History Repeats And It Doesn’t | Focus On The Present Moment

History is the same thing happening over and over again, Marcus Aurelius said. There’s nothing new under the sun. And yet, like all things in philosophy, the opposite idea must also be held true at the same time. The Stoics would also agree with what Stanford professor Scott Sagan once said, “Things that have never happened before happen all the time.”---In today's Daily Stoic reading, Ryan discusses the power of Marcus's assertion that "concentrating on the task before you like a Roman" is the best way to get through the day. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more, including the Premium Leather Edition of the Daily Stoic.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, 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.

• 0:02Ryan 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. History repeats, and it doesn't. History is the same thing happening over and over again.

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus Aurelius said, "There's nothing new under the sun." And yet, like all things in philosophy, the opposite idea must be held true at the same time. The Stoics would agree with Stanford professor Scott Sagan, who once said, "Things that have never happened before happen all the time." Is this a contradiction? No, it's a tension, it's a balance. Like yin and yang, these two opposing ideas actually perfectly complement each other. The Stoics studied both the patterns of human existence and practiced premeditatio malorum, meditating on all the possible and improbable outcomes. Marcus Aurelius said that there was a rhythm to history and that a healthy mind should be prepared for anything.

• 1:30Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca said that the job of a leader is to study the past and that the only inexcusable thing for a leader to say is, "I didn't think that could happen." People who didn't think it could happen were shocked when Caesar overthrew the Republic, just as they were shocked by the Antonine Plague, just as they were shocked that Marcus Aurelius would turn out to be a good king, despite all the unwritten rules saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely, just as they are shocked by all the unprecedented breakthroughs and disruptions and changes of today's world, and sometimes the shock in goodness and decency of people. Which is why we must keep these two opposing poles in tension. We must study the past, yet not take it as a perfect map of the terrain ahead.

• 2:13Ryan Holiday?

  We must hang both reminders on our wall, that history is the same thing happening again and again, and that things that have never happened before happen all the time. And then, once they happen, they can happen again and again.

• 2:33Ryan Holiday?

  Focus on the present moment.

• 2:37Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus Aurelius ruled at a particularly turbulent time. Wars erupted on multiple fronts, terrible plagues ravaged Rome. His rule was certainly one of constant, unrelenting pressure. But he never let it overwhelm him. From the Stoics and from the example of his adopted father, the Emperor Antoninus Pius, Marcus found a coping strategy in always sticking close to the present moment and the duties at hand. When our own stress boils over, we can remember his practices and exercises to stick with what is in front of us, not everything that it might mean. "At every moment, keep a sturdy mind on the task at hand as a Roman and as a human being, doing it with strict and simple dignity, affection, freedom, and justice, giving yourself

• 3:22Ryan Holiday?

  a break from all other considerations." You can do this if you approach each task as if it is your last, giving up every distraction, emotional subversion of reason and all drama, vanity and complaint over your fair share. You can see how a mastery over a few things makes it possible to live an abundant and devout life. That's Marcus Aurelius in Meditations. "We to live 3,000 years or even a countless multiple of that, keep in mind that no one ever loses a life other than the one they are living, and no one ever lives a life other than the one they are losing. The longest and the shortest life then amount to the same, for the present moment lasts for all and is all anyone possesses. No one can possess either the past or the future, for how can someone be deprived of what is not theirs?"

• 4:05Ryan Holiday?

  And that's Marcus Aurelius's Meditations again. And then this is one of my favorite quotes from Marcus. He says, "Don't let your reflection of the whole sweep of life crush you. Don't fill your mind with all the bad things that might still happen. Stay focused on the present situation and ask yourself why it is so unbearable and can't be survived." You know, that's pretty good advice for 2020. You know, the people who, when is this going to be over? What's going to happen next? I'm scared. What's the news? Those are the people that had trouble making it, right? But those of us who sort of locked in and just, what do we have to do today? That's where we made progress. That's how we endured and survived. I remember I was sitting on the porch with Richard Overton, who died, you know,

• 4:50Ryan Holiday?

  almost two years ago now. And he was at that time, one of the oldest men in the world. There's like 112. I remember asking, I said, Richard, how do you do it? You go day by day? And he says, ah, no, man. He says, day by night. You know, for him, if he survived the night, that was a successful day. And, and, you know, it was, it was touch and go. It's a great poem that says, I'm forgetting who it's by. Oh, Dylan Thomas, he says, you know, every night it's touch and go. Look, the, the future is uncertain. By definition, the future is unknown. It, it unfolds before us. And, and because of all the directions it could go, some of them are inevitably not what we want. And they're scary and intimidated and worrisome.

• 5:34Ryan Holiday?

  And yeah, Seneca talks about premeditatio malorum, thinking of the evils in advance. I think he, he means that specifically and generally, but, but that's about being prepared for what might happen. Once you've done that, saying you gotta zoom in and focus on what's in front of you. That's today, right? You know, 2020, as far as what happened, it's 2020. I mean, there have been decades where fewer things happened, right? Or centuries in some cases, it feels like. But, you know, the way you get through that is you wake up and you do what you gotta do. I mean, I think kids have helped me with this, where it's like, look, all right, got them up, gotta do the morning routine. Then I'm gonna go to work, I'm gonna do what I have to do, then I come home, then we're gonna play. Then it's dinner, you know, then it's the after dinner chores and then it's

• 6:19Ryan Holiday?

  starting the bedtime routine and then you get them to bed and then, you know, everything that happens from there, if you've survived, is a bonus. And so I think just that routine is helpful for focusing on the present moment. But I think Marcus's point of concentrating on the task before you like a Roman is just, you know, it's beautifully said. And if we could do that today, who knows what's, what was in the news yesterday? You know, what the speculation about what's going to happen next is, nobody knows. Nobody knows, not even me. And, and you know, as I'm, as I'm recording this a few, you know, weeks in advance, I know even less, but I'm not worried about it. Marcus Rivas has another great quote. He goes, yeah, you're worried about the future. He's like, but you'll meet the future with the same weapons that you have now.

• 7:03Ryan Holiday?

  So let's focus on what's in front of you right now. Let's use those weapons where they're most effective. Let's have the most impact where we can right now. Let's tackle this problem. Let's not work on this problem with our eye towards the next problem and the next problem and the next problem. And then what's going to happen when that next one doesn't work and blah, blah, blah. But you know, it's so easy to start spiraling and, and it doesn't help, doesn't make you happier, it doesn't make things better. So let's zoom in and, and look, do the Stoics sometimes talk about zooming way out and seeing the big picture? Yes, but right now we're talking about zooming in because zooming in is an effective tool. That's what I want you to be thinking about today. And that's all I'm going to say. So get out there, get after it, but stay focused. Concentrate like a Roman, keep your mind at the task at hand.

• 7:48Ryan Holiday?

  Do it with strict and simple dignity, affection, freedom, justice. Give yourself a break from all other considerations. As Marcus says, approach this task as if it is your last. Giving up every distraction, emotional subversion of reason. Give up the drama and the vanity and all the complaints and master these few things and that will give you a good life. Talk soon.