Everything Is A Kind Of Dying | A Little Better Every Day

Marcus Aurelius knew this, but he didn’t let it get him down. In fact, he found some reassurance in it. “When we cease from activity, or follow a thought to its conclusion,” he observed, “it is a kind of death.” But this doesn’t harm us, he pointed out. In fact, we look forward to many of these cessations and conclusions. “Think about your life,” he said, “childhood, boyhood, youth, old age. Every transformation a kind of dying. Was that so terrible?”--In today's Daily Stoic Journal reading, Ryan explores the Stoic idea of bettering oneself with small steps every day by reflecting on quotes from Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. The Stoics and future generations kept the idea of Memento Mori close by with jewelry, writing, art, and music because death doesn’t make life pointless—it makes life purposeful. They were trying to remember: We can go at any moment. We must not waste time. And that’s why we decided to add to the rich history of Memento Mori with our Memento Mori medallion, signet ring, and pendant—each reminders we must live NOW, while there is still time. ✉️ 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.

• 0:35Ryan Holiday?

  Everything is a kind of dying. It may seem dark to think about it this way, but it's true. We are constantly dying, dying every day, as Seneca said. "Life is a one-way street. Time marches in only one direction. Things are always ending, always coming to a close, or getting closer to one." Marcus Aurelius knew this, but he didn't let it get him down. In fact, he found some reassurance in it. "When we cease from activity or follow a thought to its conclusion," he observed, "it is a kind of death." "But this doesn't harm us," he pointed out. "In fact, we look forward to many of these cessations and conclusions." "Think about your life," he said, "childhood, boyhood, youth, old age, every transformation, a kind of dying." Was that so terrible? Of course not, it's just how life is.

• 1:19Ryan Holiday?

  From one end comes another beginning. Nothing lasts forever, nor will we want it otherwise. Instead, we have to accept change, if not embrace it. We have to accept that none of us maintain anything or any form forever. Instead, we are transitioning, always, some quickly, some more slowly. Everything is tinged with a kind of dying. Everything is a phase, including the life we're lucky enough to live right now.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Like I said, I've got this new cool leather cover, which you can check out at store.dailystoic.com. It, I think it just spruces it up, hopefully helps, sort of is the continuity, the thread between each year of using the journal. This is my fifth year, I think. This is my fifth journal I've gone through. So it's got a little spot here for my note cards. It's got the Daily Stoic logo on it. It says, "From Seneca, I examine my day and go back over what I've done and said, hiding nothing from myself, passing nothing by." That's what we're doing as we journal. Check that out at store.dailystoic.com. But today, or this week's entry is, "The Stoics saw their lives as works in progress.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  They didn't believe they were born perfect, but they believed that with work and dedication, they could get a little better every day. There is real delight in this progress," as Epictetus quoted by way of Socrates. Marcus Aurelius avidly pursued his own education and improvement, eagerly looking for advice, for mentors and historical examples. Well, let's follow that example this week and see how you get a little better as each day passes. "We must keep constant watch over ourselves," and as Seneca phrased it, "put each day up for review. Looking back on our day helps us to better understand where we may have fallen short and gives us tangible feedback for how to improve and grow. Only what you

• 3:37Speaker 01

  measure and record can be monitored. Only what you put up for reflection can be learned from." And our first quote is from Seneca's Moral Letters. "I will keep constant watch over myself and most usefully will put each day up for review, for this is what makes us evil, that none of us looks back upon our own lives. We reflect upon only that which we are about to do, and yet our plans for the future descend from the past." Marcus Aurelius from Risticus, he said, "I learned from Risticus to read carefully and to not be satisfied with a rough understanding of the whole and not to agree too quickly with those who have a lot to say about something." And then Epictetus says, "But what does Socrates say?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Just as one delights in improving his farm and another his horse, so I delight in attending to my own improvement day to day." This is Epictetus's Discourses 3:5. As I think about the decade and a half now I've spent studying Stoicism, I sometimes marvel at like who I was when these ideas first hit me and how far I've come. Some ways I look at how not far I've come and how I'm still find myself making the same mistakes over and over again, which Marcus remarks about in Meditations. He goes, "Look, you're still an old man and yet here you are, you're afraid of death, you're losing your temper, you're prizing the wrong things." But the truth is, he had come very, very far. And I feel like I have come far.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  I'm not perfect, I'm not where I want to be, but I can't deny that I have made progress. And so that's what Stoicism is, it's progress. What does that progress look like? Well, one of my favorite observations from Seneca says, "How do I know I'm making progress as a Stoic? I'm a better friend to myself." Are you, right? I don't know when you first came into understanding these ideas, what you first read, but it's wonderful in those moments where you catch yourself thinking, "This really would have rocked me before. This really would have sent me off before. I really wouldn't have caught myself before." I think about this even with my marriage with my wife, like just things, we were talking

• 5:44Speaker 01

  about something the other night and it's like, yeah, we've been together for 15 odd years and we're just coming around to realizing that when you do this, I do this, or that I do this and, you know? And so on the one hand, it's like, man, things would have been easier if we figured this out earlier. And yet, and yet, it's also wonderful that we're figuring it out now and the time it's going to save us and the frustrations it's going to save us and the heartache it's going to save us, right? You delight in your improvement day to day. You make little bits of progress. We have a TikTok that I posted about this, but one of the most interesting things I read about Tom Brady is that it's not that Tom Brady is obsessed with winning. People think that's what it is. He's obsessed with getting better.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  And that's how you get great. It can be a curse, certainly, right? Can be taken too far. If you only look at what you can do better, if you only look at where you fell short, if Seneca's sort of putting yourself up for the review every day becomes a kind of torture. That's not the idea. The idea is that we, you know, we push ourselves to get better. We notice where we've made improvement. I interviewed Michael Dell on the podcast, I guess this was last year. And he had this great acronym. He says pleased but never satisfied. That's how the company celebrates the success it's had, how he celebrates the success he's had or the improvements he made. It's made, but that doesn't mean you rest on your laurels. That doesn't mean you call it.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  No, you're always trying to get better, right? And the person who focuses on where you can get better, who is pleased but not satisfied. That's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. That's how we get better. That's how we push ourselves. That's the idea. So if you think of Stoicism then as a day to day journey, a week to week journey, a year to year journey, right? It's not a magical transformation. It's something you work. As they say in sobriety circles, it works if you work it. The idea is if you work it, if you make small improvements, if you try to apply them here and now, a little bit every day. It adds up, adds up. Well, being is realized by small steps, Zito said, but it's no small thing.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  So the little tweaks, little breakthroughs, little conversations, all the things that have happened for me over the years, they're not major. Not any one of them is probably worth writing home about. That's why I don't tend to put myself in the books. But cumulatively, you know, it's changed the course, the bearings, the direction of my life in a really, really big way. And I know that's true for lots of you. And here we are at the beginning of the year. Let's. But set out to make some small improvements day to day over the next 12 months and think about who you would be if you made a 1% improvement every day for the next year, every week for the next year, every month for the next year, every year for the rest of your life, right? That adds up. It adds up.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Small steps, but it's no small thing. That's the message from the Daily Stoic Journal, which of course you can pick up everywhere. And check out the new leather cover. I think it's really sick. Store.DailyStoic.com.