You've Been Doing It All Wrong

"For most of history, we’ve gotten it precisely wrong. We have given far too much attention to what philosophers have thought or written, when really what counts is what they do. What someone says is not important; what’s important is if they live up to what they say. In the end, what matters—whether a person is ancient or modern—is whether their ideas work in the real world, whether they make our lives better or not."Ryan shows why it's the actions of philosophers that are so important, and talks about the brand new book he's written to help shine light on those actions, Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius. Preorder your copy of Lives of the Stoics now and get exciting bonus chapters and more! Learn more here: https://dailystoic.com/preorder***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good 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.

• 0:29Ryan Holiday?

  You've been doing it all wrong. For most of history, we have gotten it precisely wrong. We have given far too much attention to what philosophers have thought or written, when really, what counts is what they do. What someone says is not important. What is important is whether they live up to what they say. In the end, what matters, whether a person is ancient or modern, is whether their ideas work in the real world, whether they make our ideas better or not, and whether they themselves apply those ideas. This core distinction is what separates Stoicism from other schools. "Don't talk about your philosophy,"

• 1:10Ryan Holiday?

  Epictetus would say, "embody it." That was why he was so frustrated with his students who congratulated themselves on being able to read the obscure writings of Chrysippus. They were missing the point. Philosophy wasn't about big words or complicated texts. It was about applying concepts to the real world. It was about the example one followed and the example one gave. "All study of philosophy and reading should be for the purpose of living a happy life," Seneca would say. "We should seek precepts to help us, noble and courageous words that can become fact. We should learn them in a way that words become works." And that's what makes Seneca such a fascinating person to study, because he

• 1:53Ryan Holiday?

  wasn't always noble or courageous. He worked for Nero, for Christ's sake. He was obscenely rich and threw Gatsby-esque parties. Was he happy? We don't know. But it's worth studying his life to see where he succeeded and where he failed. Where did he embody the philosophy? So beautifully captured in his letters. And where did he fall short? Because in the end, that's what matters. And that's what will teach us the most. Which is why for the last two years, I have been hard at work on my new book, Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius. And I teamed up with Stephen Hanselman, who did the translations and the co-writing on The Daily Stoic, the book that put all of this in motion. We had so much fun doing The Daily Stoic.

• 2:37Ryan Holiday?

  It's been so gratifying to see it become the runaway bestseller that it's become. And so we poured over hundreds of ancient texts and modern scholarship to bring you 26 biographies of the most important and most interesting Stoics from history, all in one accessible, readable volume that does what philosophy is supposed to do. We're studying the lives of these men and women so they can inspire us, follow in their footsteps, so they can teach us how to be better people and not just better philosophers. And Lives of the Stoics is now available for preorder everywhere you preorder books. But if you go to dailystoic.com/preorder, I've got all sorts of awesome bonus chapters for you that you can't get anywhere else.

• 3:19Ryan Holiday?

  Extra material, cool stuff that I'm really proud of, that I wanted to give to you to incentivize you to preorder it because that helps me a great deal. So if you've gotten value out of this podcast over the years, if you've enjoyed my writing, please support it by preordering the book. That makes a big difference. It's how publishers determine how many copies to print. It's what helps a book land on the bestseller list. It's what helps bookstores decide to stock them or not. Preordering is just disproportionately impactful. That's why we're announcing it here a month before the book comes out. The book comes out September 29th. But today, now, finally, you can preorder the book. Go to dailystoic.com/preorder and please preorder

• 4:01Ryan Holiday?

  Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius. Can't thank you enough. I know you're going to love this book. Check it out. Lives of the Stoics, dailystoic.com/preorder.