What We Want (And Deserve) More Than Anything | What’s Up To Us, What’s Not Up To Us

We think we want to be rich. Or famous. Or powerful. We want to succeed, we want to achieve. We want more of this. We want less of that. These desires of ours are explicit, they define our goals and order our priorities. We salivate over them. But deep down, they don’t reflect what we actually want. They’re proxies, indirect ways of getting to what we’re really looking for.---In this first Daily Stoic Journal entry of the new year, Ryan revisits the most important Stoic task that there is: distinguishing between what is in our control and what isn't. For a limited time, you can purchase the Daily Stoic Journal ebook for only $1.99 on Kindle✉️ 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?

  What we want and deserve more than anything.

• 0:44Ryan Holiday?

  We think we want to be rich, or famous, or powerful. We want to succeed. We want to achieve. We want more of this. We want less of that. These desires of ours are explicit. They define our goals and order our priorities. We salivate over them. But deep down, they don't reflect what we actually want. They're proxies, indirect ways of getting what we're really looking for. "I want, first of all," in fact, as an end to these other desires, Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes in Gift from the Sea. She says, "I want to be at peace with myself." Whether we're conscious of it or not, we think that success will make us feel good. We think that proving people wrong will make us feel better, that externals will bring us internal harmony.

• 1:29Ryan Holiday?

  But will it? Has it ever? No, no, it hasn't. It's interesting. Lindbergh quotes Socrates, "who prayed that may the outward and inward man be at one." Perhaps that's the mistake we make. We think that perfecting the outward version of ourselves that the world sees will bring us the inner peace that we want, that only we will know. But Socrates and the Stoics knew that it was the other way around. It's the inner work that is more likely to bring us the outward success, and more importantly, that the inner work was an end unto itself. That's what Marcus Aurelius was doing in meditations, trying to focus inward on the inner work. Notice he speaks nowhere in those pages about how he will be remembered by

• 2:12Ryan Holiday?

  history, how long his accomplishments will stand. On the contrary, he was reminding himself how little those things mattered. He did not bring his inner world into harmony with his philosophy. Because no one is going to remember all the things we've accomplished after we're gone. But we will never forget how little joy they brought us when we were alive. They don't come from the right place in the right order.

• 2:40Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I've got my Daily Stoic Journal in front of me. It's actually got the new cover on it, which is pretty awesome. Actually sliding it in here. Should I do this right? Got to do the back first. But anyways, you slide it in there. Boom. Got the cover on it. And then let's riff on today's entry. This is the first week in the Daily Stoic Journal. 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says,

• 3:25Ryan Holiday?

  "Every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand. Write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them." You can check out the Daily Stoic Journal anywhere books are sold. You can also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoic store at store.dailystoic.com. And it starts with the most important Stoic task that there is. What's up to us and what's not up to us? Epictetus's handbook, the Incoridion, begins with the most powerful exercise in all of Stoicism. The distinction between things that are up to us, in our control, and the things that are not up to us. It is this, the dichotomy of control, that is the first principle in the entire philosophy. We don't control many of the

• 4:09Ryan Holiday?

  things we pursue in life, yet we become angry, sad, hurt, scared, and jealous, and we don't get them. In fact, these emotions, those reactions, are about the only thing we do control. If that is the only lesson to journal on and think about this year, consider it a year well and philosophically lived.

• 4:31Ryan Holiday?

  And then Epictetus's Discourses, which we actually opened the Daily Stoic with, so I'll riff on that in a second. But he says, "Look, the chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matter so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not in uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own." And then in Incoridion 1.1, he riffs on what is and isn't in our control. He says, "Some things are in our control while others are not. We control our opinion, our choice, our desire, our aversions. In a word, everything of our own doing. We don't control our body,

• 5:14Ryan Holiday?

  our property, our reputation, our position. And in a word, everything not in our own doing. And even more, the things in our control are by nature free, unhindered and unobstructed, while those not in our control are weak and slavish and can be hindered and are not our own." And then 1:22, he says, "We control our reasoned choice in all acts that depend on moral will. What's not under control are our body and any of its parts, our possessions, our parents, our siblings, our children, our country, anything with which we might associate." Look, I think what Epictetus is saying here is that not just the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer, you know, you separate things into the categories and you only focus on what's

• 5:56Ryan Holiday?

