The Daily Stoic - 50 Harsh Stoic Truths That Will Improve Your Life

Episode Date: August 25, 2024

The Stoics believed that Stoicism was a cure for our ills. Epictetus would talk about how like the philosopher's school is like a hospital. Not all treatments, not all remedies are fun. Medicine doesn't always taste good. 🎥 Watch 50 Harsh Stoic Truths That Will Improve Your Life on YouTube 🎟 Ryan Holiday is going on tour! Grab tickets for London, Rotterdam, Dublin, Vancouver, and Toronto at ryanholiday.net/tour✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow 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.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. We've got a bit of a commute now with the kids and their new school. And so one of the things we've been doing as a family is listening to audiobooks in the car. Instead of having that be dead time, we want to use it to have a live time. We really want to help their imagination soar. And listening to Audible helps you do precisely that. Whether you listen to short stories,

self-development, fantasy, expert advice, really any genre that you love, maybe you're into stoicism. And there's some books there that I might recommend by this one guy named Ryan. Audible has the best selection of audio books without exception and exclusive Audible originals all in one easy app.

And as an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. By the way, you can grab Right Thing right now on Audible. You can sign up right now for a free 30 day Audible trial and try your first audiobook for free. You'll get Right Thing right now totally for free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend.

We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Sunday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Look, the stoics aren't always nice. Epictetus talked about how, like, look, when you're offended, it's your fault. You're complicit in taking offense. That's part of what I meant in that, like,

they don't come across as nice because, you know, we're all snowflakey these days. But I think what I mean when I say that the Stoics weren't always nice is that the Stoics believed that Stoicism was kind of a cure for our ills. Actually Epictetus and Mussonius Rufus would talk about how like the Philosopher's School was like a hospital. The reason you go there is because you're sick, there's something wrong. And so not all treatments, not all remedies are fun. Medicine doesn't always taste good.

You know, setting a broken bone hurts. I remember I got an x-ray once when I broke my elbow and as they bent my arm to get it in the x-ray machine, it was so painful I literally passed out and hit the floor I woke up not knowing what had happened right we to get examined to get treatment to hear what we need to hear sometimes we got to hear some unpleasant or harsh truths which is today's episode it's not gonna be a negative episode I promise but it the

the concede here is here are some harsh stoic truths that will improve your life. And I recorded this walking around New York City when I was there back in June for the launch of Right Thing Right Now. Sort of running in between interviews and events and seeing some friends. I tried to record, you know, little insights from the stoics here to there. So you might hear some street noise. Sometimes I'm in a car. You can watch a YouTube video of it. I'll link to that in today's show notes if you want to see it in addition to listening

to it. But in the meantime, let's just get into it. Here are harsh stoic truths that will improve your life. The stoics have been delivering harsh truths for centuries. It's what they did. Epictetus said that you should be hurt after you experience stoic wisdom. He said it's like you entered a hospital. When you left, you're going to be in pain because you weren't well when you entered.

I'm Ryan Holiday and in today's episode, I'm going to give you 50 hard stoic truths. Some of them are going to challenge you. Some of them are going to make you uncomfortable. You're going to disagree with some of them are gonna challenge you. Some of them are gonna make you uncomfortable. You're gonna disagree with some of them, but that's okay. They're not supposed to go down easy, but they will make you better. You're not being harmed.

You're not being screwed over. You're not being challenged. You're being, Epictetus said, paired with a strong sparring partner. Life is helping you. Life is making you better. Life is teaching you. Life is making you stronger.

You wanna wrestle with this. You pick hard sparring partners. Pick people who you get better for wrestling with. You can't learn that which you think you already know. That's Epictetus. Ego is the enemy because when you're a know-it-all, you're right. It's impossible for you to know anymore. You know everything that is possible for you to know. You're not that important. Mark Cirillis, he says, run down the list. All the people that came before me. He says, what happened to all these famous names, these names that used to sound so familiar? You know what they are now? They're like what Taylor Swift talks about. Who's who, who's that? We all

disappear, we all recede into memory, we are all forgotten. Another way to spell perfectionism, Churchill said, was paralysis. They are the same thing. You think it's that you have high standards, but it's actually an excuse not to have to do things. Positive visualization is bullshit. You should be doing negative visualization. The Stoics say pre-meditatio malorma, pre-meditation of evils. Seneca says nothing happens to the wise man contrary to his expectations. That means we consider all the possibilities. He says exile, war, torture, shipwreck. We should think about all that.

