“How much better is it to be known for doing well by many than for living extravagantly? How much more worthy than spending on sticks and stones is it to spend on people?”

—MUSONIUS RUFUS, LECTURES, 19.91.26–28

#book #books #stoicism #thedailystoic #kindness #HelpOthers

— The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday, Stephen Hanselman
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“First tell yourself what kind of person you want to be, then do what you have to do. For in nearly every pursuit we see this to be the case. Those in athletic pursuit first choose the sport they want, and then do that work.”

—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.23.1–2a

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— The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
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We think if we just make enough money, someday we won’t have to worry about it anymore. We think if we just get big enough, strong enough, we won’t have to worry about being pushed around. We think if we can just get through this or that rough patch, we can relax and not be so worried anymore.

Of course, it never works out that way. No one has ever gotten there and reported back on their worry-free life. Just as you must have noticed how this has gone with the progress you have made. You have more today than you did before…how do you feel? Have all your problems disappeared?

Does that mean worry is just a part of life? That stress is ever present no matter how successful or powerful we get? Well, no–unless you choose for it to be. In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius talks of his anxiety. He realizes that it’s not coming from anything external. It’s within him. It’s a choice he’s making.

This isn’t to say that things can’t be made easier by money. Or that your lack of money isn’t a problem right now. It’s that simply having or not having something is an external. Worry, doubt, anxiety, stress–indeed any emotion we experience in our lives–is internal. We have influence over the latter, not the former.

So let’s try to solve the problem where it will actually make a difference. Let’s stop lying to ourselves, saying “it will all be better in the future,” because the present isn’t the problem. None of the external things are. It’s our emotions at the root of discomfort. They are within us. They are our responsibility to work on.

What To Do When You Have Fallen Short | The Three Areas of Training #theDailyStoic
https://podcastaddict.com/episode/152112341 via @PodcastAddict@twitter.com

“But in all circumstances—adversity or advantage—we really have just one thing we need to do: focus on what is in our control as opposed to what is not.”

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— The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday, Stephen Hanselman
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​In one of his letters, Seneca tells us of an old Roman pleasantry that friends would exchange when greeting each other: “If you are well,” one would say after inquiring how someone was doing, “it is well and I am also well.”

It’s a nice little custom, isn’t it? If you’re good, I’m good, and everything is good. Nothing else matters.

But of course, because this is Seneca, he couldn’t just leave it there. In fact, telling us about this old expression was just a device to make a point. A better way to say it, he writes, is “‘If you are studying philosophy, it is well.’ For this is just what ‘being well’ means. Without philosophy the mind is sickly, and the body, too, though it may be very powerful, is strong only as that of a madman or a lunatic is strong.”

The point is that to the Stoics, the practice and study of philosophy was the only way to make sure all was well, no matter what was happening in the world. At war like Marcus Aurelius? Study philosophy in your tent at night. Unable to submit to Caesar’s tyranny like Cato? Read a little Socrates before your dramatic suicide. Shot down over Vietnam like James Stockdale? Say to yourself, as he did, “I am leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.” As in…even in a POW camp, I can still practice and pursue philosophy…and be well for it!

Nobody knows what the day or the week has in store for us. As much as we take care of ourselves and eat well, so much of our health is outside of our control. But the one way we can make sure that we are always well, that we are always getting better (mentally, spiritually, if not physically) is by the books we read, the questions we ponder, and the conversations we have.

Now get studying!

#TheDailyStoic

​Marcus Aurelius wasn’t born Marcus Aurelius (literally, his name was Marcus Catilius Severus Annius Verus). Epictetus wasn’t born a sage–to say he was would be to deprive him of the enormous credit due to a man who went from a lowly slave to a wise and powerful philosopher.

No, becoming a Stoic takes work. It takes practice.

We have been talking this month about the idea of spiritual exercising–a term coined by Pierre Hadot, a great writer about the Stoics. Philosophy wasn’t this thing you were taught he said, it was a thing you did. Through reading, through journaling, through practice in the real world.

Just as one becomes strong through lifting weights or skilled at woodworking through time in their workshop, we become adept and able at philosophy through a similar process. Stoicism is designed to be a practice and a routine. It’s not a philosophy you read once and magically understand at the soul-level. No, it’s a lifelong pursuit that requires diligence and repetition and concentration. That’s one of the benefits of the page-a-day book (with monthly themes) format we organized the Stoics into in The Daily Stoic (which is $1.99 this week as an ebook) and with the Daily Stoic Journal (which has daily entries and weekly themes–and also a cool new leather cover).

