This Is Not a Drill

"Many of us can be forgiven for having thought that this life thing was pretty easy. The last few decades have been pretty good to us. Booming economies. Great technology. Our wars have had limited impact on our populace and our recessions have been short. We were living, as one academic said after the fall of communism, after the end of history. All those tragic, bleak moments of the past…were past us."Ryan describes how to break out of that mindset to see the reality of what's happening in 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 @DailyStoic: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.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good 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. This is not a drill. Many of us can be forgiven for having thought this life thing was pretty easy. The last few decades have been pretty good to us: booming economies, great technology, even our wars and recessions have been short. We were living, as one academic said after the fall of communism, "after the end of history." All those tragic, bleak

• 0:50Ryan Holiday?

  moments of the past were past us. There is nothing like a global pandemic, one eerily similar to the plagues of the ancient world, to disabuse us of that notion. Nothing brings that home quite like hearing that New York City, the crown jewel of this cushy, modern world, is setting up temporary morgues to handle the growing piles of bodies. Nothing like hearing that millions of people are out of work to make it clear that this is not a drill. No, this is real life. This is what we have been training for, what we should have been training for. "No role is so well-suited to philosophy as the one you happen to be in right now," Marcus Aurelius said, as Rome's empire ground to a halt

• 1:32Ryan Holiday?

  and the plague descended upon the city. "Life is warfare and a journey far from home," he said, as he battled invaders at the frontier for years on end. We are living through history, just as Marcus and all the Stoics were. This is not a drill. It's time to put on our big-girl pants and get serious, get to work. It's time to embody the philosophy we have talked about. It's time to muster those critical virtues of courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. This won't be easy, but it is what's in front of us.

• 2:06Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, just wanted to remind you, if you want to take your practice of Stoicism to the next level, if you want some physical reminders of the ideas we talk about here, check out the Daily Stoic store. You can go to dailystoic.com/store. These products are what help us keep the lights on here at Daily Stoic. They help grow the business, let us spread the message to more and more people. So if you want to support us, check that out. Go to dailystoic.com/store.