Come Back To This Later

Take your much deserved break today. We are human beings after all, not human doings. So go out and live today. Rest from your labor. Come back better for it. Come back improved and sharper for it.📓 Pick up a signed edition of The Daily Stoic Journal: 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on The Art of Living: https://store.dailystoic.com/✉️ 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 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.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Bienvenidos al podcast diario de Stoic. Cada día te 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 profundizado, estableciendo una especie de intención estoica para la semana, algo para meditar, algo para pensar, algo para dejarlo contigo, para journalizar, lo que sea que estés felizmente haciendo. Así que vamos a entrar.

• 0:43Ryan Holiday?

  El día de trabajo fue propuesto por Matthew Maguire, secretario de la labor en 1882 en Nueva York. Es, dijo, "un tributo a las contribuciones que los trabajadores han hecho a la fuerza, la prosperidad y el bienestar de nuestro país, y la idea de que merecen descanso por ese trabajo". Los estoicos eran trabajadores duro, sin excusas, disciplinados, quienes, a pesar de su aceptación de la esclavitud en el mundo antiguo, todavía habrían valorado esta idea. "La mente debe dar relajación. Se elevará mejor y más fuerte después de una buena pausa", escribió Seneca. Usó la analogía de la agricultura. "Un campo que no se da un descanso, donde las cosechas no se giran, perderá rápidamente su fertilidad, y así también perderá una mente y un cuerpo que se ha trabajado demasiado".

• 1:26Ryan Holiday?

  "Así que, por todas las razones, toma tu descanso mucho merecido hoy. Somos seres humanos, después de todo, no esas cosas humanas. La vida estará larga si eres afortunado y tienes mucho trabajo en frente de ti. Si te desprendes temprano, te desprendes antes de tu tiempo. ¿Dónde te dejará eso? ¿Dónde nos dejará eso?" De alguna manera, el trabajo de trabajo es egoísta, no importa lo mucho que el trabajador afirma que lo está haciendo por otras personas, porque les priva en el mundo de esa fertilidad posterior. Causa desprendimientos innerviosos y heridas. Como observó Seneca, el trabajo constante produce una cierta clase de dificultad y debilidad en la alma racional. Nadie le gusta a una persona que es todo el negocio todo el tiempo. Así que vete hoy y vive hoy. Descansa de tu trabajo. Vuelve mejor por ello.

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  Vuelve mejor y más fuerte por ello. Esa es la idea. Esta es tu huelga. Toma.

• 2:31Ryan Holiday?

  A Hard Winter Training. The Art of Living has three levels of discipline: study, practice, and hard training. Reading the Stoics or listening to them, that's study. Trying out the lessons and reflecting on them in a journal, to friend, that's practice. What's left, though, is hard training. Epictetus liked to use the analogy of the Roman army's practice of training hard in the off months of winter, so that they could be prepared to meet any challenge when they return to battle in the spring. Seneca would spend time each month exposing himself to tougher-than-usual conditions. He, too, used a military analogy, pointing to the way that soldiers are tasked with

• 3:15Ryan Holiday?

  hard jobs so they could be strong when the enemy eventually came. So what are you doing in your life to push yourself beyond mere study and practice? 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. But this idea of keeping the thoughts at hand really ties into this week's entry. We've got two quotes from Epictetus and one from Seneca. "We must undergo a hard winter training and not rush into things for which we haven't prepared." That's Epictetus in his discourses. Here's Seneca in Moral Letters 18.

• 3:57Ryan Holiday?

  "Here's a lesson to test your mind's mettle: Take part of the week in which you have only the most meager and cheap food, dress scantily in shabby clothes, and ask yourself, 'This is really the worst you feared.' It is when times are good that you should gird yourself for tougher times ahead, for when fortune is kind, the soul can build up defenses against her ravages. So it is that the soldiers practice maneuvers in peacetime, erecting bunkers with no enemies in sight, and exhausting themselves under no attack, so that when it comes, they won't grow tired." And then finally, Epictetus says, "When a challenge confronts you, remember that God is matching you with a younger sparring partner, as would a physical trainer." Why? Because becoming an Olympian takes sweat.

• 4:41Ryan Holiday?

  I think that no one has a better challenge than yours, if only you would use it like an athlete would use a younger sparring partner. So a couple of things here. One...

• 4:52Ryan Holiday?

  I sometimes get this question, should I seek out adversity? If adversity is such a good teacher, should I seek it out? I say, look, for the most part, life is gonna give us most of the training we need. Life's gonna throw most of the adversity we need at us. So you don't need to go like getting yourself into trouble so you can know what a prison cell feels like, right? I don't think that's really what it is. As Epictetus is saying, look, instead of bemoaning the adversity when you do feel it, go like, hey, this is good. This is training I needed. I'm gonna use this. So I think about it that way. The other part is, how are you, though, actively engaged in training that makes you stronger, more mentally tough, more physically tough?

• 5:34Ryan Holiday?

  So to me, this is where like a strong physical practice comes in. It's also where getting up early, maybe intermittent fasting, maybe cold showers, but mostly working out. Because I love working out, but still every time I have to convince myself to do it, right? I love running. It's almost painful not to run, but there's still lots of days when I don't want to do it and still be easier to go slower. I have to push myself every single time. But every time I do it, I get better at pushing myself, right? I usually do some sort of weight training about four days a week as well. And so that is much less fun for me, and I really do have to push myself to do it.

• 6:18Ryan Holiday?

  And that training, though, the act of pushing myself to do something that I'm uncomfortable with, that's not fun, that challenges me, this doesn't just make me stronger and more fit and better at chasing my kids around the house. What it really does is make me better at overriding that impulse, that I don't want to do something because it's hard, or that I'm afraid, or that it's gonna be exhausting. Again, I'm in the middle of a book right now, and you think I don't wake up so many days and I don't feel it, I don't want to do it, it's hard, what if I phone it in today? Is anyone really watching? Will anyone know? Well, I've trained for exactly that kind of insidious opponent. I have, as Steven Pressfield talks about, I know the resistance well. I have built up a lot of muscles that make me stronger than the resistance.

• 7:03Ryan Holiday?

  And that's where this training comes in. And I think that's a metaphor for all forms of adversity, difficulty, resistance, weakness in life. And so I hope you have some sort of active practice. Use the adversity, train against it when it's there, but also build some active daily practices or weekly practices in your life as well.