Don’t Let Your Virtues Become This Vice

Ryan talks about why you have to think make progress for it's own sake. Check out The Daily Stoic and The Daily Stoic Journal at The Painted Porch Bookshop. 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.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com. Don't let your virtues become this vice. So we've begun to get serious about our training, both physical and philosophical. Before, we never read, and now we do. Before, we were lazy and slothful, and now we're regularly going to the gym. Before, we would eat everything we felt like eating, too much of it usually, and now we're on a diet and we're sticking to it. This is great.

• 0:50Ryan Holiday?

  We've conquered a vice. Now, there is a new danger, that this virtue becomes a new vice, the vice of pride, of superiority, of obnoxious self-satisfaction. You know the type, because, well, they won't just let you not know how great they're doing, how they can't believe they used to eat that, what a rush it was to finish that marathon, or just how transformative all these mind-blowing books have been. Ugh. Apparently, these folks have existed for thousands of years. As Epictetus warned his students, "When you have accustomed your body to a frugal regime, don't put on airs about it. And if you only drink water, don't broadcast the fact all the time. And if you ever want to go in for endurance training,

• 1:34Ryan Holiday?

  do it for yourself and not for the world to see." This is good and timeless advice. Progress is wonderful. Self-improvement is a worthy endeavor. But that's sort of the point. It should be done for its own sake, not for the congratulations or the recognition. Are you really running that marathon for the medal? Don't let your progress become pride. Otherwise, you've just traded one set of vices for a new one. And the worst part is that because of your new healthy lifestyle, the rest of us risk having to endure it for many more years.

• 2:10Ryan 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. So check it out, DailyStoic.com/email.