Why? Because he says the unexpected blow lands heaviest. He says a leader can't say, wow, I didn't think that would happen. You have to think about it, you have to anticipate it. This is different than being anxious. This is different than dreading. You think about it, you prepare for it,

and then you're ready, whatever happens. You're never gonna escape change. Life is change. Mark Sprele reminds us that being born was a change, death is a change. Every good thing in your life came from a change. So did bad things, of course, but everything in life is change.

You cannot escape it. You can only accept it. You can only embrace it. If you don't take the money, they can't tell you what to do. That's a line from a great New York City photographer. But it actually goes all the way back to Stoke philosophy too. Zeno refused to dedicate his books to kings. He didn't want to take money from them. The idea is when you curry favor the way that for instance Seneca does

with Nero, it makes you vulnerable and they can boss you around. They own you. But when you maintain your independence, when you can fulfill your own needs and you can support yourself, you have the freedom, you have the power to make choices. You have command over yourself. It all gets rendered very, very insignificant very, very quickly. There's a great Roman poet and he said, you know, in life Alexander's ambition was bigger than the world.

The world wasn't big enough to contain him. And yet he says in the end, a coffin was sufficient. Marcus Rulis would say something very similar about Alexander the Great. He said, you know, Alexander the Great and his mule driver, they both died and the same thing happened to both and the same is true for you. You're being crazy letting them determine whether you did a good job or not, whether you're happy or not, whether you're a success or not.

Mark Sturlus's ambition is tying your happiness to what other people do and say and think. Sanity, he says, is tying it to your own actions. So what part of the process, like when I work on my book, the writing of the book is up to me, right? How it does on the bestseller list, what people think about it, what the reviews say, that isn't up to me. So my definition of success is an internal one.

I'm focused on the parts of it I control. Do I want other people to like it and care about it? Sure, I guess it's nice to have, but it's extra. It's not why I do it, because to want that, or worse, to need it is to be insane and, of course, incredibly vulnerable. It always takes longer than you think, even when you take that into account. The Obstacles Away came out in 2014, so that's 10 years to today, but it took six, maybe seven years for it to hit a best seller list.

It takes longer than you think. You think you deserve it now, you think it'll happen now. It takes so much longer than you think it's going to take. That's just life. It stares you in the face. Mark Sirius says no role is so well suited to philosophy as the one you're in right now. He was the emperor of Rome, yet he was able to be philosophical, to follow virtue. On the other end of the spectrum, Epictetus was a slave. He was the emperor of Rome, yet he was able to be philosophical, to follow virtue. On the other end of the spectrum, Epictetus was a slave. He was tortured. He didn't control his body, his life, his time, and he was a philosopher.

No role. Nothing excludes you from being a philosopher. You can read these books, you can think these things, you can act on these ideas, you can apply them in your life, you can follow virtue, you can achieve herite, you can acquire wisdom. That's what philosophy is. It's not high-minded abstract ideas. It's something you apply to your actual life,

to your real job, high or low, big or small. Nothing can stop you from that. It's not unfortunate that this happened to you. Mark Surilis writes this to himself in Meditations. He says, it's fortunate that this happened to you. He says, because I've remained unharmed by it. He was saying that his character hadn't been affected. I think more importantly he's saying, now I get to do something with it. That's what the obstacle is, the way it means. Now I get to do something with it.

