This Can Change the Course of Your Life

The right book at the right time is a powerful thing. In fact, it can change the whole course of your life. Reading Marcus Aurelius can change your life, but only if you know how to read his work 👉 Head here now to grab your Meditations book and guide bundle | https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/meditations-month-2026📕 Book mentioned: Meditations translated by Gregory Hayes 🎥 VIDEO EPISODES | Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 📢 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 bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:14Ryan Holiday?

  The right book at the right time is a powerful thing. In fact, it can change the whole course of your life. Sometime in the first century A.D., a young Marcus Aurelius was given a copy of Epictetus's lectures from his teacher's own library. Walking the halls one day as a grad student at Stanford, a professor invited James Stockdale into his office. Reaching behind him, he too grabbed a worn copy of Epictetus off the shelf and handed it to this promising young man. Not only did these books change the lives of the people they were given to, Marcus Aurelius relying on it when he became emperor, and Stockdale as a prisoner of war, but it may have indirectly changed your life too.

• 0:57Ryan Holiday?

  How many people heard about the Stoics from these two evangelists? How many people has their example inspired? And there's actually another impressionable kid whose life was changed by such a recommendation. Who? Who, you might ask? Me. When I first picked up Meditations 18 years ago, I had no idea how much that book would impact my life. I had no idea the immense and positive impact this ancient philosophy that I'd never heard about would have on my relationship with family and friends, but also the relationship I had with myself. I certainly had no idea that I'd one day write books about Stoicism or that these books would sell millions of copies and lead to a global resurgence of the philosophy today. You would not be reading or listening to this right now

• 1:41Ryan Holiday?

  without someone doing for me what Junius Rusticus did for Marcus Aurelius and Professor Rhinelander did for Stockdale. I seem to remember my copy, the Modern Library Edition, with a beautiful translation from Gregory Hayes arriving right after I ordered it. But recently searching my email for that order number tells me otherwise. Instead, I found an angry customer service ticket where a teenager was angrily complaining about a few-day shipping delay. How badly I then needed those words in 652 of Meditations. You don't have to turn this into something. It doesn't have to upset you. Reading those lines again, I'm reminded of the strange magic within Meditations.

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  Because when Marcus says "you," as in "you have to assemble your life action by action," or "the things you think about determine the quality of your mind," he is obviously speaking to himself. And because he never intended those words to be read by anyone, this exercise in self-improvement is so radically sincere and earnest, even painfully so at times, that it actually has the unintended benefit of speaking directly to you, helping all of us with our common problems. And as unrelatable as antiquity might seem, human beings remain ever the same. This is why Meditations has endured for almost 2,000 years, why great leaders throughout history have carried it into battle, why businessmen and athletes and stay-at-home moms

• 3:05Ryan Holiday?

  and so many others turn to it for guidance today, forth whatever struggles and obstacles they face. However, I believe that Marcus and his Meditations wouldn't have the impact it has had today if it weren't for this beautiful English translation by Gregory Hayes. It was that translation that I first picked up all those years ago, and I think it remains one of the best you can get today. And when The Daily Stoic decided to publish a leather-bound edition of that, there was no question which translation we were going to ask for. It was going to be the Hayes translation. And you can grab copies of that, I'll link to it in today's show notes. But if you're curious about what Meditations has meant to me, or you have questions about that book or Marcus Aurelius, I would love to invite you. We're doing a live Q&A session. We're going to do a deep dive into Meditations.

• 3:50Ryan Holiday?

  And if you get our "How to Read Marcus Aurelius's Meditations," this guide we made with Daily Stoic, that's how you can receive your invite. And you can bundle it with a copy of Meditations for some savings and a bunch of other awesome stuff. So just head over to dailystoic.com/meditations to grab those and learn about Meditations Month here at Daily Stoic. That's dailystoic.com/meditations.