Fortune Favors the Brave | Balance The Books Of Life Daily

Ryan talks about how crucial the virtue of courage is, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. Ryan Holiday’s new book Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave is out now! Pick up a copy wherever books are sold or at the Daily Stoic Store: https://dailystoic.com/courageiscallingGiveWell is the best site for figuring out how and where to donate your money to have the greatest impact. If you’ve never donated to GiveWell’s recommended charities before, you can have your donation matched up to $250 before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last. Just go to GiveWell.org and pick podcast and enter DAILY STOIC 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?

  Fortune favors the brave. As Mount Vesuvius erupted, those who could run away did. Those who were far away could see only the plumes of smoke and ash. But Pliny, the elder and admiral and amateur scientist, was immediately curious. He planned to go investigate until a messenger came with ancient news that a friend was trapped the foot of the mountain. Assembling the fleet, Pliny rushed to the scene in utter fearlessness to rescue all those he could by boat. Arriving, he found the shoreline blocked by debris. A helmsman advised they turn back. We've talked before about how "fortune favors the bold." But do you know where that expression comes from? It comes from Pliny.

• 1:16Ryan Holiday?

  He said, "Fortune favors the bold," head for Pompeius. As Pliny's nephew would recount, what he had begun in the spirit of inquiry, he completed as a hero. Tragically, Pliny did not survive, although he did manage to save the life of his friend. When the Antonine plague overwhelmed Rome, if you had means to flee, you did. No one would have faulted Marcus for doing the same. But he never considered it. "People are our proper occupation," he'd write during the plague. "Our job is to do them good." So Marcus did his job. He braved the deadliest plague of Rome's 900-year history.

• 1:56Ryan Holiday?

  Courage is a critical Stoic virtue. The idea is not just that we're obligated to contribute to the world, but that we will have to brave obstacles and risk and misfortune to do so. For thousands of years, the Stoics have been like Pliny, like Marcus, like Cato, like Stockdale fighting for his comrades in that POW camp, defying his captors at every turn. That's what Stoics do. They help others. They risk themselves. They lead the charge. They like it when the odds seem to be against them because they know that the momentum of history is secretly with them, even if they have to suffer or perish for it. What mattered was what was right. What matters is the cause.

• 2:38Ryan Holiday?

  Fortune Favors the Brave, that's actually the subtitle of my new book, Courage is Calling. If you haven't checked out, I hope you do. Or if you know someone that's trying to do something big, they're not quite reaching their potential, maybe they're stuck, maybe they're dealing with imposter syndrome. I hope maybe you can consider passing them a copy of the book and even get signed copies from me in the Daily Stoic store. The idea is that all good things in life are on the other side courage, right? That without courage, we don't do what we want. We don't become who we're capable of becoming. We leave so much on the table, including friends, people who need us. And so when we say fortune favors the brave, it's not just, you know, hey, this will make you better at business, but it will make you a better citizen, a better human being,

• 3:21Ryan Holiday?

  make you better able to do the things we need desperately to have done. So I hope you can check out the new book Courage is Calling. Again, you can get signed copies from me, but it's also an audible. It's on IndieBound, it's at your local bookstore, Barnes and Noble, whatever. I hope you check out the book. Thanks for the support, everyone.

• 3:39Ryan Holiday?

  Balance the books of life daily. One of the reasons we journal is as a way of gathering up life's experiences, its insights, its frustrations, its unexpected struggles and triumphs and more. And in all of this, we are making a reckoning of our progress on life's way. Seneca, whose father-in-law was in charge of keeping the books on Rome's granary, liked the metaphor of balancing life's books each day. Rather than postpone, our impulse each day should be to bring things as much as possible to completion.

• 4:17Ryan Holiday?

  Why? Because we never know what tomorrow might bring. Epictetus too would tell his students that the important thing was that they had begun, begun to practice, to learn, to get better. So, give yourself some credit this week for the journey that you're on, and reflect on how far you have come, and how far you have left to go. 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.

• 5:02Ryan Holiday?

  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 store.dailystoic.com. And we have three quotes, two from Seneca, one from Epictetus. Seneca says, "Let us prepare our minds as if we'd come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life's books each day. Life's greatest flaw is that it is always imperfect, and a certain portion of it is postponed. The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time." And that's from Moral Letters 101. And then Seneca, and he's writing this to his father-in-law,

• 5:47Ryan Holiday?

  he says, "Believe me, it's better to produce the balance sheet of your own life than of the grain market." He says this on The Shortness of Life. And then Epictetus says, "I am your teacher, and you are learning in my school. My aim is to bring you to completion unhindered, free from compulsive behavior, unrestrained, without shame, free, flourishing, and happy, looking to God in things great and small. And your aim is to learn and diligently practice all of these things. Why, then, don't you complete the work? And I have both the right aim and the right preparation. What is missing? The work is quite feasible. It's the only thing in our power. Let go of the past. We must only begin. Believe me, and you will see."

• 6:32Ryan Holiday?

  I was thinking about this idea of keeping life's books with the fact that I just finished my fourth go around on the Daily Stoke Journal, and I know some of you have been on that path with me as well. So as I cracked open a fresh one, that was pretty cool. And I'm about to finish my, my first go around all the way through of my five year, one line a day journal. So I've been doing it every day for five years. And just to, just to have that finished is like an incredible and cool experience. And to think of the reflection that went into this.

• 7:15Ryan Holiday?

  And so, you know, when we talk about journaling, it's, it's not just a sort of a cathartic thing. It's not just a moment of stillness in the morning or the afternoon, or whenever you happen to do it. To me, the power of it is that it is recording your progress as you go. When I look at some of the things that I wrote five years ago, when I think about what I was going through five years ago, right, I just, I am proud of myself for the work that I have been putting in on myself. There's a great line that's not in today's entry, but Epitetus says,

• 7:59Ryan Holiday?

  me, he says, "Some people delight in improving their farm. Me, I delight in my own improvement day to day." And I think that's what the journal is really capturing, is that day to day improvement, that work that I've been putting in. And listening to this podcast is a little bit of work. Your journaling is a little bit of work. The reading you're doing is a little bit of work. The conversations you're having with a spouse, or a friend, or the Daily Stoke Life Group, that's a little bit of progress. And all of this, it might not seem like much, as you're doing each individual thing. But as George Washington liked to say, "Many Mikels make a muckle," or as Xeno said,

• 8:36Ryan Holiday?

  Well-being is realized by small steps, but it's not a small thing. And so as we chip away at this stuff, as we make a little bit of progress, it might not feel like much today or in the moment, but cumulatively, it is adding up. It is taking you somewhere. And that is not to be underrated. And yeah, when I did the journal four years ago now, I didn't know where it would go. I didn't know how it would work. I didn't have this kind of daily journaling practice, like prompt-based. But it's been a wonderful addition to my routine. And I've heard from so many people who've had the same experience.

• 9:20Ryan Holiday?

  And anyways, it's been wonderful. And I hope you can do more than just follow along with the podcast, but you can grab a version of it yourself. 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. Just go to dailystoic.com/email. So check it out, dailystoic.com/email.