You Need To Cultivate People Like This In Your Life

Where did Marcus learn to be Marcus? Ernest Renan writes that Marcus was very much a product of his training and his tutors. But more than his teachers and even his own parents, “Marcus had a single master whom he revered above them all, and that was Antoninus.”✉️ 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.

• 0:03Ryan 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, dailystoic.com.

• 0:28Ryan Holiday?

  Where did Marcus learn to be Marcus? Ernest Renan writes that Marcus was very much a product of his training and his tutors. But more than his teachers and even his own parents, he says, "Marcus had a single master whom he revered above them all, and that was Antoninus. All his adult life, Marcus strived to be a disciple of his adopted stepfather. While he lived, Marcus saw him, Renan said, "as the most beautiful model of a perfect life." Well, what were the things that Marcus learned from Antoninus? In Marcus's own words in Meditations, he learned the importance of compassion,

• 1:11Ryan Holiday?

  hard work, persistence, altruism, self-reliance, cheerfulness, and constancy to friends. He also learned how to keep an open mind and listen to anyone who could contribute, how not to play favorites, how to take responsibility and blame, and how to put other people at ease. He learned how to yield the floor to experts and use their advice, how to respect tradition, how to keep a good schedule, how to be moderate with the empire's treasury and never get worked up. Antoninus taught Marcus how to know when to push something or someone and when to back off. He taught him to be indifferent to the superficial honors and to treat people as they deserved to be treated.

• 1:55Ryan Holiday?

  It's quite a list, isn't it? Better still, that the lessons were embodied in Antoninus's actions rather than written on some tablet or scroll. There is no better way to learn from a role model. There is no better ...way to judge our progress than in constant company with the person we would most like to be one day. It's easy to say, but each of us needs to cultivate people like that in our lives. We need to comport ourselves as their disciples, striving to do as they do, and to never fall short of their standards if we can help it. And of course, we need to hold them up for view and record, as Marcus did, what they have taught us, so that we may never forget.