It's About Intensity Not Magnitude | What's Up to Us, and What's Not Up to Us

Ryan explains why you should linger on the works of the master thinkers, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. For a limited time, the Daily Stoic ebook is $1.99 in the US and UK this week only. We have a premium leather bound version available at dailystoic.com/leather. The new Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. You can add the Cover to any mattress, and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. Go to eightsleep.com/dailystoic to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and 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.

• 0:04Ryan 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.

• 0:34Ryan Holiday?

  It's about intensity, not magnitude. The Stoics knew we should listen more than we talk, that we should be avid readers and consumers of wisdom. And maybe that's why you've kicked off this year with a reading goal. I'm going to read 50 books this year. I'm going to read a book a week, a book a month, every book on this best nonfiction books of all time list, one book by every author on that greatest authors of all time list. And the Stoics would admire this energy. But there's also a reason that Marcus Aurelius and Seneca both cautioned themselves about their desire to read as much as possible. Both of them would have nodded in agreement

• 1:15Ryan Holiday?

  to Schopenhauer's line that intellect is a magnitude of intensity, not a magnitude of extensity. Seneca compared it to trying to heal a wound or form an intimate relationship. You wouldn't keep switching ointments or constantly come and go. And the same thing must hold true to people who never set about acquiring an intimate acquaintance with any one great writer or skip from one to the other, paying flying visits to them all, he writes. Nothing is so useful that it can be of service in mere passing. So, he says, we must extend our stay among a select few writers, those whose genius has stood the test of time,

• 1:57Ryan Holiday?

  whose works have proven to nourish and cultivate great minds. This, of course, informed my idea for The Daily Stoic. While it itself is not a work of genius, that's not what I'm claiming. It's pretty remarkable that despite standing the test of more than 2,000 years, the great quotes of the Stoics could only be found spread out over many different works. And this was the whole point of The Daily Stoic, to finally put them in one place, to create a kind of survey course of the philosophy that a person can follow every single year. And it's been incredible to see the success that the book has had since its release in 2016. It's now sold more than a million copies, it's in dozens of languages, it's spent more

• 2:41Ryan Holiday?

  weeks on the bestseller list than any other book about Stoicism ever. And that's why, in celebration, and to help encourage another year of Stoicism, the ebook for The Daily Stoic is $1.99 in the US, and it's on sale in the UK too. And you can pick one up right now, anywhere that you buy your ebooks. And, of course, the success of the book is a reflection of Seneca's point. If you really want to get something out of your reading, you must linger among a limited number of master thinkers and digest their works. And it's a testament to the power of the Stoic teachings and the mastery of the Stoics. There are other great one-page-a-day books out there too. I love a bunch of them.

• 3:23Ryan Holiday?

  I love Tolstoy's A Calendar of Wisdom, Robert Greene's The Daily Laws, Ali as Theories, A Poem for Every Day of the Year. But the idea is to find a way of thinking, a school of wisdom, a subject matter, and dive deep into it. Read and reread Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Epictetus, linger in their company, and as their intellect infuses with ours, we are changed forever. Make that your goal this year. Don't pick some large and arbitrary number of books to read. Don't pay flying visits to every author on this or that list. Instead, think about intensity.

• 4:03Ryan Holiday?

  And look, if you haven't read The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, I love that you're listening to this podcast. The book is this podcast, but the original. It's how I kicked this whole thing off. I wrote the book in 2015 and 2016. It's got original translations from all the Stoics, and I think it's worked for a reason. I'd love to have you check it out. It's $1.99 on Amazon, as I said, as an ebook, iBooks too, anywhere you get ebooks in the US. It's discounted in the US and the UK also. But we also have a leather-bound edition. If you've read the book a couple of times and you want to invest in something a little more heavy-duty that'll stand the test of time, you can check out the leather edition

• 4:46Ryan Holiday?

  at dailystoic.com/leather. Or if you just want the cloth-bound, lay-flat version, the standard hardcover, you can pick that up anywhere books are sold, and also at stuart.dailystoic.com, and I'll sign your edition as well. So I hope you start this year off reading and rereading, particularly The Daily Stoic. And if you've been meaning to pick up the ebook, well, it's $1.99 for a reason.

• 5:14Ryan Holiday?

  What's Up to Us and What's Not Up to Us? And this is from this week's entry 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, "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 stuart.dailystoic.com. Epictetus's handbook, the Inqueridion,

• 5:56Ryan Holiday?

  begins with the most powerful exercise in all of Stoicism, the distinction between the 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 this entire philosophy. "We don't control many of the things we pursue in life, yet we become angry, sad, hurt, scared, or jealous when we don't get them. In fact, these emotions, these reactions, are about the only thing we do control. And that is a lesson to remember for this entire year. And if you could do that, you could consider it a year well and philosophically lived." "The chief task in life is simply this, to identify and separate matters

• 6:40Ryan Holiday?

