I
Was introduced to meditations I was about 19 years old, this is right before I dropped out of college I tore this book apart
It's what the economist Tyler Cowen would call a quake book
It shakes everything that I think that I know about the world now admittedly
I'm 19 years old. So it's not a whole hell of a lot but really it's though
It's it's a single passage in this book that has the most resonance for me and I'll show that to you now
He's saying our actions may be impeded but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions
Because we can accommodate and adapt the mind adapts and converts to its own purposes
The obstacle to our acting and then he concludes with the the maxim that I've tried to live my life by he says the impediment
To action advances action what stands in the way becomes the way and so this is the critical tenets of stoicism
essentially in any and every situation no matter how bad or seemingly
Undesirable it is we have the opportunity to practice a virtue and and virtues a bit loaded. So we'll replace that with excellence
everything that happens to us is a chance to practice excellence and
This is I think best illustrated by a quote from from Andy Grove was one of the CEOs of Intel
He's saying bad companies are destroyed by crisis good companies survive them great companies are improved by them
The Stoics say over and over again. We don't control what happens to us. We control how we respond oftentimes
Unfortunately the way we respond to something makes it worse. We tell ourselves that something is unfair
we tell ourselves that were screwed over we tell ourselves that this is the worst thing that ever happened and
Great people don't do this right when the United States was launching the Apollo program
What they actually looked for in the astronauts was not their ability to pilot although they hired some of the greatest
Test pilots from from the Air Force, but what they really looked for was their ability to regulate their emotions in stressful situations
And they would tray they trained this skill to its apex so over and over again the astronauts were exposed to stressful
Situations they were gradually exposed over time to everything. They would potentially face in space
So when an astronaut like John Glenn orbits the planet earth for for more than a day
His heart rate actually never goes over a hundred beats per minute
Meanwhile, most of us, you know
We get an angry phone call or an unpleasant email. We start to feel that pounding on our chest because we haven't
practiced that and and it's so dangerous, especially for an astronaut not to practice that because
without that meticulous preparation if something goes wrong and really screwed over you can as Chris Hadfield who's a Canadian astronaut
Said a few years ago. He's saying look it's worth remembering that there's no problem
So bad that you can't make it worse also and that's oftentimes
What our perceptions do we make a bad thing even worse? And then we complain that it's too hard to get over and so I'm
particularly inspired by people who don't do this, so
as epictetus says
You know who then is invincible the one who cannot be upset by anything outside his reasoned choice and john
D rockefeller right as a young man
He starts in finance a few years later the panic of 1857 strikes and it's one of the Crypt the worst economic
Crisis in American history it actually originates in Ohio where he's based
But but what Rockefeller does is he sees this as an opportunity an opportunity to study the market?
To see what people do in extreme situations and to learn from it and he he ultimately he calls this his apprenticeship. He says I'm
How blessed are those who struggle for a foundation or a beginning in life and he's actually grateful that this happened and and in fact
He makes a significant part of his fortune in the next economic crises because he trained in that one
So the panic of 1873
The panic of 1907 even as an old man in 1929 when the market goes south
He makes a fortune again because he'd had this apprenticeship in difficulty
and so that's just a slight tweak on how to look at a difficult thing turns it into a
benefit rather than an obligation that we have to go through and as Seneca says a good person dies events with his own color and
Turns whatever happens to his own benefit. Thanks for watching. Please click Subscribe
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