Real People. Real Tests. Real Stoicism.

What does Stoicism look like in the moments that matter most? In this episode, Ryan shares listener stories about how this philosophy showed up in their hardest situations and what it changed.👉 Do you have a story of how Stoicism has personally impacted your life? We'd love to share it on the podcast! Send an audio recording of your story to this email: [email protected] 🎥 VIDEO EPISODES | Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:15Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. You know, Daily Stoic is a beast. It is a content machine. There is an insatiable amount that I have to record and write and produce, whether we're talking about the Daily Stoic email, or the YouTube channel, or this podcast. It's a lot of me talking. And when people go, I listen to the podcast every day, or, you know, I listen to your audiobooks, or I watch the videos when they come out, I go, it sounds like a lot of me talking. It's also a little exhausting to hear me talk that much. So we're going to flip it a little bit in today's episode, and I'm going to share your stories. I'm going to share what Stoicism has meant to some of our listeners, what they've learned from it, what they've taken from it, how they apply it, and hopefully they can spur something in you.

• 0:59Ryan Holiday?

  And then maybe you want to share your story with us as well. You can send an audio of what Stoicism has meant to you, how you came to it, what resonates with you, what you're struggling with, how you apply it, all that. You can send that audio recording to [email protected]. Higher audio quality is better. If you've got an external mic, that's best. Claire can work a lot of magic. She's our producer, but she can't work unlimited magic. And you'll hear in today's episode, some audio differences, but I think these are pretty good. And most of all, the stories are what's powerful. And here's our first, here's Marty.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Hi, my name is Marty. My journey into Stoicism began in the summer of 2021. As I read the Daily Stoic, the lessons captivated me. I was astonished how this ancient wisdom could be delivered in such a readable, understandable way. And I questioned why I never came across this before. What initially resonated with me was a passage from Marcus Aurelius that I first read in the Daily Stoic and then reread in Meditations. In the passage, Marcus advises that we, "Do not procrastinate, do not confuse others in conversation, do not allow our thoughts to wander, do not be passive or aggressive, and do not be all business."

• 2:19Speaker 01

  I thought to myself, if I can follow these rules, it'll be difficult to steer myself in the wrong direction. When the pandemic hit in 2020, I played back and forth with getting sober. I would go weeks or even months at a time without drinking, but then I'd give up and find myself amid another weekend bender. In July of 2021, around the time I began studying Stoic philosophy, I hit my form of rock bottom. After that, I finally quit drinking. While I can't say for certain that it was Stoicism that got me sober, I can say that Stoicism has helped me stay sober.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  I started to realize that coping with stress and enjoying life will not come from external pleasures and vices, but from my internal values and living through virtue. I came to Stoicism with the idea that it would help me improve from a performance aspect. As an educator and basketball referee, my goal with Stoicism was to learn how to control my emotions and be self-disciplined while maintaining poise and self-confidence. Stoicism involves so much more. The afterword in "Right Thing Right Now" is one of the most powerful chapters I've ever read.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Ryan writes, "Like most people, when I was first drawn to Stoicism, I was attracted to what it could do for me. But the thing about Stoicism is that it does its work on you. I am lucky that I found Stoicism, not just because it kept me calm and collected under pressure, but because as the years went by, the deeper message of the Stoics sunk in."

• 4:06Speaker 01

  I was initially interested in self-discipline, courage, and the process of acquiring wisdom, but I'm starting to understand the justice side. Doing what's right for those closest to you and for the greater good. Keeping your word to yourself and others, remaining honest and loyal, and showing true empathy. This doesn't mean attempting to save the world, but instead doing your small part each day without excuses.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Stoicism has become my guidebook for life, something I did not have before. Trying my best to focus on what I can control and to live through courage, self-discipline, justice and wisdom has helped me control my emotions and be more intentional in my career and relationships. I read books, I write a newsletter, and I cherish the simpler parts of life. I am more open-minded and eager to learn and I am more aware of what's truly important because I realize that our time is finite. I have an entirely different view on how to embrace challenges and obstacles and I care more about other people knowing that we're all in this together.

• 5:19Ryan Holiday?

  It's amazing, Marty, to hear the role stoicism has played in your sobriety. It actually reminded me of something I talked about with Jamie Alexander on the podcast. She was saying that stoicism was a big part of her sobriety journey as well. Here is what she said.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  I'm almost eight years sober now, God willing, and I think that was by far the best thing that has ever happened to me. So I learned a lot from that. So this is, this ties into a higher power thing is like, I really don't know what's good or bad. And I'm, I'm holding up air quotes here because I really don't.