It's good that it happened to me instead of someone else because I'm the one that's uniquely suited, uniquely trained to do something with it. It's gonna take a lot out of you. It's gonna take more out of you than you think you have. Mark Sturrilli says in one passage in Meditations he's trying to amp himself to get out of bed in the morning. He goes, it's warmer under the covers here. I like being comfortable. He says, you weren't made to be comfortable. You weren't made to huddle under the covers and be warm. He said, no, people who love what they do,

they wear themselves down doing it. So there's a limit on the eating and the sleeping and the fun side. You gotta get out there. You gotta do what your nature demands and you gotta understand it's gonna be hard and it's gonna take a lot out of you. It's not that you read, Epictetus reminds us,

it's what you read. If you're offended, it's your fault. Epictetus says, you are complicit in taking offense. The remark was objective, the thing just was. And then you decided that it hurt you, you decided you were harmed by it. It's not actually true. Another person can't hurt you,

you are complicit in taking offense. You just gotta mind your own business. Mark Suriles reminds us, we should stop trying to escape other people's faults. We should try to escape our own, Mark Sturiles tells us. Most of what you do is totally inessential. Mark Sturiles says that's a question we have to ask ourselves. He says we have to ask ourselves is this essential? Because so much of it is trivial, so much of it is unnecessary, so much of it is inefficient. And he said when you eliminate

the inessential, what you get is the double benefit of doing the essential things better. So you want to constantly be eliminating, constantly paring things down, constantly asking yourself, do I really need to be doing this? Is it important? Is it going to move the needle? Why am I doing it? How could I do it better? You eliminate the inessential and you do the essential better. Pleasure passes quickly, but the shame remains. That's the harsh stoic truth. But the positive side of that is the reverse. When you work hard for something, when you put in hard labor on something,

that passes quickly. But the pride, the virtue, the good that comes out of it, it remains. Poverty isn't just having too little. This is what Seneca says. Just because you have money doesn't mean you're rich. He says poverty is wanting more. So you could be a very wealthy, very successful person,

but if there is not enough, if you are constantly craving and hoping for more, then you're very, very poor. Just reading a book is not enough. You have to reread the book. Seneca says we have to linger on the work of the master thinker. He's talking about reading it once and again and again and again because each time we read the book, we find something new,

we bring something new to it, we take something new out of it. You should probably shut up. You should probably shut up. Zeno said it's better to trip with your feet than with your tongue. Cato said he would only speak when he was certain that what he was about to say was not better left unsaid. So much of what we say doesn't need to be said. It doesn't matter. It's trivial. It's not important and it's also probably incorrect. So catch yourself before you're gonna say it. Catch yourself before you speak and ask yourself, is this better left unsaid? The thing is not the problem. It's your opinion about that thing. The Stoics say

the event is objective. It's indifferent to us. It's our opinions about it that are the problem. By the way, the thing is not asking for your opinion. It doesn't give a shit about your opinion. You got gotta stop wasting time talking about this stuff, arguing what a good person is like, what the right thing is, these complicated virtue ethics. Mark Struths says, waste no more time arguing what a good person is like, just be one. You don't get rich acquiring things, acquiring money.

Epictetus says, it's not about having many things, it's about having few wants. If you have everything you need, if you have enough, if you feel sufficient, then you are very rich. Would it also be nice to pair that with having a lot of money? Sure, but you could also have very little and feel like enough, feel good.

Get to a place where you feel like you have enough and you are rich. When you pair your wants down, when you don't need anything from anyone or anything outside your control, that to the stoics is true wealth. Two ears, one mouth for a reason. You're talking way too much.

The less you talk, the better you'll do. And by the way, it's worth remembering that talking about something and doing it fight for the same resources. The more you talk about it, the less energy and resources you have to actually do it. Alice and Matt here from British Scandal. Matt, if we had a bingo card, what would be on there?

Oh, compelling storytelling, egotistical white men and dubious humour. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you will love our podcast, British Scandal, the show where every week we bring you stories from this green and not always so pleasant land. We've looked at spies, politicians, media magnates, a king, no one is safe. And knowing our country, we won't be out of a job anytime soon. Follow British Scandal wherever you listen to your podcasts. Your problem is that you want the third thing. Mark Sturrow says, okay, you did something good for someone.

