Respect the Man Who Stands Alone | Awareness Is Freedom

“It’s hard not to read about Cato’s life and not be struck by how often the man stood alone. He stood alone as Quaestor, as he reformed Rome’s treasury. He was the sole voice willing to say “No” when people wanted to spend money the empire didn’t have.”Ryan talks about the importance of living by principles and respecting others who do the same, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. This episode is also brought to you by Literati Kids, a subscription book club that sends 5 beautiful children’s books to your door each month, handpicked by experts. Literati Kids has book clubs for children ages 0 to 12, and each club has age-appropriate selections tailored to what your child needs. Every Literati Kids book in your child’s box is hand-picked by experts and guaranteed to spark their curiosity, intellect, and spirit of discovery. Go to literati.com/stoic to get 25% off your first two orders and receive 5 incredible kids books, curated by experts, delivered to your door every month.***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/dailystoicSee 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 another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epictetus, Marcus, Aurelius, Seneca, then some analysis from me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

• 0:40Ryan Holiday?

  "Respect the man who stands alone." It's hard not to read about Cato's life and be struck by how often he stood alone. He stood alone as he reformed Rome's treasury. He was the sole voice willing to say no when people wanted to spend the money the empire didn't have. He stood alone when he refused to buy elections. He stood alone in how he dressed. He stood alone when he filibustered against bad laws. As Seneca would write, "Cato stood alone against the vices of a degenerate state that was sinking to destruction beneath its very weight, and he stayed the fall of the Republic to the utmost that one man's hand could do to draw it back." Cato was right in most of these stands, wrong in others. Sometimes he was obstinate and

• 1:23Ryan Holiday?

  stubborn, other times righteous and good, but each time he stood alone, very alone, with conviction and determination and real skin in the game, which is why we have to respect and admire him, why he was a great hero to his fellow Stoics, and why he was truly a great man. Today, we seem not only to have lost the courage to stand alone like this, we've lost even our admiration for people who do. Everything is so divided and partisan that we can't see the beauty and the bravery of John McCain's final vote in the Senate, or Romney's lone Republican vote to commit. We can't appreciate the risk taken in J.K. Rowling's tweets, or Jordan Peterson's stand about free speech, or in whistleblowers,

• 2:05Ryan Holiday?

  or in activists like Colin Kaepernick, because all we can see is whether we agree- Or not, whether we like them or not. If you want a world where people do the right thing, where they act on the courage of their conviction, then you must create a culture that respects those choices. You must carve out space to respect the taking of a principled stand and must learn how to say, "I don't agree with that person, but man, that took guts." That's not to say that you exempt them from the consequences. That's not to say you don't fight against them if you do disagree, but you recognize and acknowledge guts when you see it. Standing alone is a difficult thing. It's a controversial thing. It's unfortunately a rare thing, but we need more of it now than ever before,

• 2:50Ryan Holiday?

  lest we go the same way as Rome.

• 2:55Ryan Holiday?

  Awareness is freedom. The person is free who lives as they wish, neither compelled nor hindered nor limited, whose choices aren't hampered, whose desires succeed, and who doesn't fall into what repels them. Who wishes to live in deception, tripped up, mistaken, undisciplined, complaining in a rut? No one. These are base people who don't live as they wish. And so, no, no base person is free. Epictetus's Discourses, 4:1. "It's sad to consider how much time many people spend in the course of a day doing things they have to do, not necessarily obligations like work or family, but the obligations we needlessly accept out of vanity or ignorance. Consider the actions we take

• 3:40Ryan Holiday?

  in order to impress other people or the lengths we'll go to fulfill urges or sate desires we don't even question." In one of his famous letters, Seneca observes how often powerful people are slaves to their money, to their positions, to their mistresses, even, as was legal in Rome, to their slaves. "No slavery is more disgraceful," he quipped, "than one which is self-imposed." We see this slavery all the time. A codependent person who can't help but clean up after a dysfunctional friend, a boss who micromanages employees and sweats every penny, the countless causes, events, and get-togethers we're too busy to attend but agree to anyway. Take an inventory of your obligations from time to time. How many of these are self-imposed? How many of them are truly necessary?

• 4:25Ryan Holiday?

  Are you as free as you think? This is March 4th entry in the Daily Stoic. I did a piece somewhat recently about this where I said that success, at least for me, is spelled autonomy. And what I mean by that is if you're rich or powerful or famous or living your so-called dream, is it really a dream? Are you really successful? Are you really powerful? If you're not in control of your life, more specifically, if you're not in control of your days. So on the one hand, Marx's realist is very, very powerful. On the other hand, he's not very powerful because he has to wake up every day and be emperor. It doesn't seem like he really wanted to do that. And so that's part of it, right?

• 5:07Ryan Holiday?

  Like, are you in control of your schedule? Or is your schedule in control of you? To me, that's a really important question. And like even today, I was rushed this morning because I opened my phone and I had a bunch of things in the calendar that I hadn't checked and I didn't think about and honestly don't really want to do. And that cut short my walk with my kids. It made me a little short with my wife as I was rushing out of the house. And it's leaving me less time to write, less time to read. And it's not really the day that I want to have today. And so that sucks. But it's self-imposed. That's the worst part about it. I have the power to change it, but I didn't. I could sort of blow it all up, but my word matters to me. So the point is, I have to learn from this

• 5:51Ryan Holiday?

  and I don't want days like this in the future. So that's one sort of thing. Like, are you in control of your calendar? Is your calendar in control of you? The other part of this, though, and I think this is also what Epictetus is talking about, is it's not just freedom to do what you want. There are plenty of people that are so rich and so powerful, they wake up, they don't have to do anything. They'll never work another day again. They have people to do all the unpleasant things. And yet, they're still very not free because they are addicted to this substance or that substance. They've got this bad habit or that bad habit. They have this racing thought, or this paranoia, or this fear, right? The autonomy, Epictetus was seemingly the least free out of anyone in Rome. He's literally

• 6:33Ryan Holiday?

  a slave. But he finds freedom within that because he frees himself from his desires, from his impressions, from the tyranny of his mind. He's in control, even though he's not in control of parts of his life. And so that's the sort of the both sides of Stoicism. It's carving out freedom with your time, because that's so important. But also with the free time you have, are you free inside your own mind? Are you free from internal slave drivers as well? And so that's the question for you today. Are you as free as you think? Where have you carved out freedom? And are you aware of this? Because it's in the awareness that we find freedom. And I'll give you that quote from Seneca again. "Because it pertains both to the schedule and both to our thoughts and our emotions and our desires.

• 7:16Ryan Holiday?

  No slavery is more disgraceful, Seneca tells us, than one which is self-imposed." Thanks so much for listening. If you could leave a review for the podcast, we'd really appreciate it. The reviews make a difference. And of course, every nice review from a nice person helps balance out the crazy people who get triggered and angry anytime we say something they disagree with. So 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.