Keep Calm and Carry On

"Things are rough out there, it’s hard to argue with that. The stock market. Quarantines. Hospitals filled to capacity, and beyond. Travel plans cut short. Families cut off from loved ones. What is happening?! you might find yourself asking. This is terrifying, are things breaking down? Maybe. But it’s helpful to recall in times like these that, as the broadcaster Paul Harvey once explained, there have always been times like these."Every day, Ryan Holiday reads the Daily Stoic meditation for the day. To receive these via email, sign up at https://dailystoic.com/email/See 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.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good 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 at dailystoic.com.

• 0:29Ryan Holiday?

  Keep calm and carry on. Things are rough out there. It's hard to argue with that. The stock market, quarantines, hospitals filled to the brink, travel plans cut short, families cut off from loved ones. "What is happening?" you might find yourself asking. "Isn't this terrifying? Are things breaking down?" Maybe. But it's helpful to recall in times like these, as the broadcaster Paul Harvey once explained, that there have always been times like these. Marcus Aurelius lived through a pandemic. If you're old enough to read this, then you have already experienced at least one financial crisis. You come from

• 1:10Ryan Holiday?

  a long line of survivors, people who lived through civil wars as well as civil unrest, people who survived quarantines and long separations, people who had their plans disrupted, people who woke up for days and days in a row not knowing what the morning would bring or what kind of future that lay ahead. They survived. They survived the London Blitz. They survived the Black Plague. They survived the Mongols and cold nights on the frontier. They survived without governments. They survived without electricity. They endured grief and fear and pain and change. They kept calm. They carried on. They learned, as Marcus did, that things can only ruin your life if they ruin your character, that we might not control

• 1:55Ryan Holiday?

  world events, but we control how we respond. We control whether we hold our heads high. We control whether we help our neighbors. We control whether we contribute to the panic or not. We control whether we take care of ourselves and take precautions. We control whether we live up to that eternal standard of courage, moderation, justice, and wisdom. Yeah, it's tough out there. It's scary. But we're gonna be okay. We're going to keep going, and we're going to get through this. You know, I'm sitting here now and I'm holding my Four Virtues coin, our Daily Stoic one. And I've been trying to think a lot about those ideas of courage and self-discipline and justice and wisdom, because this is the moment for those things.

• 2:39Ryan Holiday?

  And I think the reason we make these coins for Daily Stoic is precisely as a reminder of that, as Marcus said, we should try not to exchange these virtues for others. So yeah, we've got all sorts of competing concerns. We've got our own safety. We've got our job. We've got, you know, that trip we planned. We've got all these things. But let's make sure that what's coming first is that courage, caring about others, wisdom, self-discipline. Let's make sure we're being the people that this philosophy is hoping for us to be. If you want to check out the coin, you can check it out at dailystoic.com/virtues. Be safe, guys.