SAINt JHN & Marcus Aurelius | Living It Up

Published Jan 11, 2024, 8:00 AM

Dramos focuses on the stoic idea of diminishing your ego. He uses lyrics from SAINt JHN and two quotes from Marcus Aurelius to ask us to push our ego aside and go for the things that make us happy.

Yes, yes, I am Dramas and this is the Street Stoic Podcast, bringing your daily dose of stoic philosophy remix for the hip hop generation. Now, with that in mind, let's get things started with your daily shot of inspiration. Now today we're gonna be focusing all around the stoic idea of diminishing your ego and more particularly taking more risks in this life and really living life to its fullest. And a few lyrics that I pulled come from Saint John and the record Best Part of Life, And in it he says, who's scared? Who really afraid of where this goes? Even though I know I know how it ends up, ain't nobody scared. I put my hand up in the air. You put your heart up in the air. You gave it to me, made it very clear, this.

Is the ride of your life. I'm excited.

I think he's saying a few different sort of things here in this, but I particularly love that line where he talks about you just you put your heart up in the air and essentially you're just putting yourself out there to whatever life has to offer. That's about taking risks, right, That is you being sort of open to whatever life is sort of going to throw your way as a result of you going after what it is that you want, right, whatever is interesting to you, and your ego in this sort of scenario oftentimes will make you second guess taking that risk because your ego is scared of looking dumb. Your ego is scared of being embarrassed, of being wrong. Right, And what ends up happening when you listen to that part of yourself too much is it holds you back from living your life to its fullest. And listen, we've all been there before. We've all sort of succumbed to our own ego in this way where it is trying to protect us at the end of the day, right, protect us from any perceived harm. But again, in life, we're only rewarded based upon the amount of risks that we take. And this leads to a quote from one of the stokes, Marcus Aurelius, that I absolutely love. Actually two quotes I'm going to pull. But he says, it is not death that a man should fear, but rather he should fear never beginning to live. I love this quote so damn much because it sort of slaps you in the face with the notion that just because you're here, breathing, existing, doesn't actually mean that you're truly living. There are so many of us sort of just going through the motions in life and playing it safe, taking the easy route, accepting the bare minimum. That's not really living. You're not really opening yourself up to all that this beautiful world has to offer. Right, And of course you have to take risks within reason. I'm not saying to throw your whole life away and on a whim just you know, go move to a BISA and try to become a DJ with no real plan or anything like that, no money, right, obviously, like there has to be calculated risks in this life. But you have to allow yourself to dream big. You have to be fearless in dreaming big, in putting yourself out there. And that kind of leads to the second quote I pulled from Marcus Aurelius, where he says, to be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over, it stands unmoved, and the raging of the sea falls still around it. You are the rock in this scenario, right, no matter how much nonsense life might throw your way through the ups and downs, whatever it might be you're committed to standing strong and just taking on life, and I really think that's the only way to truly live and man like. That's what my life really has has been a series of you know, a series of just risks, I mean, calculated risks. But like everything I've done has been said to be crazy by somebody in my life at one point or another. Right, But it's it's me sort of refusing to accept what's considered to be the standard, understand that there's more out there for me, and pushing and pushing to really get the fullness out of this thing called life. It hasn't always worked out the way that I planned. I've fallen on my face, I've been embarrassed, you know what people have told me. I told you so before. But at the same time, the rewards on the other side of those failures, on the other side of those risks, have been greater than any of the negative Right, The positive outcomes that have come in my life as a result of the risks I've taken have far outweighed the failures that came along with them. Right, And it wasn't always immediate, but eventually those risks paid off in a far better way. You know, I say this as as somebody who left the world of radio to go into the wild West of podcasting, right where the zero consistency.

Right, I was under a contract, I was full time.

