This is The Math That Losers Do | What Virtue Is This Moment Asking of You?
The Daily Stoic
Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures
4.5 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2026
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The past is gone, and no amount of calculation will bring it back or make it fair. What we do have is agency right now.
🎥 Watch the video of today's episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1zgKBx93rY
👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/
🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast
✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail
🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/
📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, |
| 0:07.8 | courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. |
| 0:14.3 | This is the math that losers do. |
| 0:18.4 | You could be focused on what you're going to do about it. You could be focused on solutions. You could be thinking about forgiveness or patience or acceptance. Instead, you're thinking about who's to blame, making as the Noah Khan song goes, |
| 0:32.4 | making quiet calculations where the fall lies. Why are they like this? Why did they do it? Why didn't they listen? Why couldn't have things gone differently? |
| 0:42.3 | The better question is, what good is all this going to do you? It happened. It's done. It doesn't change your |
| 0:48.2 | responsibilities. Nothing is more pathetic, Marcus Ruelas writes in meditations than people who run around in circles |
| 0:54.6 | delving into the things that lie beneath and conducting investigations into the souls of the people |
| 1:00.1 | around them. He's saying that it's very easy to get distracted by putting other people on trial |
| 1:05.5 | and that this is a way to let yourself off the hook. We should instead focus on how we're going to |
| 1:10.6 | respond to this, how we're going to respond to this, |
| 1:11.4 | how we're going to, as the Seuix teaches, use this as an opportunity to practice virtue. |
| 1:16.8 | We can keep running the numbers, replaying the mistakes, a sign and fault, but the total never |
| 1:22.0 | changes. That type of math keeps us stuck in the past. The past is gone, and no amount of calculation will bring it back or make it fair. |
| 1:31.5 | What we have is agency right now. |
| 1:34.2 | We can choose to let it go, to move on, to move forward. |
| 1:37.5 | Agency doesn't exist in the past. |
| 1:40.1 | Only exists now. |
| 1:54.5 | We are just getting back from a trip, so the fridge is empty, and we were like, oh, man, we've got to go to the store, we're going to have for dinner tonight. |
| 1:56.9 | And then I realized, no, no, no, wait, Hello Fresh just came. |
| 1:59.7 | So we took the Hello Fresh meals out and we got to work. |
| 2:03.8 | We love Hello Fresh in our household because the meals are simple. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

