This Is How To Change Your Life | 25 Brutally Honest Stoic Reminders From Marcus Aurelius

How can we make a great fortune out of misfortune? Reverse our circumstances, as Epictetus did? 💡 We designed ourHow To Read Epictetus (A Daily Stoic Guide) http://dailystoic.com/ecourse as a personal field guide —part book club, part masterclass, part daily practice. It’s designed to help you not just read the words of Epictetus, but live them—to turn his timeless wisdom into real change in your own life and the lives of those around you. And if you get the guide before July 26th, you’ll receive a private invitation to an exclusive LIVE Q&A with Ryan Holiday, where he’ll go deep on all things Epictetus, Stoicism, and how to apply these ideas right now, in today’s world. Head todailystoic.com/epictetuscourse http://dailystoic.com/epictetuscourse to learn more and get your book, guide, and bundle today! 👉 GetHow To Read Epictetus (A Daily Stoic Guide) http://dailystoic.com/ecourse & all other Daily Stoic courses for FREE when you join Daily Stoic Life |dailystoic.com/life https://dailystoic.com/life/ 📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work":https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/?hl=en: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast 🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/ 📱 Follow us: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/,Twitter https://twitter.com/dailystoic,YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic,TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic?lang=en, andFacebook https://www.facebook.com/dailystoic See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  This is how you change your life. He was born a slave. He was tortured and endured hardship that few can even imagine. And yet Epictetus, whose name literally means acquired one, was never broken. He never relinquished the command over his mind, never allowed others to control his thoughts or emotions. Instead, he mastered the art of resilience and discovered that while we may not choose everything that happens to us, we always have the power to choose how we respond. As he said, "Even Zeus cannot deprive you of that fortune." How can we seize this power for ourselves? How can we find a great fortune inside even misfortune?

• 1:40Ryan Holiday?

  How can we reverse our circumstances, as Epictetus did? Well, we can do it the same way Epictetus himself did, through philosophy. You see, Epictetus studied under Musonius Rufus, the so-called Roman Socrates, who instilled in Epictetus that philosophy was not a diversion or a luxury, but a necessity, a discipline, a way of life. And then, after earning his freedom, Epictetus established his own school in the city of Nacopolis, where students from all over the empire, including the Emperor Hadrian, came to learn. So what did Epictetus teach? Well, we've been doing a deep dive into those teachings. It's Epictetus Month here at Daily Stoic. What Epictetus taught was that most people are not enslaved by others,

• 2:25Ryan Holiday?

  but by their own passions, their fears, their attachments, that our judgments, not events themselves, are what disturb us, that we must train ourselves to be indifferent to the things outside of our control, and that freedom lies in wanting only what we can control, our character, our choices, our reason. Now, Epictetus didn't write any of these teachings down. He taught through conversation, not books. His classroom was not an ivory tower. It was rigorous, even confrontational, a place where students were challenged not just to understand the Stoic ideas, but live them. And almost 2,000 years later, those lessons, captured by his student Arian, remain one of the most practical entry points into Stoicism. And as I said, that's what we've been doing here

• 3:10Ryan Holiday?

  the whole month of July at Daily Stoic. We've been doing a deep dive into your favorite philosopher's favorite philosopher, this guy, Epictetus. And thousands of Stoics all over the world have been doing this with us, and we'd love to have you join us because tomorrow on July 26, we're doing a deep dive into Epictetus's life. We'd love to have you join us. You can right now grab entry to that, plus a discounted copy of our favorite translation of discourses and our How to Read Epictetus Guide, all at a 25% discount. If you just go to dailystoic.com/epictetuscourse. I would also add if you're a Daily Stoic Life member, you can get the course totally for free. That's dailystoiclife.com. And I'll leave you with a thought from Epictetus. He said, "How much longer are you going to wait

• 3:55Ryan Holiday?

  before you demand the best for yourself? How much longer are you going to wait till you figure out this great teacher?" As I said, your favorite philosopher's favorite philosopher. I don't know, hopefully not one more day because I'd love to talk to you tomorrow in the Q and A. And you can sign up right now at dailystoic.com/epictetuscourse to learn more, get your book, your guide, and your bundle now.

• 4:25Ryan Holiday?

