Feeling Scared and Overwhelmed? Start Here

Pain and hardship are part of life. From ancient Greece and Rome to now, people have faced plagues, wars, illness, and loss. The question has never been how to avoid it, but how to endure it and find meaning through it. In today’s episode, Ryan shares practical Stoic methods that have been tested for centuries to help reduce anxiety, anger, and stress, build real resilience, and become stronger when life gets hard. 👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing toThe Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content:https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ 🎥 Watch the video episodes onThe Daily Stoic YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos:https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast onInstagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/?hl=en:https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email athttps://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 https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/,Twitter https://twitter.com/dailystoic,YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic,TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic?lang=en, andFacebook https://www.facebook.com/dailystoic See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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?

  You're never going to be able to escape pain and suffering in this life. It is inevitable, it is unavoidable. It is a fact of life that life is hard, that it challenges us, that it throws things at us. This is not new. Imagine what it was like to live in ancient Greece or ancient Rome. Epictetus spends 30 years of his life in slavery. Seneca lives through the time of Nero. Marcus Aurelius has health issues on top of plagues and famines and wars. People have always gone through challenges. There have always been overwhelming events. And the question is, how are you going to toughen yourself up to be able to deal with it? How are you going to make it through? And how are you going to derive meaning from it? That's what we're going to talk about in today's episode.

• 0:58Ryan Holiday?

  Methods that have been tried and tested over the centuries by the ancient Stoics to help reduce your anxiety, reduce your anger, reduce your stress, increase your resilience, and make you stronger for difficult times.

• 1:15Ryan Holiday?

  You think you're the first person to live in political dysfunction? You think you're the first person to live in a time when it feels like the world is falling apart? You think you're the first person to live in a time when people are shitty to each other? When there's demagogues in power? When it feels like stuff is falling apart? No, you weren't. The ancient Stoics lived in the time of Nero. You know Socrates? He didn't live in the golden age of Athens. He lived in the time of 30 tyrants. He lived through a great power conflict. People have always lived in difficult times. But you know what they figured out? They figured out you've got to focus on what's in your control. You've got to figure out how to not let the assholes make you an asshole. You've got to do good where you can. You've got to remind yourself what's important. You can't follow every news story. You can't be distracted by every outrage.

• 2:00Ryan Holiday?

  You can't extrapolate everything into the end of the world. You have to ride it out. You have to focus. You have to stay good and stay decent. And then you got To make a positive difference where you can. You can't give up hope. You have to stand strong. And you have to realize in times like these that there have always been times like these. And people got through it and you will get through it. And it may well be an opportunity for you to be great, to be heroic, to make a difference. That's what you focus on in dysfunctional, crazy, scary times.

• 2:35Ryan Holiday?

  Are things wonderful or are things terrible? Is this a golden age or a nightmare? Is it a bull market or a bear market? The Stoics would say it doesn't fucking matter because you don't get a choice. All that matters is how you respond to it. All that matters is what you make of it. That's where you do have a choice. You don't pick when you're born. You don't control what other people do. You don't control global events, but you control how you respond to them. That's what Marcus really means when he says that the obstacle is the way. We choose what we make of it. We choose what we do with it. We choose who we become in response to it.

• 3:12Ryan Holiday?

  Look, a world without assholes is just not possible. A world without injustice is just not possible. A world where everything works, where everyone gets along, where everything is wonderful. It's just not in the cards. Has that moment ever existed in the past? Of course not. So why would you expect it to exist in the present or in the future? This was Cato's big problem, Cicero said, that he wanted to live in Plato's Republic instead of facing the fact that he lived in the dregs of Romulus. This is where you are. This is how things are. The main question is what are you gonna do about it? Who are you gonna be inside it? Are you gonna let inhumanity turn you into someone who is inhumane? Marx really says in Meditations. Are you gonna give up? Are you gonna despair? Or are you gonna focus on the good that you can do?

• 3:57Ryan Holiday?

  Are you gonna focus on what's in your control? Are you gonna practice the very best revenge? The most revolutionary and transgressive thing you can do? Which is to not be like those people, to not be like your enemies, to not let the assholes make you an asshole. That's the goal. That's what we have to do and that's what Stoicism can teach us.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  I am curious about what you see about the let them theory. What you see about it all.

• 4:23Ryan Holiday?

