Nobody Gets Out Alive | Judge Yourself Not Others

Ryan talks about the importance of practicing memento mori, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. LMNT is the maker of electrolyte drink mixes that help you stay active at home, work, the gym, or anywhere else. Electrolytes are a key part of a happy, healthy body. As a listener of this show, you can receive a free LMNT Sample Pack for only $5 for shipping. To claim this exclusive deal you must go to drinkLMNT.com/dailystoic. If you don’t love it, they will refund your $5 no questions asked. 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?

  Bienvenidos al Daily Stoic Podcast. Cada día nos traemos una meditación inspirada por los antiguos estoicos, ilustrada con historias de la historia, eventos actuales y literatura para ayudarte a ser mejor en lo que haces. Y al principio de la semana intentamos hacer un profundísimo descubrimiento, estableciendo una especie de intención estoica para la semana, algo para meditar, algo para pensar, algo para dejarte con, para journalizar, lo que sea que te ocurra de hacer. Así que vamos a entrar.

• 0:34Ryan Holiday?

  Nadie muere vivo. Esto de la vida, es maravilloso. Somos seres sentidos, los predadores de la extrema parte de la cadena alimenticia. Tenemos tecnología brillante, placeres increíbles, así como talentos y habilidades que nos traen alegría y éxito. Y ¿sabes qué? Todavía vamos a morir, cada uno de nosotros. Eso es lo que hay de la vida. Aunque sea maravilloso, ninguno de nosotros muere vivo. Nacimos mortales, nacimos frágiles. Hemos tenido un diagnóstico terminal desde el nacimiento. Esto no debería desviarnos de nuestro sentido de maravilla o apreciación. No todo se renderne pointless.

• 1:16Ryan Holiday?

  Mira a Seneca, escribió muchas veces sobre la inevitabilidad de la muerte. Él escribió, y aún así, él escribió, ese es el punto. publicó libros, se preocupaba por cada palabra en ellos. Quería que encontraran grandes audiencias, celebraba sus éxitos. Marcus Aurelius estaba constantemente meditando sobre esas palabras, "memento mori", y aún así, él creció a su familia. Estuvo en la cabeza de un enorme imperio, que luchó y se esforzó para mantener y proteger. También se ríe, ama y caza y lee y va al teatro. El hecho de que moramos no es triste, es solo eso, un hecho. Tenemos que estar conscientes de ello, pero no tenemos que dejar que nos destruya. En cambio, deberíamos ser libres de ello, libres de seguir nuestros talentos donde nos guíen,

• 2:00Ryan Holiday?

  pero no llames si no nos guíen a la fama eterna. Libres de enamorarse y criar una familia, pero no de estar atrapados con ansiedad y preocupación cada segundo. About the pain of losing them, freed to have fun, but be careful not to waste our finite amount of time doing so. None of us are going to get out of this life alive. None of us will escape the prophecy, and that's okay. What we have is right now. What we have is plenty, so seize it, embrace it, live it. And of course, memento mori, you can check out the memento mori coin that I carry in my left pocket everywhere I go at store.dailystoic.com.

• 2:42Ryan Holiday?

  Judge yourself, not others. There is nothing less philosophical than being a know-it-all. This is especially true of those who use their knowledge to scold others for their mistakes while claiming the superiority of their knowledge or insight. The Stoics taught that behaving this way was to miss the entire purpose of philosophy, as a tool for self-correction, medicine for our own souls, not a weapon for putting down others. Seneca's letters twice employ the metaphor of scrubbing down or scraping off our faults. "We need to see ourselves as in the care of philosophy's principles," he says, or, as Epictetus put it later, when referring to the philosopher's lecture hall, "we need to see it as a hospital for our own

• 3:27Ryan Holiday?

