The Daily Stoic - You've Been Doing It All Wrong

Episode Date: September 8, 2020

"For most of history, we’ve gotten it precisely wrong. We have given far too much attention to what philosophers have thought or written, when really what counts is what they do. What someone says is not important; what’s important is if they live up to what they say. In the end, what matters—whether a person is ancient or modern—is whether their ideas work in the real world, whether they make our lives better or not."Ryan shows why it's the actions of philosophers that are so important, and talks about the brand new book he's written to help shine light on those actions, Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius.Preorder your copy of Lives of the Stoics now and get exciting bonus chapters and more! Learn more here: https://dailystoic.com/preorder***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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 Wondery'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. music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Daily Stoic. For each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the 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 dailystowach.com. You've been doing it all wrong. For most of history, we have gotten it precisely wrong. We have given far too much attention to what philosophers have thought or written when really what counts is what they do. What someone says is not important. What is important is whether they live up to what they say. In the end, what matters, whether a person is ancient or modern,

is whether their ideas work in the real world, whether they make our ideas better or not, and whether they themselves apply those ideas. This core distinction is what separates Stoicism from other schools. Don't talk about your philosophy, Epictetus, would say embody it. That was why he was so frustrated with his students who congratulated themselves

on being able to read the obscure writings of Chrysipus. They were missing the point. Philosophy wasn't about big words or complicated texts. It was about applying concepts to the real world. It was about the example one followed in the example one gave. All study of philosophy and reading should be for the purpose of living a happy life Santa could say we should seek precepts to help us noble and courageous words that can become fact.

We should learn them in a way that words become works. And that's what makes Senika such a fascinating person to study because he wasn't always noble or courageous. He worked for Nero for Christ's sake. He was obscenely rich and through Gatsby-esque parties. Was he happy? We don't know. But it's worth studying his life to see where he succeeded and where he failed.

Where did he embody the philosophy he so beautifully captured in his letters and where did he fall short? Because in the end, that's what matters and that's what we'll teach us the most. Which is why for the last two years, I have been hard at work. My new book, Lives of the Stoics, the Art of Living from Xeno to Marcus Aurelius, and I teamed up with Steve Enhancelment who did the translations and the co-writing on the Daily Stoic, the book that put all of this in motion. We had so much fun doing the Daily Stoic. It's been so gratifying to see it become the runaway bestseller that it's become. And so we poured over hundreds of ancient texts and modern scholarship to bring you 26 biographies of the most important and most interesting stills from history all in one accessible readable volume

that does what philosophy is supposed to do. We're studying the lives of these men and women so they can inspire us to follow in their footsteps so they can teach us how to be better people and not just better philosophers. And lies of the Stoics is now available for pre-order everywhere you pre-order books, but if you go to dailystoic.com slash pre-order, I've got all sorts of awesome bonus chapters for you that you can't get anywhere else, extra material, cool stuff that I'm really proud of, that I wanted to give to you to incentivize you to pre-order it because that helps me a great deal. So if you've gotten value out of this podcast over the years,

if you've enjoyed my writing, please support it by pre-ordering the book. That makes a big difference. It's how publishers determine how many copies to print. It's what helps a book land on the best subtlest. It's what helps bookstores decide to stock them or not. Pre-ordering is just disproportionately impactful. That's why we're announcing it here a month before the book comes out. The book comes out September 29th, but today now

finally you can pre-order the book. Go to dailystilic.com slash pre-order and please pre-order lives of the Stoics, the art of living from Xenota Marcus Aurelius. Can't thank you enough. I know you're going to love this book. Check it out, lives of the Stoics dailystoic.com slash preorder. 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 and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Hey there listeners!

While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Cotopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes,

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