They received that benefit. That's awesome. Transaction concluded. You don't need the third thing. Recognition, gratitude, appreciation. You don't need the world to throw you a parade. Don't need acknowledgement. And you didn't even do anything special.

You did your job, which is to do good, to be good, to help people, to be kind. You did the right thing. That's enough. The grudge you're holding, it's meaningless. Mark Strauss says, look at the people who held these grudges, who raged about things, who held on to things. He says, where are they now? They're dead and gone. The grudge went nowhere. And the same is gonna happen to your thing. Whatever it is you're upset about, however significant it was for you, eventually it disappears along with you. So how can you work on letting it go? How can you move on?

How can you process? How can you not carry it around? How can you not let it consume you? This is what you trained for. That's the whole point of philosophy at Bactita says, to be able to say to whatever situation you find yourself in, whatever the moment is, big or small,

positive or negative, you're supposed to be able to say, this is you find yourself in, whatever the moment is big or small, positive or negative, you're supposed to be able to say this is what I trained for. This is what it was all leading up to. This is the point of all of it. This is what I trained for. And now I'm going to apply all these things that I learned, that I've been reading about, that I've been talking about, that I've been experimenting with, all the experiences that I've gained up until this point. This is what it was all for. It's called self-discipline for a reason. It's not something you wield against other people. In meditations, Marcus Aurelius says, remember, tolerant with others, strict with yourself. They're your standards.

They're your goals. They're your beliefs. You can hold yourself to them, but not other people. Seneca says, we're all slaves to something. He points out a powerful Roman who was a slave to his mistress. He talks about a Roman politician who's a slave to his ambition, to the crowd, right? Maybe you're a slave to money or food or wine. He says even slave owners were slaves to their estates so we're all slaves to something. He says we should look very suspiciously at any habit or practice or item that has power over us. We cannot go without the controls what we do and say and think and where we go. If everyone agrees with you then you're not really thinking originally at all. Chrysippus, one of the

early Stokes, he said if I wanted to be part of the mob I wouldn't have become a philosopher. So it's okay to have controversial opinions. In fact, you should have a few controversial opinions. You should think for yourself. Don't do what everyone else is doing. Don't think what everyone else is thinking. Think for yourself. The obstacle is not the problem. You're the problem. Your opinions about it are the problem. Your orientation towards it is the problem. The Stoics say the obstacle is the way, right? The impediment to action advances action when it stands in the way becomes the way. What do they mean by that? Marcus Springless is saying that there's something you get to do because of this, right? There's things

that you can do now that you couldn't do before. There's an opportunity for you to act with courage or discipline or justice or wisdom. There's something you can do now that you couldn't ordinarily do. We can't let a crisis go to waste. We have to use this thing in front of us. Yeah, it seems like an obstacle, but now there's something we get to do because of it if we do it. You have two choices, Seneca says. You can laugh or cry.

Democritus, one of the philosophers, he cried. He despaired at how awful and evil the world was. Seneca pointed out Heraclitus, he laughed at it. We think of the Stoics as humorless, but they weren't. Instead of despairing, instead of being angry, instead of being depressed, instead of any of those negative emotions, they decided to laugh at the absurdity of life. They decided to laugh at the pain that life can inflict on us because it's the one part of it we control. We control our response to it, so we might as well find humor in it instead of pain and suffering and anger.

You're not going to be successful because you haven't defined what success is. You haven't really thought about where you're trying to go. Seneca says that if you don't know what port you're sailing towards, no wind is favorable. If you don't take the time to really go, where am I trying to go? What does that look like? Why am I interested in that?

Why is that important? Is that in my control? You're not gonna be able to make the individual day toto-day part-by-part decisions that will allow you to actually get there. You won't know how to respond properly to the things, the opportunities, and to the obstacles that you face along the way. Look, you don't control what happens. You don't control other people. You don't control the weather. You don't control the world. You really don't control anything at all. But you do control how you respond to those things. That's the truth. You don't control the world, you really don't control anything at all. But you do control how you respond to those things.