  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 to uncontrollable externals, but within myself, to the choices that are my own." Epictetus's Discourses 2:5. "Some things are in our control while others are not. We control our opinion, choice, desire, aversion, and in a word, everything of our own doing. We don't control our body, property, reputation, position, and in a word, everything not of our own doing. Even more, the things in our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unobstructed, while those not in our control are weak, slavish,

• 7:24Ryan Holiday?

  can be hindered, and are not our own." Epictetus's Inqueridion 1:1. "We control our reasoned choice and all acts that depend on our moral will. What's not under our control are our body and any of its parts, our possessions, parents, siblings, children, or country, anything with which we might associate." Epictetus's Discourses 1:22. So here we are, a new year. I think it's worth repeating today the Serenity Prayer. You don't have to be religious, and, you know, plenty of people in recovery are not religious, but the prayer works. "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can,

• 8:09Ryan Holiday?

  and the wisdom to know the difference." And what I love about that, this Serenity Prayer is it feels like one of the most timeless observations ever, right? So this, it's a prayer, so it must go back like thousands of years. Like, who said it? St. Augustine, Martin Luther? Was it one of the popes? Was it Jesus himself? No, it was Reinhold Niebuhr in 1932. It spread very, very rapidly, but 1932, I just love the idea that, that, you know, think of all the things that had been invented before 1932. I mean, people are still driving cars from 1932. They're classic cars, but, but like, all the thi- I mean, it's a cra- I'm, I'm talking to you

• 8:54Ryan Holiday?

  from a building that was built in 1880 something, so it was 50 years old when that prayer was, was composed. But that's because the wisdom in it is timeless, and it's, and not just timeless in the sense that like, yeah, that's true, but it's like, it's an ongoing continual struggle, right? We always are focused on things that are not in our control. Sometimes we, we fail when something is in our control. We don't want to step up and deal with it. And it takes wisdom to know the difference, to know what is up to us and what's not up to us. And that's what Epictetus is talking about. He goes, really, what's up to you, right? The things you own, you don't really own, your reputation,

• 9:36Ryan Holiday?

  not really you, you know, your money, even people you love. You, you don't control them, you don't control how long you have access to them, you don't control what they think of you. All you really control is what you think. You don't even fully control your own body, he's saying, right? And I mean, anyone who got COVID over the last eight months, anyone who's, you know, had a health scare, or cancer, or mental illness even realized, like, you don't even fully control your own body or your own mind. But what we control for the most part is their own choices. We control how we react to these things, right? Even if you have a mental illness, right? Whether it's, whether you're struggling with depression, or bipolar, or, you know, you don't control the illness,

• 10:20Ryan Holiday?

  but you control whether you seek treatment for it, you control whether you follow the treatment for it. You control the adjustments you make in accordance to the illness, right? We, we, we control how we respond. And I, that's just, it's a lesson worth repeating every single year. Because it's true every single year and it will be true as long as we are human beings. Don't control what happens to us. We control how we respond. That's Stoicism. And we should try to respond well. We should try to respond with courage and justice and wisdom and temperance. Now, this idea that we don't control what happens, we control how we respond. That's Stoicism. It's simple, but it's so hard. I mean, it's so hard.

• 11:04Ryan Holiday?

  But we've got to realize, look, when we're, I, I, I've been saying this on some of my talks recently. It's like if you have a hundred energy points and you spend 10 of those energy points blaming, 10 of those energy points feeling sorry for yourself, 10 of those energy points wishing things were otherwise, that's 30% of your available energy that you are not spending on doing something about the problem, moving the ball forward or focusing on some new area or new opportunity instead. Right? I don't know about you, but I, I'm not smart enough, capable enough, brilliant enough, naturally talented enough that I can afford to waste 30, 40, 50, 80% of my energy, as people often do, on things that don't matter, where it's not making a difference.

• 11:47Ryan Holiday?

  So we focus on what's up to us. And what is up to us are, are ruling reason, our choices, our thoughts, our opinions. And then to a certain degree, the actions that we take. We control our response, not what happens. We don't even control necessarily the outcome of those responses or actions. But again, we control what we think about them. We control the willpower we bring to them, control the virtue that we try to apply. That's what Stoicism is about. Happy New Year, everyone. Let's get at it. 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. You just go to dailystoic.com/email. So check it out, dailystoic.com/email.