Who Could Have Seen It? | 9 Stoic Lessons From Running Every Single Day

Everything seems fine. Everything seems better than fine. Your life is going great. You’re happy. You’re in love. Your finances are great. But will it last? Or will Fortune, as Seneca said she is wont to do, surprise you with a reversal?---And in today's Daily Stoic video excerpt, Ryan shares why running is an excellent activity to use to practice Stoic, from its mental and physical endurance benefits, to its strengthening of resilience.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, 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.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

• 0:29Ryan Holiday?

  Who could have seen it? Everything seems fine. Everything seems better than fine. Your life is going great. You're happy. You're in love. Your finances are great. But will it last? Or will fortune, as Seneca said she is wont to do, surprise you with a reversal? Could you have seen, had you been walking on Amsterdam Avenue and caught sight of the bridal party that day, how utterly unprepared the mother of the bride was to accept what would happen before the year 2003 had even ended? John Didion writes hauntingly in her beautiful book, Blue Nights, which you should absolutely read. "The father of the bride died at his own dinner table," she writes. "The bride herself in an induced coma,

• 1:11Ryan Holiday?

  breathing only on a respirator, not expected by the doctors and the intensive care unit to live the night, the first in a cascade of medical crises that would end 20 months later with her own death." "No one can see what fortune has in store for us," the Stoics remind us, and that's the point. "We are in the dark. We are not in control. We live in an unwalled city. We are vulnerable." Seneca knew this firsthand, exiled once by unexpected illness, another time by the whim of the emperor, and a third time a knock on the door signaled that his death sentence had been handed down. "We cannot take the present moment for granted, because the future that lies before us is uncertain. Life itself is uncertain. Live

• 1:56Ryan Holiday?

  accordingly," or rather, as Seneca said, "live immediately."

• 2:04Ryan Holiday?

  So the most philosophical part of my day is also the most physical. It's when I get off my ass, I go outside, I put on my shoes, and I go for a run. Four miles, five miles, six miles, sometimes 10 miles. Sometimes it's hot, like today it's over 100 degrees. Sometimes it's freezing, sometimes it's snowing. Sometimes it's early in the morning, sometimes it's in the afternoon. It doesn't matter, but it's that I take the time to push myself physically. And then in that time, when the mind is asserting dominance over the body, when I can't do anything but sort of think, but also at the same time be present, that's when I'm practicing Stoicism. And we know that's what Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Epictetus and Chrysippus and Cleanthes and so many of the other Stoics did. They were wrestlers, boxers, runners, weightlifters, gladiators.

• 2:47Ryan Holiday?

  They were pushing themselves physically as part of their philosophical pursuits. In today's episode, we're going to talk about the physical practice that I do the most, running, and the lessons that long-distance running, pushing myself physically, have taught me, not just about Stoicism, but about life and what Stoicism has taught me about how to be a better runner and athlete.

• 3:12Ryan Holiday?

  I think if you just do one hard thing a day, that puts you in good shape. That's a win, right? One of the things about running is that it's always a win for me. It doesn't matter if it's a couple of miles, it doesn't matter if it's a lot of miles. What matters is that I didn't want to do it, I know that I should do it, and then I did do it. It's about asserting that dominance that we talked about. It's about seeing what's on the other side of that sacrifice and that difficulty, right? And what's usually on the other side is a greater capacity. You realize that you're stronger than you thought you were, you have more endurance than you thought you did. You just have more in you, period, than you thought you did. And that's what running is all about to me.

• 3:52Ryan Holiday?

  I just finished my run in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Remember what Seneca said, "We treat the body rigorously so it may not be disobedient to the mind." You get up early, you put in work, even though it's cold, even though you're tired, even though you'd like to stay under the covers, as Marcus Aurelius says. You put in the work, so you remind your body who is in charge, that you're in charge, that you decide how this is going to go throughout the course of the day and throughout the course of your life. You're in charge, you treat the body rigorously, so it's not disobedient to the mind.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  You have to search for this idea that struggle is difficult. Or, you know, like the title of your book, "The Obstacle is the Way." Like, getting through things is how you build a stronger foundation. It's how you develop character. It's how the mind understands how to manage difficult situations.

• 4:43Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and I think it's a transferable skill. So like, you're doing it in the cold plunge, or running, or fighting, or whatever. And then, when I'm working on a book, and books are hard, you know? And they're like halfway through, I'm like, "This isn't coming together. This sucks. Should I stop?" I'm like, "I know this feeling very well. And I know that you don't listen to this feeling, so, like, fuck off." Because you're gonna go through hard things in life. And you want to have cultivated a sense of, like, not quitting. Things are hard.

• 5:17Ryan Holiday?

  You have to run your own race. Seneca defines tranquility, or peace, or happiness, this word euphemia, as a sense of being on the path that you're on, and not being distracted or misled by the paths that crisscross yours. Like, everyone's gonna be on their own journey. Everyone has their own potentials, their own limits. And so, I think of athletics not being in competition with someone else, but being in competition with myself. I got out there, I'm running. I don't care if other people are passing me. I don't care if other people are in better shape than me. I don't care about anything that anyone else is doing. I care about what I'm doing. I care about the race I'm trying to run.

• 5:59Ryan Holiday?

