The Daily Stoic - Do This To Get That
Episode Date: January 10, 2024In a sense, this is also the secret to happiness. No one can give us step-by-step instructions for achieving happiness—not even the Stoics. But they did teach us how to be resilient, how to... think, how to manage frustration, how to do hard things, how to endure, how to laugh, how to focus on process vs outcomes, to try to be useful, to be empathetic, how to love. It’s with these tools—with the ability to adapt to circumstances, to find the opportunity in obstacles big and small—that we’re able to experience happiness.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check 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.
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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom
designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom every day life.
Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of
history's greatest men and women.
For more, you can visit us dailystoic.com.
Do this to get that.
Obviously, we want to be happy.
But as we all know, it's not as simple as that.
Happiness isn't something that just happens.
It's not something anyone can give us
or that we can purchase.
Nor is it something that any of us can hold on to.
It's a rather fleeting thing.
So how do we get it? What do we do?
There's a great exchange between epic teetus.
If you haven't read his discourse, as you should, I've got some good copies I
recommend in the painting porch. But the exchange is between epictetus and one of
his students. And the student is asking epictetus to show him what to do so he
can be wise and successful. This is the wrong request epictetus says. It will be
better to ask how to be adaptable to circumstances.
In a sense, this is also the secret to happiness.
No one can give us step-by-step instructions for achieving happiness, not even the stoics.
But they did teach us how to be resilient, how to think, how to manage frustration,
how to do hard things, how to endure, how to laugh,
how to focus on process for our outcomes, to try to be useful, to be empathetic, how to love.
And it's with these tools, with the ability
to adapt to circumstance,
is to find the opportunity in obstacles big and small
that we're able to experience happiness.
None of us will be happy all the time,
because that's impossible,
but Stoicism does set us up to be happier than most people.
It sets us up to be
happy and ways and in places that most people can't be happy. And we should be pretty happy
about that. Hey, Prime Members!
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