Not Just To Read, But To Read Critically | Stop Monkeying Around

“An illiterate world is not a good one, but a world where people unthinkingly believe and accept everything they read is not that much better. So it’s great that you’re reading—but are you reading critically?”Ryan explains the importance of honing your reading practice, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. Blinkist is the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee 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.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, then some analysis from me. And then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

• 0:41Ryan Holiday?

  Not just to read, but to read critically. An illiterate world is not a good one, but a world where people unthinkingly believe and accept everything they read is not much better. So it's great that you're teaching your kids to read. It's great that you are reading, but are you reading critically? You need to know. Authors can be wrong. Authors can be questioned. A book is not a one-way conversation. It's a dialogue between the reader and the writer. You have to take notes. You have to disagree. You have to question what you see on the page. Everyone needs to know. No book is definitive. No one's school or system has all the answers. You have to read books by opposing thinkers. Read one book after another, then read something that presents a different point of view.

• 1:25Ryan Holiday?

  You have to realize the importance of debate. You have to understand how to compare and contrast. We've talked about the dangerous world of ideas. You're gonna have to look at things you disagree with. You're gonna have to have tastes. You're gonna have to talk and learn from people who have different opinions than you. It's going to mean going down rabbit holes you never thought of before. Remember what Epictetus said. Just because someone spends time reading doesn't mean they're smart. It matters how and what you read. So start this practice today. Start it now. Be a real reader, a wide-ranging, critical reader, a questioner, a reviewer, a thinker.

• 2:04Ryan Holiday?

  Stop monkeying around. Enough of this miserable whining life. Stop monkeying around. Why are you troubled? What's new here? What's so confounding? The one responsible? Take a look. Or just the matter itself? Then look at that. There's nothing else to look at. And as far as the gods go by now, you could be trying to be more straightforward and kind. It's the same, whether you've examined these things for 100 years or only three. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 9, 37, from today's entry in The Daily Stoic, expertly translated by the one and only Steve Hanselman. The meditation coming from me. This is 366

• 2:46Ryan Holiday?

  Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, The Daily Stoic. You can get anywhere books are sold. You can also get a leather-bound edition in the Daily Stoic store. Here's today's meditation, and then we'll riff on it a bit here. "Character," Joan Didion would write in one of her best essays, "is the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life, and it is the source from which self-respect springs." Marcus Aurelius urged us not to waste time complaining about what we haven't got, or how things have worked out. We have to quit monkeying around and be owners of our own lives. Character can be developed, and when it is, self-respect will ensue. But that means starting and getting serious about it. Not later, not after certain questions

• 3:28Ryan Holiday?

  have been answered, or distractions have been dealt with, but now, right now. Taking responsibility is the first step. "To be without this respect is the worst of all fates," as Didion put it in her essay on self-respect. "To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night beyond the reach of warm milk, the phenobarbital in the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trust betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth, or cowardice, or carelessness." We are all so much better than that.

• 4:05Ryan Holiday?

  I love in meditations, you hear Marcus, you know, saying stuff like this to himself. "Stop monkeying around. How much longer are you gonna wait?" He says, "You're an old man now, and you're still struggling with this." I love the vulnerability there. Like, he's not telling you to stop monkeying around. He's telling himself to stop monkeying around, and by extension, also you. But the point is, this is directed at himself, because we all struggle with it. We all get distracted. We all get, you know, complainy and whiny and obnoxious and entitled. But we have to stop. If we stop monkeying around, we have to get serious. We have to take responsibility for our own lives, for our own actions. Yes, things happen in the world. Yes, things are unfair. Yes, things suck. Yes, there are injustices that need to be addressed at large.

• 4:49Ryan Holiday?

  But you are responsible for your own habits. You're responsible for what time you woke up this morning. You're responsible for the standard you hold yourself to. You are responsible for what you say, what you do, right? We are responsible for ourselves and our own emotions. "You can't make me angry," as my wife says to me sometimes. "You can't make me frustrated." We are responsible for ourselves. And when we do things where we have abstained from this responsibility, "I take no responsibility at all," Trump famously said. "This is the most shameless, shameful thing that a person can do." But this is an important Stoic concept, right?

• 5:33Ryan Holiday?

  The Stoics say, "Don't take responsibility." And I sometimes contrast Stoicism and Christianity. It's not that they're saying, "Take responsibility, God says so." Or, "If you don't take responsibility, you're gonna end up in hell." The Stoics are saying, and I think this is what Didion captures so well, is that to not take responsibility over the course of a life ultimately is a form of hell. It is a miserable way to live, as she said. It's to be beyond the reach of comforts, the drugs, the sleep, relief. It is a miserable way to live. So, take responsibility for your life. Stop blaming others. Own what is in your control. Deal with it. Take it seriously.

• 6:16Ryan Holiday?

  Do your best. Do good, as we were talking about last week.

• 6:22Ryan Holiday?

  And you might not always succeed. You might not be rewarded for it. You may well be punished for it. You may not get what you want. But, but you can look yourself in the mirror. You can know you did your best. You can know you're trying. And you can know that on a long enough timeline, you will be vindicated and it will work out. Be good, everyone. Take responsibility. Talk to you next time.

• 6:45Ryan Holiday?

  And of course, this is what we built the Daily Stoic Read to Lead Challenge about. It's like two weeks of awesome Stoic-inspired reading practices. It's the reading practices I try to use in my own sort of self-driven educational process. It's served me well. It's served the Stoics of old well. I think you'll get a lot out of it. Check it out. DailyStoic.com/ReadToLead. And again, Daily Stoic Life members get all our courses for free, which you can sign up for at DailyStoicLife.com.