  The Stoics didn't dance around the truth. In fact, Marcus Aurelius hated people who said, "Let me be honest with you." He said, "No, it should be written on your forehead that what you say is what you mean. If it's not true, don't say it." But conversely, I think also, "If it is true, you have to say it." And sometimes those truths can be hard to hear. Sometimes those truths make us uncomfortable. Nobody said the truth would be easy, but that doesn't make it any less essential. So here are some hard-hitting, brutally honest reminders from Marcus Aurelius. "The people you meet are gonna suck." This is the harsh truth that Marcus Aurelius opens meditations with. Says, "They're gonna be jealous, and annoying, and difficult, and stupid. They're gonna be all these things.

• 5:10Ryan Holiday?

  We know they're gonna be these things. We have to go into the day with our eyes wide open." That's the harsh-truth part of it. But the uplifting part, the happy part of it, is the second part. He says, "But they can't implicate you in ugliness." And he says, "More importantly, remember that you're made to work together, that life is incomplete without those kinds of people, and that we're related, and that we share an affinity and a bond for each other. We can't be surprised by it. We can't let it suck us down, and we can't let it change us for the negative. We still have to be good. We still have to do our job. We still have to play our part." You think you're a good person, but you're hurting people. Marcus Aurelius reminds himself in meditations. He says, "Remember, you can commit an injustice by doing nothing also."

• 5:54Ryan Holiday?

  And you know, there's the things that we turn away from, the things we don't wanna think about, the things that we say are someone else's problems, the things we say we can't do anything about. And those are injustices that we are allowing to be perpetrated. We're complicit in that, unless...

• 6:12Ryan Holiday?

  We try to do something about it. Most of what you do is totally inessential. Marcus really says that that's a question we have to ask ourselves. In everything we do, we have to ask ourselves, is this essential? Because so much of it is trivial, so much of it is unnecessary, so much of it is inefficient. When you eliminate the inessential, what you get is the double benefit of doing the essential things better. So you want constantly be eliminating, constantly paring things down, constantly asking yourselves, do I really need to be doing this? Is it important? Is it going to move the needle? Why am I doing it? How could I do it better? You eliminate the inessential and you do the essential better. Whenever you're anxious, whenever you're worried, whenever you're stressed out, whenever you're doubting, you know what you're doing? You're extrapolating.

• 6:57Ryan Holiday?

  And the ancient Stoics would say that extrapolation is the enemy. Marcus really tried to remind himself when his kids got sick, he said, my kid is sick. I don't need to tell myself they're going to die from it. He says, you can't let your life be crushed by your imagination as a whole. You can't picture every bad thing that could possibly happen. You have to stick with what's in front of you. You have to stick with what is in your control. The anxiety is not being caused by the external thing, the Stoics would say. The anxiety is within us. We are the common variable between all the things that worry us, between all the things that upset us, between all the things that convince us the world is ending. We are the common variable. We are bringing ourselves, our opinions, we are projecting our feelings onto objective events.

• 7:42Ryan Holiday?

  So stop doing that. Stop extrapolating. Focus on what's in front of you. Stick with idea and action and utterance, the Stoics say, that is plenty to keep you busy. It's not unfortunate that this happened to you. Marcus really writes this to himself in Meditations. He says, it's fortunate that this happened to you. He says, because I've remained unharmed by it. He was saying that, you know, his character hadn't been affected. But I think more importantly, he's saying, now I get to do something with it. That's what the obstacle is, the way he means. Now I get to do something with it. It's good that it happened to me instead of someone else because I'm the one that's uniquely suited, uniquely trained to do something with it. You are impotent. Your anger is impotent. Marcus really, in Meditations, he quotes a line from a lost play by the playwright Euripides.

• 8:27Ryan Holiday?

  And the line says, and why should you feel anger at the world as if the world would notice? Nobody cares. It doesn't matter. It doesn't mean anything. Your anger, your resentment, your grievance, you are shouting into an enormous void. You are yelling at an inanimate object. You are mad at the weather. You are mad at forces that are so enormous, that are utterly amoral, completely indifferent to you and your existence. So you might as well let it go. The best revenge is to not be like that, the Stoics would say. And if you think about it, yes, people can hurt you. But when you look at those people, who they are, why they do what they do, it doesn't actually feel like they're getting away with anything. They're their own worst enemy. It sucks to be them.

• 9:10Ryan Holiday?

