The Daily Stoic - 10 Pieces of Life Changing Wisdom From the Stoics

Episode Date: July 18, 2021

On today’s episode, Ryan breaks down 10 pieces of life changing wisdom from the Stoics. Stoicism has never been a philosophy for school. It's been a philosophy for life. That’s why the Stoic writings are blunt. Straight to the point. They get in, make their point in as few words as possible, and get out of your way. Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsv6P3Crup8&t=47sBlinkist is the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too.Ladder makes the process of getting life insurance quick and easy. To apply, you only need a phone or laptop and a few minutes of time. Ladder’s algorithms work quickly and you’ll find out almost immediately if you’re approved. Go to ladderlife.com/stoic to see if you’re instantly approved today.Talkspace is an online and mobile therapy company. Talkspace lets you send and receive unlimited messages with your dedicated therapist in the Talkspace platform 24/7. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com or download the app. Make sure to use the code STOIC to get $100 off of your first month and show your support for the show.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music download the app today Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke each weekday We bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics Something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage justice Temperance and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the

challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target,

the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I've been having a lot of fun doing these sort of short TikTok hits about stoicism.

Stoic wisdom in one minute or less. Actually, when you do them on Instagram, they gotta be like 30 seconds. So these are really, the constraints can be powerful. And actually, Client, these talks about how the fetters of poetry, the structure, the demands of the medium of poetry would create the art. And I have found that trying to distill these lessons down into the shortest possible time

has been really, really great. And so today's episode is a compilation of 10 life-changing pieces of stoic wisdom back to back to back, mostly from TikTok. And by the way, you can follow us, go to TikTok.com slash daily underscore stoke. And you can follow me, TikTok.com slash Ryan underscore holiday. But this is a best of Stoke Wisdom in one minute or less, ten lessons, one minute or so each. I think this is going to be really awesome for you.

I think you're gonna like it. This is really popular when we did it on YouTube. We're gonna talk about Memento Mori. We're gonna talk about concentration. We're gonna talk about a Morfati, temper, routine, ego, getting up early acceptance. We'll talk about character. And most of all, we're gonna talk about season the day.

This episode's great. You can check it out. 10 pieces of life-changing wisdom from the Stoics and of course do follow us on TikTok. That's tiktok.com slash daily underscore at Stoic and then I'm at Ryan underscore holiday. Here's 10 pieces of life-changing wisdom in one minute or less from the Stoics.

There's two words that come to us from the ancients that I think we should remind ourselves of, repeat to ourselves in any and every situation we're in. You win the lottery, you strike it rich, you get recognized, you get an award, you say to yourself, momentum or e. Remember, you will die. You go through shit, you go through trouble. Someone cheats on you, someone betrays you, someone lies to you, someone steals from you, someone gets what you earned, someone gets promoted over you, you say to yourself, momentum or e. Remember that I will die. You could leave life right now, Mark Serely said. Let that determine what you do insane thing. You get in a fight with your girlfriend or your

boyfriend. Your parents say something mean or let you down. Your neighbor pisses you off. You break your leg. You blow out your knee. You fall out of love with someone. You're stressed out by work, your kids are sick. You say to yourself, Memento Mori, life is short, I'm going to die. Sometimes, when I need to pick me up, I think of one that Mark Serrealis wrote to himself in Meditations. He said, of course you can do it. He said, if you concentrate like a Roman, if you do this, like it's the

last thing you're doing in your life. And I think about the most powerful man in the world struggling with something. We don't know what it was, but he's telling himself that, yes, it is possible. And another place in meditation, he says, it reminds yourself that if it's humanly possible, know that you can do it also. And so I think that we all need these reminders, the idea of self-talk. I'm gonna talk myself into this.

I'm gonna remind myself what I'm capable of. I'm gonna remind myself to concentrate now in this moment. I'm gonna remember what's humanly possible and that as a human being. Of course, it's possible for me. And I'm going to do this as if it's the last thing I'm doing in my life. I'm going to do it as if it matters. To me, that's what Stoicism is about. And that's a reminder, I gave myself today, and I hope you give it to yourself today also. What the Stoics talk about is the idea of loving what happens.

Marcus really says that what you throw on top of a fire is fuel for the fire. So what you want to cultivate, what you have to practice, you have to almost repeat it like a mantra to yourself, is the practice of loving everything that happens. Not just accepting it, not just tolerating it, but leaning into it, going, this is for me, I chose this, I wanted this way, and it's the best fucking thing that ever happens to me. When the computer eats the manuscript you've been working on, you say, a more faulty, I love it.

When you're stuck in traffic, you say, a more faulty, I love it. When you're criticized on Twitter, when your boss calls you out, you say, a more faulty, I love it, I'm gonna be better for this having happened to me. When you're hungry, you say, I love it. I'm alive. I feel this. I'm gonna make the most of it.

You say, a more faulty. I don't think I've ever lost my temper and then been glad after the fact. I'm never so glad I got angry, I got upset. It never makes things better. That's what the Stokes believe that anger always makes stuff worse. And Seneca points out how totally irrational this is to get angry is like to return a kick to a mule or a bite to a dog. He writes this whole incredible essay

on anger to Nero. He says the emperor can't afford to get angry. They have to be calm, they have to be rational. They have to think things through. You know, a sports coach might get angry on purpose to rally the team, but an NBA coach who's not in control of their temper, is just gonna rack up technical fows and make the team worse. So we control our temper.

