The Daily Stoic - Why Stoics Put Greatness On Display

Episode Date: June 19, 2022

When we see greatness, we should memorialize it.We should put it that greatness up on display. On our desk. On the wall. In ink on our skin. On the home screen of our phones. However you decide to honor the people whose example you love, put it somewhere you are guaranteed to see it every day and ask: "am I living by the example they stand for?"→ Put your own greatness on display:Marcus Aurelius Print: https://store.dailystoic.com/products/marcus-aurelius-print Page-A-Day Desk Calendar: https://store.dailystoic.com/products/daily-stoic-page-a-day-desk-calendarAmor Fati Medallion: https://store.dailystoic.com/products/amor-fati-medallion-1Memento Mori Medallion: https://store.dailystoic.com/products/memento-moriHemingway First Draft T-Shirt: https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/hemingway-tee?_pos=2&_sid=a325378b5&_ss=rDance of Death Print: https://store.dailystoic.com/products/arrowLinkedIn Jobs helps you find the candidates you want to talk to, faster. Every week, nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn? Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/STOIC. Terms and conditions apply.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 Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic 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. If you've never been out to my bookstore, the painted porch, you should, I would love to have you come out anytime,

but the painted porch is also where I work. I mean, I've had a number of different office spaces over the years, I've worked, I had a house in East Austin that I wrote a lot of my books in, I wrote, Trust Me I'm Lying, when I lived in New Orleans, I wrote a big chunk of obstacle at the New York public library. They're on fifth. And anyways, the point is over the years, I've tried to build a workspace, an environment that is conducive, not just to the work that I want to do, but the person that I

want to be. Like, I have a little framed print here here. I'll talk about it in today's episode, but I'm just looking at it as I talk about this from Humacloud. He sent me this great little print. It says, like an asshole, I took him, hurt it for granted. I just think about that on a daily basis. I have the Oliver Sacks no sign over to the right of my monitor reminding me to say, no, I've got a little set of notes here as Mark's really talks about, which actually, we did as part of one of the early daily stuff new year, new UChallenge epithets for the self.

What are the rules or watch words that I want to live by? I have honest, calm, fair, father, brave, generous still. So anyways, in today's episode, I'm gonna walk you through the Pain in Porch, my bookstore, and my office, and the sort of momentos and reminders and strategies to arrive from those things that help me try to be a little more stoic. Help me try to be better, help me try to do what I need to do and be who I want to be. And we're going to talk about that. Why Stoics put up reminders like this,

put up mementos like this, and what maybe you can learn from that as well. So enjoy. So enjoy. So enjoy. Is this thing all? Check one, two, one, two. Hey y'all, I'm Kiki Palmer.

I'm an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur, and a Virgo, just the name of you. Now, I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovingly nicknamed 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 Mrs. 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 want to 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 Mrs. Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits. Follow Baby Mrs. 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.

In one of Settinka's letters, he's talking to his friend Lucilius and he says that we should be hunting out quotes or sayings or ideas from the ancients that we can use as our models that can be there for us always. In fact, that's what this letter exchange between the two of them over years and years was. It was them, hey, here's this quote I think you would like, here's this reminder that I thought, here's this thing that I'm thinking about. I'm Ryan Holiday, and today's episode I want to talk about a really important stoic

practice that's guided me through my 15 years now of studying stoicism, whether I'm talking to the NFL or the NBA, whether I'm speaking to special forces operators or sitting US senators, whether I'm running my bookstore or writing one of my books. I try to have things around me that inspire me, that guide me, that give me clarity about the situations that I'm dealing with. Sometimes that's a quote, sometimes that's a statue, sometimes that's a picture.

But the idea is these are reminders put up on display. Marcus really says, nothing is so inspiring as seeing the virtues we admire embodied around us. And so my office, my house, my life, even my body is a way of displaying these ideas so I can follow them, I can lean on them in whatever situations I happen to find myself. Spring is in the air. It's a time of renewal and growth. going through this right now at Daily Stoic. We're trying to add some people in some key positions to help us continue to do what we do. And the hard part of hiring is finding the people that you want to hire. It's a tight labor market where talent has a lot of control. And rightfully so, that's great. Just makes it

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This is one of my favorite Marcus Aurelius quotes. He says, waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one. The idea for the Stokes is you don't talk about it. You embody it, right? What do you do? Doesn't matter what you read, doesn't matter what you think,

doesn't matter what you say, what matters of the results. Are you being the person that philosophy wants you to be? As Mark really says, this is the daily Stoke calendar. What's the tear away? Today is what? Monday, what makes a person free from hindrance and self-determining?

Wealth doesn't neither does high office state or kingdom, rather something else must be found in the case of living, his knowledge of how to live. So it's one quarter day that I love. This is Walker Percy, one of my absolute favorite writers. I like just having him look over my desk while I'm writing. This is a Momentum Warrior Reminder. This is a picture of Mark's to really is that someone sent me. So I see that from across my desk which is really good. This is a quote from General Mattis that he sent me. Things were kind of falling apart in the world and I was talking to him about it and he seemed

hopeful and I said if you seem hopeful after all the dark stuff, you've seen what excuse do I have. And he just said, keep the faith, Ryan, hold the line. So that's a really important reminder for me. This is a quote I try to live by. I said it, but it's a reminder. Am I being a good steward of Stoicism? So I try to think about that always.

