Do You Have This? | Protect Your Own Good

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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 Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  Do you have this? They pushed themselves on purpose. Cato dressed outside the conventions of his day. Zeno's philosophy teacher once spilled soup on Zeno in front of a large group of people. Seneca practiced poverty. Marcus Aurelius mentally rehearsed being criticized and misunderstood. Why did they put themselves in these uncomfortable positions? To get comfortable with them, to get comfortable with themselves. There's a great new profile of the writer Janet Malcolm, and she talks about one of the many benefits of discomfort, with discomfort, that the writer said she saw in Janet Malcolm. "She was comfortable saying no to invitation, a photograph, a profile, an interview, a lecture,

• 1:39Ryan Holiday?

  if she didn't feel like doing it, which she mostly didn't," profile says. As the writer Zoe Heller put it, "That, I think, is a fantastic lesson for all women, you know, a polite, firm, no-thank-you." As the writer Alice Gregory told me, "She is unwilling to temper the truth with all the kind of frilly girly things we do in conversation to soften things or to get people used to certain ideas." Look, there is no way around discomfort. If your life revolves around fitting in, if you are afraid to disagree with people or speak up, you're going to have a tough time. You're also going to let opportunities and goals pass you by. Each of us needs to cultivate a sense of comfort with ourselves, with saying no, with being straightforward and uncompromising in what we think is important.

• 2:25Ryan Holiday?

  And the only way to get comfortable with discomfort is to practice it again and again, until it no longer feels like discomfort at all.

• 2:43Ryan Holiday?

  Protect your own good. Musonius Rufus, one of Epictetus's teachers, taught that human beings are all born with an innate goodness, or as he put it, with an inclination to virtue. It's our choices that decide whether that goodness comes out or not. We're not bad people, essentially, though we might sometimes do bad things. The purpose of Stoicism, then, is to remind us of that goodness and to help us work hard to protect it. So spend some time this week writing about the choices you can make, the actions you can take to do just that. And this is from the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living, which I use myself every morning. I love the little prompts.

• 3:27Ryan Holiday?

  Here is Epictetus's Discourses, who, as you know, Epictetus was Musonius Rufus's student. Protect your own good in all that you do. And as concerns everything else, take what is given as far as you can make reasoned use of it. If you don't, you'll be unlucky, prone to failure, hindered, and stymied. That's Discourses 4:3. And then Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. Marcus, then influenced by Epictetus, so Musonius teaches Stoicism to Epictetus, whose writings then survive and make their way to Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius, as it happens, is introduced to Stoicism through Junius Rusticus, who loans him his copy of Epictetus. Dig deep within yourself, Marcus writes in Meditation 759.

• 4:10Ryan Holiday?

  For there is a fountain of goodness ever ready to flow. You will keep digging. I guess what the Stoics are doing here is really pushing back on this notion of original sin, that we're toxic, broken, horrible people, that human nature is something to be feared. There is a darkness in us, but, but there's also incredible good. And I think the Stoics are talking about what side of you are you gonna nurture? What side is gonna come out? What side are you gonna look for? What side are you gonna reveal? And Musonius and Epictetus and Marcus are all tested in incredible ways. Musonius is exiled three times, perhaps four. Epictetus, you know, experiences the incredible injustice of slavery. Marcus Aurelius is given absolute power.

• 4:54Ryan Holiday?

  And as they say, power reveals. But I think also adversity reveals. And in both Musonius and Epictetus's case, adversity revealed an unbreakable goodness, a commitment, a tenacity, a perseverance, an unswerving belief in these principles that we're talking about now. And in Marcus Aurelius, you know, he wasn't challenged the same way, although life did challenge him with loss and grief and pain and sickness, but, but it also challenged him with a great bounty of good fortune. And that too tested his character. It tested whether there really was goodness inside of him and what side of him he was going to reveal.

• 5:36Ryan Holiday?

  So as you go out into the world this week, think about who you really are underneath. Think about what kind of character you've been cultivating. And let's show people who we are and who we can be and what we actually believe. As, as Marcus says, let's not waste time arguing what a good man should be. Let's be one. Let's be the best we can for ourselves, for our family, for our world. And I'll talk to you soon.

• 6:06Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything, I just wanted to say thank you.