This is How You Have To See (and Respond To) Things | Becoming An Expert In What Matters

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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 bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:14Ryan Holiday?

  This is how you have to see and respond to things. You just got the news. You just figured out that something isn't possible. You just failed. You just got passed over. Marcus Rilis wrote about moments exactly like this in Meditations. Something happened, he writes. Good. It was meant for you by nature, he said, woven into the pattern from the beginning. Instead of lamenting it, instead of fighting it, instead of wondering why it went this way, instead of that way, he's saying we have to embrace it. See it as something happening for you and not to you. Life is short, he writes, that's all there is to say. So try to be a good person. Try to do good, to do the right thing.

• 0:59Ryan Holiday?

  Don't waste time complaining. Don't waste time wishing or hoping. Remember, he says, it was woven into the pattern from the beginning. So get to work. That's actually what we've been talking about all month here. This is Meditations month at Daily Stoic. This is the month Marcus Rilis was born. So we just kind of do this deep dive into Meditations. And we're kind of doing a book club about Meditations, which I'd love to have you join. If you haven't read Meditations, you don't know where to start, or maybe you read it, you put it down, you didn't totally get it. I think this would be an awesome place to start. And at the end of the month, right after Marcus Rilis's birthday, we're all gonna dive in and do a discussion of it together. It's gonna be awesome. I can't wait to see you in there.

• 1:44Ryan Holiday?

  You can sign up right now. And you get it for free if you buy our leather edition of Meditations. Anyways, I'm excited to see you in there. DailyStoic.com/meditations. I'll tell you about my journey with the book. This is something we really worked hard on, and I think you're going to like. I'll see you in there. Thanks.

• 2:14Ryan Holiday?

  Becoming an expert in what matters. This is today's entry in the Daily Stoic, April 14. Believe me, Seneca says in On the Shortness of Life, "It's better to produce the balance sheet of your own life than that of the grain market." The things that people manage to become experts in fantasy sports, celebrity trivia, derivatives in commodities markets, 13th century hygiene habits of the clergy. We can get very good at what we're paid to do, or adept at a hobby we wish we could be paid to do. And yet, our own lives, habits, and tendencies might be a complete mystery to us. Seneca was writing this important reminder to his father-in-law,

• 2:58Ryan Holiday?

  who, as it happened, was for a time in charge of Rome's granary. But then his position was revoked for political purposes. "Who really cares?" Seneca was saying. "Now you can focus that energy on your inner life." At the end of your time on this planet, what expertise is going to be more valuable? Your understanding of matters of living and dying, or your knowledge of the 87 bears? What will help your children more, your insights into happiness and meaning, or that you followed breaking political news every day for 30 years? I've said this before, but obviously, being an informed citizen in a democracy is really important. But people seem to think that being an informed citizen

• 3:43Ryan Holiday?

  means watching a lot of MSNBC, or Fox News, or spending a lot of time on Twitter. But what you see with these folks is they know a lot of trivia, but they fundamentally don't understand human nature. They fundamentally don't understand right, or wrong, or virtue, or the things that actually matter in life. Heraclitus said something like this. He says, "You know, these people study all these books for all these years, and they fail to realize that day and night are one." What I take from that, as he's saying, is that they're missing the big picture. They're missing the eternal, deep truths of life in exchange for the trivia. You know, they run a great business. They understand these events in fiction, or art, or sports, or whatever it is.

• 4:27Ryan Holiday?

  But they've fundamentally not come to grasp the truths of existence.

• 4:34Ryan Holiday?

  And I think even what I love about Stoicism is that Stoicism isn't big arcane abstract questions, but practical ones. It's about understanding the balance sheet of one's life, as Seneca was saying. It's about understanding their self, understanding their emotions, understanding people. I think what Seneca is saying is that we often understand everything but ourselves. We ask all the little questions instead of the couple of big questions like, why am I here? What's important to me? What's right? What's wrong? And that's such a shame. Philosophy is supposed to be practical. Philosophy is supposed to push us to understand ourselves and humans. Right?

• 5:18Ryan Holiday?

  Like, the amount of people that focus on this or that and then just fundamentally don't understand how psychology works, or fundamentally understand how like the very system of government works, they're just tied up in stuff, right? And they haven't thought about what the thing they're talking about would actually mean. So we talked about this before, about how certainty and arrogance is the root of real ignorance. And I also think it goes for, what are you going to choose to know about? Trivial, ephemeral things? Are you going to probe the deeper questions? Are you going to probe yourself? Are you going to look inward? Marcus really says, throw away your books. Now, he says this in meditations, and I don't think that meant, you know, then go watch the gladiatorial games.

• 6:03Ryan Holiday?

  I think he meant, throw away your books and sit there and think. Sit there and get in touch with yourself. Sit there and really examine, think about the things you've already learned. That's what we're talking about. And it's just another sort of deeply powerful question from Seneca. As the Stoics tell us always, become an expert in the things that matter. Focus on the things that matter. Ask the questions that really matter. Leave the trivia and nonsense to everyone else.

• 6:35Ryan 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.

• 7:13Ryan Holiday?

  Ryan