It's not that we don't feel the anger. It's there, we know it's there, but we don't act on it. We try not to act on it because it always makes things worse. We regret it afterwards. The fact that we have that hangover is a really important sign that it's not an emotion or impulse that we want to give in to. It's humbling to think that Marcus Aurelius,

the head of the most powerful empire on earth, had the same amount of hours in the day as you. Just 24. So how did he get it all done? How did he have time to be a king, a philosopher, a writer, a husband, to pass laws and judge cases, to lead troops into battle and guide Rome through a terrible plague, and do this while remaining good without being corrupted by the temptations or the stresses of his position. Well routine had something to do with it.

Marcus Aurelius was a man of habit, all the stoics were. They understood as Aristotle did that we are what we repeatedly do, that excellence is a habit. For Marcus Aurelius the day started early at dawn when you awake, he wrote, know that you are getting up to do the work of a human being. There was no time for him to stay under the covers and stay warm. We've got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring

out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discussed their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So, if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondaria. To the Stoics, arrogance is the most dangerous thing in the world. Sino says, conceit is the impediment to all knowledge.

I like Epic Titus, he says, you cannot begin to learn that which you think you already know. So, this idea of coming from a place of curiosity rather than a place of knowing, this idea of being humble enough to ask, this idea of not thinking you know it all, is the key for the stokes to moving forward. It's impossible to learn that which you think you already know. If you think you know everything, you're right. That's why it goes the enemy because if you sink you're perfect, if you sink you're brilliant, if you sink you know all the answers, it's impossible for you to get any better. You're frozen in place. It's

impossible to learn that what you think you already know. That's Epic Titus. At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, I have to go to work as a human being. What do I have to complain of? If I am going to do what I was born for, the things I was brought into the world to do, or is this what I was created for, to huddle under the blankets and stay warm, and then he has this little conversation with himself, he goes, but it's nicer here. And I think anyone that's not wanted to get out of bed

in the morning has had this dialogue. So you were born to feel nice, he says, instead of doing things and experiencing them, don't you see plants, birds, and ants, and spiders, and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order as best they can, and you're not willing to do your job as a human being. Why aren't you running to do what your nature demands? But we have to sleep sometimes, you can plans. Agreed, but

nature set a limit to that. As it did on eating and drinking and you're over the limit, you've had more than enough of that, but not of working. There, you're still below your quota. My favorite quote from Marcus Aurelius, he says, objective judgment now at this very moment. Unselfish action now at this very moment. Willing acceptance now at this very moment of all external events. I mean, that's basically stoicism in a nutshell. If you don't have to read meditations, you have to read cynically, you don't have to read epit. If you don't have to read meditations,

you have to read setically, you don't have to read epitides, you don't have to get a degree from Harvard in ancient philosophy to get any more out of stoicism than that. Right? It's like, look, see the world as it is for what it is. Don't put judgments on top of stuff. Be a good person, you have to take action. That's unslikes.

Be a good teammate, be a good citizen, you have to take action, that's unlike be a good teammate, be a good citizen, be generous, be caring, don't be all about yourself. And then willing acceptance, I know people that sounds like resignation, but what it's really about is like, instead of complaining about how things are, instead of feeling persecuted, instead of feeling like shit is unfair,

or instead of feeling like you can go back and change the past which you can't accept it and then move forward. Marcus really has a great passage he says it can only ruin your life if it ruins your character otherwise it cannot harm you inside and out. And that's a theme you see Marcus talk about over and over again. He basically goes like, look, does this prevent me from acting with the virtues or with the character that I hold to be important? Basically does this stop me from acting with wisdom, justice, temperance or courage? The answer is like, no, it never does. Almost nothing does.

And in fact, most of the bad stuff that happens to us, getting fired, running out of money, being humiliated, being rejected, most of the stuff that happens is actually only an opportunity for those virtues. There is no situation that ruins our character because our character of the Stokes would say, is something that only we possess. It's inside us.

We can decide to abandon our character, we can abandon our principles, we can choose not to act with virtue, temperance, justice and courage. And in that case, we are harmed. Marcus really says to himself, you could be good today, but instead you choose tomorrow. Basically we're always pushing off into the future.

Epic Titus, he says to himself, how much longer are you going to wait to demand the best of and for yourself? And in Santa, I think most poignantly he says, fools all have one thing in common. They are always putting off living. And so what we take from all this, these three wise but very different still eggs, is that idea of carpetedium sees the day, take advantage of what's in front of you. Don't wait to forgive someone or to make up or to tell them how you really feel about them do it now. Don't live wrongly, don't live unhappily, don't show up every day for a job you don't like, because you hope that one day it will turn into a job you like.

We have no idea how long we're here for. That's what that exercise of Memento Mori is reminding us. You know, Marcus really talks to us, he says, do everything as if you were a dying man because the truth is we all are dying. We're given a fatal diagnosis at birth. If you're looking for ways to keep these stoic lessons with you, check out our daily stoic store. These are all items that were designed to embody stoicism,

to help you carry the stoic practice with you. We wanted to make things that we would actually use ourselves. That's why we don't make t-shirts or stickers or wristbands. We make things of super high quality that we stand behind, that we think are awesome, that embody stoicism. We have our Momentumori medallion, our Amorafati medallion. We have prints with Marcus Aurelius quotes and so much more. You can check out dailystoke.com slash store for more. And this week, check out our theme.

Thanks for listening and see you soon. Hey, prime members. You can listen to the daily stokeic early and add free on Amazon music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.