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December 20, 2023 9 mins

Today, Dramos shares quotes from J. Cole and Arius Didymus to illustrate the fact that you will have to make sacrifices if you want to become a master of your craft.

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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Yes, Yes, I am Dramas and this is the Street
Stoic Podcast, bring you your daily dose of timeless stoke
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 mix things up a

(00:37):
little bit and we're going to talk about the stoke
value of pursuing virtue right or excellence right, the chase
for excellence. And to me, the person that immediately came
to mind when kind of thinking about this idea of
pursuing excellence in your particular craft is J Cole. Right.
I pulled a couple of excerpts from an interview that

(00:58):
I had watched from him not too long ago, and
a first quote I have from him. He's talking about
the process of making the warm Up mixtape, and he
says that was the way the warm Up came from.
Every day I woke up, wrote verses and made beats.
And I love this this notion. Right. If you dive
deeper into the interview, he talks about how literally he

(01:19):
would wake up and before he did anything else, before
he brushed his teeth, before he washed his face, before
he ate anything, literally would get up, roll over, grab
his notebook, and he would write a verse. Right. This
was his exercise every single day, challenging himself that he
had to write a verse before he got his day started. Right.
And another quote I pulled from that Seam interview, he says,

(01:40):
I put myself through drills. I really try to work
out my craft to like reach new heights and push myself.
And I love this idea of doing something not because
someone is watching you, right, but instead you're challenging yourself
to be better every day because you want it for yourself.
When he puts himself through I think he talks about

(02:01):
like seven minute drills. I guess where he could write
a song in seven minutes and he challenges himself to
do so. Right. Again, this isn't a show he's putting
on for anybody else. He's not posting this to social media.
He's not, you know, doing it in front of some
producer to impress them. He's literally by himself putting on
these drills just to challenge himself to be a bit
better at songwriting, at his craft, because he's chasing excellence, right.

(02:22):
And this leads to a quote from one of the
stokes perfectly Arius Didamus, and he says self control is
the knowledge of what things are worth choosing and what
are worth avoiding and what is neither. Contained within this
virtue are things like orderliness, propriety, modesty, and self mastery.
And I think the sort of grandiose message here is

(02:45):
that greatness requires self control. And I love that line
about knowing what things are worth choosing and what things
are worth avoiding. That contained within this virtue of self
control is a life that is you know, balance is
in order, and being able to master your craft and
master yourself right, becoming the person that you are meant

(03:07):
to be the highest version of yourself. And I think
this is where a lot of people fall short. A
lot of people have these ideas, they have these dreams,
but they're not willing to put in the real effort
that it takes to be disciplined. I saw this quote
the other day of somebody talking about Jim Carrey actually
talking about how some people aren't willing to sacrifice the

(03:29):
finer things in life for a year in order to
better their entire life right. They're too concerned with looking
successful or happy or like they have it all together
to the outside world. That's their priority at the end
of the day, rather than making the sacrifices needed to
actually build the foundation needed to live the life that
you want right, And I relate to this on various levels.

(03:52):
That's sort of how I've tried to live my life,
and at times I've been better at it than others.
We all sort of fall into those ruts. But for me, recently,
a habit that I've adapted that I try to stay
on is waking up every day at six am, not
because I have to, but because I want to give
myself the extra time needed to take care of a
particular task. For me, writing every day for an hour

(04:16):
has become a form of discipline. It's how I've been
able to write four books in one year. I wake
up at six am, I go through my morning routine,
and from seven am to eight am, I write. And
every single day that's my routine, Monday through Friday, and
eventually I have enough for a book, and then another book,
and then another book. And this sort of self discipline
of not giving myself the extra sleep that I always

(04:38):
kind of need, but challenging myself to become a better writer,
to become somebody who has far more output creatively than
the average person would who's writing books. That sort of
idea of challenging myself to be the best version of
myself in this particular format, that's allowed me to then
do something crazy, which I can't believe when I say,

