The Daily Stoic - 7 Life Changing Stoic Ideas That You Can Practice Daily

Episode Date: April 3, 2022

Stoicism is a practical philosophy, which means it is made to be PRACTICED. In this podcast, Ryan discusses 7 key ideas of Stoicism that will help you develop a daily practice and respond to challenging situations in your life. Stoicism provides exercises to help manage stress, excessive thought, anger, depression, worry,  and other destructive mindstates. Stoic practices can help develop a sense of inner peace and calmWatch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0lmSRCSGIU&t=12sAs a member of Daily Stoic Life, you get all our current and future courses, 100+ additional Daily Stoic email meditations, 4 live Q&As with bestselling author Ryan Holiday (and guests), and 10% off your next purchase from the Daily Stoic Store. Sign up at https://dailystoic.com/life/ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, 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 Stokes, something to help you live up to those four Stoke 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. Hey, everyone, welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcasts. You know, as I've written all these articles and pieces and emails over the years, sometimes I like to go back through them and try to sort of organize them into some sort of system or process that makes sense.

You know, it's a little ad hoc. I wasn't always how I was thinking about it, but it can be interesting how these things came together. And I think one example of that is what we're going to talk about today. I wanted to put together seven life-changing exercises, concepts from the Stokes, you can apply over the next seven days. I won't spoil, but I wanted to just go through sort of seven quick ideas that I've written about, talked about, even created some of these challenge coins about. I think this will be a great episode, just a way to, to sort of as you go, go forward to the next week, you can apply stosism to what you're doing, what you're thinking about, and any difficulty or success that you might experience. So enjoy this episode and I'll talk to you soon.

There's a lot of exercises and stoicism but I think these seven are really the core of what you might call the sort of the stoic code. How to be a good person, how to understand how you fit in the world, how to always prioritize the right thing in the right way, how to make sure you're not acting out of ego, how to turn bad things into good things. These are stoic virtues, these stoic exercises. You have to practice every day and you have to practice them in any and all situations, but if you can do it, you can do it consistently, and then you'll be amazed at what you can accomplish and the kind of person you turn into being. Marcus Aurelius wanted to remind himself that you have to do the right thing. It's just that you do the right thing, the rest doesn't matter. So the highest good to the Stoics was virtue, was working for that common good, it was seeing

obstacles as opportunities, but it was doing the right thing in the right way for the right reasons. If you're not acting according to your moral code, it doesn't matter how successful you are, it doesn't matter how famous you are, you're going to be unhappy. So in Christianity, there's this idea that if you've seen, if you've violated the 10 commandments, you will go to hell. I think the stoic argument is like, if you're a bad person, if you lie, cheat, steal, act out of selfishness,

in fact, you live in hell. Your life is a hell. It's without meaning, it's without purpose. You have no faith in other people. And so, at the core of stoicism is that idea of some of the bottom, the highest good. And the highest good to the stoics is virtue. They said that virtue is the sole good. Doing the right thing, the right way, regardless of the consequence, was the only thing that

matters. One of the most powerful exercises in stochism is the exercise of Amor Fati. The idea that there is no such thing as an obstacle, there's only fuel. So Marx really talks about fire being the metaphor for the life of a stoke. Everything you throw in front of a fire, he says is fuel for the fire. It turns obstacles into brightness and flame, he says. So you want to go through your life, not thinking about all the problems and all the difficulties. You want to think about all that these obstacles and difficulties are offering you the fuel

that it's providing for you. So a stoke loves everything. That's what a Morphati translates to. A love of fate. And it means that there is nothing that can slow you down because everything is actually taking you exactly in the direction that you want to go. It seems like a weird one, but the Stoics want you to have really low expectations. Seneca talks about pre-metatoshio malorum, about thinking about the worst case scenario.

If you have such a tight grip on how you want things to go and be, you're never going to be happy because what can go wrong will go wrong. But if you're willing to be fluid, if you're willing to let go, if you can think a little bit in advance about how things might not go your way, you can anticipate it, you'll be better. So, Ceneca says like, the expected blows of fortune fall less heavily than the unexpected blows. The happier person is the one who realizes that things are not always going to go their way, that knows the world is not sunshine and kittens, that sees things honestly and accurately,

that person has a lower expectations and then they're pleasantly surprised when things exceed those expectations versus the person who is constantly disappointed with how cruel and unfair the world is. fans lovingly nickname me, Kiki, keep a bag Palmer. And trust me, I keep a bag love. But if you ask me, I'm just getting started. And there's so much I still want to do. So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the baby this is Kiki Palmer podcast. I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest

experts in the hot seat to ask them the questions that have been burning in my mind. What will former child stars be if they weren't actors? What happened to sitcoms? It's only fans, only bad. I wanna know. So I asked my mom about it. These are the questions that keep me up at night.

But I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you. Because on Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits. Follow Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, whatever you get your podcast. Hey, prime members, you can listen early and app-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today.

