Daily Stoic Sundays: How Seneca Overcame Stress

In today's Daily Stoic Sunday episode, Ryan talks about Seneca, author, playwright, and advisor to the emperor Nero, how he faced the multiple stressors that he encountered in his life, and how you can do the same. This episode is brought to you by the Theragun. The new Gen 4 Theragun is perfect for easing muscle aches and tightness, helping you recover from physical exertion, long periods of sitting down, and more—and its new motor makes it as quiet as an electric toothbrush. Try the Theragun risk-free for 30 days, starting at just $199. ***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 @DailyStoic: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.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We reflect, we prepare, we think deeply about the challenging issues of our time, and we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school, when we have the time to think, to go for a walk,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  to sit with our journals, and to prepare for what the future will bring.

• 0:53Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another weekend episode of The Daily Stoic. You know, it would be insane not to be stressed out right now. I know I'm super stressed, not only because of the COVID stuff. I'm pretty exhausted. I just spent the last eight days recording the audiobook to Lives of the Stoics, which instead of being able to do in a studio with a producer, I did it in my office with the sound deadening things stacked up against box of books and, you know, the most cobbled together system you can imagine. And couldn't do it with AC because of the AC here in the background, and I was sweating like crazy, plus all the other work I had to do.

• 1:37Ryan Holiday?

  These are, I mean, these are stressful times. It would be, again, insane not to be stressed. No childcare. You haven't been able to go out or relax or see people. You've got stuff piling up. You've got, you know, your schedule's thrown sideways. These are stressful times. And I think, you know, I do think it's important, too, that as Stoics, we don't think that the Stoics simply do not experience stress, that they're above it, or that they stuff it down and just eat it. You know, that's not what... Stoicism is. Stoicism is, it's the process of integrating,

• 2:16Ryan Holiday?

  channeling, dismantling stress so that it doesn't destroy you. And obviously, I think Marcus Aurelius is a good example of this. If we can, you know, you look at a picture of a president today when they get elected and then four years later, when they're up for reelection, just the amount of gray hair, the weight they've put on, how sunken in their cheeks are, to be head of state is an immensely stressful job, just as if you watch, you know, you look at photos of your parents when they had you versus when you were a teenager versus when you went off to college, you know, these are stressful, difficult things. And I think, you know, obviously, something like a pandemic is only going to contribute to that. We're experiencing, you know, although historically not an anomaly,

• 2:59Ryan Holiday?

  it is a once in a century kind of event. And, and that should, that should certainly add to what is on our plate. And I'm no exception to that. But, you know, life goes on. We have to figure out how to integrate and overcome this stress. And so that's what today's message is about. I was specifically interested in how Seneca processes and integrates stress, how he slays his stress, as, as we've been saying. Look, this is a guy, if you can imagine what working for Nero would have been like, if you could imagine being exiled for eight years on the island of Corsica would be like, if you could imagine the, the

• 3:43Ryan Holiday?

  stress and the pain of losing a young child, as Seneca did. As just a writer, I am in awe of what Seneca was able to accomplish. And I, I shudder to think at how difficult it must have been, you know, given the primitive writing tools that he had at the time, and just what it would have been like to publish then, to deal with feedback then, you know, to, to have something in your head and the stress of it not being as good on the page. These are sort of timeless difficulties. What Seneca went through is not that different than what we go through. What Marcus went through is not that different than what we go through. Stress is stress, and the Stoics have been. Processing it and organizing it, and I think overcoming it for centuries.

• 4:26Ryan Holiday?

  We do talk a lot about this in our Slay Your Stress Challenge, which you can check out at dailystoic.com/stress. But today's message is about how Seneca managed to do this, what sort of strategy and ideas we can take from Seneca. Certainly, I'm applying these to my life, and you can probably hear it in my voice. I am pretty damn tired, but I am proud of myself. I haven't lost my temper about it. I've kept up the good parts of my routine. I've been productive. I haven't let it make me miserable. I haven't enforced any false deadlines on it. I'm just checking it off one box at a time, not trying to let the crazies out there get to me, which is all a person can do, and I hope you're able to do.

• 5:11Ryan Holiday?

  So now we'll get to it. There's no question that Seneca's life was stressful. Plagues, natural catastrophes, financial crises, frustrating colleagues, personal insecurities, existential angst, deranged leaders and bosses, and a lifelong chronic health condition to boot. His life was littered with stresses and anxieties. But the truth is that if it wasn't, if everything had been easy, we probably wouldn't be talking about him 2,000 years later. So how did he manage? How did he deal with his stress? What can he teach us about managing our own? It's good that in addition to all his experiences that Seneca was such a great writer, because

• 5:54Ryan Holiday?

  his letters, his essays, his plays, indeed, all of his writings, were preoccupied with these problems and teach us so much about how we can conquer our own modern stresses and anxieties. "Never will there be a shortage of reasons for anxiety," Seneca wrote. "Whether born of happiness or misery, life will press on its way from one pursuit to another." But he reminds his friend Lucilius that we can hold out free from anxiety during life's siege. We all can. We can avoid getting swept up in all the chaos and all the responsibilities and all the overwhelming goals and aspirations of life. We can overcome adversity, achieve peace of mind, and reign over the greatest empire,

• 6:38Ryan Holiday?

  as Seneca said, which he believed was becoming emperor of oneself, of one's emotions.