(05:00):
four books in one year. It's a wild thing to
talk about. But again, that all starts with discipline and
challenging myself to be better than I was yesterday. Right,
it's all about self mastery and wanting to master my
craft and become better at it each and every day.
And we've heard from J. Cole, we have heard from
one of the Stoics areas Didnamus. I've given you some

(05:21):
insights to my own daily routine. Now let's talk about
how you can make this your mantra for today. So
today we've been talking all about the Stoic idea of
the pursuit of virtue or excellence. You've heard from J. Cole,

(05:42):
you've heard from one of the Stokes areas Didnamus give
you some insight into my own sort of methodology with
this concept. Now let's talk about how you can make
it your mantra for today. And I think at the
end of the day, you have to make a decision
as to I think, a what you want to be
excellent at, but be more than that. I think there's

(06:03):
obviously the craft in itself. Right, If you are a
songwriter like Jay Cole, you obviously want to get better
and better at that each and every day. You know,
if you are a creative and you like writing, like myself,
each and every day, I want to try to get
better at that. Right. It's a very tangible thing, but
I think even larger that than that, on a more
existential level, it's challenging yourself to do things each and

(06:24):
every day that bring out the best version of yourself.
And you know, just a practical example is the content
that you ingest on a daily basis, Right, who are
you following on social media? What are you watching on TV?
And I think we've kind of touched on different things
like that along the course of these two seasons on
the podcast. But even for me, rather than only watching

(06:46):
you know, mindless television, the majority of the content that
I watch is like educational based. I'm always watching YouTube
videos on social media hacks or how somebody found their success,
what was their come up story? Right? Things that are
always you know, sort of implementing ideas into my brain
that I can then possibly use to become better than
I was the day before. And I've dedicated myself to

(07:08):
a life of excellence, right, This has become sort of
my norm. Right. I don't sort of indulge in a
lot of these standard entertainment stuff because I'm always trying
to sort of hack my own excellence, you know, and
become better. And in order to do so, I need
to be very mindful of the content that I am ingesting,
of the routines that I'm taking up, right, of how

(07:29):
I'm spending my time, who I'm spending it with. It's
a life of really being dedicated to excellence. And I
think when you are dedicated to that self mastery, that's
where happiness comes from. Right, That's where fulfillment comes from.
And I think that's sort of the missing key and
a lot of sort of modern day social climate that
we live in, this sort of fast food era where

(07:51):
we're all sort of just chasing the perception of greatness
rather than greatness in itself. And I think that's sort
of the mindset we have to adapt today, is that
regardless of if somebody is watching or not, we're still
going to be dedicated to our excellence. That's the priority.
Our excellence is the priority. The validation comes second to that. Now,
to recap all we've been talking about today, Jake Cole

(08:13):
sort of being the embodiment of this idea of having
his priorities in order. He is putting in the time
when no one is watching. He's not resting on his
previous successes. Right, He's challenging himself constantly to become better
at a craft that many consider him to be one
of the best of all time. He's still saying to himself,

(08:33):
I can still get better. And he's challenging himself each
and every day, right, And that's a dedication to excellence.
That's sort of a life's purpose that provides him with
I'm sure a lot of fulfillment within his everyday life.
And Arius didim as talking about the idea of self control, right,
Having this this self control allows you to make decisions
that will bring out the best in you, right, choosing

(08:54):
what you should be avoiding and choosing what is actually
worth your time. Right. All that leads to self mastery,
a happier life, a better life, a better version of yourself,
and even myself creating routines that give me the best
opportunity to become better at the things that I'm passionate about,
and making sure that I carve out that time and

(09:15):
that I have the discipline to sort of be, you know,
very rigid in saying no, this time is set aside
for this. I'm going to take care of it each
and every day. This is my priority. Even though nobody's watching,
nobody's holding me accountable. I'm holding myself accountable because I
want to chase excellence in this current task or just
as a human being in general. Now, with that said,

(09:35):
thank you so much for checking out the Street Stoke Podcast.
Do your best to apply these concerts that we discussed
into everyday life, and I will catch you next time.
The Street Stoke Podcast is a production of Iheart's Michael
Dura Podcast Network
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