You know, I had the stability that we are all looking for, particularly when you work in the industry like media and entertainment where there isn't real stability. And I decided to take that risk. And it was scary, and there I fell on my face a few times. But now looking back, I'm so grateful for the version of me that that decided to ride that out, decided to sort of jump ship and be okay with the waves crashing around me, understanding that it was going to produce a far more exciting experience in this thing called life. Now we've heard from Saint John, we have heard from one of the Stokes, Marcus Aurelius, on this topic of diminishing your ego. Now, let's talk about how you can make it your mantra for today.

First, let's take a quick break and then we'll be.

So today we've been talking all about the stoic idea of diminishing your ego. Right, we've heard from Saint John, we have heard from one of the stokes, Marcus Aurelius. I've talked about it myself, how I implement this into my own life. Now let's talk about how you can make it your mantra for today. And I think first and foremost, it's just a reminder that life is meant to be indulged in right and of course within reason. But this world has so much to offer each and every one of us, yet so many of us refuse to take real advantage of it. We refuse to challenge ourselves, we refuse to put ourselves out there to new experiences, and we're just missing out on the sort of endless potential of just happiness that is out there for us if we just push a little bit harder past that fear and don't allow our ego to make us live in the fear of failure. I mean, think about even the most trivial things that we could.

Tastrifize, right.

I think this is a good example to kind of bring it home for you. Think about like approaching somebody you find attractive at a bar. That's talked about as one of the sort of biggest fears, like alon like public speaking and things like that. One of the biggest fears that we as human beings inherently have. But what's the worst case scenario?

Right there?

You approach somebody that you find attractive at a bar, you tell them you find them attractive, whatever it is, they're not interested.

Life goes on.

Literally, it's not like you die, you know, It's not like you know, you lose all your money, everything you've worked for in this moment because you took this risk. It's literally the lowest level risk.

Of human being.

A pride take is just literally going and having a conversation with another person. Yet we build it up to be the most difficult thing in our minds. Right, So many of us do it, and we do this with so many different aspects of our life.

And that's the ego talking.

Right, Because my ego doesn't want me to go up and approach this person and then get shut down, and then now I think lesser of myself because.

My ego gets bruised. Right.

My ego wants to maintain the facade of confidence, right, rather than potentially having to have my confidence shaken in a moment of somebody not being interested in me the same way I'm interested in them. But is that really living life. Do I really want to look back and say, what if I would have gone up to that person, what would my life look like? And that's sort of the thing that holds us back when you know, kind of recapping what we're talking about. What Marcus Aurelius talked about is you should fear never beginning to live. And that's what moments like that one are, right You living in regret because you didn't actually live this moment to its fullest potential. You left something on the table, and now you have to live with that.

And that's why I love the.

Quote from Saint John, and he's sort of talking about how this situation might end up badly. He says, even though I know how it ends up, ain't nobody scared, right, He's saying, even if this thing crashed and burns, which it probably will, I'm putting myself out there for the experience. I'm putting myself out there to live this in its fullest way. Hand is up, you know, you put your heart up in the air, like I'm laying it all out there, even if it ends badly. I'm trying to get the fullest experience out of this thing called life. And I think that's just such a beautiful kind of proclamation and something we should all be striving for, and even for me. You know, this is the thing that I'm the most grateful for. As far as when I sit back and thank myself for all that I've done, it is for taking those.

Risks, calculated risks, but risks.

Nonetheless, I'm so grateful that I decided to challenge myself to not play it safe, to not accept the bare minimum, and to really say, I want to get the most out of every situation that I possibly can. Right I want to be as fulfilled and happy and have as much experience as I possibly can. And I'm going to follow my face sometimes It's gonna be difficult at other times, but at the end of the day, I know I'm really getting the most out of this thing called life, and that's all that I could ever hope for all of you listening to this podcast. Now, with that said, thank you so much for listening to.

The Street Stoic. Do your best to apply these.

Constants we discussed into your everyday life, and I'll catch you next time. The Street Stoke Podcast is a production of Iheart's michaela podcast Network

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