• 6:45Ryan Holiday?

  Okay, but how? First, he would say, "We must come to the realization that there are more things likely to frighten us than there are to crush us. We suffer more in imagination than in reality," he said. "We spend so much time worried about how bad things are going to be. We torture ourselves more than the thing we're worried about ever could, that is, if it happens at all. So what I advise you to do," he said, "is do not be unhappy before the crisis comes. We are in the habit of exaggerating or imagining or anticipating sorrow." Instead of letting those racing thoughts and outsized fears swirl around in his head, he said, "You should write down whatever enters in your head. You should get out all those thoughts on paper.

• 7:29Ryan Holiday?

  You should cage your monkey mind in a journal." Seneca's Evening Review was essential to calming down. It was essential to self-improvement and personal growth. "This is how to deal with one's ills," he said. "This brings peace and freedom." To conquer his stress, Seneca also made it a routine to seek out manageable stress and challenges that could make him stronger. He took plunges in freezing water. He fasted or ate the cheapest and scantiest fare. He went out in public, wearing his worst clothes. He slept on the floor. He made it a priority to practice what he called voluntary discomfort. "Familiarity with exposure to danger will give contempt for danger," he explained. "It is precisely in times of immunity from care

• 8:13Ryan Holiday?

  that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress. And it is while fortune is kind that it should fortify itself against her violence. In days of peace, the soldier performs maneuvers, throws up earthworks when no enemy is in sight, and wearies himself by gratuitous toil in order that he may be equal to avoidable toil." This is what modern cognitive and behavioral therapists now call exposure therapies, getting close and personal with your anxieties. It's also about toughening yourself up, about practicing, about developing real confidence in your ability to persevere and survive and endure.

• 8:55Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca stressed about all the things that we stress about. He was afraid of losing his job. He worried about not being able to provide for his family. He was anxious about whether his writing would be recognized or lost to obscurity. He was stressed about the future of his country. He knew that life was inherently unpredictable and he was terrified of what he imagined life would be like if everything he worked for was suddenly snatched away by the spear thrust of fortune. So he stopped imagining. He exposed himself. He got face to face with his fears and then he asked himself the simple question, is this what I was so afraid of? Seneca, in other words, slayed his stress by bringing them closer, summoning them by walking right up to them again and again and again, and realizing that most things

• 9:40Ryan Holiday?

  torment us when they ought not to torment us at all. Sometimes, admittedly, he couldn't cage those racing thoughts on the page. Sometimes, there was no amount of exposure that cured him. Sometimes, his problems felt especially vexing and painful. But he discovered to make even these seem less severe. All you have to do, he said, is draw further back and laugh. We get so consumed and distracted by the immediacy of what's happening around us that we forget to see the big picture. Zoom out, he says, and look at this from space, not with your ear to the ground. The troubles you're having at work will be ridiculous to you three jobs from now. Think about all the things you stressed about when you were younger and how silly they seem to you today.

• 10:22Ryan Holiday?

  Now, consider that this exact evolution will happen to you again at middle age and again in old age, if you are lucky to live that long. Draw back and laugh, he said. It's freeing. It's a relief. So yes, as Seneca said and believed, stress is a fact of life. But being stressed and feeling stressed, that is always a choice. It's a choice we make, or it's a choice we don't make. In fact, this is what all of the Stoics' teachings revolve around, the idea of combating and avoiding the unnecessary pain and stress and anxiety and worry and frustration, on focusing on what is in our choice and making the right choices. We see Marcus Aurelius filling the pages of his private journal with notes to himself on how to escape anxiety and not be controlled.

• 11:04Ryan Holiday?

  ...by his temper. We see Epictetus talking to his students over and over and over again about focusing on what was up to them and nothing else. The Stoic canon is loaded with practical and actionable steps to overcoming and domesticating feelings of anxiety and stress. It's up to us, though, to choose whether to put them to work. It's up to us to choose agency over our own emotions and feelings. It's up to us to take control. How much more enjoyable would your days be without the constant dread of stress looming over you? How much more productive would you be without spending hours per day indulging in imagined troubles? What could you be capable of if you trained for it, if you practiced,

• 11:47Ryan Holiday?

  if you exposed yourself? You know the answer. And of course, if you are looking to slay your stress, you can check out the Daily Stoic Slay Your Stress Challenge. It's an actionable 14-day challenge designed to help you reclaim your life from the negative effects of stress and anxiety. We've designed this course to help you reclaim your life. We lay out the most actionable ways to manage your stress and anxiety, backed by thousands of years of research and practice, particularly the insights from someone as wise and impressive as Seneca. You can check it out at DailyStoic.com/stress.