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

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

You made that up. If you don't answer this call, you could lose your job. If you keep passing on these opportunities,

you could get passed over in your career. If you miss this flight, the vacation could be ruined.

If you let your employees do that, they'll think you're a pushover. In the course of a day,

we make hundreds and thousands of assumptions. We rely on causal links, if this, then that, if not this, then that,

that while rarely spelled out explicitly, they cause us worry and concern. The problem is,

most of this logic is spurious at best. Most of these assumptions are faulty. We're just making

them up, even though they make us miserable.

And this is why the use of reason, as well as reflection, was so important to the Stoics.

Because in pausing and examining, we find that much of our anxiety, much of our franticness, much of our suffering,

is self-inflicted and totally unnecessary. One missed

meeting or a phone call or an opportunity is not going to determine the future of your life.

Sometimes you have travel difficulties. That's just how it goes. Your employees don't think you're a

pushover and probably appreciate what you did for them. So what is real in these moments? What are you

making up? Stop extrapolating.

Stop adding in the lens of anxiety. Stop putting your worries and stress and assumptions on it.

And when you remove these self-inflicted and likely incorrect assumptions, you're able to face

whatever comes with the right reaction.

You know what silently kills sales teams? The inability to see what's happening in their pipeline.

And part of the reason they can't do that is because they use software or CRM that's so complicated that people don't even log in.

I do this all the time.

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