This is The One Thing You Don’t Accept

From corruption to tyranny, the Stoics refused to sit on the sidelines. They tried to change things.🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.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.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help you bring those four key Stoic virtues—courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom—into the real world.

• 0:14Ryan Holiday?

  This is the one thing you don't accept. There's so much happening that's outside our control. There's stuff that's bigger than us, that predates us, may well outlive us. There's stuff that's happening far away. There's stuff that's happening that doesn't affect us. There's stuff that we just don't get a say about because nobody asked us, and it won't make a difference. Most of this, the Stoics tell us, is stuff we'll have to come to terms with. We'll have to learn how to accept, as painful and as humbling as that might be. Epictetus calls this the "art of acquiescence," and it's not an easy thing to practice. Marx really reminds himself that he has the power to have no opinion and to try to keep in mind that the world was not asking to be judged by him.

• 0:59Ryan Holiday?

  And yet, do you know what these two men and the rest of the Stoics did not accept, what they insisted on having opinions about? Injustice. They did not think it was right or wise to be silent or resigned to what was obviously wrong. Perhaps a better way to think about it is this: Injustice, whether it's corruption or cruelty, is what we are saving our opinions and our objections for. Instead of complaining about the weather or our team losing this weekend's championship game, we're going to direct our outrage at things we can get involved with fixing. From corruption to tyranny, the Stoics refused to sit on the sidelines. They tried to change things. They insisted on what was right, and they insisted on not doing what was wrong.

• 1:44Ryan Holiday?

  Now, they didn't always get this right, but it was a place where they refused to be accepting or accommodating because to do so would make them complicit in that injustice. And the same goes for us.