The idea is to put one thing up for you to review—to have at hand—and to fully digest. Not in passing. Not just once. But every single day over the course of a year, and preferably year in and year out. It’s also the benefits of what we do in our Daily Stoic challenges (which you can see here).

Marcus would say that the student of philosophy is like a boxer. Through training and practice and repetition, a boxer becomes one with their weapon. And through training and practice and repetition—reading, writing in a journal, listening to Stoics in conversation—we become one with our philosophy. So make that your goal this year. To create a practice. To get the reps. To make Stoicism a part of your life and your mind.

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When he was starting out in Hollywood, Judd Apatow began to have panic attacks. The stress of rewriting a script. Getting a film in on time. Managing all the moving pieces on a project. He felt the enormity of the pressure and like a lot of us, he took that to an irrational extreme.

If this movie is bad, he would think, it’s all my fault. He would look around at the actors on set and think to himself, I can take them all down if I don’t make this scene historically great. As he thought those kinds of thoughts, his temperature would begin to rise, his heart would start pounding, and his surroundings would begin to feel like they were closing in on him.

As Apatow experienced more and more panic attacks, he learned the right way and the wrong way to deal with them. As he says in the book Sicker in the Head,

“The secret was you don’t try not to have a panic attack, because that makes it worse. You don’t run away from it. You allow yourself to feel it, and you remind yourself that everything will be fine, that nothing’s going to happen. When you try to stop it, it’s like taking a mirror and smashing it on the ground and stamping on the bits and creating a thousand mirrors.”
The Stoics would say panic, stress, and anxiety are feelings, and you can’t prevent them from happening. And if you try to suppress these emotions, like stuffing junk in your closet, it eventually comes exploding out. The bill inevitably comes due…and with interest attached.

Stoicism, as we’ve said, is not about suppressing your emotions. That’s not what a Stoic does. A Stoic learns to feel and deal with their emotions. As we’ve talked about, a Stoic seeks out help (here’s our popular video on the topic). As Apatow did, they go speak to a therapist. They notice patterns and understand how they go–and where the offramps are. As Marcus Aurelius did, process things in your journal. Whether it’s panic attacks, stress, anxiety, or some other destructive emotion—you can’t keep it from happening from sheer will or discipline.

But you can get better at responding when it happens. You can become a better friend to yourself, as Seneca told us to. You can pick yourself back up off the floor and keep going, a little wiser, with a little more perspective than last time.

#TheDailyStoic
We worry about the future. About who might win an election we’re closely watching. About what some foreign leader might do. About the markets and your portfolio. About the climate. It’s so uncertain, we think, unpredictable and potentially overwhelming.

But is it really?

“If you’ve seen the present,” Marcus Aurelius writes in his own anxious and scary times, “then you’ve seen everything–as it’s been since the beginning, as it will be forever. The same substance, the same form. All of it.”

And he’s not wrong. All the things you’re worried about potentially happening in the future are in fact happening right now somewhere in the world. All the things you’re not sure you could handle…people have been handling since the beginning of time. Nothing new looms, only reruns of what you’ve already experienced or read about in the annals of history.

You’ll meet this ‘future,’ Marcus reminds himself, with the same weapons you’ve met everything else in your life with. Whatever is coming, you can handle…because it’s already here, because it’s always been with you.

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There's no such thing as “quality” time.

Time is time.

In fact, as Jerry Seinfeld has said, garbage time—eating cereal with your kids late at night, laying around with your spouse on the couch—is actually the best time.

The Stoics would say that all time is created equal. The present moment is the same for everyone, Marcus Aurelius said. It's what you do with it that makes it special. Not where. Or for how long. Or at what cost.

Forget chasing huge experiences. Realize there is no such thing as “quality” time. Embrace “garbage” time. Because when you do, you end up getting the best kind of time there is. You get the moment right in front of you. That’s what Marcus meant when he said, “Give yourself a gift: the present moment.” Cherish it.

It’s all we have.

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Marcus Aurelius asked,

When you’ve done well and another has benefited by it, why like a fool do you look for a third thing on top—credit for the good deed or a favor in return?
So you did a good thing, he’s saying, why do you need to be thanked for it? It felt good to help someone else, why do you need credit or recognition or gratitude? The same goes for hard work and accomplishments. Do you really need people to know what you did? Do you really need the likes and the comments and the cheers and, as Marcus put it, the clacking of their tongues and hands?

The answer is that you don’t. In fact, it’s usually better not to get credit (because the ‘right thing’ is not always appreciated, because other people might get jealous, because it puffs up your ego).