• 5:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  You know, something can be, you know, we're not dumb. We can realize when we're like, oh, you know, like I broke my shoulder, that friggin hurts. That, that really sucks. But that could lead to something that, you know, really wonderful. And this has put me stoicism and my sobriety and the way my life has gone over the last few years, which is not like I thought it would. Kind of in, I'm not even going to say in the worst way because I don't believe that now.

• 6:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  But it has positioned me in a way, and I'm now in a place where I can be, I think, a lot more useful to a lot more people.

• 6:23Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks, Marty. I appreciate the kind words about the afterword to write thing right now. That's, that's actually been my favorite part of writing the series. Didn't want the books to feel real preachy, like I was an expert on these things. In fact, no, I'm, I'm struggling with them as much as you guys are. And I wanted it to be clear where I was coming from in writing them. Next, we're going to hear from Jordan.

• 6:44Speaker 03

  My story of Stoicism doesn't harbor around a single event, but rather, it's the glue that made all of these seemingly disjointed pieces come together in alignment. Who am I to be submitting to a platform like this? I'm not a community leader. I haven't written a book. I'm not a titan of industry or an exceptional athlete. I haven't been subjected to decades of slavery and servitude. I'm one ingredient in the soup of humanity. But I think it's in that being that I feel the call to this. It's in this commonality, this thread that nearmost can pull, and it will tug somewhere on the fiber of their being. My foundational years were formed by people with severe codependency,

• 7:29Speaker 03

  chemical imbalances, and intense anger issues. I adopted a learned behavioral pattern. Trigger, fiery explosion, deep emotional damage, cry, massive guilt trip, hug, sweep it away, and pretend everything is better. Even though I noticed how this destructive behavior pushed people away and affected relationships, I still carried this with me into my early twenties. This behavior played itself out in a toxic, long-term relationship, and when it ultimately came to a heinously painful ending, I was struck with an epiphany that was a massive turning point in my life and my behavior.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  I never want to feel this way ever again, and I never want to be someone who makes someone feel this way ever again. I knew what I had been doing up to that point in my life had to change. I started caring more about how my actions, my words, and my behaviors affected others. I told myself, "No more lies, no more half-truths, no more raging anger." I learned that anger is typically a secondary emotion, and there is usually something behind it: fear, sadness, guilt, betrayal, or confusion. Very rarely was anger erupting just for the sake of anger itself. It was an indicator that something else was going on behind the scenes.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  I started to examine places in my life where I felt anger. And so much of it sprung from my anger towards my mother. And after many months of not speaking with help from my partner at the time, I realized there would be a world one day where I wouldn't be able to reach out to my mother. No call, no text, no letter, nothing. And that feeling filled me with grief. She was alive and she was a person, a human, just like me, who was dealt an unfair hand in life. And when I took her off the pedestal of, "This is what a mom should be", and just saw her as a person with an entire life,

• 9:39Speaker 03

  and parent, which is one of the roles where she did her best with what she had, it released years of animosity and tension from my mind, my heart, and my body. Few things have spoken clearer to me than Stoicism, and it has been my grounding rod and my guiding star ever since then. When my current partner had a cancerous brain tumor recurrence and I was his caretaker, Stoicism guided me. All the times my chemically imbalanced mother tested my boundaries and my patience, Stoicism guided me. When other family members were held in the strong grip of addiction, Stoicism guided me. And when the weight of the world feels overwhelming and uncertain, Stoicism guides me.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  I cannot control the world or the people in it, but I can always put in the effort to be the best version of me I can be at the time and give myself grace in my learning and my becoming. I always carry my copy of meditations and I have highlights and notes in the margins. I have gifted meditations to friends and family. I've shared the podcast and posts for years because I carry within me a lived truth of its potency. It's a buoy within the sea of chaos, and I am eternally grateful for the moments and chapters and seasons through which it has and continues to keep me afloat and shape my character.

• 11:04Ryan Holiday?

  I think a lot of people can relate to that, right? I think we're all a slave to our emotions here, there. That's why Stoicism is attractive. Like, if that's a totally foreign idea to you, you're probably not like, oh, I like a philosophy that helps me not do that, right? But anger is there for me. I've said this before, I don't think I have an anger problem, but anger is a problem for me, as it is for most people, as it was for Marcus Aurelius, right? He talks about how the consequences of anger are more harmful than whatever the thing we are angry about. So yeah, I appreciate you sharing, and I hope you keep spreading the word and the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius.

• 11:43Ryan Holiday?

  For our final submission, we're going to hear from Herman from Argentina. I think I'm getting it right. G E R M A with an acento N from Argentina.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  I'm a school teacher, and I wanted to share how I apply Stoic ideas in my job. I first came across Stoicism about 10 years ago through a YouTube video in Spanish. It was called something like Stoicism, the best mentality you can have. Out of curiosity, I watched it and was introduced to the concept of the dichotomy of control, among other Stoic ideas. And eventually, I found the Daily Stoic, and that's where I really started to go deeper into Stoicism. Now, I've been watching Ryan's videos, listening to his podcasts, and reading his daily emails for a couple of years.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  One of my favorite daily Stoic videos is the one about you control how you play.