  So the Stoics say you give up on revenge, you give up on getting even because you already won, you are already better by not being that person. The best revenge, Marx really says, is to not be like that. You're weak if you lose your temper. Stoicism was a masculine philosophy, but Marcus really has pointed out how pathetic it is that we get overwhelmed by our emotions and we lash out at people. Men sometimes judge other men for crying. But it's strange that we don't judge each other for losing our temper, which actually does hurt people, which is of less purpose. So when you feel that rage or anger coming on this, the Stoics say, get control of yourself, get command of yourself. Say, is this who I want to be? Is this what being a mature adult is?

• 9:55Ryan Holiday?

  And the answer is almost certainly no. You're not going to be remembered. You're not that important. Marx really says, run down the list of all the people that came before him. He says, what happened to all these famous names? These names that used to sound so familiar? You know what they are now? They're like what Taylor Swift talks about, who's who, who's that? We all disappear. We all recede into memory. We are all forgotten. A very relevant reminder from the Stoics in these crazy times. You don't have to let this upset you. You don't have to turn this into something. They're not talking about disengaging from the world. They're just saying you don't have to let your feelings get hurt all the time. You don't have to let everything make you anxious or worried. You don't have to extrapolate this out to what it could possibly mean.

• 10:40Ryan Holiday?

  You don't have to follow every news story. You don't have to let this upset you, Marcus really says, you don't have to turn this into something. You can just let it be. You can accept the information. You can focus on what's in your control. You can focus on what you need to do. You don't have to turn this into something. Your problem is that you want the third thing. Marcus really says, okay, you did something good for someone. They received that benefit. That's awesome. Transaction concluded. You don't need the third thing. Recognition, gratitude, appreciation. You don't need the world to throw you a parade. You don't need acknowledgement and you didn't even do anything special. You did your job, which is to do good,

• 11:22Ryan Holiday?

  to be good, to help people, to be kind. You did the right thing. That's enough. The obstacle is not the problem. You're the problem. Your opinions about it are the problem. Your orientation towards it is the problem. The Stoics say the obstacle is the way, right? The impediment to action advances action. It stands in the way becomes the way. What do they mean by that? Marcus really is saying that there's something you get to do because of this, right? There's things that you can do now that you couldn't do before. There's an opportunity for you to act with courage or discipline or justice or wisdom. There's something you can do now that you couldn't ordinarily do. We can't let a crisis go to waste. We have to use this thing in front of us. Yeah, it seems like an obstacle, but now there's something you get to do because of it if we do it.

• 12:06Ryan Holiday?

  Part of the reason your life sucks is because your thoughts suck. Marcus really says that our life is dyed by the color of our thoughts. So if we see only negative, if we only see the worst in people, if we only see what's impossible, if we only see how we screwed up, that's gonna color our perception of reality. Your life is dyed by the color of your thought. If your life is negative, if you're, it's full of grievances, well, of course, the world is gonna look that way to you. Even though he was the emperor of Rome, even though it was 2,000 years ago, Marcus really still wanted the approval of other people. We all do. We want to be liked. We want to be respected. We want to be admired. But this leads us astray because these people, they don't know what they're talking about.

• 12:51Ryan Holiday?

  And that's one of the things that Marcus. Marx really says in meditations, he says, you have to look at who they really are. These people whose approval you long for. He says, think about what their mind is really like. He says, when you can delve into this, when you can see who they are, it loses its power over you. You realize these are not people whose respect you need. These are not people whose approval you need to crave. You just need to do what you know is right. You need to focus on what's in your control and you leave the rest to everyone else. A person can change, but people, people don't change. You can change, but the world, the world abideth forever. It is undefeated. It is exactly the same as it ever was and ever will be. This is what we see in Marx's meditations.

• 13:36Ryan Holiday?

  His complaints about humanity are the exact same complaints we have today. People complain, people are dishonest, people are jealous, people are lazy, people are loud. People are people. We've been waiting on the world to change for a very long time and it doesn't. This is why Marx really reminds himself, don't go around expecting Plato's Republic. That's not where you live. That's not how things work. This isn't about being cynical, but in deciding not to be naive, we are setting ourselves up actually to be less cynical. This isn't to say that you shouldn't try. This isn't to say that we can't make a difference. No, that's actually the whole point. Most of all, we can't take this personally. Most of all, we shouldn't set ourselves up for disappointment or disillusionment.

• 14:21Ryan Holiday?

