Trudging Through Your Own Life? Here's the Stoic Fix | Maria Semple

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey gang, today we're talking about the enormous power and relief and release that comes from shifting your perspective. One way of putting this is the old saw about how the problem isn't the problem, the problem is how you're relating to the problem.

So today we're going to talk about that, but we're also going to talk about a whole bunch of other stoic principles, including focusing on what you can control and letting the rest fall by the wayside, which my guest calls, quote, a major turn-on. And we'll talk about the concept of, quote, digging it, baby, no matter what's happening. My guest is my friend Maria Semple, who's a well-known novelist. She is perhaps best known for her novel, which then turned into a movie, called Where'd You Go, Bernadette. And now she's got a new novel that's getting a ton of buzz called Go Gentle.

I had the opportunity to read it early, and it's incredibly good, and it is filled with stoic principles because the protagonist is an expert on Stoicism, which I should have said this earlier, but it's the ancient Greco-Roman philosophy, which itself has become incredibly buzzy in recent years, and Maria herself, as you will hear, is a big Stoic enthusiast. That's why she injected the theme into this new novel. Although, as you will also hear her discuss, both she and her protagonist have some questions about the limits of Stoic philosophy and practice. By way of context, I got to know Maria several years ago when I met her, and what I'm about to say is supremely bougie, I know it, but when I met her, when we were seated near one another at a dinner party at the TED conference, where I was giving a speech,

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