It Can Happen To You | Accepting What Is

Ryan explains why being prepared is so essential, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. List your product on AppSumo between September 15th - November 17th and the first 400 offers to go live will receive $1000, the next 2000 to list a product get $250. And everyone who lists gets entered to be one of 10 lucky winners of $10k! Go to https://appsumo.com/ryanholiday to list your product today and cash in on this amazing deal. 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 can happen to you. He was on the top of the world, one of the best of his craft, beloved by millions. And then, at 43, he was struck down by colon cancer. Because Chadwick Boseman kept his diagnosis private, except to his loved ones, this news surprised many people. A lot of them had the typical reaction, "How tragic," they said. "What a loss. It's not fair." And all of that is true and reasonable. But almost no one had the less pleasant reaction, the one that Seneca would argue we should have towards any unexpected loss. No one said, "Oh, that easily could have been me." "This," Seneca said, "is the thought we must have when we see the coroner come pick up our neighbor,

• 1:18Ryan Holiday?

  when we hear that somebody's life savings were stolen by a fraudster or they were taken to jail on trumped-up charges. The same there, but for the grace of God, God-hy." Seneca would have probably used the word "fate" or "fortune" instead of "God." We're talking about the same thing. What can happen to anybody can happen to everybody. What can happen to somebody you know can happen to you. You are not immune. You are not special. No amount of fame, or power, or talent exempts us from the "mori" in "Memento Mori."

• 1:53Ryan Holiday?

  Everyone gets dealt bad luck. Being young, being well-liked, having already been through so much, or never having been through anything at all. These are all irrelevant considerations. What's past is prologue and beside the point. Just like the list of numbers that have hit at the roulette table just before you walk up, they are facts. They are not fate. They are not predictive or protective. When your number is up, that's it. The events of the world are constantly trying to remind us of this. Yet so many of us don't want to listen. We downright refuse to listen. "Why is this happening to me?" We whine and wail into the void. Because it can. That's why. Because it happens to people every single day.

• 2:37Ryan Holiday?

  And you should know that by now. This idea of memento mori is obviously an important Stoic practice. We talk about it here all the time on Daily Stoic. I have memento mori reminders in my house. I'm looking at the memento mori print here on my wall that we sell in the Daily Stoic store. And I've got the Daily Stoic coin here in my pocket. That's it slamming into the desk. I love that reminder. Brings me home to it. Helps put things in perspective. You can check that out at store.dailystoic.com. But remember, memento mori. Accepting what is. Reinhold Niebuhr's Serenity Prayer is a mantra for many.

• 3:20Ryan Holiday?

  "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change," it reads. "Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." The Stoics wanted to push past simply accepting what is. They wanted us to be grateful and happy with what is. Epictetus taught that we get a well-flowing life when we wish for what is going to happen, not for what we want to happen. And Marcus Aurelius adds that we should meet anything that comes our way with gratitude. Not, "I wish this was different and I'll tolerate it, but I'm glad it happened this way. It's for the best. So let us try that on for size this week."

• 4:02Ryan Holiday?

  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 store.dailystoic.com. And we have two quotes from Epictetus and one from Marcus Aurelius. "Don't seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything

• 4:45Ryan Holiday?

  happens as it actually will, and then your life will flow well." That's Epictetus's Incoridion 8. And then from the Discourses 1:12, he says, "To be truly educated means this: learning to wish that each thing happens exactly as it does." Marcus Aurelius' Meditation 9:6, "All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the present moment, action for the common good in the present moment, and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way." One thing I wanted to point out, because I was fascinated to learn this, is the Serenity

• 5:27Ryan Holiday?

  Prayer. One, it sounds like some sort of real hymn or prayer that must go back thousands of years. Honestly, it sounds like something that could come from the Stoics. But in fact, it really comes, and then obviously, a lot of people associate it with recovery movement, which it has become a big part of. But...

• 5:51Ryan Holiday?

  It really dates to like the 30s and 40s. They think that he composed the prayer somewhere around the time of 1932, 1933, which for some context is, you know, in the midst of the Great Depression. But again, one of the benefits of wisdom is that it is both timely and timeless at the same time. So this idea of the prayer, "Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know one from another." Also, I think the difference between that as he first writes it and then what it sort of commonly gets rendered out is also a sign

• 6:33Ryan Holiday?

  of, as Twain says, the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. Like, just the perfect wording of it, the perfect encapsulation of the wisdom, it feels, as soon as you see it, even though, you know, it's as old as some people's grandparents who are listening to this, or perhaps some people who are listening to this themselves, they may be well older than that short little prayer. But it feels as current and fresh and also as ageless and timeless as just about anything. But anyways, let's not nerd out too much on the history of the prayer. What I thought I would focus on today, because we've been talking about acceptance quite a lot here on the podcast, I tend to disagree a little

• 7:18Ryan Holiday?

  bit with Epictetus. I find that Epictetus's life was so tragic and painful. I mean, he's born, his name literally means like enslaved. We know almost nothing about his family. We know nothing about his existence, except that he's born a slave, he has a cruel master who tortures him, he walks for a limp the rest of his life, and then after 30 years of slavery and, you know, eventually getting his freedom, Epictetus is exiled by a cruel emperor. So it is a hard life.

• 7:52Ryan Holiday?

  But I find it striking that nowhere in Epictetus's writings, does he really question whether any of it was right or fair, whether anything could be done about it? Now, you might say this is him reaching this sort of sage-like level of wisdom, and I think there's truth to that. I mean, who am I to question, obviously, such a great and brave and, you know, enduring spirit? But I guess, obviously, we live in a world now where people have more agency, and why do we have that agency? Because people were willing to fight for it and change. So, obviously, the Stoics are mostly right, that so much of what happens in this world is outside of our control.

• 8:32Ryan Holiday?

  We should accept it, resenting it, crying over it, whining about it, simply wishing it was otherwise, does not do anything. And then a lot of the things that there, I think this is referred to, are things that you just, look, you were born five feet three, you were born five foot three instead of six foot three, that's just a reality, you're gonna have to accept it, right? People in your family go bald, you're gonna have to accept it, right? Your spouse turned out to be a jerk, they ran away with all your money, left you, broke your heart, it happened, right? That is true, but I do, I just don't want Epictetus to be misinterpreted as some sort

• 9:11Ryan Holiday?

  of rationalization or acceptance of profound injustices, including the injustices that Epictetus seemed relatively okay accepting, right? As they say, progress depends on the unreasonable man. I talk about this a little bit in the Courage book. We have to be accepting, we have to face unflinchingly the reality of our situation, but even as I read this paragraph that I have written, I would push back on it a little bit, and I do think it's important that we focus on what we're gonna do about the situations that we find ourselves in, and I feel like Epictetus could have done that a bit more himself. Still, obviously, a great man, better man than I, certainly, I could not have endured

• 9:54Ryan Holiday?

  what he had endured, but it's just a thought today, and I want you to be okay pushing back and questioning things from the Stoics as well. They weren't perfect, they were products of their time, they were products of their own experiences, and we can challenge and debate and argue with them as long as we think we're getting them closer to what they actually mean, what the wisdom of the Stoics actually mean, and that's today's message.

• 10:22Ryan Holiday?

  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.