What Did You Learn?

“There’s no question that the last year and a half has been tragic. Millions of people have perished in a merciless pandemic, millions more are still dealing with the consequences. Businesses were destroyed. Jobs were lost that will never come back. Relationships were subjected to unimaginable strain. Institutions were stretched to their breaking points.”Ryan explains the importance of learning from experience, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic See 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.

• 0:04Ryan 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.

• 0:27Ryan Holiday?

  What did you learn? There's no question that the last year and a half has been tragic. Millions of people have perished in a merciless pandemic. Millions more are still dealing with the consequences. Businesses were destroyed. Jobs were lost that will never come back. Relationships were subjected to unimaginable strain. Institutions were stretched to their breaking points. To which the Stoics would say, "And? This is life." Especially Marcus Aurelius, who himself endured a far worse plague and much greater geopolitical strife. He would remind us that history has always been difficult, that life has always been filled with events like this, that this was just our turn in the barrel.

• 1:11Ryan Holiday?

  Mostly, though, the Stoics would ask, "So what did you learn from this experience? Did you learn what matters to you and what doesn't? Did you learn how to be patient? Did you learn how to deal with your anxiety? Did you learn how your actions affect other people? Did you learn how interconnected all our lives are in this modern world? How vulnerable the system is? How vulnerable your own safety net was? How fragile life is, period." Memento mori. Did you learn that you are stronger than you thought you were? Because to not learn from the events of the COVID-19 pandemic would be to add impiety on top of the tragedy. In fact, the ability to learn from, to grow from, to find meaning in the twists and turns of fate,

• 1:55Ryan Holiday?

  according to the great Viktor Frankl, is one of the few powers we puny humans have in this life. The events of the last year have been trying. They've been unpredictable. They've been painful. They've also been instructive, if you choose to see them that way. And why on earth would you choose not to see them that way? Considering the alternative. Nothing can bring back the people or the time we have lost. It is an insult to our own injury not to learn from, to grow from what has happened, so that it might never happen again, if that's possible, or so that we might be better prepared when it does, which it will.

• 2:36Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. 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 at dailystoic.com/email.