This is All It’s Good For | 3 Stoic Mantras To Build Your Life On

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

• 0:32Ryan Holiday?

  This is all it's good for.

• 0:37Ryan Holiday?

  Each of us strives for accomplishment, for recognition. This is what human beings do. We want to be the best. We want to be celebrated. We want to hear the applause of the crowd. We want to establish a legacy. This is why we work hard, why we strive, why we push ourselves. In Marcus Aurelius's time, it's why generals took armies out to distant lands to win great victories and earn themselves a triumph through the streets of Rome. Today, it's why we not only do our own version of this with events like Super Bowl parades, or CEOs ringing the opening bell at the stock market, but why we hire publicists to spread the word about it. But where does this recognition and attention get us, and what does it mean? Brad Pitt, one of the most famous and beloved actors of his generation, once told a story about the early days of his career. He'd just gotten

• 1:21Ryan Holiday?

  his first bit of real publicity, a positive profile in a major newspaper. "I was pretty pleased with myself," he recounted recently. "Two days after it came out, I go over to a friend of a friend's house. In the kitchen, I look down, and there's a litter box for a cat, and there's my piece in USA Today with a cat turd on top of it. That pretty much defines it." In meditations, Marcus Aurelius tries to remind himself what applause really is, just a bunch of idiots slapping their hands together. "What is cheering and praise?" he says, "just the clacking of tongues." And what happened to Alexander the Great, the most famous and accomplished man in the world? "In the end, he was buried in the same ground as an ordinary mule driver." The point of this exercise is not to render

• 2:04Ryan Holiday?

  everything and every honor meaningless. It's just a reminder. Don't get too full of yourself. Don't think that fame or awards change anything. Don't let power go to your head. Tune it out. Focus on what you control. Keep doing your best. If people appreciate that, great. If they don't, well, know what their opinions and recognition are actually worth.

• 2:32Ryan Holiday?

  As you know, we talked about recently the power of stories. Tighter than a story, I think, is a mantra, maxim, an epigram, a one liner, a one word. Marcus Aurelius in Meditations talks about epithets for the self, watchwords for life, mantras, reminders, like a thing, a slogan, a motto, that you can repeat to yourself in difficult moments. I was just interviewing the great Robert Coram for the podcast and he was talking about Bud Day, one of the prisoners in the Hanaway Hilton alongside Stockdale, and as he's going in to be tortured, he's, "How am I not going to break under

• 3:13Ryan Holiday?

  this?" And he finds himself repeating an Air Force motto, "Return with honor," right? Those kind of core mantras are just so powerful, they're so easy to remember, they're hard to do, they're simple, but they're not easy. But in today's episode, I want to give you some reminders. Two, you've probably heard a million times on this podcast, Memento Mori, another one, Amor Fati, the other one, Good Character and Good Deeds. The point is, these are some mantras we can build on, build our life around, that I'm excited to share with you today.

• 3:48Ryan Holiday?

  What I think is one of the best passages in all of Meditations, but certainly in the most illustrative, Marcus Aurelius says, "The fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good." And I think if we're shortening that to a mantra, we'd say, "Good character, acts for the common good," or "Good character, good deeds," meaning that you work on yourself, of course, that's a huge part of Stoicism, but it's also about what you do for others, whether you're being a positive difference maker in the world. I think Marcus Aurelius refers to the common good something like 80 times in Meditations. And so it's really important that we don't see Stoicism as this interior philosophy. It's about perfecting the self or working on the self so one can make a bigger difference

• 4:29Ryan Holiday?

  in the world. So this mantra of good character, acts for the common good. You're working on yourself, but then how are you making a difference in the world? How are you making things better? How are you contributing? How are you being of service? That's the motto that I think you want to try to live by every single day. You want to say to yourself in every situation. You want to remind yourself, look, what's my character? And what am I doing for others? Right? That to me is the essence of Stoicism and why this is such a critical Stoic mantra. And one of the three I want you to think about constantly.

• 5:06Ryan Holiday?

  I just watched the sun go down here on the beach. Every time you see the sunset, every time you see the sunrise, you should stop as the Stoics do and remind yourself you will never see that again. You'll never see that specific sunrise or specific sunset again. That's part of it. But the other thing is that's one less that you will ever get in your life. The Stoics say it's not that death is in the future, but that we're dying every minute, every day, every time we see the sunset, every time we get a haircut, every time we watch a few seconds tick on the clock, you have to remind yourself that it's time you will never get back. Time is not just our most precious resource, but it's tick, tick, ticking away. It is non-renewable. So the idea of memento mori for the Stoics was that time is fleeting. It is escaping us. It is killing us as we are killing time.

• 5:50Ryan Holiday?

