We Can Be Hurt…Or We Can Do This Instead | Ask Daily Stoic

People will betray us in life. They will take from us. We can be hurt and broken and angry about this, or we can use it as Epictetus did—as a reminder of the transient nature of possession. 💡 We designed our How To Read Epictetus (A Daily Stoic Guide) as a personal field guide —part book club, part masterclass, part daily practice. It’s designed to help you not just read the words of Epictetus, but live them—to turn his timeless wisdom into real change in your own life and the lives of those around you. And if you get the guide before July 26th, you’ll receive a private invitation to an exclusive LIVE Q&A with Ryan Holiday, where he’ll go deep on all things Epictetus, Stoicism, and how to apply these ideas right now, in today’s world. Head to dailystoic.com/epictetuscourse to learn more and get your book, guide, and bundle today!👉 Get How To Read Epictetus (A Daily Stoic Guide) & all other Daily Stoic courses for FREE when you join Daily Stoic Life | dailystoic.com/life📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow 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.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  One evening, Epictetus woke up to hear someone in his house walking towards the noise. He found a criminal had stolen the iron lamp he kept burning in a shrine in his front hallway. As always, Epictetus handled the situation with calmness and humor. "Tomorrow," he said to himself, "you will find an earthenware lamp, for a man can only lose what he has." But what if Epictetus had been awake when the man walked in? What if he'd caught the thief red-handed? Would he have beaten the criminal up? Would he have fought for his prized lamp, pressed charges after, demanded restitution? Actually, if we know anything about Epictetus, we can say confidently that the situation would have gone almost exactly as it did. To him, the theft was a reminder from fate that we don't truly possess anything. It was also a reminder, we can guess,

• 1:37Ryan Holiday?

  that human beings, out of desperation or greed, do unvirtuous things. That is something we don't control, but we do control how we respond. We can imagine that Epictetus, that he caught the thief and gotten to talk to the man, as the bishop did so beautifully in Les Mis, when he catches the thief and he says, "Take this stolen silver and use it to become an honest man." People will betray us in life. They will take from us. We can be hurt and angry and broken about it, or we can use it, as Epictetus did, as a reminder of the transient nature of possession. We can use it as an opportunity, as they did in that famous play, to be merciful, to let them think better of it, to forgive, as Marcus tried to do when he was betrayed by Ividius Cassius.

• 2:21Ryan Holiday?

  We can get better, and we can try to make them better, too.

• 2:31Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Couple of weeks ago, I was recording from a balcony in Athens last week. I believe I was recording from a balcony in Ithaca. I am here in Vathie, I guess. I don't know how you would pronounce it, but we spent the last four or five days putzing around Ithaca, swimming every morning, trying to do a little writing on the new book, enjoying time with family. And as I was saying last time, I was in this region, in this neck of the woods, back in February, when I was talking to a marketing and a VC company in Abu Dhabi. I was telling them about this guy named Zeno,

• 3:13Ryan Holiday?

  who suffered a shipwreck in the Mediterranean in the 4th century B.C. And it's funny, we were walking along the port here in Vathie, and there is this sunken sailboat. And so I told my kids the same story that I was telling the folks in Abu Dhabi, about how Zeno suffers this shipwreck. And instead of it being the worst thing that ever happened to him, he says he makes a great fortune when he suffers a shipwreck because it drives him thus to philosophy. And I was trying to say, hey, when we were in the Athenian Agora last week, we walked by that place, that big pit in the ground. That's the painted porch, that's the stoa pokile, that's where it all happened. So I've been circling around this for a while, and I've used this little vacation as an excuse to sort of get a little bit closer to it.

• 3:57Ryan Holiday?

  Anyways, here are some questions that the folks asked me back when I was in Abu Dhabi. I thought they were really interesting. I always love trying to take what I do and translate it, not from one language to another, but from one sort of culture to another, one line of work to another. I think it landed, I think their questions were really interesting. I wanted to share that with you now, so enjoy.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  ¿Cómo puedo diferenciar entre una decisión antiparticular versus una decisión de coraje?

