You Must Learn From History | Watch Over Your Perceptions

Ryan talks about why it’s better to learn from the experience of others, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal. Blinkist takes top nonfiction titles, pulls out the key takeaways and puts them into text and audio explainers called Blinks that give you the most important information in just 15 minutes. Go to Blinkist.com/STOIC to start your free 7 day trial and get 25% off of a Blinkist Premium membership. 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?

  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.

• 0:33Ryan Holiday?

  You must learn from history. When Xeno was a young man, he stopped to visit the oracle. There, he was given a mysterious prophecy. "You will find wisdom," she said, "when you have conversations with the dead." What on earth could that mean? It's simple. She was talking about reading. Books are a way to speak to the dead. Want to learn about commanding an army? Discuss this with Napoleon via his memoirs. Want to learn how to endure exile or loss? Try Seneca's letters, his consolations, or the lectures of Musonius Rufus. Trying to navigate a terrible pandemic? You can talk to the survivors and the victims of the plagues of history, Marcus Aurelius being a good example of both. Nothing of these people are with us anymore,

• 1:17Ryan Holiday?

  but somehow, across the pages of their books and the books written about them, it is if they are sitting across from us. And yet, so many of us reject the opportunity to have this conversation. We are, as they say, functionally illiterate by choosing not to read. And ironically, this is something one feels quite tangibly when we interact with the past. It becomes immediately clear how long the same things have been happening again and again, without anyone seeming to notice. That "men do not learn very much from history," Aldous Huxley once said, "is the most important lesson that history has to teach us." If you wish to find wisdom, you must read. You must study history. You must avail yourself of the knowledge and the experiences of the dead.

• 2:01Ryan Holiday?

  There is enough of it out there to last you a lifetime, to extend your lifetime, and ideally, to help you make your lifetime something subsequent generations can learn from as well.

• 2:12Ryan Holiday?

  And look, if you're looking to be a better reader, to supercharge your reading practice, strongly recommend something we put together here at Daily Stoic, we're calling it the Read to Lead Challenge. It's two weeks of reading-based challenges, exercises drawn from the Stoics, who were, as we've talked about before, very active, thirsty readers. Harry Truman said that not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers, and the Stoics were no exception to that. So, check this out. It's our Read to Lead Challenge. It's habits from my reading practices, and Marcus Aurelius', and Seneca's, and Epictetus' and many other historical greats. So, you can check that out at dailystoic.com/reading.

• 2:57Ryan Holiday?

  Watch over your perceptions.

• 2:59Ryan 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.

• 3:34Ryan Holiday?

  Every moment brings a flood of impressions of the world around us, and our minds are filled with the perceptions that arise with them. The Stoics teach us that we must keep a constant watch over this flood, as if we are standing guard to protect something of vital importance. What is it that we are protecting? Our peace of mind, clarity, and freedom, all of which are anchored in our perceptions. Epictetus reminds us that we need to pay attention to what matters and learn how to ignore so many of the relentless provocations that come our way.

• 4:09Ryan Holiday?

  And here we have Epictetus telling us, "Keep constant guard over your perceptions, for it is no small thing you are protecting, but your respect, trustworthiness and steadiness, peace of mind, freedom from pain and fear. In a word, your freedom. For what would you sell these things?" Epictetus Discourses. "An important place to begin philosophy is this: a clear perception of one's own ruling principle." That's Epictetus's Discourses as well. "I don't agree with those who plunge headlong into the middle of the flood and who, accepting a turbulent life, struggle daily in great spirit with difficult circumstances. The wise person will endure that, but won't choose it,

• 4:52Ryan Holiday?

  choosing to be at peace rather than at war." Seneca Moral Letters 28. It's tricky, right? I mean, the Stoics ask us to be active. They ask us to be involved. They ask us to be engaged. And then somehow, they expect us to be at peace, to not be bothered by what's happening in the world. That's the tricky thing, right? Like, you can go off in your cave, right? You can go on your 10-day meditation retreat and get some semblance of peace or stillness. The tricky thing, and this is what I was trying to write in that book as well, the tricky thing is to find peace now, within yourself, while engaged,

• 5:36Ryan Holiday?

  while fully aware of what's happening in the world. What you don't know about, what you tune out, what you pretend doesn't exist, you know, it's easy not to be bothered by. But the key to Stoicism is finding the ability, the strength, to have that peace and stillness despite everything that's happening. I open stillness as the key with the story of Seneca trying to write a letter to Lucilius. And he's in this noisy apartment in Rome. And he's trying to, you know, he's saying, "Look, you know, I didn't choose this. I had to do it." That's the cost of what his philosophy is demanding to him. The Epicurean said, "Hey, go flee to the garden." Seneca has to be engaged. He has to live in the city. He has to be involved.

• 6:20Ryan Holiday?

  But can he find peace within that? And he says that you can. You can find peace. You can become, as Marcus Aurelius talked about, the rock that the waves are crashing over, but eventually become still around. And we do this by keeping guard over our perceptions, as Epictetus is saying. It's knowing what to care about and what not to care about. You know, I've had Mark Manson on the podcast before. You know, the subtle art of not giving a fuck is not caring about anything. It's about finding the right things to care about and things not to care about. So that sort of discernment is really essential to managing our emotions and our perceptions, which is the theme in the journal this month.

• 7:04Ryan Holiday?

  You know, as we say, every moment brings a flood of impressions, a flood of news, a flood of interruptions, a flood of things that we have to, that we're called to have opinions about, to react to, that are vying for our attention. And our ability to stand guard against this, to let the good things in, to keep the bad things out, that's the key. That's the struggle. That's the fight that we're all engaged in. So, you know, even me, obviously, I live out in the country a little bit. I've lived the life of a writer, which allows me, you know, some shelter from the craziness of, you know, a person who has to commute into a, you know, a major city and work in an office with dozens of other people or hundreds of other people,

• 7:49Ryan Holiday?

  and TVs blaring and phone calls and meetings. And yet, even there, even amidst my sort of privileged situation, I have to decide what to let in and what not to let in. You know, what role does the phone play in your life? What role does, you know, your colleagues or your partners play in your life? You know, how disciplined are you about staying on task while you're in it? How?

• 8:18Ryan Holiday?

  ¿Cuánto tiempo puedes mantener tu atención en lo que importa? Incluso si nada está pasando, ¿es tu mente el enemigo de sí mismo? ¿Estás tratando de acercarte a aquí? ¿Estás desviando o estás soñando? ¿Cómo mantener la atención? ¿Cómo concentrarse como un romano? Como dijo Marcus, eso es lo más importante. Y así tener una percepción clara de nuestra propia mente, nuestras propias limitaciones, nuestras propias tentaciones, esto es realmente la clave. Eso es lo que estamos trabajando aquí. Eso es lo que quiero que pienses hoy y esta semana. Recuerda, mantén una guardia constante de tus percepciones, porque no es una pequeña cosa que estás protegiendo. Estás protegiendo tu respeto, tu confianza, tu quietud, tu paz de mente, libertad de dolor y miedo. En una palabra, lo que estás protegiendo es tu libertad. Muchas gracias por escuchar el podcast Daily Stoic.

• 9:03Ryan Holiday?

  De nuevo, si no lo sabes, puedes recibir estos a través de correo electrónico todos los días. Solo vas a DailyStoic.com/Email. Así que miralo.