The Most Critical (And Rarest) Ability In Life | Practice Love

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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.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  The most critical and rarest ability in life: everything we need to do draws on the same ability. Every problem we face, every decision we make, every risk we take, every belief we choose to accept or question, it all requires the skill of discernment. Life, business, ethics, success, it all comes down to being able to see what is what in a given situation, what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. And no skill was more cultivated than this by the Stoics. Epictetus talked of money changers, who could tell just by banging a coin on the table, whether it was counterfeit or not. This, he said, was what a good philosopher had to be able to do,

• 1:40Ryan Holiday?

  to know the right impression from the wrong one, a good response from a bad one, a virtue from a vice. This is what Seneca was doing in his Evening Reviews. It was what Marcus Aurelius was trained in by Rusticus and Fronto and Antoninus.

• 1:57Ryan Holiday?

  To be able to see what's in front of you with clarity, to know what's important and what isn't, how things work. That's what wisdom is. It's not an encyclopedic knowledge of facts and figures, but something both profound and applied. For it was not Gandhi's sharp legal mind that made him the Mahatma. No one is born with this critical and all too rare ability. It is not something Seneca reminds us that can be delegated to someone else. There is no technology that can do it for you. There is no app, no teacher who can simply download everything into your brain, no guru who can lead you to enlightenment, or shaman who can give it to you in a dose. No, I say, it's Brian here, by the way, that Wisdom Takes Work.

• 2:41Ryan Holiday?

  That's the title of the new book. You can preorder signed and numbered first editions. It is out in two weeks. It means so much to me if you did. But basically Wisdom Takes Work, lots of work, lots of reading, lots of teachers, lots of experience, lots of reflecting. Took lots of work in the ancient world and it takes lots of work today. But where would we be without it? Who would we be without it? The reason we need discernment is that life is constantly putting us in difficult situations, asking us difficult questions, putting us in ethical dilemmas, especially in a world of social media and algorithms where we are bombarded with information, with noise, with temptations, with endless distractions. How will we navigate this? How will we make sense of it?

• 3:25Ryan Holiday?

  Without wisdom, we cannot. We will be carried away. We will be misled. We will do the wrong thing. And as I said, the new book is all about that. How to do it, why it matters, what wisdom is, and the methodology that will help bring it into our lives. Wisdom Takes Work is the fourth and final book in the Stoic Virtue series, and I think it's the best. I'm incredibly proud of it. It's meant a lot to me to be able to do it, and it means a lot to me to be able to tell you about it. If you could preorder it, it would mean a lot to me. It's what helps an author more than basically anything else. If you've gotten anything out of this email, this podcast, Daily Stoic over the years, it would be a huge help. You just go over to dailystoic.com/preorder to do that.

• 4:09Ryan Holiday?

  We've got signed and numbered first editions, plus a bunch of awesome preorder bonuses, including a chance to have dinner with me. You can get pages from the original manuscript, bonus chapters, and a bunch of other stuff. As I said, dailystoic.com/preorder. We will run out of these signed and numbered first editions. We did it with all the first three books in the series. We already ran out of the Four Virtues set, so this is your chance. Dailystoic.com/preorder. I can't wait for you to read this thing.

• 4:44Ryan Holiday?

  Practice love. The Stoic notion of Sympathia, that we are all part of an organic whole, connected by mutual interests and affinities, is greater than the Golden Rule. Don't treat others how you would like to be treated. Treat them like you would treat yourself, because we are all one. Seneca said that whenever he encountered another human being, he saw an opportunity for kindness. And he learned from Hokkado of Rhodes that if you want to be loved, there's only one thing you can do: love others. Who can you give love to this week? What kindness can you expend? How can you show how you feel, to strangers, to friends, and family? And how can you show them that you actually believe we are all part of the same whole?

• 5:26Ryan Holiday?

  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 at store.dailystoic.com. In the "All is One" chapter of Stillness is the The key, there's a quote I like from Seneca says,

• 6:07Ryan Holiday?

  "All that you behold, that which comprises both God and man is one. We are all part of one great body." And there's this quote I love from Edgar Mitchell, the astronaut who was up in space looking down at the earth. And he says that he felt an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, and intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it. So this idea that we are all one, this this sympathy idea to me is the essence of Stoicism. Stoicism isn't to make you an island, to disconnect you from other people. Quite the contrary, Seneca says it's to make you kinder and more connected to other people. And Seneca, the three quotes we have today. One is Seneca quoting Picado.

• 6:51Ryan Holiday?

  He says, "I can teach you a love potion made without any drugs, herbs, or special spell, if you would be loved, love." And then in The Happy Life, Seneca says, "A benefit should be kept like a buried treasure, only to be dug up in necessity. Nature bids us to do well by all. Wherever there is a human being, we have an opportunity for kindness." And then in Moral Letters 95, he says, "Nature produced us as a family, since we all sprang from the same source and towards the same end. Nature bestowed upon us a mutual love and joined us together as friends." I think going out into nature, looking at something majestic, or as Edgar Mitchell did, looking at the earth from a distance, it does give you this sense of our interconnectedness.

• 7:33Ryan Holiday?

  It makes a lot of the things that we get angry about feel very petty and small and insignificant. Being around your kids does this as well. You see just how sweet and innocent and pure they are. And it feels weird to carry anger or resentment about anything or anyone.

• 7:53Ryan Holiday?

  But one of the things I wanted to do in today's episode, I wanted to riff, give you a little TikTok that we did that was popular. You might think that the Stoics are kind of these unfeeling people, and I get that, but it's actually not true at all. Seneca says, "If you want love in your life," he says, "then love." Marcus Aurelius says that he learns from one of his mentors, "to be free of passions, yes, but full of love." Do you have affection for other people? If you want to feel good, if you want to be loved by other people, it's about what you put out in the world. As the Beatles say, it's about the energy you put out in the world because ultimately that's what you control. If you want to feel better, don't go expecting other people to validate you, other people to give you what you want. Give what you want. Marcus Rios says, if you want to feel good, do good.

• 8:38Ryan Holiday?

  If you want to feel loved, put love out in the world. Put affection out in the world. See everyone you meet, as Seneca says, as an opportunity to practice kindness and the rest will take care of itself. I promise. As the Beatles say, and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. What are you putting out in the world? What are you contributing to the whole? How are you remembering that we are all, you know, one finger on a, on a large hand? Or that we're all part of the same body? The more you feel this, the more connected you are to it. Not only will your anger and fear and resentment and anxiety dissipate, but you will do better. You will be better. You will make the world a better place. That's my message for today. Go out and do a kindness.

• 9:23Ryan Holiday?

  Go out and do something good. If you want to feel good, do good, as the Stoics say. And I'll leave it there. Sympathia, everyone. We are all part of the same whole.

• 9:39Ryan 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.