This is How You Know It’s Working

This Stoicism thing—you’ve been practicing it for a while, but how do you know it’s working? 📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work":https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work 👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening and early access: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/?hl=en: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast 🎥 Watch the video episodes onThe Daily Stoic YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos:https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos ✉️ 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.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  This is how you know it's working. You read the books, you listen to the teachers, you turn the ideas over in your mind. This Stoicism thing, you've been following it for a while, but how do you know? How do you know it's working? There will be signs, you can count on that. One of them, Epictetus tells us, is that you should be getting in fewer arguments. Another, from Seneca, is that you're a better friend to yourself. Marcus Aurelius in Meditations talks about being able to sit in the perfect stillness, about not being pulled and torn in a million directions. This might not all sound like wisdom, but it is. The point of wisdom, the point of philosophy, was to get to a smooth flow of life, the Stoics believed,

• 1:40Ryan Holiday?

  to be able to live in accordance with nature. That means prizing the right things. That means seeing the big picture. That means abstaining from the wrong things. It means tuning out what doesn't matter. It means wisdom. And the one thing we know about wisdom is that you have to work for it. Seneca said, "No man is wise by chance. No, much toil remains," he said. "For all of us, wisdom, then, is not just work. It is the work of our lives." And that's the title of the new book, Wisdom Takes Work. Learn, Apply, Repeat is the fourth and final book in the Stoic Virtue Series. If you want to jump on it, dailystoic.com/wisdom. It would mean a lot to me if you could.

• 2:25Ryan Holiday?

  If you've gotten anything out of this podcast over the years, I hope you can give it a look. dailystoic.com/wisdom. I can't wait to hear what you think. Enjoy.