Simple Stoic Rules That Actually Change Your Life

Life is a lot. It moves fast. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by what to do, what not to do, and whether you’re even focusing on the right things. In today’s episode, Ryan shares simple Stoic rules to live by that can help you live with more clarity, purpose, and steadiness right now.🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 📢 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 you bring those four key Stoic virtues: courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:14Ryan Holiday?

  Life is a lot. It's overwhelming. It comes at us fast. What should we do? What should we not do? Seneca talked about how life without design is erratic. It can disorient us. It can overwhelm us. So what we're going to talk about in today's episode are some Stoic rules to live by, things to start doing, things to stop doing, some guardrails, some tried and true best practices from the ancient world that can help us live better today.

• 0:44Ryan Holiday?

  Things the Stoics say you should never do. "Don't be overheard complaining," Marcus really says in Meditations, "not even to yourself." Just notice how often you catch yourself complaining, how often you're whining that things are this way and that way, instead of, again, just accepting them. Or better yet, do something about them. "Don't compare yourself to others." Epictetus says, "We should only enter a competition where winning is up to us." Meaning, is winning, is getting the thing that I want, is how I measure success here? Is it up to me? If so, then it matters and I'm going to focus on it. If it's not up to me, then I'm judging myself the wrong way and I'm comparing myself to others and things that are outside my control. "Don't tie your identity to things that you don't own, that can be taken away from you, that are yours only in trust or yours only temporarily."

• 1:28Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca lived in a world where you could be exiled by unjust charges, where you could die from a cut on your finger, where an emperor had unlimited power over you. And so they understood that to attach yourself, to be identified with something that was temporary or ephemeral and could be taken from you was to make yourself very vulnerable to the whims of the world. "Don't talk more than you listen." The founder of Stoicism, Zeno, he says, "We have two ears and one mouth for a reason." That ratio matters. Marcus really says his line was, "Be strict with yourself, tolerant with others." It's remembering that just as you mess up, other people mess up. It's called self-discipline for a reason. So we want to be tolerant of other people and their mistakes. We understand that they didn't sign up for the same rigors or standards that we did. When we mess up, when we make mistakes... We always have reasons, we always have justifications, right?

• 2:13Ryan Holiday?

  We understand that it doesn't say that we're a bad person. But why don't we extend that courtesy to other people? Don't overindulge, not just in the vices, but also in seemingly good things. Marcus Schrilles in Meditations talks about not being all about business. The Stoic virtue of temperance, right? It means moderation that is famously symbolized by someone pouring water into wine. They're diluting it, right? Don't overdo it in sleep, don't overdo it in work, don't overdo it in stress, don't overdo it in procrastination and taking time off. Life is about temperance, it's about balance, it's about finding the right amount.

• 2:51Ryan Holiday?

  Five Stoic habits that will make you have the best year yet. Number one, pause and reflect. This is the definition of Stoicism. Put every oppression to the test, question every emotion. You can still respond, just don't respond right away. Number two, go for a long walk every day. Nietzsche was right when he said that only ideas had while walking have any worth. Three, this is more than just walking. Do something really hard this year. Seneca said, "We treat the body rigorously so that it's not disobedient to the mind." Do something hard this year, challenge yourself, pick a big goal and get after it. Number four, do things the way you don't usually do them. Marcus Schrilles talks about practicing using his reins in his non-dominant hand. Don't do things the way you've always done them.

• 3:36Ryan Holiday?

  Try a new way, introduce some variety. I think it was William Tecumseh Sherman who his vow was he never went back the same way he came. Try to do something unusual, get you out of your rhythm, it makes you better. Take a book with you everywhere you go. The foundational story of Stoicism has Zeno being taught that wisdom comes when we have conversations with the dead. Carry a book with you, talk to writers and thinkers, the wisest people who ever lived, who are no longer with us. This is key to a good year.

• 4:08Ryan Holiday?

