Put All Of Your Energy Into This | Practice Letting Go

Amazon tells us that’s one of the most highlighted passages in the digital version of Stillness is the Key. It’s an idea that’s impossible to disentangle from Stoicism. Epictetus said there were things that were up to us and some things were not. Ok, but then what? Remind yourself, Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations, that the past and the future are not in our power, only the present is. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, 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?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:38Ryan Holiday?

  Put all of your energy into this. The less energy we waste regretting the past or worrying about the future, the more energy we have for what's in front of us. Amazon tells us that this is actually one of the most highlighted passages in the digital version of my book, Stillness is the Key. It's an idea that's actually impossible to disentangle from stoicism. Epictetus said, "There were things that were up to us and some things that were not." Okay, but then what? Well, as Marcus Aurelius says, "We must remind ourselves that the past and the future are not in our power, only the present is." You have to try to live in the very now. It's the only thing that exists. It is the only thing that is

• 1:19Ryan Holiday?

  true. "Our memories of what's past degrade and then betray us. Our thoughts of what is to come are never accurate. Now is all there is and all that is real." So Marcus wrote, "Give yourself a gift, the present moment. Live immediately," Seneca wrote. "Give yourself a gift of truth and reality." And when you do, when you put all of your energy into the present, you can be sure you are using that energy wisely, free of regret and worry. What a present that is. If you haven't read Stillness is the Key, I would love for you to do it. Super proud of the book. It came out in 2019, and I think it's held up well. It certainly held up well for me during the pandemic, when suddenly there was sort of a forced stillness, in the sense that things we used to do went

• 2:02Ryan Holiday?

  away. But then there was an inner turmoil that had to be stilled and quelled if I was to have any sort of hope and happiness and contentment. Acceptance. And I also have, can you hear that? These are my keys. When I walk into the office every morning, I use a key that says stillness on it that we sell in the Daily Stoic store that you might like to check out. You can check out all that stuff, including signed copies of Stillness is the Key, at store.dailystoic.com.

• 2:39Ryan Holiday?

  Practice letting go. We suffer when we lose things we love, and we suffer most when we lose people we love. But it is a natural, unavoidable part of life. And the Stoics say that this suffering is increased by our belief that we possess the objects of our love. They are, as we like to say, a part of us. This belief doesn't increase our love or care for them, but rather is a form of clinging that ignores the simple fact that we don't control what will happen, not to our own bodies, let alone to the ones we love. Epictetus taught a powerful exercise that every time you wish a dear child or family member or friend goodnight, you remember that these things are like a precious breakable

• 3:22Ryan Holiday?

  glass. Remember how dramatically things can change while you sleep. Marcus II struggled to practice this with his own family as he tucked them in at night. And the point wasn't to be morbid, but to create a sense of appreciation and a kind of humility, where you cannot take anyone, especially someone you love, for granted. And then the quotes are from Epictetus in Seneca. Epictetus says, "Whenever you experience the pangs of losing something, don't treat it like a part of yourself, but as a breakable glass, so that when it falls, you will remember that and won't be troubled. So too, whenever you kiss your child, sibling, or friend, don't layer on top of the experience all the things you might wish, but hold them back and stop them, just as those who ride

• 4:05Ryan Holiday?

  behind triumphant generals remind them that they are mortal." The same way, remind yourself that your precious one isn't one of your possessions. It's something given for now, not forever. That's Epictetus's Discourses 324. "But the wise person can lose nothing. Such a person has everything stored up for themselves, leaving nothing to fortune. Their own goods are held firm, bound in virtue, which requires nothing from chance, and therefore can't be either increased or diminished." Seneca on the firmness of the wise. We did a Daily Stoic email recently that I wanted to read you, or a chunk of it. Let me pull it up here. "The moment when, after many years of hard work and a long voyage,

• 4:48Ryan Holiday?

  you stand in the center of your room, house, half-acre, square mile, island, country, knowing at last how you got there, and you say, 'I own this.' In the same moment, the trees unloose their soft arms from around you. The birds take back their language. The cliffs fissure and collapse. The air moves back from you like a wave, and you can't breathe. 'No,' they whisper, 'you own nothing. You were a visitor, time after time, climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming, 'We never belonged to you. You never found us. It was always the other way around.'" I just think that's such a beautiful poem.

• 5:32Ryan Holiday?

  And, look, when, there's a part of what Seneca here that stops me. He says, "So that when the glass falls, you will remember that and won't be troubled." Now, I don't think that's quite right. We know that Seneca lost a child and grieved quite deeply. We know that his mother grieved him quite deeply when he was exiled, and he in turn grieved his mother. We know that he and his wife struggled at their parting when they were forced to commit suicide. The idea that the Stoic can just think these things and then not be attached to people, I think that's a false... Ideal, and I don't think that's where you actually want to get,

• 6:17Ryan Holiday?

  even if you could get there. To me, what Epictetus's exercise, what Marcus is doing, and it's one I practiced almost every day during the pandemic, when, especially in those dark early days, when it seemed very, very serious. Not that it wasn't serious, but it seemed so much more uncertain, the seriousness of it. The idea of holding your children close and saying that you don't know what's going to happen through the night is there to make you breathe that moment in, to not rush through it, to not try to get it over with, right? So you can go check your email or, or watch Netflix or, you know, have a snack, right? It's to go, no, this is important. I'm not going to rush through this.

• 7:02Ryan Holiday?

  I'm not going to get past it. I am going to breathe it in because it matters, because it's here now. To me, that this is a breakable glass doesn't mean put it up on the highest shelf, wrap it in bubble wrap and hope nothing bad ever happens to it. It's, it's to appreciate it while you have it, to realize that you don't have it forever, because none of us do. That's what I take from that exercise. And you know, that was brought home to me even more during almost a year exactly from, you know, March of 2020, when this freak storm hits Texas and I, you know, everyone tucked their kid in at night.

• 7:44Ryan Holiday?

  They lost power and a few families woke up and found that their children or older family members had, had died in their sleep, had frozen to death in their sleep. I had gotten so cold, so unexpectedly.

• 7:59Ryan Holiday?

  You just think about how tragic that is and how that could happen.

• 8:05Ryan Holiday?

  To anyone. And you realize how much worse it would feel if you'd had an argument before bed, if you'd been short before bed, if you'd said, no, I said only two books, and now you want me to read a third one. Right? You would regret that. It would be tragic in any circumstances. Again, the idea that you would get to a place where you would not care that it happened, I don't think that's right. Marcus Aurelius loses multiple children, multiple children. That's insane, unthinkable. And even in meditations, you get the sense that he's still grieving, still working through it. So you don't get there. But you do hopefully get to a place

• 8:49Ryan Holiday?

  where you can minimize the regrets. So you're not sitting there kicking yourself, saying, I wish I'd been more patient. I wish I'd been there more, period. I wish I hadn't rushed through things. While I had them, I really loved them. I really connected with them. I wasn't detached from them. I was attached to them.

• 9:11Ryan Holiday?

  And that's why this tragedy is the least bad version of how it could go. That's not the happiest way to leave you today, but I do think it's a powerful exercise and we're thinking about. And I'll talk to you soon.