That's the truth. You don't control other people or places, you control how you respond. What good is posthumous fame, the Stoics say? It won't do you any good, you'll be dead. And more importantly, Marcus Rulis reminds us that the people in the future aren't gonna magically be better or smarter.

They're gonna be just as stupid and annoying and misinformed as they are now. So stop chasing posthumous fame, exist in the present, do what you can now, do what's right now. It's not just that you read, you have to read a lot. General James Mattis, a modern day stoke, he says, if you haven't read hundreds of books about what it is you do, about your craft, about your chosen line, he said you are functionally illiterate.

And that's such a great line. Being literate is awesome. How literate are you? The Mark Twain line about the person who doesn't read has no advantage over the person who cannot read. It's not just that you can read. You have to read deeply. You have to read everything available. You have to read things you agree with, things you don't agree with. You have to be more than just literate. You have to be functionally literate. You have to know what it is that you do. You have to be more than just literate. You have to be functionally literate. You have to know what it is that you do. You have to understand this life thing inside and out. The world life can be amazing. You're being too

idealistic. In meditation, Mark Zeruelis writes to himself, he says, remember you don't live in Plato's Republic. He says, don't go around expecting utopia. Don't expect people to be perfect because they're not. That was actually the knock in Rome against the great Stoic Cato. Cicero said, look, this guy's problem is that he thinks he lives in Plato's Republic instead of the dregs of Romulus.

He was too high-minded, too idealistic, and he couldn't be pragmatic and practical enough to exist and work with other people to solve imperfect problems with imperfect solutions. But that's part of Stoicism too. You're gonna die. That's the stoic idea of memento mori. Life is very, very short.

You could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think. You could go at any moment, and in fact you will go at some moment, and that moment could be very, very soon. The people you meet are gonna suck. This is the harsh truth that Mark Skrullis opens meditations with.

Says they're gonna be jealous and annoying and difficult and stupid. They're gonna be all these things with. Says they're gonna be jealous and annoying and difficult and stupid. They're gonna be all these things. We know they're gonna be these things. We have to go into the day with our eyes wide open. That's the harsh truth part of it. But the uplifting part, the happy part of it is the second part.

He says, but they can't implicate you in ugliness. This is more importantly, remember that you're made to work together, that life is incomplete without those kinds of people. And that we're related and that we share an affinity and a bond for each other. We can't be surprised by it, we can't let it suck us down, and we can't let it change us for the negative. We still have to be good, we still have to do our job, we still have to play our part. You're harming yourself.

Mark Struthers says it can only harm you if it harms your character. What he means is the thing happens to you, they stole from you, they lied to you, they did something to you. But then it's in how you respond if that makes you worse, that makes you do something unethical, if it makes you something other than what you should be, that's where the harm comes from. The harm comes in your reaction and how you're responding to the thing. What they did to you is nothing if it doesn't touch responding to the thing. What they did to you is nothing if it doesn't touch inside you, if it doesn't change who you are, what you do, how you treat

people. You think you're a good person but you're hurting people. Mark Stryus reminds himself in Meditations, he says, remember you can commit an injustice by doing nothing also. And you know, there's the things that we turn away from, the things we don't want to think about, the things that we say are someone else's problems, the things we say we can't do anything about, right? And those are injustices that we are allowing to be perpetrated, and we're complicit in that

unless we try to do something about them. You want power, you want control, you want influence, and yet you neglect the most valuable empire there is. The greatest empire Seneca said is command of oneself. Your thoughts, your opinions, your actions, your urges. Command of oneself is the greatest empire. Self command, self discipline, self control. That's real power. Think of how many powerful people, how many important people, how many people who ruled great armies or nations

didn't have that. They were slaves to their desires, to their ambitions, to their need for more and more and more. And if you have control of yourself, then you have more than they will ever have. It's not impressive that you can read difficult books, that you know all this fancy literature. There was a Stoic student who was bragging to Epictetus that he'd read all the works of Chrysippus. And Epictetus looked at him and he said, you know, if Chrysippus was a better writer, you'd have less to be proud about. Philosophy isn't supposed to be complicated.

