No, The World Is Not Conspiring Against You

“Sometimes it can feel like you’re surrounded by small-minded idiots. Especially when you’re trying to do something new, important, or good. All of a sudden, you’re dealing with insane red tape, incompetence, or worse, vehement protest from people who plain don’t know what they’re talking about.”Ryan explains why we should focus our energy on being better, not on other peoples flaws, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.***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 Daily Stoic: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.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom, designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday 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.

• 0:27Ryan Holiday?

  No, the world is not conspiring against you. Sometimes it can feel like you're surrounded by small-minded idiots, especially when you're trying to do something new, important, or good. All of a sudden, you're dealing with insane red tape, incompetence, or worse, vehement protests from people who plain don't know what they're talking about. We can feel this in the course of ordinary life. Certainly, Marcus Aurelius did. He opens Book Two of Meditations with a pretty accurate picture of people. They're surly, aggressive, dishonest, mean, pedantic, stupid, and they constantly get in the way of people who are not any of those things. Put together, it's enough to make us nod our head to that famous Jonathan Swift quote,

• 1:12Ryan Holiday?

  "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign that the dunces are all in a confederacy against him." Except that this is not a very stoic or productive way to live, because it makes it other people's fault. Even Marcus Aurelius realized that. For all the negativity in that first quote, what he really believed and tried to live by was this idea, blame yourself or no one. Instead of getting angry at other people's poor execution, focus on the deficiencies in your instruction. Instead of resenting their protest, examine whether you've been persuasive enough. Don't get mad about red tape. Think about all the bad ideas this process has actually helped stop. Be forgiving of other people's stupidity or rudeness,

• 1:57Ryan Holiday?

  because you've been plenty guilty of it yourself at one time or another. The world is not conspiring against us. It is not filled with dunces. If anything, we are the dunces for not focusing our energy on the only things that matter, our decisions, our attitudes, our actions.

• 2:17Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. And if you didn't know, I also have another podcast and daily email. Every day I write something at DailyDad.com, which gets delivered to thousands of people all over the world. I record the meditations, just like this one, on the podcast for free. So if you're a parent, if you know a parent, if you're an expecting parent, I think you'd really like it. It's called Daily Dad, but it has nothing to do with gender. I'm a dad, that's why it's called that. We'd love to have you over at DailyDad.com. And of course, subscribe to the Daily Dad Podcast.