Leave It Better Than You Found It | Reduce Wants, Increase Happiness

Ryan talks about how you can improve your life, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://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 the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:33Ryan Holiday?

  Leave it better than you found it. When Octavian took power in 27 B.C., he was advised by two Stoic teachers, Arius and Athenodorus. You can read about them in Lives of the Stoics, actually. His reign started off slow, but by the end, he had transformed Rome from an ailing and sadly failing republic into a functioning imperial state. Augustus, as Octavian came to be called, was not perfect, and neither was Rome. But both were better off than they were at the end of Rome's second civil war. As Octavian would say at the end of his life, "He had found Rome a city of bricks and left it as an empire of marble." And this should be the standard by which we judge all our endeavors, professions, relationships,

• 1:17Ryan Holiday?

  and indeed, our lives themselves. Did we add value or extract it? Did we improve things or muddle them? Did we kick the can down the road on problems, or did we solve them? Did we leave things in a better place than we found them? Seneca, by this rubric, is not nearly the success that his wealth and fame would indicate. Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius's stepfather, on the other hand, did an incredible job, not just by putting Rome on a sounder footing, but successfully passing power to someone else who did the same. Marcus himself would leave Rome better than he found it, but not for long, with his son Commodus. But what really matters is us. What kind of impact are we having on our industry?

• 2:00Ryan Holiday?

  What kind of force are we in our neighborhood? Are we going to leave a broken, failing climate to our children? Are we going to run the economy hot for ourselves, knowing it will inevitably crash and be some other generation's problem? We must leave things better than we found them. That is our job.

• 2:20Ryan Holiday?

  Reduce wants, increase happiness. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, "366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living" by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon. Then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, "Every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand. Write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them." You can check out the Daily Stoic Journal anywhere books are sold. You can also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoic store. It's store.dailystoic.com. The Stoics knew that wanting less increases gratitude, just as wanting more obliterates it.

• 3:04Ryan Holiday?

  Epictetus focused much of his teachings on helping his students reduce this destructive habit of wanting more. In it, he saw the key to a happy life and to relationships. By practicing the art of wanting less and being grateful for the portion that we already have before us, we are hopping off the so-called hedonic treadmill and taking a real step on the path to a life of real contentment. That's what we're journaling about this week in the Daily Stoic Journal. That's where this little meditation comes from. We've got three quotes from Epictetus. He says, "Remember to conduct yourself in life as if at a banquet. As something is being passed around and comes to you, reach your hand out and take only a moderate helping. Does it pass you by? Don't stop it.

• 3:49Ryan Holiday?

  Hasn't yet come? Don't burn in desire for it, but wait until it arrives in front of you. Act this way with children, espoused, towards position, with wealth. One day, it will make you worthy of a banquet with the gods." That's Epictetus's Incoridion. "When children stick their hand down a narrow goody jar they can't get their full fist out and start crying, drop a few treats and you will get it out. Curb your desire. Don't set your heart on so many things and you will get what you need." That's Epictetus's Discourses 3:9. "Freedom isn't secured by filling up your heart's desire, but by removing your desire." Epictetus's Discourses. It's not that the Stoics didn't like stuff. I mean, they did.

• 4:33Ryan Holiday?

  They enjoyed life. But they also knew that there is such thing as too much of a good thing. And they tried to enjoy what they had while they had it, but also not be dependent on it. And also, more importantly,

• 4:47Ryan Holiday?

  Not desire and achieve and acquire so much that it becomes its own burden. And I think that's something we miss. For instance, even about the Epicureans. Like, we think the Epicureans were these sort of pleasure lovers. And to a sense, they were. But it was the simple pleasures. It was the right amount that brought them pleasure. And too much becomes not only not a pleasure, but a punishment. There's a joke I like. Someone attended one of Aristotle's dinners and they said, Aristotle, you know what I love about your dinners? I don't regret them the following morning. So this idea of moderation is so essential. It's the key to happiness. The right amount.

• 5:30Ryan Holiday?

  I remember Steve, my editor and collaborator on The Daily Stoic and The Daily Stoic Journal, said to me once, he said, "Moderation in all things and some things not at all." And I thought that was beautifully expressed. And that's kind of how I try to live my life. You know, Seneca probably took it too far in one direction. Maybe Epictetus took it too far in the other direction. And maybe Marcus Aurelius is right there in the Aristotelian mean, "Enough, but not too much." There's two beautiful metaphors there from Epictetus that I think are worth pausing on. He talks about the kid sticking their hand in the candy jar. They get too much. They could let some of it go, they could get it. But since they can't let it go, they get none of it. That's a beautiful image. But this other one that we're life at a banquet.

• 6:13Ryan Holiday?

  And I don't know about you, but whenever I'm at a buffet or a banquet, I tend to eat too much and then it's unhappy. It's unpleasurable, as Aristotle said, you regret it the next day. But if you can find a way to enjoy it, that the food is not really the point. The food is extra. The point is the conversation, the company, the experience. And to take too much, to take more than your share, to be distracted. Oh, that's coming over here. I want seconds of this. This is just take yourself out of the present moment. And in a sense, it ultimately ends up sort of punishing you. And it takes the fun and the joy out of it. So moderation in all things. He's saying, he's being explicit. This banquet thing is a metaphor. He says, "Act this way with children espoused towards position with wealth.

• 6:54Ryan Holiday?

  And one day, it will make you worthy of a banquet with the gods." The less you need, the less you want, the freer you are, the happier you are, and the more you enjoy what you do have. That idea of enough, that idea of the right amount is key. And that's what I'd love for you guys to spend some time thinking about this week. What is enough? Do you have it? Do you really need what you think you need? Do you just want it? What would happen if you actually got it? Would be, would it really fulfill the desire the way you think it would? Maybe not. Be well, be moderate. Talk soon. 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.

• 7:39Ryan Holiday?

  So check it out.