Patience Will Be Key to Surviving This

"Whether you thought things were about to go back to normal or you’re entering another long month of quarantine or your country is locking down due to a second wave, we are all in the same boat: We’re all getting a little stir-crazy."Ryan describes how to cope with new pandemic restrictions—or any delays that you may face in the pursuit of your goals—on today's Daily Stoic Podcast. Sign up for Daily Stoic's Alive Time Challenge: dailystoic.com/alive***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. Patience will be key to surviving this. We're all getting a little stir-crazy. We were just about to launch that project we had worked on for years. We were just about to sign a deal long in the making. We were about to make a career change. We were about to

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  board a plane for a backpacking trip. And now we're cooped up for who knows how long. How much will it set us back at work? Will that client still be interested? Will it still be lucrative? Will that career still exist? That airline? It's impossible to say. We will have to wait weeks, or months, or years to find out. All we know is that we've never had our patience tested quite like this. When the Emperor Hadrian started devising his succession plan, he bumped into a problem. It wasn't just that he didn't have a son. It was that a boy who he had his eye on, who he thought could make it to the throne, was only 17 years old. And so, his workaround

• 1:26Ryan Holiday?

  was to adopt a 51-year-old man named Antoninus, on the condition that he adopt and train that 17-year-old boy named Marcus Aurelius. Given life expectancy statistics at the time, Hadrian figured that this regent and mentor might be at the helm for five years. Marcus Aurelius could have felt it. Any day now, he'd be getting that promotion. Instead, Antoninus lived and ruled for 23 years. It could have driven him crazy. But instead, it made Marcus better. In the 23 years of Antoninus's reign, Marcus spent just two nights away from him. Biographer Frank McLean tells us, "Another severe test of his patience and stoical character."

• 2:09Ryan Holiday?

  As severe a test as it was, some 30 years later, Marcus would write in his journal with great adoration for those years and what he learned from his adopted father. "Hard work, persistence, self-reliance, always. Respect for people who practice philosophy." Think of Seneca spending years in exile. Think of Epictetus having to wait until he was 30. That's how long the minimum term of slavery was in Roman times until he could be free. Think of Stockdale in that prison camp for close to a decade. These were not easy situations. They were not short waits. But these Stoics endured them. They survived them. They chose to be made better for them, just as we can choose to be made better for

• 2:54Ryan Holiday?

  what we are going through right now. Who knows how long it will last? Who knows if the projections are right? All we can do is work hard, persist, be self-reliant, practice philosophy. "You can lead a good life anywhere," Marcus Aurelius wrote, "including in a lockdown during a pandemic." You just have to be patient and you have to choose to be productive. Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. If you could leave us a review in iTunes, it helps a great deal. And of course, if you know anyone who would benefit from these messages, please spread the word. Thanks.