What If This Made You Stronger? | The Sphere of Choice

“It wouldn’t be wonderful if it weren’t true. But it is: “Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way,” the philosopher and Nobel Prize winner Albert Schweitzer said, “but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it.”Ryan explains the timeless art of turning trials into triumph, and reads this week's meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, 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. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:33Ryan Holiday?

  What if this made you stronger? It would be wonderful if it weren't true, but it is. "Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way," the philosopher and Nobel Prize winner Albert Schweitzer once said. "But they must accept their lot calmly if they even roll a few more stones upon it." Not only did people have to march for civil rights, they had to fend off attack dogs and mobs and policemen's batons. Great works of art not only struggled to find publishers or galleries, but they were actively discouraged by the supposed experts and critics. Sure, successful entrepreneurs are handsomely rewarded for their success, but think of all the endless

• 1:17Ryan Holiday?

  headaches they had to endure to get there. Doubters, regulations, ungrateful customers, bad luck. Right now, people in the private and public sector are struggling to produce a life-saving vaccine and encountering all this and more. To truly make it in this life, it's not just enough to endure these difficulties. It requires something deeper, something more profound. Schweitzer said, "We need to cultivate a strength which becomes clearer and stronger through the experience of such obstacles," and that this is the only strength that can conquer the difficulties of life. In other words, we must become like the image of fire that Marcus Aurelius invokes, the one that makes flame and brightness out of everything

• 1:59Ryan Holiday?

  that is thrown into it. Because life and other people will roll and throw so much at us: criticism, doubts, competition, difficulties, deceit, obstacles, take many forms.

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  But inevitably, they always appear, sometimes in isolations, sometimes in a landslide, sometimes in a landslide in a pandemic. Our only option is to take energy from this, to be made better for it. We must learn from the obstacles. We must take consolation in them. If it were easy, then anyone could do it and the goal wouldn't be worth pursuing. We must gather strength and muscle from each experience. We have to remember, the obstacle is the way, or rather, the obstacles are the way.

• 2:44Ryan Holiday?

  The Sphere of Choice. If the first step is to discern what is or isn't in our control, the second step in Stoic philosophy is to focus the energy on the things we have a choice about. The Stoics viewed the soul as a sphere that, when well tuned, well directed, was an invincible fortress against any trial or circumstance. Protected by our reason, this sphere of choice is like a sacred temple, and it is the only thing we truly possess in this life. We are the product of our choices, so it is essential that we choose well. This week, consider and reflect on the choices you have about your emotions, your actions, your beliefs, and your priorities.

• 3:26Ryan Holiday?

  Keep this thought at the ready at daybreak and through the day and night. There is only one path to happiness, and that is in giving up all that is outside your sphere of choice, regarding nothing else is your possession, surrendering all else to God and fortune. Epictetus, Discourses 4:4. Who then is invincible? The one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice. Epictetus, Discourses 1:18. The soul is a sphere true to itself. It neither projects itself towards any external thing, nor does it collapse on itself, but instead radiates a light which it shows itself the truth of all things and truth in and of itself. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11:12.

• 4:14Ryan Holiday?

  Well, here we are. We were talking about this last week. You know, you only have so many energy points. You only have so much, so many resources. How are you going to spend them? Are you going to spend them on what's up to you? Or are you going to spend them on what's not up to you? Are you going to emote about things and pretend that that makes a difference? Or are you going to spend your energy trying to do something about this thing that you found so upsetting? Right? So I think people think that Stoicism is about resignation. It's not. It's about allocation, right? It's resigned to the things that make no difference, where you can make no difference. But it's very focused, intensely focused,

• 4:56Ryan Holiday?

  on the areas that you can make a difference, right? So you could despair about the larger, you know, political trends in your country because you're one person and you're, you know, at odds with the majority. But maybe you can make a difference with your family, with your community. You could run for school board or mayor or something like that, right? What can you do as the individual? That's not to say the Stoics aren't interested in collective action. I'm just saying, I'm going to focus my energy where it's going to make a difference. And as a Stoic, they'd be indifferent to the things where I can make no difference. Right? Where can you make a difference, right? You know, it gets tempting as a writer, right?

• 5:38Ryan Holiday?

  Because our jobs as writers are to have opinions about things. That's a really dangerous way to go through your life, thinking that the world gives a shit about your opinion, right? And that having the opinion is the thing that matters. And it doesn't matter, right? What matters is what you do. What are the actions, right? We ended the year with the idea from the Stoics about turning words into works. Well, what are you providing? Where are you putting your resources? And are you putting them towards where they have input? Where they have, where they have... Efficacy, right? So a stoic has resigned in some sense to, look, I'm not going to get involved in that nonsense. I'm not going to waste time regretting the past either. What I'm going to try to do is move forward. What I'm going to try to do is move ahead.

• 6:21Ryan Holiday?

  What I'm going to try to do is make some change where I can make some change. And, and yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm going to be indifferent to the, the things where that's not true. And that's what we're talking about here, right? That's what the sphere of choice is about. And, and, and it's an easy thing to forget. And that's why Epictetus is saying, keep it ready in the morning. Think about it throughout the day and think about it at night. Saying there's one path to happiness. It's giving up the things that are outside your sphere of choice. Focusing on what else is in your possession, surrendering everything else. So it's being zen about the things that are not up to you. But there's a kind of invincibility in that zen, right?

• 7:01Ryan Holiday?

  Because if it wasn't, if I didn't make the call, I didn't do it. If it wasn't something that was up to me, I'm not going to, I'm not going to get upset by it. Remember Marcus saying, you don't have to have an opinion about this. You don't have to get upset, but you should be upset about your own choices. Why did I do that? Why didn't I do that? Why did I, you know, why did I make this mistake? Why did I do this thing again that I told myself I was going to stop doing? Focus on you, focus on your choices, make good choices. That's how you exert control over the world. Something I, you know, I remind myself, you see what's going on in the world and you can despair. You can feel sad or you can go, look, I've got two little kids in my house who I'm responsible for.

• 7:45Ryan Holiday?

  The biggest multi-generational impact I can have is in raising them well. And then I go, and this is something Seneca failed. It's like Seneca spent all these years beating his head against the wall, trying to change Nero. He's affected far more people, had far more impact in his writing where, which he did control. So I go, okay, and look, I, I'm not going to, you know, yell at some, some person I know on social media for being, for being silly and have the impact on one person. But I, I am going to sit down and write about this or talk about this on the podcast in a way that, that can reach a lot of people, right? Let's stay in our lanes. Let's do what we can do. Let's try to make a difference where we can. And if we all do that cumulatively, that is collective action and that does have

• 8:29Ryan Holiday?

  a big impact. So this is a short lesson today. It's a straightforward one, but it's so hard. And that's why Seneca is saying, you've got to remind yourself constantly throughout the day, I'm going to focus on what's in my sphere of choice. That's where I have impact. I'm going to focus on allocating my energy properly, not going to waste it on regret, not going to waste it on bitterness, on resentment, on anger, on fear, on worry, on hope. I'm going to focus on what I control. I'm going to make a difference there. So that's what the Stoic does. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Daily Stoic. It's mind blowing to me now that we are well over 30 million downloads of this show. It means so much to me to have all of you listen.

• 9:11Ryan Holiday?

  If you want to help spread the word about the show, please leave a review on iTunes or whatever your favorite podcasting platform is. It helps a lot. And then of course, click subscribe. That's how we know how many people are listening and that that makes sure you get the episodes as they come in. So thanks again for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast.