Courage is Contagious | Four Habits Of The Stoic Mind

Ryan explains how you can overcome fear with the virtue of courage, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. LMNT is the maker of electrolyte drink mixes that help you stay active at home, work, the gym, or anywhere else. Electrolytes are a key part of a happy, healthy body. As a listener of this show, you can receive a free LMNT Sample Pack for only $5 for shipping. To claim this exclusive deal you must go to drinkLMNT.com/dailystoic. If you don’t love it, they will refund your $5 no questions asked. 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. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epictetus, Marcus, Rilius, Seneca, then some analysis from me. And then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

• 0:41Ryan Holiday?

  Courage is contagious. When another country called on Sparta for military help, the Spartans wouldn't send their army. They sent one Spartan commander. That was all it took to rebuild discipline in the troops, to inspire them, to toughen them up. One person who knew what they were doing, who wasn't afraid, who was calm amidst chaos. Courage is, as they say, contagious. Certainly, the history of Stoicism bears this out. Where does Cato get his unfathomable bravery from? The example of his great-grandfather and his father. And Seneca, when Nero's goons came for him?

• 1:24Ryan Holiday?

  From the example of Cato. For Marcus, it was Antoninus; for Epictetus, it was Musonius Rufus. It is key, Epictetus would say, to keep company with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best. One of the misperceptions of courage is we think it's something that we're born with, or we aren't. No, it's a tradition we choose to follow, or not.

• 1:52Ryan Holiday?

  It's something we decide to expose ourselves to or not. More importantly, it's something we decide to spread and inspire other people with or not. Our call to you today is to become the one who makes a new majority, to be brave and to make others brave by association, to not just follow the example of Cato, or Antoninus, or Musonius, but to be one for all those people around you, to be the kind of presence that calls forth people's best. And look, if there's someone in your life who might be battling against fear, I hope you can pass them a copy of my new book, Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave. It's a book I worked on for the last two years, including during the depths of the pandemic. I hope you can check it out.

• 2:37Ryan Holiday?

  Maybe you can pass it to someone who is struggling with courage in their own life, trying to tackle something big, feels like maybe they don't have what it takes. That's what the book is about. You can get signed copies from me at store.dailystoic.com, or you can pick up the book on Amazon, Audible, anywhere books are sold, but I do hope you check it out. Very proud of it. Thank you for the support.

• 3:00Ryan Holiday?

  Four Habits of the Stoic Mind, November 18th. Our rational nature moves freely forward in its impressions when, number one, it accepts nothing false or uncertain; two, it directs its impulses only to acts for the common good; three, it limits its desires and aversions only to what's in its own power; and four, embraces everything nature assigns to it. Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. And I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by yours truly and my co-author and translator, Stephen Hanselman.

• 3:44Ryan Holiday?

  You can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoic store. Over a million copies of the Daily Stoic in print now. It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. Spend more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks, on the bestsellers. It's just an awesome experience, but I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoic.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading. Now, let's read the Gregory Hayes translation because he doesn't do it in the list like we do. He says, "Nature of any kind thrives on forward progress, and progress for a rational mind means not accepting falsehood or uncertainty in its perceptions, making unselfish actions its only aim, seeking and shunning only the things which it has control over,

• 4:29Ryan Holiday?

  embracing what nature demands of it, the nature in which it participates, as the leaf's nature does the trees. Except that the nature shared by the leaf is without consciousness or reason and subject to impediments, whereas that shared by human beings is without impediments and is rational and just, since it allots to each and everything an equal and proportionate share of time, being, purpose, action, and chance. Examine it closely, not whether they're identical point by point, or in the aggregate, this weighed against that." So now, reading that, it's a slightly less clear what Marx is talking about. So let's switch to a third translation.

• 5:10Ryan Holiday?

  We're going to pull up the Robin Waterfield translation of Meditations, the annotated edition. He says, "Every nature is content when it makes good progress, and rational nature makes good progress by withholding assent from false or unclear impressions, by steering its impulses only towards socially beneficial works, by restricting its desires and aversions to things that it's possible for human beings to attain or avoid, by welcoming everything that's allotted to it by universal nature. For it is part of universal nature, just as a leaf's nature is part of a plant's nature, except that a leaf's nature is part of a nature that isn't equipped for perception or rational thought,

• 5:51Ryan Holiday?

  is capable of being obstructed, whereas human nature is part of a nature that's unimpeded, intelligent, and just, seeing that it gives to each and everything equal shares according to their deserts of time, substance, cause, activity, and experience. But don't expect to find every individual entity equal to every other in each of these respects. You'll find, rather, that the sum total allotted to one thing has an overall equivalence." The totality allotted to another. So needless to say, this is not the clearest of passages from Marcus Aurelius. And I think we did a good job clarifying what he means. And I actually like the numbered bulleted list that we did it in here in the Daily Stoic because it makes it a tad clearer.

• 6:35Ryan Holiday?

  But then this is today's entry. If you notice, Marcus Aurelius repeatedly reminds himself what Stoicism is. And these bullet points are helpful to those of us reading thousands of years later. But they were also intended to be helpful for him. Maybe this day that he'd written it, Marcus had accepted a bad impression or had acted selfishly. Maybe he had pinned his hopes on something outside his control, or complained, or fought against something that had happened. Or maybe it had just been a while since he thought about these things and wanted a reminder. Whatever the case was, or whatever ours is today, let's align our mind along these four critical habits. One, we accept only what is true. Two, we work for the common good.

• 7:16Ryan Holiday?

  Three, we match our needs and wants to that which is in our control. And four, embrace what nature, what fate, what the logos has in store for us. So those are four key Stoic habits we should practice on a daily basis. I love them. They're clear enough. I think clarified a bit in today's entry. I think Marcus may, who am I to criticize Marcus? But I think he might make them a little more complicated than they needed to be. I think he was just giving himself four quick reminders, reminders that I needed today. I hope you did too. I'll give them to you again. Accept what is true. Work for the common good. Match your needs and wants to what is up to you.

• 8:01Ryan Holiday?

  Finally, embrace what nature, what life has in store for you. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. You just go to dailystoic.com/email. So check it out, dailystoic.com/email.