Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues,

courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

Hey, it's Ryan. Hope you are well. I am just working on my talk. I'm going to be given a talk in

San Francisco and Portland in mid-June. I'd love to see you there. You can grab tickets at daily stoiclive.com. If you're not on the West Coast, you want to see me in the Midwest or on the East Coast. Tickets are up. Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit, Boston, D.C. I'm forgetting another one. And then I'm going to be in Australia in October as well.

All those tickets at DailyStoeclive.com.

What you need is a small crisis. It was one thing after another for Mark Cyrillus. Floods and famines, wars and

coups, disorder and destruction, matters of life and death. These crises are instructive,

naturally, and more specifically, opportunities for virtue. But they are also in their

overwhelming and tragic nature, often much more than

we need for those purposes. No one would choose something like that. No one would choose to go through

what Zelensky has gone through or Churchill or to trade places with Queen Elizabeth during

her anise horribilis. What is valuable, however, are those small crises,

those wake-up calls, those close calls. It's these situations that are significant but hardly

mortal that can make us focus, that can drive creativity and connection and clarity. They are

serious, so we have to get serious.

They are challenging and challenge us to rise up and meet them.

They can make us better if we insist on it.

In the moment, they may seem like they are great,

greater than we can imagine,

and yes, we might lose some things in the process.

Yes, there might be some consequences. But in the grand scheme of things, we might lose some things in the process. Yes, there might be some consequences.

But in the grand scheme of things, we are alive, and that was never really in doubt. And if we are

...