  Fame is worthless. What is fame? People chattering about you? People clapping their hands together? Marx really says in Meditations, "What good is that?" He says, "How strange is it that we long for posthumous fame? Fame we won't be around to enjoy." He says, "Besides, the people in the future will be just as stupid as the people who are alive right now." Why do we care about other people's opinions more than our own? Why do we crave to be liked by others? Who, by the way, we don't like that much? Whose opinion about other things we don't respect very much? But when it comes to us, we want to be known by them. We want to be seen by them. We want to be loved by them. It's silly. You need to shut up. You talk way too much.

• 4:53Ryan Holiday?

  Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, says, "We have two ears and one mouth for a reason." The world would be so much better if we posted less and read more. If we read more books. If we had less hot takes. When we open our mouth, we close our ears. Ambition is a form of insanity, right? At the essence of Stoic philosophy is focusing on what we control. We don't control what other people say or do or think, right? I try to write really good books. I've had to do a lot of work to realize I don't control whether they become a bestseller or not. The New York Times decides that. Marx really explains this perfectly. He says, "Ambition is when we tie our happiness to what other people do or say or decide."

• 5:37Ryan Holiday?

  He says, "Sanity is when we tie it to our own actions." So I have to define success as writing the best book that I'm capable of, of fulfilling my own artistic vision. Everything else, right? What the gatekeepers decide, what the audience decides. When they decide it, that has to be seen as extra unless I want to go insane.

• 6:03Ryan Holiday?

  Number one is you put every impression to the test, right? The Stoics say just because you have an emotional reaction to something, you have this first impression, first opinion, you have to stop and go, is this actually true? Do I really believe this, right? Do other people believe this? Take a minute, look at it, zoom in, zoom out, see what it really is. Don't let the first impression of a thing overwhelm you, the Stoics say. Two, actually think about the worst-case scenario. Just a little counterintuitive. Sometimes anxious people, they're catastrophizers, I get that. But the Stoics practice premeditatio malorum, an actual meditation on what could happen. And so sometimes we're anxious in the abstract. We're worried in the abstract. We have this sense that things could be really bad, but we don't stop and think, well, what would actually happen if that happened, right? You don't want to talk to this person, you're anxious about it,

• 6:48Ryan Holiday?

  but what's the worst that could happen? They laugh at you, they don't like you, right? They ignore you. It's not actually that bad. You're worried about losing your job? Would you end up under a bridge starving? No, so many things would happen before then. Actually getting up close and personal with those impressions, with those fears, those anxieties, can help you come to terms with how fundamentally irrational what you're worried about is. Three, we get a lot of Marcus Aurelius's thoughts on anxiety because he journaled, right? And so journaling is such a helpful way to create some distance between you and your thoughts. You don't just put the impression to the test in your mind, but you write it down. Write down what you're worried about, what you're thinking about, what you're excited about, what you're afraid about. Paper is more patient than people, I once heard.

• 7:31Ryan Holiday?

  And realizing that taking some time to think, to work through your thoughts in the morning or before you go to bed, as Seneca used to do it, is a really helpful way for treating and dealing with these stressful, anxious feelings that we have.

• 7:49Ryan Holiday?

  Here's eight Stoic tips to help you beat your procrastination. Number one, you take it step by step. Part of the reason we procrastinate is that we do the opposite of this. We extrapolate all the way out to the end, all the things that we have to do, how hard it's going to be. No, you can't let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole, Marcus Aurelius says in meditation. Don't imagine everything that could possibly happen. He says, stick with what's in front of you. He says, stick with the utterance, stick with the idea, stick with the smallest thing. And Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, this would add that well-being is realized by small steps, but it is no small thing. The little things add up. Number two, you gotta

• 8:31Ryan Holiday?

  have a routine. The Stoics tell us that life without a design is erratic. We're winging it. There's, quite frankly, just too many choices. So, limit those amount of choices. What time you wake up, what kinds of things you wear, what you don't do in the morning, what you do do in the morning. Create a routine which creates less opportunity for procrastination. Number three, and this is actually part of having a good routine, you have to eliminate the inessential. Marx really says so much of what we do and say is not essential, but when we eliminate the inessential, he says we get the double benefit of doing the essential things better. If you have less on your to-do list, there is less for you to procrastinate about, and the things that you do get done will be the things that matter.

