Do You Practice For Rejection? | A Little Knowledge Is Dangerous
The Daily Stoic
Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures
4.5 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 14 July 2023
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Part of the reason we’re afraid of things is that we’re unfamiliar. We don’t know what it’s like to bomb on stage in front of people, but it seems bad–so we avoid any scenario where something like that might happen. We’ve been turned down or blown off once or twice, asking someone out, asking for help, and it was unpleasant enough that we decided we did not want to explore those feelings any further. We don’t know, or don’t remember what it’s like to be living paycheck-to-paycheck anymore…so we make our financial decisions accordingly.
The result is that this uncertainty, this unfamiliar looms large in our lives. It makes us conservative. It makes us keep to ourselves. It makes us struggle alone by ourselves. It turns us away from potential opportunities–to meet someone new, to do something cool, to start our own thing.
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And in today's excerpt from The Daily Stoic, Ryan discusses how the Stoic's advocated holding a sense of responsibility when choosing what information to consume, and why this is increasingly vital in today's media-saturated world.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our |
| 0:08.8 | daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the Daily Stoic. My book, 366 Meditations |
| 0:15.4 | on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Heart of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, |
| 0:21.0 | translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation |
| 0:26.4 | from the Stoics with some analysis from me and then we'll send you out into the world to |
| 0:31.5 | turn these words into works. |
| 0:44.3 | In Richard III and In Othello, Shakespeare has two different characters utter the same line. |
| 0:50.9 | Both Iago and a nameless orphan say, I cannot think it. In both cases, the news they are faced |
| 0:58.7 | with, the conclusion they are being asked to accept is simply too much. The Shakespearean |
| 1:06.2 | scholar Richard Greenblatt calls this phrase a kind of motto for those who can't wrap their |
| 1:12.2 | mind around perfidy. He's not being condescending for its a very common experience. Our naivete |
| 1:20.2 | are willingness to assume the best about others often leaves us open to betrayal and disillusionment, |
| 1:27.3 | which is why the Stoics spend so much time on this very topic. Marcus, for his part, opens |
| 1:34.7 | meditations with some using on the reality of the types of people he's going to meet in the days to come. |
| 1:41.6 | But later, in meditations, he speaks about the kind of behavior you see in the boxing ring, |
| 1:47.4 | gouging, headbutting, and low blows. We see this all the time in the sports world as a matter of fact. |
| 1:53.0 | And a felignman who grease up their jerseys so they can't be grabbed, in NASCAR they'll have to say |
| 1:58.3 | rubbin is racing, and there's the old saying, if you're not cheating, you're not trying hard enough. |
| 2:04.8 | You have to anticipate this kind of behavior, Marcus says. You can't take it personally. |
| 2:11.2 | He talks about the inevitability of bumping up against shameless people and how to handle it. |
| 2:16.6 | He spends time putting himself in the minds of tyrants, robbers, and perverts. Again, because |
| 2:22.4 | these types exist and we must not be surprised or abused by them. When Sennaka was sentenced to death |
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