We Need More of These People | Pain Is Self-Inflicted Harm

We once had Stoics in high office. We had Stoics making important decisions. We’re a long way from that today, aren’t we?📚 The Four Stoic Virtues: Justice, Temperance, Wisdom, Courage, are timeless keys to living your best life. The Daily Stoic is releasing a limited collector’s edition set of all four books signed and numbered, with a title page identifying these books as part of the only printing of this series. PLUS we're including one of the notecards Ryan used while writing the series. Pre-order the Limited Edition Stoic Virtues Series Today! | https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/stoic-virtues📕 Books Mentioned: Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan Holiday | preorder now at https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-workThe Daily Stoic Journal: 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on The Art of Living by Ryan Holiday | https://store.dailystoic.com/Courage is Calling by Ryan Holiday | https://store.dailystoic.com/🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.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.

• 0:05Ryan 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.

• 0:59Ryan Holiday?

  We need more of these people. Marcus Aurelius was emperor. Cato was a senator. Seneca served as consul. Bruticus was a Roman general. Brutilius was a governor in Asia. These were prestigious and enormously powerful positions. We once had Stoics in high office. We had Stoics making important decisions. We're a long way from that today, aren't we? But then again, this was not exactly representative of Rome either. The vast majority of emperors were nothing like Marcus Aurelius. Most of the senators went along with Nero instead of resisting him. A better picture of the Stoics then is someone like Epictetus

• 1:41Ryan Holiday?

  or someone like Cleanthes, someone at the bottom of the social hierarchy, trying to make the best of their lives amidst injustice, dysfunction, and frustration. A better picture of the Stoics, we've said, are the people you've never even heard of, men and women who lived ordinary, virtuous lives that were never recorded by history.

• 2:03Ryan Holiday?

  It is that life that tests the limits of one's endurance. It is that life that is truly a lesson in the dichotomy of control. It is that life, the life of quiet virtue, of decency, of hard work, of finding happiness in a world rather indifferent to your existence, that best defines what Stoicism is about. We're unlikely to be emperor anytime soon. We're unlikely to even register in the historical record. Our job is not to strive against that, to be one of the elite few at the center of things, but rather to try to do our best within our lives to embody courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom, whether it is noticed or not.

• 2:56Ryan Holiday?

  Panic is self-inflicted harm. This is from today's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal. We have a weekly meditation and then daily journaling. But let's think about it, right? Name one situation that is improved by panicking. Go ahead, like seriously, can you think of something where panicking makes it better? Seneca mused often about, "The problem with panic is that it creates danger and it limits our ability to function effectively, prevents us from finding success and seeing objectively. And worse, it makes us weaker over time because we've never truly faced the danger that we're worried about. We're always running away and then we're weaker as a result." So spend some time today meditating on scary things that might make you panic. Think about them in advance.

• 3:39Ryan Holiday?

  Think about what's so overwhelming about them. Come to understand them, get familiar with them. One of the chapters I have in Courage is Calling is I talk about this dictum that Napoleon had for his generals. He said, "Ask yourself three times a day, what would I do if the enemy appeared on my left or my right or at the center?" Obviously, the idea here wasn't to create anxiety. It was precisely to prevent panic. By thinking about what scares us in advance, by familiarizing ourself with it, Napoleon was saying, we can respond to it. We can have a plan. A general who has a plan, who has an understanding, who has contingencies, who has backup plans and backup plans for the backup plans. And they understand that no plan survives contact with the enemy. That's the general who can endure things. That's the general who's less afraid.

• 4:24Ryan Holiday?

  Fear makes us worse. Familiarity makes us less afraid. But we have three quick quotes from Seneca today. "For even peace itself will supply more reason for worry. Not even safe circumstances will bring you confidence once your mind has been shocked, once it gets in the habit of blind panic. Can't provide for its own safety. For it doesn't really avoid danger, it just runs away. And yet, we are exposed to greater danger with our backs turned." There's another great quote I have in the book from Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut. He says, "Remember, it's always possible to make a problem worse. Panic does that. Worry does that. Fear does that. Makes us worse." So Seneca says, "We're actually more in danger as we're running away than when we face our problems."

• 5:09Ryan Holiday?

  Then he says, "Success comes to the lowly and to the poorly talented, but the special characteristic of a great person is to triumph over the disasters and panics of human life." And then he says, "The unprepared are panic-stricken by the smallest things." Another quote I have from Seneca, courage is calling, that I really love. He says, "The only inexcusable thing for an officer to say is, 'I did not think that could happen.'" So you can't panic just because it's a surprise, just because it came out of nowhere, just because it's a black swan. In fact, your whole job is to be prepared for exactly this. Your whole job is, how do you perform under pressure? How do you perform when the enemy is up close? How do you perform when other people are running away? When other people are scared? This is why courage is so important.

• 5:53Ryan Holiday?

  We have to see panic and fear as something that makes us worse. It's a competitive disadvantage. It's not that we never have fear. It's that we have the fear. We are alert to what it's trying to tell us. Then we try to get to work, breaking it down. We try to get to work. Preparing for it. We try to get to work anticipating it. We try to get to work putting ourselves in a position where if it does happen, and it probably will happen, we'll be able to respond. We'll know what we can do. We'll have something. And that's, you know, as Napoleon was saying, what would you do if they were on your left? What would you do in your front? What would you do if they were over here? What would you do if all of these things happened at the same time? What are the things that can go wrong? What's my preparation for them? I'm focused instead on solutions. I'm focusing, as a

• 6:36Ryan Holiday?

  Stoic must, on what you can do about it. That's what confidence and courage gives you. And I hope you spend some time journaling about panic and fear this week. I hope it makes you better, stronger, and braver.

• 6:52Ryan 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.