  therapy." So try not to write down a single complaint or problem of another person in your journal this week. Focus on what ails you. We have two quotes from Seneca's moral letters and one from the discourses. "When philosophy is wielded with arrogance and stubbornly, it is the cause for the ruin of many. Let philosophy scrape off your own faults rather than be a way to rail against the faults of others." That's Seneca, letter 103. "Some people with exceptional minds quickly grasp virtue or produce it within themselves, but other dim and lazy types hindered by bad habits must have their rusty souls constantly scrubbed down. The weaker sorts will be helped and lifted from their

• 4:08Ryan Holiday?

  bad opinions if we put them in the care of philosophy's principles." That's Epictetus's Moral Letters 95. And then Epictetus's Discourses 323. Men, the philosopher's lecture hall is a hospital. You shouldn't walk out of it feeling pleasure but pain. For you weren't well when you entered it. I think this is the tension here, and I've seen it. Some people maybe get it wrong, probably in bad faith, when they reply to stuff I've posted or written. Who are you to criticize, I don't know, anti-vaxxers? Or who are you to say that have this political opinion? Or to say that this is right or wrong? You're not perfect. Of course, right?

• 4:52Ryan Holiday?

  Of course, I'm not perfect. Of course, a Stoic is primarily focused on their own edification, their own improvement. They're trying to look in the mirror. They're trying to scrub off their own faults. That doesn't mean that we turn a blind eye to what's happening in the world. That doesn't mean we indulge and accept and encourage ridiculousness or injustices by other people. I mean, some of the best Stoic lines are quips or criticisms of other people, right? The Stoics were also teachers. Zeno, Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, they were writers and thinkers. They were responsible for teaching philosophy to people. Of course, we have to make judgments.

• 5:35Ryan Holiday?

  I think what the Stoics are really talking about is not being a Monday morning quarterback at the expense of your performance on Sunday, right? When I study history, obviously, part of my job is to make judgments and communicate these ideas to you and to people and to myself. And that really is what I'm doing. And I have a chapter in Courage is Calling about why we don't judge another person's courage, right? We don't fully understand everything that's going on with them. But in another sense, we do judge their courage. But instead of criticizing them, instead of feeling better than them because they made this mistake, we try to look at them as cautionary tales, almost like we would

• 6:15Ryan Holiday?

  in a Greek tragedy or a Roman play, a Shakespearean play, and try to apply those lessons to our own lives. So the point is, when you see someone else doing something wrong, when you see something you don't like, when you see someone debasing themselves, when you see someone advocating a preposterous or dangerous opinion, you can criticize it. You can call it out for what it is. But don't feel superior for it. Try to learn from it. Try to apply lessons from that to your own life. That's the journey that we're on here. Obviously, as a writer and a speaker, I have to draw on examples. My work would be not very compelling if I didn't do that.

• 6:57Ryan Holiday?

  So I have to walk a slightly different razor's edge. And, and I mean, look, that's what's so funny, right? The Stoics are saying, don't criticize other people. And yet, even in this quote from, from Seneca, Moro Letters 95, he's saying, "Look, some people get this naturally, but there are other dim and lazy types hindered by bad habits, and they must have their rusty souls constantly scrubbed." So that does exist, right? And somebody has to do that job. And perhaps that's your job with a friend or a family member. Just remember that your real job is scrubbing down your own rusty soul. And if you ever think that it is not rusty, well, that is a compelling sign right there that it is.

• 7:41Ryan Holiday?

  Just a funny note, I get this all the time because of ego is the enemy. People go, what do I do about my boss's ego? What do you do about all the egos in our organization? Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah. But much less often do I get the question, I have an ego. What do I do about my ego? Right? The question we often are gravitating towards solving other people's issues, focusing on other people's flaws. But as they say in the Bible, "Don't worry about the splinter in your neighbor's eye when you have a log in your own." So that's what philosophy is about. You are not well. Treat yourself first. But of course, you may recognize similar symptoms in other people if you need to point them out. Go right ahead.

• 8:26Ryan Holiday?

  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. Just go to dailystoic.com/email. So check it out, dailystoic.com/email.