  I care about the path that I'm on, where I'm going. And I don't get distracted by the people, or the paths, or the footsteps, or the runners, or the swimmers, or whatever it is, that crisscross mine.

• 6:15Ryan Holiday?

  Today's sponsor is actually the shoes that I'm wearing right now, Hoka. Hoka's shoes were conceived in the mountain and designed to defy the odds. It's an awesome combination of cushioning and support for a super smooth ride. I mean, you just feel it when you're on them. Every day, Hoka pushes the boundaries of innovation and design and collaborate with world champions and then just everyday athletes like me. That's why today's episode is sponsored by Hoka's Mach X, their high-speed plated road shoe, which delivers a revolutionary performance for everyday speed. It's an adaptable trainer that offers the comfort of a plated daily shoe and the speed of race-ready style. They test all their stuff. It's got this P-Bax propulsion plate.

• 7:00Ryan Holiday?

  It's perfectly balanced with advanced foam compounds and it's the ideal combination of propulsion and stability for everyday use. You can join us on the journey, embrace limitless possibilities. With Hoka, run like race day, every day. Hoka, a joyful performance brand for every mover, everywhere.

• 7:21Ryan Holiday?

  People ask me as a runner if I'm like training for a marathon. I think people struggle with the idea of doing something because you enjoy doing the thing and the thing makes you better. They want to have an external goal. They want to have some sort of validation. There has to be a race where you're competing and trying to beat everyone else. To me, the marathon is waking up every day and doing the thing. As the Stoics say, "That's in my control. I control that." Even an injury, I can push through that. But if my metric is qualifying for something, beating other people, being accepted to something, well, then I've handed over the control to something else. And I've also taken this thing that I enjoy doing and turned it into a thing that other people have influence or control. I've turned it into a job, so to speak. I have no problem with people who race and do those other things. If that's what motivates you, great.

• 8:05Ryan Holiday?

  But for me, I try to keep my motivation intrinsic. Epictetus says, "If you want to win, find a competition in which you are the only one in it." And that's how I think about physical fitness. That's how I think about running. That's how I think about exercise. And that's also how I think about writing and that's how I think about my work.

• 8:21Ryan Holiday?

  There's a line from Musonius Rufus, he says, you know, "When you do something weak to get pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame sticks around." But he says, "When you do something hard, when you push yourself, when you do something that takes strength, the struggle passes quickly, but the virtue, the benefits, it sticks around, right?" And so, there's a point in every run, there's a point in every weightlifting session, there's a point in every physical thing that you do, where you're wondering if it's worth it. You're getting all the consequences, you're paying all the cost upfront. And you don't just get the benefit at the end, when the endorphins kick in or whatever, and when you're a little bit proud of yourself, but you get the benefits way down the road, right? When you have to jog up a flight of stairs to get something, when, you know, the day runs longer than you want it to be, when a project, when a book for me takes longer than I thought.

• 9:07Ryan Holiday?

  I know what I'm capable of. I've practiced it, running. The running was both building the muscle, but it's also the microcosm that's reminding me what I'm capable of, what I can draw on. And that's what I take from my running practice.

• 9:23Ryan Holiday?

  There's a great video that Arnold Schwarzenegger did in the middle of the pandemic. He was talking about people who were stuck inside, or people's routines were disrupted, people were overwhelmed. He said, "Just that you do one thing every day." He says, "It doesn't have to be a lot. Just do one thing every day." And that's kind of how I think about physical fitness. Obviously, it's good to have goals. Obviously, it's good to push yourself. Obviously, it's good to do a lot of things each day. But if you can start with just one thing, that's progress. Just do one thing every day. Seneca says that well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. The little things add up. So if you think about your physical practice, if you think about getting better, it's just doing one thing, one positive step every day. It's not everything, but it is a start.

• 10:05Ryan Holiday?

  Get up and be active in the morning. That's the key. You are building the muscle of doing when you get up early and you do something. I don't care if it's running. I don't care if it's meditating. I don't care if it's taking a cold shower. I don't care if it's just sitting and reading. But the point is, you get up early, you own the morning, and by owning the morning, you own the day. Marcus really says, "What were you put on this planet to do to huddle under the covers and be warm? No, you were not." He says, "Go do what you were put here to do. Do what your nature demands. That's how you own the morning."

• 10:40Speaker 02

  I think there are a few main things for me with running particularly. First of all, it's just like a form of meditation for me. It's a way to be outdoors. Like, if I'm working on a writing problem, I've got some structural problem that I can't figure out in my head, and then I'll go for a run. And it's like, I won't usually solve that problem, but something I didn't even know I was thinking about will like bubble up and I'll have some solution for that. So sometimes, actually, I worry when I got injured a little while ago, I was worried I wouldn't be able to write because I wouldn't be able to run, since that's where I solve a lot of my structural problems. Like, in college, I was an 800-meter runner. This is a short race, less than two minutes, about a half mile. And I would constantly make these goals of, "Oh, I want to run this time." Then you cross the finish line, and either you got that time or you didn't. So you're happy if you did, and you're pissed if you didn't. And I sort of started to realize that that doesn't really help you do it.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  It just makes you happy or sad once it's done. And so I started making much more actionable goals, like, "Let me run the first lap under a certain time," or "Make a big move with 300 meters to go."