• 9:16Ryan Holiday?

  Number four, you need a sense of urgency. Part of the reason you procrastinate is because you think you have tomorrow, you think you have forever, but life is short. It is tick, tick, ticking away. As you are putting things off, you are dying, the Stoics say. You are dying every minute, you are dying every day. Let this sense of urgency motivate you. Number five, you're procrastinating because you're spending a lot of time with people for whom procrastination is okay. Seek out better company, seek company of people who are committed, people who are doers, people who don't put things off, and you will find that your own procrastination diminishes. Number six, and this goes back to the idea of small steps, it's all about momentum, it's

• 9:58Ryan Holiday?

  all about the small wins. One of the reasons I try to write just a couple crappy pages a day, as the writing rule goes, is because in doing so, I feel like I'm making progress. I lower the stakes, and then the wins that I get help motivate me to get over the harder things. Number seven, stop being a perfectionist. As they say, perfectionism is just another way to say paralysis. Basically, you're violating a cardinal Stoic rule, you are thinking too much about outcomes. Focus on the process, focus on what's in your control, what you are doing, leave the outcomes aside, right? Concentrate on what's in front of you, concentrate on what you control. Don't think about what other people are gonna think, what other people are gonna say, how perfect it's gonna be, just do it.

• 10:41Ryan Holiday?

  And finally, number eight, you have to demand the best of and for yourself, because if not now... When Epictetus addresses this directly in his discourses, he says, putting things off and deferring the day to which you will attend to yourself, to which you will get serious about these things. What does this mean? He says, it means you will live and die as someone quite ordinary. If you don't want to do that, so stop deferring, demand the best of and for yourself. That's why you have to beat your procrastination.

• 11:15Ryan Holiday?

  Two thousand year old advice for when you're insulted, when your feelings are hurt, when you have been criticized. Number one from Epictetus, it's not the remark that upsets us, it's our opinion about that remark. It's not things that upset us, it's our opinion about those things. The remark is just words, we decide that we've been offended. Number two, this is also from Epictetus. He says, you know, when you are offended, when your feelings are hurt, when you let it get to you, you are complicit, you have chosen to take offense. Again, the remark is, someone wrote the article, someone posted the tweet, someone put up the comment, but then you decided that that hurt you, that that hurt your feelings. Number three, this is from the great Roman Stoic Cato. He was once punched in the bath, someone bumped into him, words were exchanged and someone threw a punch.

• 11:59Ryan Holiday?

  And then afterwards, the person came to apologize and he said, what? I don't even remember being hit. You can just pretend not to have heard it, you can just pretend that it didn't happen. Number four comes to us from Seneca and it has to do with our responses. He says, look, would you return a bite to a dog or a kick to a mule? No, you understand this is what these things do and people do that. People behave this way. We know we don't return it back in kind. And that's actually number five, Marx says, the best revenge is to not be like that. He says, it only harms you if it harms your character. So the unfair criticism, the slander, the insult, whatever it is, that hasn't hurt you. But if you degrade yourself in how you respond, if you sink down to their level, then it

• 12:43Ryan Holiday?

  in fact has hurt you because it has made you. Worse. Let's come back to Epictetus. He says, look, whenever you've been criticized, whenever someone exposes something about you, whenever someone says something about you in public, say, actually, if this person really knew me, they'd say something worse. Right? Tell yourself you actually got off easy. They don't know your real secret. They don't know what you're actually embarrassed about. They don't know what really went on behind the scenes. So you should say, hey, I'm actually lucky that I'm being criticized for this and not for that. Marcus Aurelius talks about this. He says, look, you're going to meet annoying people in the course of a day. You're going to meet people who disagree with you, who people who criticize you, people who stand in your way. You're going to meet with all that. He says, the main thing is you cannot let them implicate you in ugliness.

• 13:27Ryan Holiday?

