You Know You’re Good When…

You keep going. You do your best. Even if life has kicked the crap out of you.🎟 Ryan Holiday is going on tour! Grab tickets at ryanholiday.net/tour✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow 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.

• 0:03Ryan 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, dailystoic.com.

• 0:30Ryan Holiday?

  You know you're good when Seneca went into exile just days after burying his only child. Marcus Aurelius was getting himself out of bed at dawn each morning, despite the betrayal of his most trusted general, despite the rumors of his wife's infidelity, despite the fact that everything that seemed like it could go wrong had. Brutilius Rufus showed up for his show trial every day, not even revealing a hint of the disgust and pain it must have inflicted on him to be accused of something he'd never do. How these men must have ached, how sad they must have been, how angry they must have been. They didn't stuff these emotions down, though, as we said. That's a myth about Stoicism. But they did keep going. They kept writing, they kept working, kept being observant, kept being good, kept smiling, kept trying to be the person

• 1:15Ryan Holiday?

  that philosophy tried to make them. "You know you're good when you can even do it with a broken heart," Taylor Swift sings. That is Stoicism. You keep going, you do your best, even if life has kicked the crap out of you, even if someone has twisted your insides up, even if you're depressed, even if you're anxious, even if you're tired, so tired, even if nobody knows, even if nobody understands. You've got a job to do, a duty to fulfill. A broken heart can slow us down, but it can't stop us.