This is my large bust of the one and only Marcus Arelius and then this is a bust of Marcus Arelius. It's Italian marble. It's from the 1840s. So I try to have these two busts of Marcus Arelius always to think about. I have a more façade coin as Nietzsche says that we not only bear what is necessary but love it. This is the Momentumori coin. I have a bunch of Momentumori reminders that I'll show you. This is a little one that I have that I wrote to myself. I said 2020 is a test. It won't make you a better person or a worse one. So that's a reminder. This is a bust of Amelia Earhart. Her motto was always think with your stick forward about momentum, which I try to think about

as I'm struggling as a writer. I want to struggle with my writing, that it's about four momentum. I just need to make a little progress. I can't lose my ground speed. This is a Buddhist quote, it got some water on it. Dao is in the emptiness,

emptiness is in the fast of the mind. That's actually the quote that inspired stillness is the key. Oh, in here, here I have two that are really important to me. This is a quote from Hemingway. The first draft of everything is shit. The idea of being that first drafts aren't perfect,

but what matters is what you build on top of them. What matters is you get to the first draft. You can edit and to the first draft. You can edit and polish a first draft, but you can't edit and polish something that doesn't exist. And then this is one of my absolute favorites. This is the last page of the original manuscript of Stephen Pressfield's Gates of Fire,

which I think is the most important and beautiful page in the whole book, but it has the epitaph of the Spartans who died at Thermopylae. It says, go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, it's here obedient to their laws we lie. This is just an important reminder to me about duty and responsibility and sacrifice.

So I like having that on the wall. It's page 802 of the original manuscript. This is Xeno, the founder of Stoicism. So I have that. I have a Seneca quote here, some lack the thickness to live as they wish and just live as they have begun. This is a bust of Seneca, the bust of Marcus Aurelius. My old foster books marks a realist again, Marcus Aurelius. So just like having Marcus around, it's just like

the embodiment of, obviously he's not alive, I can't talk to him. Having the image of it is there and it's inspiring and good. This is one of my heroes willing to come to Sherman, so I have this painting of him on the wall. I'm into Mori coin again. Ah! This is a NYPD challenge coin that someone sent me. The motto is Fortune favors the bold. This is from the 31st Fighter Wing in Aviano Air Force Base

in Italy who I talk to, few years ago they have a great motto, return with honor. To me, return with honor means like, come back better than you left, right? Don't be degraded by what you do out there, don't be changed by what happens out there, but come back with the same commitments, the same ideals, the same beliefs that you left with. This is John Fontay, one of my favorite writers. So I like to have writers use example, inspires me around. He's also a bit of a cautionary tale. And this is another momentum more. This is a dance of death print and the idea

is that the arrow is pointed directly at you. The arrow escapes no one, no one escapes the dance. That I dance as the French inscription says it's supposed to be mounted right at eye level. And then this I just put up this is the four virtues. So the owl is wisdom, the man dropping watered into wine is temperance, the lion is courage and then those are the scales of justice. Those are the four virtues of stoses and those are the four virtues that I try to live by. I have this here So everyone that comes into the office, everyone that works for me has a constant reminder of the four virtues. And then there's a little bit

of that thing in locker rooms for you're supposed to. Touch it as you go. There's a couple here. These are four really cool prints from the artist Joey Roth, whose stuff I love. To me this is about difference between talking and doing. It's kind of an embodiment of the more of a surrealist. I don't talk about it, be about it, quote that we talked about earlier. This is the difference between a beginner, a master, and an expert. You know, it's about what you see beneath the surface that matters. This one about sort of the full bullet necessary for success, inspiration, discipline, success, humility, and then this one is about, you know,

well-rounded, it's great, but obsessed is better than saying. And then there's a reminder of stillness. Physical, I love from Walter Mosley. I'm not saying that you have to be a reader to save your soul in the modern world. I'm saying it helps. And then... Okay, after... A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. I just love that quote as both a writer and a reader. A great line from a margarita inglipome.

Books are door shaped portals carrying me across oceans and centuries, hoping you'd deal less alone. This is one of my favorite Latin expressions. A book is medicine for the soul. Obviously, I believe this is why I chose this profession. Then, and then this is the last one that I sort of built the bookstore around, which is that good things happen in bookstores. In fact, Stoicism is founded in a bookstore. So anyways, I just like to have these reminders everywhere. I think about them often. I guess the last three I would give you, I don't just have my house or my office or my bookstore, but I literally tattooed on my body. They are the obstacles the way, he goes the enemy, and stillness is the key.

If you want to learn more about Stoic philosophy, totally for free, you can sign up for a daily Stoic email. It's one free email every morning, the best of Stoic wisdom, dailystoic.com slash email. Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoke Store. You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend. The app goes the way.

You go as the enemy still Still, this is the key. The leather bound edition of the Daily Stoke. We have them all in the Daily Stoke store, which you can check out at store.dailystoke.com. Hey, prime members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic early and add free on Amazon music, download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page six or Du Moir or in court.

I'm Matt Bellasai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal

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