It can be hard, especially right now, to feel good about anything. There is dysfunction. There is conflict. There is outright lawlessness. There is corruption. There is cruelty.
What is working well? Not the economy. Not the government. Perhaps not even your own business, or your own day-to-day life.
Despair is so easy, even reasonable in moments like this. The Stoics knew that feeling well: Seneca in the time of Nero. Epictetus, chained to slavery. Cato, watching the Republic fall. Marcus Aurelius at the beginning of the end of the empire.
But they did not. They did not give up. They knew that there was 'hope within despair.' Where? Marcus Aurelius wrote that it was within us. It did not matter how much dung you threw on top of an underground spring, he noted, fresh water was still there. He said we needed to dig for it. If we want to live in good times, he said, the solution is easy: Do good things.
Self-regulation is the single most important skill for life. In today's episode, developmental psychologist and parenting expert Dr. Aliza Pressman joins Ryan to talk about how to start reframing everyday frustrations, why she is worried for this generation of parents, and the difference between expressing emotion and acting on it.
I'd first begun thinking about the original Olympic Marathon route, which runs from the town of Marathon to the city of Athens in Greece, as far back as 2007. I was working as a researcher for Robert Greene at the time and The Battle of Marathon, as described in Robert's book The 33 Strategies of War, had totally captivated me.
For one, the battle just had such a profound impact on Western civilization. But also, through my conversations with Robert, I learned how a writer transforms research like this into compelling book material.
It wasn't until reading Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, however, that I realized you could actually run the original Olympic Marathon route. Since then, it became a personal obsession to one day do just that—and I started training in my Hokas in preparation.
Well, last month I finally fulfilled this decades-old dream and ran this long path in my Hokas that had inspired me long ago to pursue a writing career and push myself past the physical limits of what I thought possible.
I couldn't have done it without the support of Hoka and their excellent gear. Curious about the lessons I learned during this incredible challenge? Watch for the full documentary—sponsored by Hoka—coming soon!
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