There Is No Reason Not To Follow Your Heart

“Steve Jobs was more interested in Buddhism than he was Stoicism. He may not have been, at least according to biographies, a particularly good person. But he was still a person, one whose perspective on life was shaped in interesting ways and utterly changed after his first brush with cancer in 2003.”Learn how the Stoic concept of memento mori marked a turning point in Steve Job’s life, and why you too should meditate on mortality, on 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 Daily Stoic: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.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom, designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday 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.

• 0:26Ryan Holiday?

  There is no reason not to follow your heart. Steve Jobs was more interested in Buddhism than he was in Stoicism. He may not have been, at least according to biography, a particularly good person, but he was still a person, one whose perspective on life was shaped in interesting ways and utterly changed after his first brush with cancer in 2003. In his famous graduation speech to Stanford University, Jobs reflected on the lessons that he had learned glimpsing into the abyss of mortality and how it shaped how he tried to live in those last years of his life. As he said, "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

• 1:10Ryan Holiday?

  Because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There's no reason not to follow your heart." This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there.

• 1:53Ryan Holiday?

  And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that's as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you, but someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Marcus Aurelius summed up life along similar lines. He said, "Everything's destiny is to change, to be transformed, to perish, so that new things can be born." It's right. Nothing is permanent, not failure, not pain, not fame, not fortune, not you, not anyone. If you can take a minute to stop and think about this, it will help you to lead a better life, will help you be a better person.

• 2:38Ryan Holiday?

  What might Steve Jobs' relationship with his daughter have been had he realized it earlier? Might Marcus Aurelius have been a better or more attentive father himself had he taken the advice to heart sooner? We are all naked. We are all small. When we accept this, so much pretense, so much agitation falls away. It allows us to simply be, to be here, to be happy, to be good. There's no reason not to follow your heart, not to do what you know is right and what you know that you can do. Can you see that? Thanks for listening to another episode of The Daily Stoic. It's mind blowing to me now that we are well over 30 million downloads of this show. It means so much to me to have all of you listen.

• 3:21Ryan Holiday?

  If you want to help spread the word about the show, please leave a review on iTunes or whatever your favorite podcasting platform is. It helps a lot. And then of course, click subscribe. That's how we know how many people are listening and that that makes sure you get the episodes as they come in. So thanks again for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast.