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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life.

On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives.

Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

Try to see the world this way.

After serving as an officer in Vietnam, Paul Woodruff decided to dedicate his life to teaching and writing about philosophy.

He's been a professor at the University of Texas at Austin since 1973.

He's written half a dozen books.

He's translated the works of Plato, Thucydides, Sophocles, and Euripides.

And as it happens, it all started when he discovered Marcus Aurelius as a teenager after he was given a copy of Meditations.

Professor Woodruff told this story beautifully on the Daily Stoic Podcast recently, and more helpful he explained how he has applied what he's learned ever since.

What I find most helpful from Marcus Aurelius is something I still frequently apply in my own life he told me.

And he used a slightly humorous example to explain.

I love bird watching, and I have a bird feeder.

And for a while, I found myself getting angry at the squirrels that would try to steal bird seed from the feeder.

And I know many bird lovers who are just fuming with anger at squirrels.

And I thought about this, and I said to myself, you know, I'm actually very closely related to squirrels, their mammals, maybe what they need to get food.

Everything they're doing is entirely natural to them.

And as Marcus Aurelius says, it's inappropriate to be angry at anyone for doing what's natural for them to do.

And of course, it's natural for the squirrels to do this.

So instead of being angry at them, I should just order a little more bird seed, which I did.

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