• 4:35Ryan Holiday?

  Sí.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Esto es importante para mi vida.

• 4:38Ryan Holiday?

  Creo que esa es una gran pregunta. Cuando sientes fuertemente por algo, sientes energía o algo, te atrapas en algo, estás enojado por algo, te preocupas por algo, estás dispuesto a hacer algo, retrocedes y dices: "Hey, ¿por qué quiero esto? ¿Es el ego o es algo más?" Voy a empezar a explicar. Estoy terminando mi próximo libro, es el cuarto libro en esta serie, "Virtudes Partiriales". Y acabo de devolver todos los edits de mi editor. Ahora mi reacción inmediata es como: "¿Cómo puedes?"

• 5:10Ryan Holiday?

  Esto fue perfecto cuando te lo di y ahora me estás dando todas estas notas. Y esa es la reacción del ego, ¿verdad? Como: "Estoy orgulloso de esto, he puesto mucho en mí mismo y ahora está volviendo". No solo con muchas notas que son críticas, sino también como: "Puedo hacer todo este trabajo". Si mi ego me dice que es perfecto, entonces no tengo que hacer todo este trabajo, ¿verdad? La humildad dice: "Oh, tal vez hay algo en ello y ahora tengo que hacer ese trabajo". O la confianza dice, aunque creo que es un mejor lugar para comenzar, la confianza dice: "Algunas de estas notas están correctas y voy a usarlas y mejorar". Y a veces las notas están incorrectas y estoy bien defendiendo eso y empujándolo hacia atrás, ¿verdad?

• 5:52Ryan Holiday?

  Así que lo que hago es devolver las notas y estoy frustrado con ellas por un tiempo. Y luego, en lugar de responder, me siento en ella y luego digo: "Sabes, voy a empezar con las notas obvias". Como voy a empezar con las que son pequeñas, como si fuesen reparaciones de anillos o cosas pequeñas. Y voy a trabajar a mí mismo hacia las más difíciles, que son más difíciles de lidiar. Así que solo trato de decir: "Hey, ¿por qué es importante para mí?" Why am I getting worked up about this? What matters? Is this, is this my ego? Or is this actually like a basic boundary issue? I think one of the other ways we can help with this is with something that ego doesn't often do, is just ask someone else. Like, ask someone who's not as caught up in it.

• 6:36Ryan Holiday?

  You know, I get asked to do something and I usually get off the, I go, I have to think about it. And then I call my wife and I say, I ask, hey, should I do this? Here's why I'm thinking about not doing it. Here's what bothers me about. I'm trying to get the perspective of somebody, somebody whose identity is not tied up in it. I think that's another really important one. So I would say time. And then how do we alter our perspective? So we can see it from a different angle. Those are two of the best ways.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Is the solution is confidence?

• 7:04Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, I would, I would say that, again, the idea of midpoints between two vices. If we have ego on one end and if we have sort of worthlessness or, you know, you know, a lack of sort of spine or, you know, just utter loneliness, right? Kind of in the middle, I would say is confidence. And to me, confidence is an awareness of our strengths and our assets, paired with an understanding of our vulnerabilities and our weaknesses. And if you have both, then you're gonna be great. And if you only have one, you're gonna get yourself into trouble, I think.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  My question is around stillness.

• 7:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:43Speaker 03

  So in the world we are living in, right? So the world rewards speed and productivity, right? All the time. And what do you recommend for leaders to make space for, you know, stillness?

• 7:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  And still the attitude?