  There's this interesting passage that Marcus opens meditations with that I think it's got a little let me in it. Tell me what you think. Okay, so the first part, he opens meditations with a list of acknowledgements from everything he learned from all his friends. But then he says, "When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself, the people I will deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly." He says, "They are like this because they can't tell good from evil, but I've seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own." He says, "And so none of them can hurt me and no one can implicate me in ugliness." He says, "I can't feel angry at my relatives or hate them because we were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural and to feel anger at someone and to turn your back

• 5:07Ryan Holiday?

  on them are obstructions." And what I like about that is the first part, you think is going to be cynical and jaded and nasty. And then he's like, "But that's them."

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:16Ryan Holiday?

  And like, "My job is just to not let myself be like them and also to work with them regardless." That to me is Stoicism and the idea of you let them be them and you still have to make sure you are who you're supposed to be.

• 5:34Ryan Holiday?

  When Marcus really says, "The obstacle is the way," he's talking about something very specific. In that passage in meditations, he's talking about difficult and obnoxious and annoying and frustrating people. He's saying, "They are an opportunity to practice virtue. We don't control them, we don't control what they do, we don't control what they say, but we control how we respond to those people. We control what we do, we control who we are in response to them." So frustrating people are a chance to practice patience. People who wrong us are a chance to practice forgiveness. People are a chance for us to practice our persuasive skills. The idea is that everyone we meet, even the most annoying and frustrating and obnoxious people, are a chance for us to be what we're capable of being. They're testing us, they're making us better.

• 6:20Ryan Holiday?

  You don't have to make it worse. They did something to you, they cost you something, they screwed something up. It's annoying, it's frustrating, it sucks, this is no question, but you don't have to make it worse. This is something the ancient Stoics talk about a lot. The event, right, the comment that someone makes, the injury, whatever, that's one thing. But then the decision to be angry about it, to be bitter about it, to focus on what's unfair about it, by responding impulsively, by being like the person who injured you, you are adding to the injury. You're piling costs on top of the cost. Why? Like, why do we do that? You don't control what happened, you don't control that it happened, but you control how you respond to what happens.

• 7:06Ryan Holiday?

  You control the story you tell yourself about it, you control how much you ruminate on it. You control whether you let it ruin your mood. You control whether you let it ruin your life.

• 7:20Ryan Holiday?

  It's not just that we suffer more in imagination than we do in reality, as Seneca says. It's that we add suffering, right? So we're dreading this thing that might happen, and indeed, it might happen. But by thinking about it, walking ourselves through it, going over it, over and over and over again, living in it right now as if it will happen. You know what we're doing? We're adding suffering on top. What we're effectively doing is borrowing that suffering. We're like, "I want to deal with it now, I want to sit in it now, I want to feel it for longer." So we have to remember that this use of our creativity, the way we're thinking about the thing over and over again, we're living in it, we're actually just adding suffering on top of the thing that may or may not actually even happen.

• 8:15Ryan Holiday?

  Pain is something we choose. And I don't mean your back pain. I don't mean the pain you feel when a loved one has died. I don't mean the pain from your chemotherapy. That would be insanely insulting to say otherwise. I'm actually thinking more about that great lyric from the band Mad Season in "River of Deceit." They say-

• 8:40Ryan Holiday?

  The Stoic read on that is that when we decide to feel persecuted or singled out, when we decide that something has been taken from us, when we decide that we have been dealt an injustice, that's when we are adding pain on top of the pain. That's when we are choosing to make it worse. "Don't feel harmed," Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations, "and you haven't been." The Stoics believe that when we add an opinion on top of the objective event, when we throw ourselves the pity party, when we say to ourselves that we've been singled out, that our reputation has been damaged, that something has been stolen from us, that's when we take something that's not about us and we make it about us. So when you are experiencing pain,

• 9:24Ryan Holiday?

  when you are experiencing difficulty, try not to make it more painful. Try not to choose pain on top of pain. Try not to hit yourself with, as the Buddhists say, the second arrow.

• 9:37Ryan Holiday?

  You are impotent. Your anger is impotent. Marcus Aurelius in Meditations, he quotes a line from a lost play by the playwright Euripides. And the line says, "And why should you feel anger at the world as if the world would notice?" Nobody cares. It doesn't matter. It doesn't mean anything. Your anger, your resentment, your grievance, you are shouting into an enormous void. You are yelling at an inanimate object. You are mad at forces that are so enormous, that are utterly amoral, completely indifferent to you and your existence. So you might as well let it go.

• 10:13Ryan Holiday?

