No One Is Unbreakable | Keep The Rhythm

Ryan explains how you can become incredibly resilient with Stoicism, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. The new Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. You can add the Cover to any mattress, and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. Go to eightsleep.com/dailystoic to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 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?

  No one is unbreakable. No one, not even a Stoic, is unbreakable. We have a long history of the Stoics being devastated by things. Cato, at the loss of his brother; Marcus, and the victims of the plague; Seneca, undone by his exile; Stockdale's body ravaged by seven years in the Hanoi Hilton. They did not simply shrug these things off. How could they? They were human beings. While Stoicism promises to help you build an inner citadel, fortress of power and resilience that prepares you for the difficulties of the world, it makes no promises to make you a superhuman. A Stoic isn't someone who's invincible. Stoic is someone who puts themselves back together

• 1:18Ryan Holiday?

  so they can do what needs to be done for themselves and for others. The Stoics would have liked a Japanese art form known as kintsugi, which dates back to the 15th century. In it, masters repair broken plates and cups and bowls, but instead of simply fixing them back to their original state, they make them better. The broken pieces are not glued together, but instead fused with a special lacquer mixed with gold or silver. And the legend is that the art form was created after a broken tea bowl was sent to China for repairs. But the returned bowl was ugly, the same bowl as before, but cracked. Kintsugi was invented as a way to turn the scars of a break into something beautiful. Courage isn't about being invulnerable.

• 2:03Ryan Holiday?

  It's about getting back up. It's about healing. A Stoic finds a way to be stronger at the broken places, as Epictetus did, literally, after having his legs snapped by his torturous master. It's Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in American history, returning home damaged by war, unlike many veterans and trauma survivors with PTSD. But he decides that this will not define him. Suddenly, life faces us, he concludes in his memoir. "I swear to myself that I will measure up to it. I may be branded by war, but I will not be defeated by it." You will lose people you love. You might be financially ruined by someone you trusted. You might put yourself out there,

• 2:47Ryan Holiday?

  put every bit of your effort into something and fail. And you might be passed over for the thing you wanted so badly. The question is, as always, what will you do with this? How will you respond? Will you let it defeat you? Or will you put the pieces back together and be made stronger for what happened?

• 3:08Ryan Holiday?

  That's the idea. When I say courage is calling, I don't mean you become this invulnerable robot who charges into deadly situations without a thought. No, to me, courage is the person who keeps going, who continues to hope, continues to try, continues to work to improve themselves, who looks not just at scary things in the world, but scary things in themselves. One of the scariest things in the world, of course, is to look in the mirror, to be vulnerable, to ask for help, to try to improve, to try to work on your own issues. So that's what Courage is Calling is about. It's the new book for me. If you haven't read it yet, I'd love for you to support it. If you have read it and there's someone in your life that could benefit from it, please do pass along the word. You can get signed copies from me in time for the holidays at store.dailystoic.com.

• 3:51Ryan Holiday?

  Of course, you can also get the Audible ebook. You can get it at Barnes & Noble, iBooks, anywhere books are sold. I just hope that you support the book and I appreciate everyone who has so far.

• 4:04Ryan Holiday?

  Keep the rhythm. Marcus Aurelius must have known that as emperor, he was part of a grand and great history. As a philosopher, he knew that all people are part of the rhythm pulsing through both history and their own lives, and he liked to remind himself not to lose that beat. "Return to your philosophy," he would tell himself when he drifted. "Don't give in to distractions." In fact, he tried constantly to return to it. That kind of awareness, that paying special attention, is something he learned reading from Epictetus. He told his students that while none of us can be perfect, we can catch ourselves when we begin to slide, when we drift from where we should be.

• 4:48Ryan Holiday?

  So can you feel that rhythm this week? Can you point to examples when you really feel locked into it? 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 Marcus and one from Epictetus.

• 5:32Ryan Holiday?

  "Walk the long gallery of the past, of empires, of kingdoms succeeding each other without number. You can also see the future, for surely it will be exactly the same, unable to deviate from the present rhythm. It's all one, whether we've experienced forty years or an eon. What more is there to see?" That's Meditation 749. And then Meditation 611, he says, "When, forced as it seems by circumstances, into utter confusion, get a hold of yourself quickly. Don't be locked out of the rhythm any longer than necessary. You'll be able to keep the beat if you are constantly..." Returning to it. And then Epictetus's Discourses 412, he says,

• 6:16Ryan Holiday?

  "When you let your attention slide for a bit, don't think you will get back a grip on it whenever you wish. Instead, bear in mind that perhaps because of today's mistake, everything that follows will be necessarily worse. Is it possible to be free of air? No, not by any means. But it is possible for a person to always be stretching to avoid air. And we must be content to at least escape a few mistakes by never letting our attention slide." I was thinking about this and I remember I wrote an article, wrote a blog post, I'm looking at this. This is March 4, 2012. So this is before,

• 6:56Ryan Holiday?

  this is, this is, trust me, I'm lying. It's mostly written, but it's not out. I've moved to New Orleans. I'm transitioning towards this sort of a different life. And anyways, I wrote, I wrote a blog post on my site called "Return to Philosophy", and I'll read it to you. "I have written this post before, but it remains a common theme. The busier we get, the more we work and learn and read, the further we drift. We get in a rhythm. We're making money, being creative. We're stimulated and busy. And it seems like everything is going well, but we drift further and further from philosophy. So we must catch ourselves and return to it. Pick up meditations, Seneca, Plutarch, Hadeau,

• 7:41Ryan Holiday?

  our note cards of quotes and reminders, anything from the shelf of great books. Stop and evaluate. Read something that challenges, that informs. No matter how much learning or work or thinking we do, none of it matters unless it happens against the backdrop of exhortative analysis, the kind rooted in the deep study of the mind and emotion and demands that we hold ourselves to certain standards. We must turn to the practical, to the spiritual exercises of great men and actively use them. It's the only way we'll get anything out of the rest of our efforts. It's simple. Stop learning or working for a second and refine. Put aside all the momentum and the moment. Tap the brakes.

• 8:27Ryan Holiday?

  Return to philosophy." And then I found the other post, which is, wow, dated December 22, 2009.

• 8:39Ryan Holiday?

  So, wow, I guess I'm 22. And I wrote, "Lately, I have felt off. As I felt down, it occurred to me how long it had been since I sat down and read philosophy. I knew I should fix this, but I didn't. A new book would come and I'd immediately pick it up. I think I've spent so little time reading now, it would be a shame to sit down with something I've read before. But this was a sham. What I was doing was distracting myself. It's what Steven Pressfield calls the resistance. I made myself busy so that I would have no chance to feel better. And I knew that philosophy requires work and self-criticism and one inevitable conclusion, that my problems were almost entirely my own fault.

• 9:24Ryan Holiday?

  Their resolution requires an active process that only I can initiate. Philosophy is the tool with which to do so." As one would say, and I think this is Marcus Aurelius I'm quoting, "Doctors carry their tools on their person." Or more ideally, a boxer's tools are their person. We should seek to do the same. There is no excuse for being too busy or too distracted, nor is there any alternative." So anyways, if you feel like you're slipping a little bit, know that I do that too, and I have now for well over a decade and a half.

• 10:05Ryan Holiday?

  And you just pick yourself back up, you go back to the rhythm, as Marcus Aurelius says, you pick up your philosophy, you return to it, and you keep going. So I'll leave you there, and I hope you pick up the rhythm this week, and I'll talk to you soon. 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. You just go to dailystoic.com/email. So check it out, dailystoic.com/email.