The Daily Stoic - This Is What Progress Looks Like

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

Ryan talks about the importance of being a good friend to yourself.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 Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. insight, wisdom necessary for living good 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 at dailystowick.com. This is what progress looks like. How do you know you're making progress in this philosophy? It's a question that every person struggles with including Seneca when he was writing his famous letters

He meditated on this theme. What does getting better look like? How do you know if any of this is working? quoting one of his favorite philosophers Haccato Seneca comes up with a pretty good metric. What progress you ask have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself. What a wonderful way of putting it. Not I am richer, I am more famous, not even I sleep more soundly or I am handling a crisis well. Sure those things are nice and possibly even important.

But to the stoics, the point of this work was something simpler and more earnest to be a good friend to yourself. A person who is a friend to themselves, Seneca wrote, is an aid to all mankind. Why? Because they are kind, they are calm, they are healthy, they have empathy for themselves and for others. They aren't desperate, they don't need to put others down to make themselves feel better. They can quietly spend time alone. Use that as your rubric. Is the voice in your head getting nicer? Are you more still? Are you practicing good self-care?

That's what progress looks like. That's what you deserve as a human being and as a friend. If you like the podcast that we do here and you want to get it via email every morning, you can sign up at dailystoke.com slash email. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily stoic early and ad-free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon music, download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.