You Must Run War Games

"In Rome, as today, things went wrong all the time. Wars broke out. Earthquakes struck. Pandemics infected populations. In Rome, as in our time, people were constantly caught off guard by these things."Learn the exercise that the Stoics performed to prepare for disaster in today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***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. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where 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 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com.

• 0:29Ryan Holiday?

  You must run war games. In Rome, as in our time, things went wrong. Wars broke out, earthquakes struck, pandemics infected populations. In Rome, as in our time, people were constantly caught off-guard by these things. Seneca writes about a fire that broke out and destroyed the city of Lyons. Even in learning this, the people of Rome were not prepared when a fire broke out and destroyed their city. If only they had listened to Seneca. He'd been saying it since the first time he was exiled. "Premeditatio malorum: Nothing ought to be unexpected by us. Our minds should be set forward in advance to meet all problems, and we should consider not what is wont to happen, but what can

• 1:12Ryan Holiday?

  happen." What about today, when COVID-19 has made quick work of businesses, government agencies, and supply chains? Was anyone able to withstand the onslaught of economic and health issues? Yes, it turns out there was. In Texas, there was HEB, the grocery chain, that has been actually expanding services and letting customers know that they don't need to stockpile, because there are plenty more supplies coming. There is also AT&T, which despite record broadband usage, is ably handling the surges. How? Because they prepared for this. They war-gamed for precisely this scenario. As a recent Atlantic story reported, "AT&T Rehearses for Disaster." Last May, the company ran an internal war

• 1:56Ryan Holiday?

  game on how a pandemic would affect its ability to keep phone and internet service running. The company does these exercises routinely to try to get ready to build teams of people and their reflexes, and also able to understand what they will need on the ground. Seneca said that we should be routinely peering ahead, planning for the unexpected, running those war games. Like lions burning to ashes or global stay-at-home orders, it's hard to fathom some things happening. But that's precisely why we have to be ready. You have to put yourself in the position that Epictetus said we must be in, the one that lets you greet adversity with the expression, "You are precisely what I trained for."

• 2:38Ryan Holiday?

  And that begins with premeditatio melorum.

• 2:43Ryan Holiday?

  It's been almost four years since The Daily Stoic was published. This little book, the first collection of all the Stoics in one book in centuries, has sold nearly 1 million copies in 20 languages. It's quite possible that your copy, having been cracked open hundreds of times now, is looking a little worse for wear. So we have good news. We are releasing a premium leather-bound edition of The Daily Stoic. This limited edition comes with a host of new features to distinguish it from the original: a genuine leather cover with gold foil-stamped logos, gilded edge pages printed on premium-grade paper, and all-new illustrations to delineate each section of the book and more. And the book is on sale now,

• 3:26Ryan Holiday?

  but this is the first run, which means it's a limited quantity. So don't miss your chance to own this new, beautiful edition of The Daily Stoic. You can buy yours today in the Daily Stoic store or at dailystoic.com/leather.