  You have to understand what they don't understand, which is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. They don't understand how the world actually works. If they knew better, they wouldn't be criticizing you the way that they are. At the same time, the Stoics remind us that when someone corrects us, like when the criticism is correct, they're actually doing us a favor. You wouldn't interrupt your enemy when they were wrong, when they were making a mistake, when they were looking silly. No, you would let them do that. Right? You would let them continue in error. So when someone points out something that you're not right about, when someone corrects you, you should accept that correction. So actually, the key is not necessarily ignoring all criticism, but knowing which criticism to listen to and which not to. Marcus Aurelius says, you got to think about the people whose

• 14:12Ryan Holiday?

  approval you want. Think about the critic at the newspaper and you go, they would actually like to be doing what I'm doing. You think about the nasty commenter on the bottom of this video and you go, how many of these people would actually like to be doing this? How many of these people, if they met you in person, would be acting very differently? Right? Marcus Aurelius says, when you look at these people, when you look at them up close, you find you won't be straining for their approval so much.

• 14:41Ryan Holiday?

  These are five things that fools do according to the ancient Stoics. Number one, they care about what other people think. Even though they don't actually respect those people, even though in private those people show you that they're not worthy of you caring about what they think. "It is the craziest thing in the world," Marx really says, "that we all love ourselves more than other people, but for some reason we care about their opinion more than our own." The second thing fools do, and in fact Seneca said this is the one thing all fools have in common. They're always getting ready to start. Fools wait until tomorrow. They say, "I'll get to it later. I'll get to it after this. I'll get to it when things calm down." No, you won't. No, fools don't. If you're gonna do it, do it now. You could be good today, Marx really says, but instead you choose tomorrow. Fools make that choice.

• 15:26Ryan Holiday?

  Number three, fools act like they can afford to procrastinate, like they have forever. Again, it's crazy, the Stoics say. We protect our property, we protect our money, and then we waste our time, as if it is not the most precious resource we have, the only thing they're not making more of. Number four, what we do is we suffer unnecessarily. And we do this by extrapolating, by being anxious, by worrying about things that are not in our control. "He who suffers before it is necessary," Seneca says, "suffers more than is necessary." When you're torturing yourself about what may or may not happen, what you're doing is adding to the pain and anguish. "We suffer more in imagination," Seneca says, "than we'd have to in reality." Number five, a fool is a know-it-all.

• 16:11Ryan Holiday?

  And in this sense, they're right, right? When you think you know everything, it's true, you can't know anything else. Epictetus, one of the Stoic philosophers, says that "we have to remember we cannot learn that which we think we already know." Wise people are humble, they are open. Fools are know-it-alls.

• 16:30Ryan Holiday?

  Eight things that will make today a successful day. Prepare for what you're planning to face. Marx really says, "Tell yourself in the morning you're gonna meet frustrating people, difficult people, traffic, whatever. Don't be surprised. Prepare for it. Take a walk. I start every morning with a long walk or a long run, outside, being active." Day is a win from that point forward. Do deep work, focus, don't get sucked into your email. Don't let your inbox be your to do list. Focus intensely, get lost in it, go into a flow state. Always wonderful. Do a kindness, do something nice for someone today. Marcus really says if you want to feel good, do good. That's a great way to have a great day. Read, you should always be reading. Reading is the most wonderful thing that was ever invented.

• 17:13Ryan Holiday?

  It's how we we learn from other people's painful trial and error. You should always be reading, get lost in a book. Again, it's also a form of deep work. Make time for strenuous exercise. I know I already said going for a walk, but go for a run, go for a swim, go for a bike ride, do a CrossFit session, whatever it is, but get active, get your heart rate moving, push yourself every single day. Think about death, memento mori, life is short. You cannot take it for granted. We could go at any moment. As Seneca says, it's not that life is short, it's that we waste a lot of it. And we waste it because we think we have unlimited amounts of it. And then finally, at the end of the day, before you go to bed, take a few minutes and review the day in a journal, in your mind, with your spouse, whatever. But think about what went well, think about what you could do better. And think about how, if you're lucky enough to wake up tomorrow,

• 17:58Ryan Holiday?

  you're going to have an even better day because you're going to follow all eight of these practices.

• 18:09Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.