Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient

wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom, everyday life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old

philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest

men and women.

For more, you can visit us, Dailystone.com.

Do you have this ability? A leader is a doer, but that doesn't mean they're always doing.

In fact, if a leader is always doing, chances are they'll end up doing the wrong thing,

because they haven't taken enough time to think, to study, to question, and prepare. In Thomas Rix's wonderful book,

Waging a Good War, which he also discussed on a great episode of the Daily Stowe podcast recently,

Rix looks at what made Bob Moses one of the best yet lesser

known civil rights leaders. Moses was calm and quiet. He didn't seek out the

spotlight. He did not make decisions out of emotion. Instead, Rix says, quoting a colleague of Moses,

he had the capacity for reflection and distance from the thing you are very much in the midst of and even leading.

Rix goes on to say that the ability to gain psychological detachment to

reflect on action is a talent of many effective leaders.

James Mattis, he says one of the best American generals in our

recent wars made a habit of carrying in his combat knapsack a copy of the works of

Marcus Aurelius and reading that Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher for a half hour at night, he explained,

helped him gain some mental distance from the battlefield.

Of course, Marcus Aurelius himself had this ability and that's what created meditations in the first place.

Marcus was taking time to think and reflect to distance himself from the very battlefield he was writing from in his tent. All leaders need to be able to do this.

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