  It's kind of insane. We put up with so much shit from strangers. And civil society demands that we be patient with that person in front of us in line, the person who cut us off in traffic, that employee or that coworker that just never does things right. And so it's kind of strange the way that when we do lose our temper, it's never at those people. It's at the people we love the most. You'll repeat instructions 30 times to someone you work with, but if you, if your spouse says "what" too many times, you lose it. God forbid your son leaves... Leave his shoes out when you asked him not to. Seneca had this great line, he said, "Let us not be angry with good people." Right? But that's what we do. It's not so much a paradox as it is a problem of proximity.

• 10:57Ryan Holiday?

  Because they're closest to us, we have the most interactions with them. But it's also because they're closest to us, we know they'll put up with it. And there's something very sad and tragic and I think fundamentally unstoic about this. I think Stoicism is first and foremost about trying not to be angry with anyone, trying to be in command of oneself, to not lose one's temper. But then let's really think about who's getting the brunt of our frustration? Who are we shortest with? The fact that we can get mad at someone because they love us enough to put up with it, because they're kids and they have to live with us, it's not an excuse. Remind yourself of all their positive traits. Remind yourself of what actually matters to you.

• 11:40Ryan Holiday?

  Remind yourself of how important they are to you. Remind yourself of all they have to put up with from you. Let us not be angry with good people. That's what this philosophy is helping us with.

• 11:52Ryan Holiday?

  Seneca has to go into exile days after burying his only child. Marcus Aurelius is writing to himself about getting up out of bed in the morning, even though he has health issues, even though the empire is falling apart, even though his wife might be unfaithful to him. There's a Stoic named Rutilius Rufus, who shows up every day to his show trial where he's brought up on false charges and everything he owns is taken from him. I think about how these men must have ached, how sad they must have been, how angry they must have been. Stoicism is not about stuffing these emotions down by any means, but I also think about that Taylor Swift line about how you know you're good when you can do it with a broken heart. That's part of what Stoicism is.

• 12:34Ryan Holiday?

  You feel it, but then you do what you have to do anyway because it's your duty. That's what Marcus Aurelius is saying when he's having that discussion with himself about getting up early. He's saying, "Why aren't you going to do what your nature demands? Don't you love your duty, your responsibilities?" This is what Stoicism is, even if life is kicking the crap out of us, even if something or someone has twisted your insides up, even if you're depressed, even if you're anxious, even if nobody says thank you, even if you're tired, so, so tired. You have a job to do, a duty to fulfill. A broken heart can slow us down, but we can't let it stop us.

• 13:16Ryan Holiday?

  Doing hard things is good for you. We treat the body rigorously, Seneca said, so it's not disobedient to the mind. That's why we go for a run. That's why we push ourselves a little bit further. That's why we get in a cold plunge. That's why we take on challenging projects, because we grow stronger for the resistance. We unearth new capacities, new abilities in ourselves. Seneca said he pities people who haven't been through adversity, who don't seek out challenges because they don't know what they're capable of. So whatever you're going through, however tough it is, tell yourself it's good that it's this way. It's making me better. Doing this hard thing. Doing hard things generally is good for me. It is making me better. It's making me stronger. It's making me wiser. It's making me more resilient. So I'm grateful for it.

• 14:00Ryan Holiday?

  And I'm going to lean into it. If it was easy, I wouldn't get better.

• 14:07Ryan Holiday?

  If you love history, it's really easy to idealize the past. What would it have been like to live in this era or that era, through this event or that event? And I can tell you, it would have sucked because things have always sucked. I love ancient Greece and ancient Rome. But you know Socrates lives through like 30 years of war? And then Athens is ruled by 30 tyrants? And then what do they do to him? They put him to death. Epictetus lives through 30 years of slavery. Seneca lives in the time of Nero. Cato sees Rome fall as a republic. Marcus Rilis lives through the beginning of the decline and fall of Rome. Plus, there's a plague, a famine, a flood, a civil war. He has held it. It's one thing after another, which is, by the way, what history has always been. History has always been one thing after another. The point is, it's always been this way.

• 14:52Ryan Holiday?

  It always will be this way. We don't control when we're born. We don't control the historical events that are happening around us. We control how we respond to them. We control how we live through them. We control who we are inside of them, whether we let them change us for the worse. We don't control what happens. We control how we respond to what happens. That's Stoic philosophy. We don't control the awfulness of our times, only whether we're the exception to it, whether we're a bright spot within it, only whether we rise up and meet the challenges of the moment that we're in, which, by the way, is what all the historical greats we admire have in common.