  Don't stay up waiting for the world to change. It's not going to. If you want to see change, you have to be change. You care about yourself more than other people. You're self-interested, as all people are by definition. And yet Marx really points out, we care about other people's opinions more than our own. We care if they like what we wear, if they like what we say, if they think we're good or bad or whatever. It's insane. Trust your opinion, develop your own internal compass, your own internal sense of whether you're doing a good job or a bad job, whether you were successful or not. You can't outsource it to the crowd. Remember, the crowd is the mob, the mob is irrational. You can't let them determine any of it. It all gets rendered very, very insignificant, very, very quickly.

• 15:02Ryan Holiday?

  There's a great Roman poet and he said, you know, in life, Alexander's ambition was bigger than the world. The world wasn't big enough to contain him. And yet, he says, in the end, a coffin was sufficient. Marx really would say something very similar about Alexander the Great. He said, you know, Alexander the Great and his mule driver, they both died and the same thing happened to both and the same is true for you.

• 15:23Ryan Holiday?

  You're being crazy letting them determine whether you did a good job or not, whether you're happy or not, whether you're a success or not. Marcus Aurelius says ambition is tying your happiness to what other people do and say and think. Sanity, he says, is tying it to your own actions. So what part of the process, like when I work on my books, the writing of the book is up to me, right? How it does on the bestseller list, what people think about it, what the reviews say, that isn't up to me. So my definition of success is an internal one. I'm focused on the parts of it I control. Do I want other people to like it and care about it? Sure, I guess it's nice to have, but it's extra. It's not why I do it because to want that or worse, to need it, is to be insane and of course incredibly vulnerable.

• 16:07Ryan Holiday?

  Being clapped for, being celebrated, all the things you think you want, it's worthless. What is it, Marcus Aurelius says, cheering is a clacking of tongues, clapping is a smacking of hands. And by the way, who's doing the cheering and clapping? Do these people actually know what they're talking about? Do they know what's good and what's not good? No. So stop trying to chase what the crowd wants, what the mob wants. It's not important. You're never gonna escape change. Life is change. Marcus Aurelius reminds us that being born was a change, death is a change. Every good thing in your life came from a change. So did bad things, of course, but everything in life has changed. You cannot escape it. You can only accept it. You can only embrace it. You should mind your own business, deal with your own problems. Marcus Aurelius reminds us like we should stop trying to escape other people's faults. We should try to escape our own.

• 16:52Ryan Holiday?

  It's gonna take a lot out of you. It's gonna take more out of you than you think you have. Marcus Aurelius is in one passage in Meditations, he's trying to amp himself to get out of bed in the morning. He goes, "It's warmer under the covers here. I like being comfortable." He says, "You weren't made to be comfortable. You weren't made to huddle under the covers and be warm." He said, "No, people who love what they do, they wear themselves down doing it." He said, "There's a limit on the eating and the sleeping and the fun side. You gotta get out there. You gotta do what your nature demands and you gotta understand it's gonna be hard and it's gonna take a lot out of you." Marcus Aurelius's prescription for these crazy times is very simple. He said, "You can't be careless in your actions. You can't be confusing in your words."

• 17:32Ryan Holiday?

  You can't be imprecise in your thoughts and you can't retreat into your own soul. You can't try to escape what's happening. You can't be overactive or busy. You focus on what's in your control, which is you. You try to keep an even keel and you say that whatever is happening, however it goes, what it ultimately is for me is an opportunity for me to be my best, to do my best, to do good. I'm going to embrace the obstacles. I'm going to embrace the difficulties. This is going to make me better. You gotta stop wasting time talking about this stuff, arguing what a good person is like, what the right thing is, these complicated virtue ethics. Marx really says, "Waste no more time arguing what a good person is like. Just be one." You're gonna die.

• 18:16Ryan Holiday?

  That's the Stoic idea of memento mori. Life is very, very short. You could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think. You could go at any moment and in fact, you will go at some moment and that moment could be very, very soon.

• 18:32Ryan Holiday?

  When I wrote The Daily Stoic eight years ago, I had this crazy idea that I would just keep it going. The book was 366 meditations, but I'd write one more every single day and I'd give it away for free as an email. I thought maybe a few people would sign up. Couldn't have even comprehended a future in which three quarters of a million people would get this email every single day and would for almost a decade. If you want to get the email, if you want to be part of a community that is the largest group of Stoics ever assembled in human history, I'd love for you to join us. You can sign up and get the email totally for free, no spam. You can unsubscribe whenever you want at dailystoic.com/email.