The Daily Stoic - Ask Yourself This Question About Every Thought | Heroes, Here And Now

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

Ryan explains why you should always think through your impressions before you act on them, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.List your product on AppSumo between September 15th - November 17th and the first 400 offers to go live will receive $1000, the next 2000 to list a product get $250. And everyone who lists gets entered to be one of 10 lucky winners of $10k! Go to https://appsumo.com/ryanholiday to list your product today and cash in on this amazing deal.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow 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 Stood Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. 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. on music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance in the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful

co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the stoics, from Epititus Markis Relius, Seneca, then some analysis for me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works. As an author, as an entrepreneur, as a creative in this world, I wear like a lot of hats. And that's why I'm excited about today's sponsor, actually from a dear friend of mine, AppSumo, the leading digital marketplace for entrepreneurs, has awesome tools for authors

and creatives as well. AppSumo is the best way to automate all of your busy work that comes from running a business so you can boost your productivity, scale beyond your skill set and focus on what matters most to you. And the great news is that AppSumo is giving away their entire $1 million Black Friday marketing budget to creators like you and me. If you have an e-book, an online course,

a template or any other digital product, this is for you. List your product on AppSumo between September 15th and November 17th. The first 400 offers to go live will receive $1,000. The next $2,000 Pylista project will get $250. Just go to AppSumo.com. Slash Ryan Holiday. AppSumo.com Slash Ryan Holiday. Ask yourself this question about every thought. Every minute of every day thoughts pop into your head about what's happening, about other people, about yourself, about what you see,

about what you feel. What are you supposed to do with all these thoughts? Well, according to the core premise of stoicism, the one thing you're not supposed to do is act on them immediately. Epic Titus talks about stopping and putting every impression to the test. Or, as Dr. Stixrod said on the Daily Stoic podcast, his excellent book, The Self-Driven Child, is one I recommend you pick that up at the Pinn and Ports. He said that, with every thought we must have the discipline to ask, is this true? All of life is opinion. Mark has really said, stuff happens and we make snap judgments. But this subjectivity can be misleading, it can warp reality itself.

That's why we have to slow down, submit every impression to the test, confirm everything we think and feel is true. Because most of it isn't. We're not actually upset, we're just hungry. We haven't been wrong, it just looks like we have been. There's nothing actually to worry about, that's just our anxiety talking. The situation isn't bad because just as easily

we could see what's good in it. Or maybe as so often as the case, we don't need to think anything about it at all. We can just turn off our thoughts about this for that all together. Got it? Heroes, here and now. Such behavior, people don't want to praise their contemporaries, whose lives they actually share, but hold great expectations for the praise of future generations. People they haven't even met or ever will. And this is akin to being upset that the past generations didn't praise you. Marcus Aurelius is 618 and I'm reading to you today from the daily Stoic 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living by yours truly. My co-author and translator, Steve Enhancelman, you can get signed copies by the way in the

daily Stoic store. Over a million copies of the daily Stoic and print now. It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. It's been more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the best cellist. It's just an awesome experience. But I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoke.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading. Alexandria, the city in Egypt,

still bears the name of its founder. Alexander the Great, some 2,300 years after he set foot there. How cool would it have been to have a city named after you for so many centuries to know how many people are still saying your name? Here's a thought. It wouldn't be cool because, like Alexander, you'll be dead. You'll have no idea whether your name lasted through the centuries. No one gets to enjoy their own legacy by definition.

And worse, think of all the horrible things that Alexander did to achieve what he did. He fought pointless wars. He had a terrible temper, even killing his best friend and a drunken fight. He was ruthless and a slave to his ambition. Is he really so admirable? Instead of wasting even a second considering the opinions of future people, people who are not even born yet, focus every bit of yourself on being the best person you can be in the present moment, on doing the right thing right now. The distant future is irrelevant, be good, and noble, and impressive now, while it still matters.

When I had Camila Cabello on the podcast, several months back, or last year at this point, I have no conception of time anymore with the pandemic. She was talking about this idea that she heard from one of her mentors. They told them the legacy is not for you. The legacy is for everyone else. And I think that's a great way of saying this same stoic concept, which is, you know, it doesn't bring Elvis any pleasure that we're still enjoying the songs. What matters is, did he do them honorably was he bringing pleasure to himself

and his family and collaborative partners all that at the moment he was making them. When the stoics talk about indifference, they're saying, it's not good or bad, it just is, right? I think this is kind of where they come down. Like, Marcus really wouldn't be upset that we're still talking about them. That meditations is still relevant. It's that making meditations relevant was not his goal in any way. In fact, he never intended meditations to be published. So unlike Alexander who's naming these cities after himself obsessed with his legacy, trying to be the greatest conqueror in the world, Marx really fights a more internal battle

to be great, to master himself rather than master the world, to conquer himself rather than conquer the world. And he tries, in his writings, not to impress future generations, not to show people how smart and brilliant he is, but instead to get so personal and vulnerable and raw and real and true that incidentally he makes something that stands the test of time. The longevity and stand power and continued relevance of meditations is an accidental byproduct of the truer, greater place that Marcus Aurelius got to in his life.

And I think Marcus Aurelius is uniquely suited to talk to us about this, because he was famous and powerful. He was a peer of these great emperors, but even then he was reminding himself, like how many people even remember Antoninus, his predecessor, or how many people are still around from Hadrian's court or Augustus's court?

How many people know any of these names anymore? He's like, you know, it goes by like this and it's forgotten so easily. And I remember when I was talking to Camille, we were talking about how, you know, you look at the most stream songs of this year and you've heard of most of them. You go back five years and you know most of them.

You go back 10 years and you know a handful of them. And 20 years, you know, a couple. And as you go back, it recedes. You know fewer and fewer and fewer until, you know, you don't know any of the famous songs from 1900. And that's inevitably what's going to happen to you and your accomplishments, even if they reach those heights or a greater.

We're all forgotten, and even if we weren't, we aren't around to enjoy it. So what matters then is who we are today, to ourselves, to our people, to our own potential, anything else is extra, anything else we're indifferent to. What matters is that we do the right thing. All those horrible compromises and sacrifices that Alexander has to make to be Alexander. The payoff is what? He dies as a young man, a horrible death. Mark says he's buried in the same ground as his meal driver. And then what? The legacy, it means what? Not only is it not really last, yes, some of the cities are still named after him. But Emerson talks about Napoleon. He's like, by the end of Napoleon's reign,

what's left? Europe's exactly the same as it was essentially. All that's, you know, it faded away. Is accomplishments faded away as quick as the smoke from one of his cannons, he said. Ashes and dust as they say in Gladiator, that's all we are. Remember that.

Be humble. Act accordingly. Don't give a crap about legacy, give a crap about who you are and what you are doing today. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. You just go to DailyStoke.com slash email. So check it out at Dailystoke.com slash email. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily Stoke early and ad free on Amazon music, download the Amazon music app today, or

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