It Can Make You Great | Accepting What Is

What made Marcus Aurelius different? What were his secrets to success, resiliency, and productivity? How did he master his emotions and maintain such self-control?🏛 The 2025 LIVE session of Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy For Your Actual Life starts November 10th. Don’t miss your chance to join us! Read on for more about the unique opportunities you get from joining the LIVE course. | https://dailystoic.com/101📖 Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan Holiday is out NOW! Grab a copy here: https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work📚 Check out The Daily Stoic Boxed Set here which includes The Daily Stoic and The Daily Stoic Journal: https://store.dailystoic.com/🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.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, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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?

  It can make you great. Just so you know, the 2025 Live Session of Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life is starting in just a few weeks. It's going to start on the 10th. Don't miss your chance to join us to do a deep dive into Stoicism, and I'd love to have you in there. It's one of my favorite things that we do every year. We're told that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and yet it didn't with Marcus Aurelius. As emperor of Rome, he was the most powerful man in the world, and yet still he worked hard, sought peace, remained compassionate. He didn't indulge himself in pleasures. In the depths of Rome's financial crisis, he even sold off his own possessions to raise

• 1:38Ryan Holiday?

  money for the country. He was especially good and decent compared to his predecessors and many other powerful leaders throughout history, and you might say even leaders in contemporary times. So what made Marcus Aurelius different? What were his secrets to success, resiliency, and productivity? And how did he master his emotions and maintain such self-control? How might you apply these lessons to your own life? Imagine if you had the tools to be less angry, less distracted, less impulsive, if you could be disciplined even amidst incredible success as well as difficulty. How much more time would you have? How much more could you accomplish? How much greater could you be?

• 2:21Ryan Holiday?

  Would it make you a better leader, a better partner, a better friend? How would it feel if you were more content with yourself, less anxious of what others thought of you? How much more time would you have to achieve your goals and focus on the things that really matter in life? Well, that's what Stoicism is about. That's what it can do for you because this is a philosophy designed for the real world to solve real problems is a essential tool, I say, in the pursuit of self mastery, perseverance, and wisdom, a way to live the good life. So if you want to learn how to apply Stoicism to your actual everyday life, I'd love to have you join us in Stoicism 101, Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life. It's the best practices and routines of Stoicism, all delivered in 14 days.

• 3:04Ryan Holiday?

  As we've said here before, Stoicism is like the secret weapon of so many great men and women of history, and that's what we dig into in Stoicism 101. I've taught Stoicism everywhere, from NFL locker rooms to Fortune 500 boardrooms in front of TED audiences and millions of people all over the world, and I'll be your personal teacher as we dive into the 101 of Stoicism. It's 14 days, two live Q and As with me, there's going to be a private discussion board, all the previously recorded office hours from the other times we've run Stoicism 101, along with a bunch of other awesome stuff. And to join us, you have to sign up by Monday, November 10th. That's when it starts. I'll link to that in today's show notes, or you can just go to dailystoic.com/101 to join us.

• 4:00Ryan Holiday?

  Today's entry, Accepting What Is. Reinhold Niebuhr's Serenity Prayer is a mantra for many. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change," it reads, "courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." The Stoics wanted to push past simply accepting what is. They wanted us to be grateful and happy with what is. Epictetus taught that we get a well-flowing life when we wish for what is going to happen, not for what we want to happen. And Marcus Aurelius adds that we should meet anything that comes our way with gratitude, not, "I wish this was different,

• 4:43Ryan Holiday?

  and I'll tolerate it, but I'm glad it happened this way. It's for the best." So let us try that on for size this week. And we have two quotes from Epictetus and one from Marcus Aurelius. "Don't seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will, and then your life will flow well." That's Epictetus's Incoridion 8. And then from the Discourses 1:12, he says, "To be truly educated means this: learning to wish that each thing happens exactly as it does." Marcus Aurelius's Meditation 9:6, "All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the

• 5:24Ryan Holiday?

  present moment, action for the common good in the present moment, and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way." One thing I wanted to point out, because I was fascinated to learn this, is the Serenity Prayer. One, it sounds like some sort of real hymn or prayer that must go back thousands of years. Honestly, it sounds like something that could come from the Stoics. And then, obviously, a lot of people associate it with recovery movement, which it has become a big part of. But it really dates to like the 30s and 40s. They think that he composed the prayer somewhere around the time of 1932, 1933,

• 6:08Ryan Holiday?

  which for some context is in the midst of the Great Depression. But again, one of the benefits of wisdom is that it is both timely and timeless at the same time. So this idea of the prayer, "Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know one from another." Also, I think the difference between that as he first writes it and then what it sort of commonly gets rendered out is also a sign of, as Twain says, the difference between lightning and a lightning bug, like, just the perfect wording of it, the perfect encapsulation of the wisdom, it feels, as soon as you see it, even though, you know, it's as old

• 6:50Ryan Holiday?

  as some people's grandparents who are listening to this, or perhaps some people who are listening to this themselves, they may be well older than that short little prayer, but it feels as current and fresh and also as ageless and timeless, it's just about anything. But anyways, let's not nerd out too much on the history of the prayer. What I thought I would focus on today, because we've been talking about acceptance quite a lot here on the podcast, I tend to disagree a little bit with Epictetus. I find that Epictetus's life was so tragic and painful. His name literally means, like, enslaved. We know almost nothing about his family. We know nothing about his existence, except

• 7:34Ryan Holiday?

  that he's born a slave. He has a cruel master who tortures him. He walks for a limp the rest of his life. And then, after 30 years of slavery and, you know, eventually getting his freedom, Epictetus is exiled by a cruel emperor. So it is a hard life. But I find it striking that nowhere in Epictetus's writings, does he really question whether any of it was right or fair, whether anything could be done about it. Now, you might say this is him reaching this sort of sage-like level of wisdom. And I think there's truth to that. I mean, who am I to question, obviously, such a great and brave and enduring spirit?

• 8:15Ryan Holiday?

  But I guess, obviously, we live in a world now where people have more agency. And why do we have that agency? Because people were willing to fight for it and change. So, obviously, the Stoics are mostly right, that so much of what happens in this world is outside of our control. We should accept it, resenting it, crying over it, whining about it, simply wishing it was otherwise, does not do anything. Look, you were born five foot three instead of six foot three, that's just a re- You're gonna have to accept it, right? People in your family go bald, you're gonna have to accept it, right? Your spouse turned out to be a jerk, they ran away with all your money, left you, broke your heart. It happened, right? That is true, but I just don't want Epictetus to be misinterpreted as some sort of rationalization

• 9:00Ryan Holiday?

  or acceptance of profound injustices, including the injustices that Epictetus seemed relatively okay accepting, right? As they say, progress depends on the unreasonable man. I talk about this a little bit in the Courage book. We have to be accepting, we have to face unflinchingly the reality of our situation. But even as I read this paragraph that I have written, I would push back on it a little bit, and I do think it's important that we focus on what we're gonna do about the situations that we find ourselves in. I feel like Epictetus could have done that a bit more himself. Still, obviously a great man, better man than I. Certainly, I could not have endured what he endured, but it's just a thought today,

• 9:42Ryan Holiday?

  and I want you to be okay pushing back and questioning things from the Stoics as well. They weren't perfect, they were products of their time, they were products of their own experiences, and we can challenge and debate and argue with them as long as we think we're getting them closer to what they actually mean, what the wisdom of the Stoics actually mean. And that's today's message.

• 10:07Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it, we love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please, spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything, I just wanted to say thank you.