• 12:43Ryan Holiday?

  If there's one thing that philosophy can teach any athlete, whether you're an amateur, whether you're a collegiate, prospect, whether you're a top-ranked recruiter, whether you're making millions of dollars in the pros, it's something that I talked about to the Cleveland Browns this year when they had me talk about Stoicism. What I said, I started my talk, and I said, "Look, everyone in this room controls one thing: they control how they play. You don't control what your teammates do, you control how you play. You don't control what they say about you on Twitter, you control how you play. You don't control the size of your contract, you control how you play. You don't control what they say about you from the stands, you control how you play.

• 13:28Ryan Holiday?

  You don't control what the ref says, you control how you play." You don't control whether it's snowing. You don't control whether it's raining. You don't control whether it's 100 degrees. You control how you play. You don't control whether your teammates get hurt. You don't control if your teammates are fair. You don't control if the guy in the position ahead of you wants to groom you and mentor you or not. You control how you play. You don't control whether your opponents cheat. You control how you play. You don't control if your coach is a bully and he screams at you. You control how you play. You don't control if people are doubting you, if they don't believe in you. You control how you play.

• 14:13Ryan Holiday?

  You don't control yesterday's game. You control how you play today. You don't control if you've lost to this team 1,000 times. You control how you play. You don't control if your team wins. You control how you play. You don't control if you lose. You control how you play. All you control, if it's not clear enough, is how you play right now, right this second. Whether there's doubters, whether you're being adored, all you control is how you play. The effort that you bring, the decisions you make, the principles by which you operate. And that's ultimately all you can judge yourself on. You don't control the outcome. You don't control the facts. You don't control anything but how you play.

• 14:55Ryan Holiday?

  But if we can focus on this, the Stoics said, if we can focus exclusively on what we control, not only be happier, we'll have way more energy and way more to focus on what is in front of us while everyone else wastes time whining about, complaining about, worrying about, thinking about, bragging about what they don't control.

• 15:17Speaker 04

  Thinking about my job as a school teacher and all the setbacks that come with it, mainly students' behavior toward their teachers. I borrowed this idea of "you control how you play" and turned it into "you control how you teach." And I came up with this. Life is like a classroom, and you only control one thing.

• 15:41Speaker 04

  You control how you teach. You don't control whether your students misbehave or not. You control how you teach. You don't control if your students pay attention to you. You control how you teach. You don't control if your students do their homework, study for their tests, or turn in their assignments on time. You control how you teach. Instead of focusing on what your students do or don't do, just make sure you're teaching the best class you can teach, because that's basically the only thing you control, the only thing that is really up to you. What your students do, say, and think, that's not up to you. At the end of the day, you shouldn't ask yourself,

• 16:27Speaker 04

  "Did my students do everything they were supposed to do?" Instead, you should ask yourself, "Did I teach the best class I could teach? Did I respond to my students' behavior with courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom? Or did I just lash out at them like a wild beast because they didn't do what I wanted them to do? In other words, did I just get angry at my students for not behaving the way I wanted them to behave?

• 16:57Speaker 04

  But students are not the only people schoolteachers have to deal with. We also have to deal with our own colleagues, students' parents, principals. Just a few days ago, a principal told me, "Herman, you have to make your students respect you. You have to make them be quiet." And I was like, "I can't make my students respect me or be quiet. I don't control what they do in the classroom, what they say to me, or what they think about me. Whether they respect me or not, that is not up to me, that is up to them." When I started to become more aware what was really up to me and what was not, I began to feel a sense of relief

• 17:42Speaker 04

  because I started saying things to myself like, "I don't control whether things go the way I want them to or not. I did the best I could, and I can't do more than that." Because of this and other stoic ideas like, "Don't suffer imagined troubles", "Put every impression to the test", and...

• 18:03Speaker 04

  Don't ask for the third thing, as Marcus Aurelius would say. You can't record something for the Daily Stoic Podcast without mentioning Marcus Aurelius. So there you go, Ryan.

• 18:17Ryan Holiday?

  You know, I love this mantra of I control how I teach. Mantras like that can be really helpful. And it sounds like you're doing the best you can. And you're really thinking about how you apply the virtues, right? Courage, discipline, justice, wisdom to your job, which is a great job and an important job. And we appreciate your service. And I think you're providing a great example. Thanks to everyone for submitting their stories for today's episode. Let us know if you want to share your story, what you think of this episode. If you like this format, I think it's great. And I'd like to do more of it. As I said, the email there is [email protected].