If You Can Get THIS, You Will Be Happy. Guaranteed.

Ryan talks about the only thing that you really need to be satisfied, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://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.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

• 0:26Ryan Holiday?

  If you can get this, you will be happy, guaranteed. There is, in many of us, a sense of lacking, even though we have so much: our health, our families, our homes. We want more. Things are good, but it feels like to be truly happy, they need to just be a little bit better. Indeed, this is the human condition, and it always has been. We think that the next honor, the next dollar, the next accomplishment will finally do it for us. It was Seneca who writes most eloquently of this desire, this insatiability we all have. Alexander the Great, he notes, was poor despite his conquests of most of the known world, because he could only think of the next campaign. Seneca notes that money rarely makes us rich,

• 1:10Ryan Holiday?

  because all it does is give us a craving to earn more. The cycle is timeless, from Alexander the Great to Seneca's to ours. We chase, we get, we crash, and decide the only way to feel that high again is to repeat the whole thing, but bigger, better, and with more. This is wrenching and impotent. It's an angst, an ache, captured beautifully by the bridge in the song "All We Ever Knew," by the head and the heart. "I'm feeling low, I'm feeling high," the song goes. "Feeling down, why isn't this enough? I'm feeling low, feeling high, feeling down. Why isn't this enough? Why isn't this enough?" Because it will never be enough. No amount of acquiring, or doing, or experiencing ever will be.

• 1:54Ryan Holiday?

  Can you understand that? Can you try to get this through your head? We must come to terms with the fact that the soul can never be filled by possessions, and there are no conditions from which we can accomplish happiness. No, it must ensue. It can only emanate from virtue, from gratitude, from the stillness that comes when you are present. You don't need more. You have enough. You can be happy right now. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. So check it out, dailystoic.com/email.

• 2:37Ryan Holiday?

  You