It's not supposed to be pretentious. It's supposed to be simple and straightforward. And it's supposed to be something that you apply to your life. You care about yourself more than other people. You're self-interested, as all people are by definition. And yet, Mark Shulis points out, we care about other people's opinions more than our own.

We care if they like what we wear, if they like what we say, if they think we're good or bad or whatever. It's insane. Trust your opinion, develop your own internal compass, your own internal sense of whether you're doing a good job or a bad job, whether you were successful or not. You can't outsource it to the crowd. Remember the crowd is the mob, the mob is

irrational, you can't let them determine any of it. You're not strong unless you can do something with that strength. You're not smart unless you can do something with that intelligence. Epictetus said if someone was bragging about lifting weights and all the workouts they were doing, you wouldn't say, show me your shoulders. You would say, show me what you can lift, show me what you can pick up. Right, so ultimately the learning we do, the work we do, the training we do, it's gotta be about the practical application.

It's gotta be what you're able to do with it. You're not gonna be remembered. You're paying too close of attention. Epictetus says, if you wanna improve, you have to be content to be seen as ignorant or foolish in some matters. He was saying that if you're on top of everything, if you know the latest gossip, all the breaking news, what you're doing is not paying attention to the important things. What you're not doing is working on yourself.

You have to be willing to say, I don't know about that, I didn't hear about that. If you're following everything, you're really following nothing. You're weak if you lose your temper. Stoicism was a masculine philosophy, you're really following nothing. You're weak if you lose your temper. Stoicism was a masculine philosophy, but Marcus really has pointed out how sort of pathetic it is that we get overwhelmed by our emotions and we lash out at people. Men sometimes judge other men for crying, but it's strange that we don't judge each other for losing our temper, which actually does hurt people, which is of less purpose.

When you feel that sort of rage or anger coming on this, the stoic say, get control of yourself, get command of yourself, say, is this who I want to be? Is this what being a mature adult is? And the answer is almost certainly no. You are impotent. Your anger is impotent. Mark Shrevely said in Meditations, he quotes a line from a lost play by the playwright Euripides, and the line says, why should you feel anger at the world as if the world would notice? Nobody cares. It doesn't matter. It doesn't mean anything.

Your anger, your resentment, your grievance, you are shouting into an enormous void. You are yelling at an inanimate object. You are mad at forces that are so enormous, that are utterly amoral, completely indifferent to you and your existence. So you might as well let it go. Part of the reason your life sucks is because your thoughts suck. Marx really says that our life is died by the color of our thoughts.

So if we see only negative, if we only see the worst in people, if we only see what's impossible, if we only see how we screwed up, right, that's gonna color our perception of reality. Your life is dyed by the color of your thought. If your life is negative, if you're it's full of grievances, well of course the world is gonna look that way to you. Every day I send out one stoic inspired email totally for free. Almost

a million people all over the world. If wanna take your stoicism journey to the next level. I would love for you to subscribe. It's totally for free. You can unsubscribe at any time. There's no spam. Just go to dailystoic.com slash email. Love to see you there. If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on wonder.com slash survey. Welcome to the offensive line. You guys on this podcast, we're going to make some picks, talk some and hopefully make you some money in the process. I'm your host, Annie Hagar. So here's how this show is going to work. Okay, we're going to run through the weekly slate of NFL and college football matchups, breaking them down into very serious categories like no offense. No offense Travis Kelce, but you got to step up your game if Pat Mahomes is saying the Chiefs need to have more fun this year. We're also handing out a series of

awards and making picks for the top storylines surrounding the world of football. Awards like the He May Have a Point award for the wide receiver that's most justifiably bitter. Is it Brandon Iuke,, T. Higgins, or Devontae Adams? Plus on Thursdays we're doing an exclusive bonus episode on Wondery+, where I share my fantasy football picks ahead of Thursday Night Football and the weekend's matchups. Your fantasy league is as good as locked in. Follow the offensive line on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can access bonus episodes and listen ad free right now by joining Wondery+.