Another one is related to a more faulty, but it's the idea that the obstacle is the way. That's what Marcus really says. This is the impediment to action, advances action, which stands in the way becomes the way. Sure, things are going to happen that you don't want to happen, but you can instead focus on how you can use this, on how you can move the ball forward because of it. So if someone cuts you off in traffic, okay, that's not what you wanted, but this is a chance to practice forgiveness. You make a mistake, it's a chance for you to practice forgiveness to yourself, right?

Your car is stuck or your trip is delayed, this is a chance for you to catch up on things that you've been putting off. How can you use everything that's happening to you, all the obstacles as opportunities to practice different virtues? So you might set out to do one thing and then that gets impeded, but what that allows you to do is go do a different thing instead. So the stoke is always thinking the obstacle is the way. This is an opportunity. The impediment has actually showing me the direction that I want to go. There's an old zen story about a king who felt like his people were become in complacent. And so he put a large boulder on the one path on the way into town. And he stood in a tree and he watched as people came up to this boulder, this obstacle.

You know, people cursed him, people pushed at it, it turned around and went home. Some people just sat down and waited for someone to do something about it for him. And finally a man walks up and he actually attempts to climb over the boulder, he attempts to go around. He pushes that, he can't get it to budge, and finally he goes off into the woods and comes back with a big stick or a log and he jams it under the rock and finally cranking it like a lever, he gets it to move. And what he finds underneath the boulder was a small purse of gold coins and a note attached to it that actually the king had left and it said, never forget that inside every obstacle is a chance to improve your condition. The obstacle in the path is the path. And that's at the essence of stoicism. The obstacle is the way. The impediment to action advances action, Markus really has said, what stands in the way is the way. The impediment to action advances action, Marcus really has said, what stands in the way is the way.

So we want to see obstacles not as things that are blocking us from where we want to go, but that actually is struggling with them, we're going around them, we're trying things because we can't get through them. We end up discovering new things about ourselves and about the world. There is almost no philosophical school that says ego is a good thing. The Greeks and the Romans spoke of hubris, almost all the plays of history and the myths of religions are about the dangers of pride, pride goeth before the fall. So the Stokes believed that ego was the enemy. Epictetus said you cannot learn that which you think you already know.

So the Stokes constantly asking themselves, why am I doing this? What is my motivation? Am I doing this for other people? Am I doing it because it makes the world better? Or am I doing it to feel superior to other people as it's fuel for my arrogance? Or is this fuel in humility? And so essential in stosism is just the idea that you are not special. The world does not revolve around you. And if you make decisions or take actions, thinking that, thinking that the world revolves around you, thinking that the rules don't apply, you'll be rudely awakened when you come crashing down

to earth and lose everything you work so hard for. The Stoics is individualistic as they were, as much as they were about individual empowerment, you know, deeply believed in our connection to other people and other things. Something like 80 times Marcus Reelius talks about the common good in meditation. Seneca spoke of sympathy at the idea that we were just a small part of a larger organism. Marcus Reelius says, you know, what's bad for the hive is bad for the bee. So in this time of sort of self-absorption and self-interest, of self-aggrandizement, the Stoics offer a different way of thinking about things. They think about it in terms of how can I make sure I'm helping other people? How can I make sure that my success isn't coming at the expense of others?

How can I see myself as a citizen, as a piece of a larger organism, and that this makes sure that we're good and make sure we're doing work for other people, it makes us more selfless and less selfish and thus allows us to contribute more to society. You might think that meditating on your mortality is a way to be unhappy, that the fact that you're going to die, that you could die at any moment, this is depressing, the fact that Stokes, that it was the key to happiness, because when you realize life can go away, you are grateful for the life you do have.

So, Senka says, like, look, if you go into every evening thinking, I have lived, I have lived my life, that's it. When you wake up in the morning, you're like, oh, this is wonderful, I get a free bonus day. This joke wants to live life as though you're playing with house money. Because you are. Each one of us was born knowing we're going to die

and every extra day we get is a gift, is extra. So this idea of momento more of meditating on our mortality is not morbid, it's actually the best way to be happy. Hey, it's Ryan. If you want to take your study of stoicism to the next level, I want to invite you to join us over at Daily Stoic Life. We have daily conversations about the podcast episodes, about the daily email. We actually do a special weekend set of emails for everyone. You get all our daily stoic courses and challenges, totally for free.

That's hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our new year, new year challenge, which we're gonna launch in January. You get a special cloth bound addition of the best of meditations that we've done. You get a bunch of cool stuff. It's an awesome community. I've loved being a part of it. I've loved getting to meet everyone

who's trying to take their study of stoicism to the next level. Love to have you join us. Check us out at dailystokelife.com. We'd love to have you and join us on this digital stowa that we've staked out together and get better every day. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoic Early and Add Free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon

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