• 7:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, of course. Yeah, obviously, communication is important. Speed is important. But at the same time, if you're always just reacting and reacting, I think you're gonna get yourself in trouble. And then if you're also just, you know, saying everything that pops into your head, you're gonna get yourself into trouble. So again, I think all these things come down to the, the still virtue of temperance or a balance or moderation somewhere in the middle. What I try to do is I try to create. Distance between me and say, social media. Like, I understand this is where I interact with my fans, sorry, communicate with things. But I also, I try not to carry it around my pockets. You know, where if I have one moment of quiet, I'm immediately seeking out noise. Right? I, so I don't have any of them on my phone.

• 8:40Ryan Holiday?

  I have someone on my team who handles them. But I, and so I have to be more thoughtful about what I want to do. I'm, I'm trying to think more, like, thinking about how long this thing has been last. Thinking about the things that, that are gonna go the distance, I think is really important. One of the, the dictums of Amazon for many years was this idea of focus on the things that don't change. And I think a lot of the reason we're busy and noisy and, you know, don't have that stillness is we're focused on like, the trends of the moment, the scandal of the moment, you know, the, the, the joke of the moment, the meme of the moment. And how many of those are still gonna be relevant? A month from now, let alone a year or 10 years from now.

• 9:22Ryan Holiday?

  And so, like, one of the things I think leaders need to, I, I would say leaders should consume less news and read more books. Uh, obviously I'm a little biased as an author, but I, I think, you know, you wanna be consuming information and learning things that were designed to stay relevant for a long period of time. And I mean, look, as, as we're talking about today, they're 25 centuries old and, and they're just as timely as ever. How much is the latest, you know, study or the latest news story or the latest business trend? What are the chances that people are gonna be talking about it 25 weeks from now? You know, let alone 25 centuries from now.

• 10:02Ryan Holiday?

  So I would try to, I think the more you're rooting yourself in the timeless things, you can find what's timely in them. Like, when I read history, it helps me understand what's happening right now, but I have less opinions about it. I'm less judgmental about it, I'm less threatened by it because it's less up to me. It already has, you know? And so I, I think leaders need to sort of cultivate time and space for that kind of stuff. We wanna be focused more on the things that are evergreen, that are perennial, sort of best principles, the bedrock stuff, and less about, you know, the latest thing.

• 10:42Speaker 04

  And you mentioned you have the social media.

• 10:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:44Speaker 04

  What is one thing that you wanna make sure they pull up?

• 10:51Ryan Holiday?

  That's a great question. Obviously, your kids need to know that you love them, that you support them, that they make your life better by being in it, all this sort of basic parenting stuff. But one of the things my wife and I are thinking about, which I think is kind of the metasfield of life, is like, how do you deal with frustrations? Right? Like, because life is frustrating, and certainly it is full of frustrating situations. How good are you at responding to that? Like, how, when you are dysregulated, how can you regulate yourself? Have the awareness to go, hey, I am feeling this way, or I don't like this, or I wish it was otherwise, and then deal with it instead of taking it personally,

• 11:36Ryan Holiday?

  instead of giving up, instead of lashing out to be like, okay, this happened. I don't control that that happened. I do control what I do next. And to me, that at the most basic level is not just a skill you need to succeed, but you see how hard life is for people who do not have that skill. And I think like languages, you know, it's easier to learn when you're young. The more you can, you can figure out how to deal with uncomfortable, difficult situations that are going to life. In America, we have this expression, we call them snowball parents. Maybe less snow here, so you guys don't use that as much. But a snowball parent is a parent who goes in front of their kids and just constantly clearing everything out of the way.

• 12:20Ryan Holiday?

  And, you know, that's nice, but you're depriving them of the ability to know what to do when stuff is in their way, because they just don't, they haven't experienced that. And so how do we deal with emotions, struggles, adversity, difficulty? I think at the core, that's what Stoicism is, is a set of principles and strategies for dealing with the fact that, whether you're a slave like Epictetus, or you're the emperor like Marcus Aurelius, there are more things out of your control than in your control. And the ability to separate those two things into the proper categories, and then to focus all your energy on the parts that are in your control, that's the whole game.

• 13:07Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please, spread the word. Tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.