  up to you, but that a lot of things that we think of as being up to us are not even up to us, right? Really, at the absolute core of it, what we control are our thoughts, our emotion, our opinions. We don't control what happens, control how we respond to what happens, but even then, within a constrained amount. And this might seem kind of resigned or a sad way to start the year, but I don't think it is. I think it's the only way to start the year. It's certainly the only way I thought we could start the Daily Stoic, which I'll read to you the January 1 entry. "The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what

• 6:38Ryan Holiday?

  we can change and what we can't, what we have influence over and what we do not. A flight is delayed because of weather. No amount of yelling at an airline representative will end a storm. No amount of wishing will make you taller or shorter or born in a different country. No matter how hard you try, you can't make someone like you." And on top of that, time spent hurling theirself at these immovable objects is time not spent on the things we can change. The recovery community practices something called the serenity prayer. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Addicts cannot change the abuse suffered in childhood. They cannot undo the choices that they have made or the hurt they have caused.

• 7:23Ryan Holiday?

  But they can change the future through the power they have in the present moment. As Epictetus says, they can control the choices they make right now. The same is true for us today, for the year that stands before us. If we focus on making clear what parts of our day are within our control and what parts are not, we will not only be happier, we will have a distinct advantage over other people who fail to realize they are fighting an unwinnable battle.

• 7:51Ryan Holiday?

  It's funny, I think when we're younger, we have an outsized view of what's in our control and what isn't. And as we get older, we ratchet that back, which is ironic because as we get older, we're also more powerful, more successful, et cetera. But you, you just realize like, look, you, you don't control what other people do. I mean, even the longer I've been a parent, the, it's something less strict I am, but I do feel the more chill I am because I've made the mistakes. I've tried to control things I don't control. I've seen where my anxiety or stress or worry or whatever gets me. And I cultivate the ability to step back to focus on what I control. My son was like, I was working, I was playing on the floor with one of my sons

• 8:35Ryan Holiday?

  and my other son drew on my jacket with a pen a couple of days ago. And it's like my favorite jacket, it's like ruined, he wrote all over it with a red Sharpie. I don't know why I didn't notice, but I didn't. And I was mad, but there's a part, I was like, hey, look, like, no amount of being mad at a child is going to undo the ruined jacket, right? And what's the opportunity that I want to seize here, right? Like, what, what good is it? To make this person feel bad about what happened, or to no amount of yelling is going to undo what happened. So I want to, I want to take the opportunity to talk about instead calmly, respectfully,

• 9:18Ryan Holiday?

  talk about what it means to respect other people's persons, their stuff, et cetera. And to talk about, hey, how would you feel if I did that to something that you like or that you care about? Right? And I didn't do it perfectly, but my wife and I were talking about it after just like how compared to how our parents would have reacted, how different it was. But the idea is, look, I just control what I do about it. Just control how I respond. I just control whether I let my emotions get the best of me or not. Or when I catch myself, at what point in that process do I walk it back? Right? What's up to us and what's not up to us?

• 10:00Ryan Holiday?

  I feel like so many things that I'm upset about, that I get in arguments about what I'm really saying is, wish that hadn't happened. I want to undo that that happened. And that's not how life works. That's not something that's up to me. And so I'm practicing the idea of getting a little bit better at letting go of that thing, of moving on from that thing, and so must you.

• 10:22Ryan Holiday?

  This is a year that we try to focus more on what's in our control. We argue less with reality. I have a whole set of note cards. It's a theme I often journal and think about how often I find us. We're in arguments with reality. We wish things were different. They weren't the way that they were. And this isn't like resigning yourself to the state of society. This is resigning yourself that something that happened did happen. It is done. It is in the past. Arguing and relitigating and relitigating, it doesn't change it. It's not, you don't have the power to make it unhappen. But you do have the power to decide how it's going to make you feel, whether it harms you or not, what you do about it, who you are because of it. That's the part of this that's up to us.

• 11:08Ryan Holiday?

  That's where I'll leave you today.

• 11:12Ryan Holiday?

  It's a wonderful new year. Like I was saying, I've got the leather cover on the journal, which you can check out at store.dailystoic.com. It's really cool. I'm glad to have one. This is the copy I keep at the office. I have one at home. And on the front, it just says, "Make time," which is what we should be doing for journaling. We should make time to think about what's in our control and what isn't. You can check that out at store.dailystoic.com. And of course, The Daily Stoic is $1.99 as an ebook for the next two weeks. I'll link to that in today's show notes as well. Happy New Year, everyone. Hope you're enjoying the challenge, and we'll talk soon.

• 11:52Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. 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.