Think about that today, and remember it always. You don’t need credit. That’s not what should motivate you. Do the right thing because it’s right. Pursue excellence because that’s just what you do. Leave the recognition and the rewards alone

#TheDailyStoic
“If it is not right, do not do it,” Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations, “if it is not true, do not say it.” But it’s worth pointing out that as a philosophy, Stoicism demands more of us than just this negative. As Marcus would also point out, “Often injustice lies in what you aren’t doing, not only in what you are doing.”

So, first, do not lie. But, second, sitting by and allowing a lie to stand? These can both be injustices. No Stoic would argue that fraud is permissible. But what if you witness fraud? What if you suspect a fraud is occurring at your work or in your industry or in government?

In his book Anitfragile, Nassim Taleb bridges these two quotes from Marcus perfectly: “If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.”

Be the person that stands up. Be the person that lends a hand. Be the person that actively does good, that is courageous and generous. It’s not enough to simply not do wrong. We are called to do more than that, we are held to a higher standard. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” is the line. It’s true. Don’t turn a blind eye. Don’t make it someone else’s problem.

Do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter- except Attribution. Attribution always matters.

#TheDailyStoic

We think we want to be rich. Or famous. Or powerful. We want to succeed, we want to achieve. We want more of this. We want less of that. These desires of ours are explicit, they define our goals and order our priorities. We salivate over them.

But deep down, they don’t reflect what we actually want. They’re proxies, indirect ways of getting to what we’re really looking for.

“I want first of all–in fact, as an end to these other desires,” Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes in Gift from the Sea, “to be at peace with myself.” Whether we’re conscious of it or not, we think that success will make us feel good. We think that proving people wrong will make us feel better. That externals will bring us internal harmony. But will it? Has it ever?

No. No it hasn’t. It’s interesting, Lindbergh quotes Socrates who prayed that “May the outward and inward man be at one.” Perhaps that’s the mistake we make. We think that perfecting the outward version of ourselves that the world sees will bring us the inner peace we want. But Socrates and the Stoics knew it was the other way around. It’s the inner work that is more likely to bring us the outward success. And more importantly, that the inner work was an end unto itself.

That’s what Marcus Aurelius was doing in Meditations, trying to focus inward on the inner work. Notice he speaks nowhere in those pages about how he will be remembered by history, how long his accomplishments will stand. On the contrary, he was reminding himself how little these things mattered if he did not bring his inner world into harmony with his philosophy. Because no one is going to remember all the things we accomplished after we’re gone, but we will never forget how little joy they brought us while we were alive if they don’t come from the right place, in the right order.

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We all have vices. We all have flaws. We all have things we know we want to change.

What happens? Nothing happens.

This is true for everyone, even Martin Luther King Jr. “One day,” King said, we tell ourselves, “I’m going to rise up and drive this evil out. I know it is wrong. It is destroying my character and embarrassing my family.”

But then…

At last the day came and you made a New Year’s resolution that would get rid of the whole base evil. And then the next year came around and you were doing the same old evil thing. Can you remember the surprise and disappointment that gripped you when you discovered that…after all that you had done through your resolutions to get rid of it—the old habit was still there? And out of amazement you found yourself asking, “Why could I not cast it out?”

Martin Luther King Jr. accomplished so much because of his ability to rise up and drive evil out. But how much greater could he have been had he been able to purge some of his own evil habits? He was too busy. He had trouble delegating. He ate poorly. He was disorganized. He had affairs.

Seneca reminds us that fools all have one thing in common: They are always getting ready to start. They are always getting ready to change. They are always getting ready to start the diet and exercise program. And then? And then? And then?

They never do. We don’t do the work.

Is that who you want to be? Is that who you are meant to be?

Of course not. Make this the year. This is the year you drive the bad habits out. This is the year you follow through. This is the year you demand the best of and for yourself.

#TheDailyStoic
The Stoics believed that stressful and dangerous situations unfold like this:

Something happens—we wake up to reports that the stock market has taken a dive, we get screamed at by our boss, the doctor raises an eyebrow and recommends we go in for further testing…

And this provokes a reaction—not a good one either. A scared one. Or an angry one. Something emotional. Or we go the opposite way and we just shut down, paralyzed by the events.

The Stoics called these involuntary and immediate impressions that we form in response to bad news or stress phantasia. Contrary to what you might think, the Stoics were quite sympathetic to these reactions. They understand them as natural, and largely out of our control. You throw something surprising at someone…and they’re going to be surprised. That’s how it works. That’s why it’s called ‘surprise.’

Stoicism is not a philosophy meant to show you how to stop that. Instead, what Stoicism is about is what to do next. What to do after the involuntary first impression has been given its moment. As Donald Robertson writes in his wonderful book, How To Think Like a Roman Emperor, “The Stoic tells himself that although the situation may appear frightening, the truly important thing in life is how he chooses to respond.”

