It's Not About Manifesting, It's About Taking Action | Spendthrifts Of Time

Ryan discusses the Stoic’s take on the law of attraction, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. Blinkist is the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://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 another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, then some analysis from me. And then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

• 0:41Ryan Holiday?

  "It's not about manifesting, it's about taking action. The things you think about determine the quality of your mind," Marcus Aurelius wrote. "Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts." Does that mean that Marcus and the Stoics believed in the law of attraction? The belief that the universe creates whatever it is you focus your thoughts on, as popularized by the authors of The Secret? We get asked this question a lot at Daily Stoic. People read about the Stoic discipline of perception, the idea that we are defined by our thoughts, and draw a parallel to the practice of manifesting. While the Stoics did believe that our thoughts were extremely powerful, that our worldview does influence what we see,

• 1:26Ryan Holiday?

  it's important to note that in Stoicism, the discipline of perception is inseparable from the discipline of action, which itself is followed by a discipline all about acceptance. For the Stoics, action is the critical variable to making happen what you want to happen. As obvious as this sounds, we get the opposite advice from the law of attraction. As they put it, "What we do is we attract into our lives the things we want, and that is based on what we are thinking." And one disciple writes, "You did not come into this environment to take action," they warn, "is to insult the universe's power of manifestation."

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  Nowhere in the Stoics will you find the advice to sit around, to think positive thoughts, and wait for the universe to magically solve your problems. "A life is assembled," Marcus said, "action by action." Nowhere does Seneca write to Lucilius, "Write yourself a cheque for a million dollars," and then wait. No, rouse yourself to action, he tells him. Shake off your habit of overthinking with hard work. So, yes, the discipline of perception is important, but mainly because it sets you up to take the action necessary to bring into reality that which you perceive. Stoicism has nothing to do with manifesting. It is a philosophy of action.

• 2:52Ryan Holiday?

  It's a philosophy of action, we might add, designed for an unpredictable world that is largely outside of our control. A Stoic thinks, acts, and then accepts. They do not dream, expect, and wait, because they are not naive, entitled children.

• 3:12Ryan Holiday?

  "Spend thrifts of time." This is the entry from December 9th. "Were all the geniuses of history to focus on this single theme that could never fully express their bafflement at the darkness of the human mind? No person would give up even an inch of their estate, and the slightest dispute with a neighbour can mean hell to pay. Yet we easily let others encroach on our lives. Worse, we often pave the way for those who will take it over. No person hands out money to a passerby, but how often do each of us hand out our lives? We're tight-fisted with property and money, and yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing for which we all should be the toughest misers."

• 3:57Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca on the shortness of life, 3:1. And I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoic, "366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living," by yours truly. My co-author and translator, Stephen Hanselman. You can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoic store. Over a million copies of the Daily Stoic in print now. It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. Spend more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks, on the bestsellers. It's just an awesome experience, but I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoic.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading. "Today, there will be endless interruptions, phone calls, emails, visitors, unexpected events."

• 4:39Ryan Holiday?

  Booker T. Washington observed that "the number of people who stand ready to consume one's time to no purpose is almost countless. A philosopher, on the other hand, knows that their default state should be one of reflection and inner awareness. This is why they so diligently protect their personal space and their thoughts from the intrusions of the world. They know that a few minutes of contemplation are worth more than any meeting or report. They also know how little time we're actually given in life, and how quickly our stores can be depleted. Seneca reminds us that while we might be good at protecting our physical property, we are far too lax at enforcing our mental boundaries. Property can be regained. Property can be regained.

• 5:22Ryan Holiday?

  There is quite a bit out there, some of it still remaining untouched by man. But time, time is our most irreplaceable asset. We cannot buy more of it. Can only strive to waste as little of it as possible." I say this in some of my talks, right? If your neighbor came over and stole your car or started building on your property, you'd be like, "What the hell is this?" And you'd call the police or the homeowners association, or you'd sue them. You'd be like, "You can't steal this from me." But if your neighbor sucks you in with gossip, if your neighbor sucks you in with drama, if your neighbor comes over and talks about god knows what, you're afraid to say something. You don't want to be rude, right?

• 6:07Ryan Holiday?

  Well, everyone else is going, I guess I have to go. Man, you are spending something you can never get back your time. This is something I struggle with. Obviously, as a somewhat public figure, people come up, they want to talk, they want to say things, they want to take pictures, they want me to do things. I get an unending amount of requests into my inbox and I do try to respond, I try to be kind and I get something out of it too. But I have to remember that I'm taking this time from somewhere. It is depleting an account. That account, not just me that I'll never get back, but also time that I promised to my children, to my family, to my work, right? We only have so much time. It is an asset.

• 6:51Ryan Holiday?

  It is the most precious asset in the world. That's why billion-dollar companies are built around this so-called attention economy, right? Attention, time from people is the most valuable resource there is. Look, Facebook is one of the world's most valuable companies and it's free. Nobody pays for it. Why is that? Because Facebook has managed to capture people's time, your time, which they then sell to other people, right? Because you're not paying for it, it's a sign you are the product that's being sold. We have to protect our time. I've told this story many times, but I'm looking here over my right shoulder, I've got this little picture hanging on my wall that Dr. Jonathan Fader gave me. It says, "No."

• 7:36Ryan Holiday?

  It's a picture of Oliver Sacks saying, "No." Have to say no. You have to say no to lots of things. You have to say no to the phone, no to the request, no to the, "Can you come in on Sunday?" No to the, "We're all going to get together and do X, Y, or Z." That is, if you don't want to do those things, if it is not a good use of your time. Seneca says, "Of course, we have to spend time." There should be a return on this time, right? Because you're investing a thing that you can't get back. It's your most precious capital. So my reminder today, as we wrap up this year, I'm sure all of us can look back and think of the ways that we inefficiently spent our time. And I hope we can do better, not starting next year, but starting right now.

• 8:18Ryan Holiday?

  As we talk about this new year, new you, we're going to talk about that in the new year, new you challenge coming up soon. Stay tuned. But I hope that in the new year, this new you starting actually right now, that you are not a spend thrift with time. Do what you want with your money. You can get more of that. Treat your property however you want. You can get more of that. You cannot get more time. No one can. Jeff Bezos can't buy more time. Mark Zuckerberg can't buy more time. Oprah Winfrey can't buy more time. That's why they spend their money, right, on things that free them up, right? They use their power. They have staff to protect them from impositions, to protect them from those neighbors, from those people, from those interruptions that would steal that

• 9:01Ryan Holiday?

  time. Protect your time. You can't get more of it. That's what memento mori is a constant reminder of. I hope you'll take that point today. 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.