at home. So raise your kids right; raise your kids to make a difference.
I'm not letting them get me. I'm not letting the sons of bitches, I'm not letting the assholes turn me into a son of a bitch, turn me into an asshole. I'm not letting cynical people make me cynical; I'm not letting insane people make me insane. In some ways, I think this is kind of the hardest task in the world right now: to not let them make you like them; to not let cruelty harden you; to not let stupidity make you bitter; to not let outrage pull you down. You know, Marcus really says that the best revenge is to not be like that, to not be like them. And so while I, you know, I'm genuinely disappointed, not just in the world, but in like people I know, people I love, people I thought I respected—what they're doing and saying and thinking—it… it's not good. Instead of focusing on that, instead of trying to change them, which I have less impact and control over, I'm focused on not following suit, not getting dragged down. As Epictetus said, the whole point of being a philosopher is to not be part of the mob, to be above, to hold yourself to a higher standard, to not be corrupted and corroded by the time you are living in. And we live in one of those times, and we have to do the work to not be sucked into it.
I'm doing difficult things. I got up early this morning, even though I didn't want to. I got in Barton Springs, even though it was cold, even though it was pouring rain, even though I knew that my stuff was getting wet and I'd have trouble drying off afterwards, but I did it because doing hard things is good for you. I got in my cold plunge yesterday for the same reason. And by the way, doing the cold plunge yesterday made doing the swim this morning easier; it made writing this morning easier; it made doing this video easier. The Stoics talk a lot about kind of keeping yourself in fighting shape—not for appearance's sake—but they understood that life was a battle. Marcus talks about being like a wrestler who's dug in for sudden attacks. They trained in boxing because it both made them stronger and it was a metaphor. Like, when we're not feeling good, we don't act good. A person who's disgusted with themselves is going to have less patience for other people; a person who loses their breath easily, I think, is going to lose their temper and their courage or their self-control more easily. You know, I got in great shape during COVID; I tried to run and bike and walk every day; I covered thousands of miles, tens of thousands of miles, even. You know, as things kind of went back to normal, some of those habits waned a bit, and I've been trying to push myself more physically. We treat the body rigorously, Seneca said, so that it's not disobedient to the mind. You know, we keep these practices—physical, just like we keep the journaling practice—because it keeps us… it toughens us; gives us confidence in ourselves; it builds the meta-muscle that says, "I'm in charge; I can get through hard things; I can endure unpleasantness; I can endure things that take longer than expected." Never a bad time to get in shape. And by the way, this is one of the things Socrates said: he said, "No one is excused from keeping themselves in fighting shape." Right? He was talking about, you know, obviously being a man in Athens, being able to fight in the army, but he was saying also, "Don't you want to know what you're capable of?" Right? You only have one body; you're not going to see what it's capable of, what you're capable of, you got to do those hard things.
These days, I'm choosing to be philosophical. I don't mean in the sense that I'm reading a lot of Marcus Aurelius or Socrates or Seneca or whatever—I am; it's always good to read philosophy—but I mean it in the colloquial sense: to be philosophical. When we say someone's philosophical, what we mean is they see the big picture; they're calm; they have wisdom; they have perspective; they're above or outside what is misleading or overwhelming or confusing or manipulating other people. That's what it means to be philosophical. Like, think about how many bad leaders there have been throughout history; think about how many moments, eras, and epochs that were defined by chaos and dysfunction; how many societies felt like they lived at the end of the world, that the sky was falling. That's a constant thread throughout history, and of course that's what right now looks like and feels like, because it has always looked like and felt like this. Like, the 1960s were filled with war and assassinations and unrest. If you read Brian Burrows' *Days of Rage*, there's a crazy stat in there: in 1968, there was a flu epidemic and 2,000 terrorist bombings in the United States. It gives you perspective on this moment; gives you things to be grateful for; also gives you things to be aware of, to not be so sanguine about, because you know how bad it can get. The Great Depression was not fun; it wasn't fun to live through Watergate or the Six-Day War or the '73 oil crisis or the Cuban Missile Crisis. Imagine Montaigne in the Reformation, or imagine living through the Cultural Revolution or the Civil War—or any Civil War. This shit was scary; it was weird; it was confusing. But that's what history is; it's only the passage of time that turns down the volume on these moments, that reduces them to some passage in a book. Like, the fall of Rome must have felt like the end of the world, and yet the world went on; the Roman Empire went on after the fall for hundreds of years. I guess what I'm saying is like we don't choose whether we live in normal times or not; we do get to choose our attitude about these times, our perspective on these times. The Stoics remind us that history is cyclical, that chaos is the rule and not the exception, but also through reason, through courage, through discipline, through perspective, through wisdom and truth, we can rise above it. So that's what I am doing; that's how I am preparing and future-proofing myself for whatever the next four years, whatever the future, however long, brings us.
I want to focus on what's in my control; I'm doing the work; I'm not going to be broken by things beyond my power; I'm going to focus on what is in my power; I'm going to do my job; I'm going to contribute to my community; I'm going to try to make a small positive difference for the people I can. And I hope this video does some of that for you. Every day I send out one Stoic-inspired email, totally for free, to almost a million people all over the world. If you want to