It’s perfectly reasonable to tremble in the face of danger, he says, and it was likely that Cato and Marcus Aurelius were scared on the eve of battle or before an important speech. But we don’t hold that against them, because what mattered is what they did next.

They led the charge. They gave the speech. They did the right thing anyway. They transcended their phantasia.

And so must you.

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​Seneca had money and privilege. Lots of it.

Yet where did it get him?

It didn’t save him from illness, or spare him from years of convalescence. It didn’t protect him from the whims of an emperor, who exiled him for false charges. It didn’t save him from tragically losing a child. In the end, it didn’t even give him the freedom to walk away from Nero’s service when he wanted to. Even with his vast wealth, it was a problem he couldn’t buy himself out of.

Does this mean there is no advantage to having money? No. Nor does it imply that not having money is better than having it (Seneca would deem money a ‘preferred indifferent’—better to have than not have).

It’s just a reminder: All the work and sacrifice, fantasies or desires, fame and power…none of it will give you what you think it will. Your fortune will not protect you from what fate has in store for you–at best it will insulate you from some inconveniences. But your money will not buy you happiness or peace.

Those things can never come from externals. They will not be found in a bank balance or a magic number. They can only come from within.

#TheDailyStoic
This is that weird time of year where we start to think about how we want the following year to go. We start thinking about what we call “resolutions”—the promises we make to ourselves about what we’re going to do in the next 12 months. The habits we’re going to quit, the skills we’re going to learn, the standards we’re going to hold ourselves to.

On the one hand, it’s a wonderful and inspiring bit of reflection that the whole world basically comes together to do this at the same time. It’s excellent that everyone has finally decided to get in shape, to stop smoking, to try to give back more, to commit to being a better friend or relative, to read a certain number of books. But it’s strange that everyone puts it off for so long—we treat our self improvement like it’s a school project we hope might just complete itself, praying that maybe our parents or teacher will handle it for us.

Well, they won’t.

Epictetus asked, why is it that we wait to demand the best for and of ourselves? It’s crazy!

Here you are today, staring down the barrel of 2023. And while the best time to demand the best for and of yourself was years ago, the second best time is right now. Put the missed opportunity behind you and repeat this passage from Epictetus,

“From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event.”
Can you do that? Can you start right now? No more putting stuff off. No more, “I’ll start on Monday.” No more “in the future, I’ll do better and expect better.” No. Demand the best for yourself now.

It’s what a grown up does.

#TheDailyStoic
Cynicism is easy. Being jaded is easy. Being tired—tired of other people, tired of life—is easy.

Hope?

Hope is hard. Earnestness is hard. Caring is hard.

But that’s the whole thing: Nobody said being a Stoic was easy. We have to remind ourselves what Marcus Aurelius reminded himself,

“Does the light of a lamp shine and keep its glow until its fuel is spent? Why shouldn’t your truth, justice, and self-control shine until you are extinguished?”
The Stoic stays positive. The Stoic keeps trying. They remain strong—against the pull of bitterness and anger and hopelessness. The great General Mattis once said “Cynicism is cowardice,”. Cynicism is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we tell ourselves it’s pointless, that we can’t make a difference, that everything is terrible…we’re right. As Marcus put it, “What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.”

Greatness—being a Stoic—requires courage. The courage to wake up in the morning. To keep up good cheer, to transmit light. To believe in our own agency. To believe that making a difference is not only worth it, but possible.

It’s a hard path we’re committed to. But it’s worth it.

#TheDailyStoic
The Cynic philosopher Diogenes was once criticized by a passerby for not taking care of himself in his old age, for being too active when he should have been taking it easy and resting. As per usual, Diogenes had the perfect rejoinder: “What, if I were running in the stadium, ought I to slacken my pace when approaching the goal?”

His point was that we should never stop getting better, never stop the work that philosophy demands of us. Right up until the end Diogenes was questioning convention, reducing his wants, challenging power, and insisting on truth.

The Stoics agreed with his view, that old age was no excuse for coasting. In fact, we get the sense that many of the strongest passages in Meditations are written by an older Marcus Aurelius, one who is still frustrated with himself for his anxiety, for his passions, for his less-than-flawless record when it came to upholding his positions. In one passage he says it more or less outright: How much longer are you going to keep doing this? You’re old and you still can’t get it right.

But he wasn’t just kicking himself to feel better. He was trying to get himself to be better. He refused to take his foot off the gas. He was going to keep going right on through the finish line, and so should we. No matter how old we are, no matter how long we’ve been at this, it’s far too early to stop now, to say “close enough.”

No, we are going to give our best effort. We’re going to give everything we have, with every day that is given to us.