  Death is there in every sunset, every sunrise, no matter how beautiful. Remind yourself of that little bittersweet fact so you never take another one or another minute for granted. To me, the most powerful lesson in all of Seneca's writings, he says, don't think of death as something that's happening in the future that eventually will happen to you. He says, think of it as something that's happening right now. He said, we're dying every day, we're dying every minute. I'm looking here at this cemetery in New Orleans. Obviously, every single person in it died, right? And eventually, death happened to them. But Seneca wants us to remember that death was happening to them always. All 61 or 80 or 90 or 17 of the years that they were alive, they died every second, every

• 6:33Ryan Holiday?

  minute, and then eventually that stopped happening. So to me, that's a transformational, life-changing, mind-blowing way to think about life. Not that death is something in the future that happens once, but death is something that's happening always and every second, every minute that passes, every year that passes now. Belongs to death. It's as dead as any of the people in the cemetery. You'll never get it back, which is why you should live it, embrace it, and don't waste it while you have it. There's something that's so important to me that I carry it with me everywhere I go. It's a reminder I never want to be too far from. It's something I always want to have in the top of my mind. It's this memento mori coin I carry in my pocket. Memento mori just means remember you are mortal, remember that you will die.

• 7:13Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus Aurelius says, "You could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think." Never forget, you're mortal, you don't have forever, you could go at any moment, whether it's a pandemic, or a car crash, or a cancer diagnosis. Life is very short, don't take it for granted, don't assume you're gonna live forever. Live as if you have limited time, because you do have limited time. That's what memento mori means, and that's why I carry it with me everywhere I go.

• 7:44Ryan Holiday?

  There's a great story about Thomas Edison. He's America's most successful inventor, he's towards the end of his life, he's a millionaire many times over, and he's having dinner with his family, and a man rushes in and he says, "The factory is on fire, you have to come quick." Edison gets there and it is, his life's work is up in flames. There's no chance this fire is going out. But he finds his son, his son is standing there shell shocked, and Edison grabs him and he says, "Go get your mother and all her friends, they'll never see a fire like this again." And I just, I love that story so much, because instead of crying, instead of weeping, instead of blaming, he's just taking this brief moment to enjoy the surreal, almost terribleness of his fate. He's finding something good in it. The Stoics have this idea of amor fati,

• 8:29Ryan Holiday?

  which Nietzsche perfectly encapsulates when he says, "You don't just bear what is necessary, you love it." That's what amor fati means, it's a love of fate. And that's what Edison does, he tells a reporter, "Look, I've been through stuff like this before." It prevents a man from being bored. And he throws his life into rebuilding after this, he takes a loan from Henry Ford, and he's back up and running within six weeks, and then within six months. So the idea is, stuff is gonna happen, and it can break your heart, it can break your spirit, or you can say, "Go get your mother and all her friends." Never see a fire like this again. And you can love it and embrace it and turn it into the greatest thing that ever happened to you. It's good that it's hard, because if it wasn't hard, if it was easy, if there were never any obstacles, if everyone got exactly what they wanted all the time, everyone would do it.

• 9:13Ryan Holiday?

  They would do what you are doing, and there'd be a whole lot more competition. When Marcus really says, "No, it's not unfortunate that this happened. It's fortunate that it happened to me." This is what he's talking about. Everyone else would have been knocked over by it. They would have been deterred by it. They would have been discouraged by it. But you are strong enough to deal with this. And so it's good that it's happened. It's not bad that it's happened. It's fortunate that it happened, and you don't want it to be easy. It's good that it's hard. What the Stoics talk about is the idea of loving what happens. Marcus really says that what you throw on top of a fire is fuel for the fire. So what you want to cultivate, what you have to practice, you have to almost repeat it like a mantra to yourself, is the practice of loving everything that happens.

• 9:58Ryan Holiday?

  Not just accepting it, not just tolerating it, but leaning into it, going, "This is for me. I chose this. I want it this way, and it's the best fucking thing that ever happened to me." When the computer eats the manuscript you've been working on, you say, "Amor fati, I love it." When you're stuck in traffic, you say, "Amor fati, I love it." When you're criticized on Twitter, when your boss calls you out, you say, "Amor fati, I love it. I'm gonna be better for this having happened to me." When you're hungry, you say, "I love it. I'm alive. I feel this. I'm gonna make the most of it." You say, "Amor fati." When you lose someone you love, it might seem crazy to say, "Amor fati", but no amount of anger, no amount of resentment, no amount of sadness brings them back. So you, you take what you can from this. That's what amor fati is.

• 10:42Ryan Holiday?

  You use it as fuel. You become better from it. You become improved by it. You have cancer, you're disabled, you're white or black, you're short or tall, you're rich or poor. Amor fati, I'm gonna make the most of it. I'm not gonna let this stop me. I'm gonna be better for this having happened. When Thomas Edison's factory burned down, he finds his son. His son is stunned, shell shocked. That's how most people are when they face obstacles. But Edison... He grabbed him and he said, "Go get your mother and all her friends. They'll never see a fire like this again." That's what amor fati is. "I'm gonna use this." And he rebuilds that factory. He tells a reporter the next day, "This is gonna prevent me from getting bored. This is gonna be the next act of my life." And that's what he did. He rebuilt. He didn't whine.

• 11:26Ryan Holiday?

  He didn't complain. He didn't point the finger. He just moved on and he just kept going. And that's what we have to do with every obstacle that we face. Whatever it is, big or small, fair or unfair, chosen or tragic, we say amor fati. Love it all. Use it as fuel. Become better for this having happened. And that's a formula for human greatness. It's the only way that we should go through the world because it's the only way that turns the bad things in life into good things. Thanks so much for listening.

• 12:09Ryan Holiday?

  If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.