Ask Daily Stoic: December 28, 2019

In each of the Ask Daily Stoic Q&A episodes, Ryan will answer questions from fans about Stoicism. You can also find these videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel. See 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.

• 0:05Ryan 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.

• 0:28Ryan Holiday?

  All right, welcome to Ask Daily Stoic, where we answer your Stoic-inspired questions. The first question we've got today are, "What are five habits that can improve my life?" So I've got a couple for you. So, number one, I would say, wake up early, right? Marcus Aurelius opens Book V of Meditations with talking about waking up early, about getting out from under the covers. You don't accomplish great things laying in bed. You've got to get up early. And I like to get up early because that's where the stillness is. There's fewer interruptions. You know, it's just great. I think the next thing from the Stoics would be journaling, right? Are you sitting down and spending some time putting pen or pencil to paper and preparing, or reviewing, or reflecting on what lies ahead,

• 1:11Ryan Holiday?

  on what you did recently, on, you know, just things you want to improve or get better? Marcus Aurelius's Meditations is the way that he gets to where he gets at the end of his life. That's how he accumulates wisdom. He's writing down these lessons, these observations. He's following Epictetus's advice, which is to keep these ideas and words around you all the time and to be sort of engaging with them on a deep and active level. The other I would say is like, go for a walk. Every morning when I get up, I go for a long walk. This morning, I went about three and a half miles with my son. Didn't take the phone. Got up early. Was outside. I was active. You know, Seneca, he talks about, he's like, "Look, a mind overstressed is easily fractured." He says, "You have to

• 1:52Ryan Holiday?

  take long, wandering walks." And there is a reason. Almost every philosopher is an active walker. Putting the body in motion is a way to activate the brain at a deeper level that's really good. I think you would have a better life if, and I know I'm just a Something I'm actively working on in my life, the more kindnesses you can do for other people, the better your life will be. So pay for somebody's coffee when you're, uh, pay for the person behind you in line, leave a big tip, pick up trash. By the time, uh, you know, that you see laying by the side of the road, do something nice for other people. Seneca's line was, uh, every person you meet is an opportunity for kindness. And then the last thing is, are you making time for yourself in your life?

• 2:37Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus really says like, ask yourself at every moment, is this necessary? Do I need to do this or is this some made up obligation? So separating the essential from the inessential. So if I was like, uh, the fifth thing, if I was trying to improve your life, I just start saying no to things. Like what could you say no to? What doesn't matter? What don't you need to do anymore? And you will carve out more time for yourself, more time for philosophy and more time for happiness. If you can do that. The next question is, how can I stay calm in difficult situations? Well, to me, this is like the essence of Stoicism, right? Like the whole, even that's what the, the word stoic means in the sort of common parlance is like, how do you stay calm? How do you not be chirped around by your emotions?

• 3:17Ryan Holiday?

  So I think the first part is like, sort of asking yourself, is freaking out going to make this better? Yes or no, right? If freaking out is, and on the rare case, you know, go for it. But the, the reality is most of the time, strong emotions are not making situations better. You, there's something that your, you know, boyfriend or girlfriend is doing that's bothering you. Is yelling at them about it going to make them better? Is being angry about it or sad about it or depressed about it or worried about it? Is that making it better? No, talking to them kindly and nicely and rationally is what's going to make them better. Realizing that calm is contagious is really important too. So who do you surround yourself, right? That idea, you become the average of the people you spend time with.

• 4:02Ryan Holiday?

  Are you spending your time around calm people or are the people that you're around? Amping that up. So like if you're around people that are convinced politically that the sky is falling all the time, you're going to think that the sky is falling all the time. So realizing that calm is contagious and surrounding yourself with the right people is really important. At the core of the Stoic practice about this is like that idea of objectivity. Epictetus says it's not things that upset us, it's our judgment about things. So realizing that the events are objective, there is no good or bad, there is just what there is. And so reminding yourself, no, I got in a car accident, that's it. It's, I don't know that it's going to cost a fortune on my insurance company. I don't know that my back is going to be sore. I don't know that it was so and so's fault. I don't know

• 4:47Ryan Holiday?

  that this was terrible luck. I don't know that I got screwed over. You don't know any of that. All you know is that you got in a car accident. All you know is that somebody said something to you. You don't know that it was rude. You can't say for sure that it was ill intention. It just is what it is. So this objectivity is really important. And then when we realize that objectivity is important, this can lead to the last part, the thing that's very calming for me, which is reminding myself that I have the power to tell myself a different story about this event. So that idea of the obstacle being the way that I can choose for this to be good, I can choose for this to be a positive, is the power that I have. So I can't control that this thing happened, but I can control the story that I'm going to tell myself about it. So, you know, there's a famous story

• 5:30Ryan Holiday?

  about an employee who cost like Intel like $10 million. And the guy walks into his boss's office and he says, you know, you're going to fire me for this, right? The boss says, why would I fire you? I just paid $10 million teaching you something. And so that's a person who's decided that he's going to see this differently. He's going to see, he's going to, he knows that getting angry is not going to make it better. He knows that the event is objective, but then he could choose to tell himself a story, which is that he is now invested in this person, that this person has learned from it, and that they are both going to get better for it. That's how he was able to calmly and rationally successfully navigate a difficult situation. The third question for today is like, how can I find good books to read? This is a

• 6:12Ryan Holiday?

  question we get a lot. It's something I think about. So first off, like, There are lots of books on Stoicism, about Stoicism. I suggest you read all those. What I like to do when I'm reading, and this is how I found many of the Stoic texts that I like and many of my favorite books of all different stripes. My rule is like, what is a book that is mentioned in the book that I'm reading? So you're reading Marcus Aurelius and he mentions Epictetus. Well, check that person out. You're reading the introduction to Gregory Hayes's translation of Meditations and he mentions an essay by Matthew Arnold about Marcus Aurelius. Well, read that. And now you're introduced to this guy, Matthew Arnold. Well, who's he? Has someone written a book about him? What are some of the books that he's written?

• 6:57Ryan Holiday?

  So I kind of follow this chain method where each book that I'm reading, I read a different related book to that book. And so this has taken me down all sorts of fascinating rabbit holes. Where I'm not looking for books is the New York Times Book Review, or the New York Times Bestseller List, or the, you know, the new additions table at Barnes and Noble. I want to read a really good book and then I want to read the people that influenced or shaped the thinking in that book that I just read. So for me, this sort of chain method is really great. And so I would, I would suggest that. Obviously, in my books, that's one of the things I do. I have a recommended reading list at the back, but I'm also trying to cite different authors. And then obviously, they're all referenced in the bibliography, but like, don't just read randomly, don't just roll the dice.

• 7:42Ryan Holiday?

  Try to find connections between one book you're reading and another book that, that might be related to that. And then what you're getting is you're getting sort of overlapping ideas. So people ask how I'm able to read so fast. Well, one of the ways I'm able to do that is that I'm never reading about things that I'm utterly and completely unfamiliar with. I'm reading about related overlapping topics. And in doing that, I'm able to skim a little bit. I, I don't have to, I mean, I'm not, I'm never like, wait, what was that? I totally don't understand. But I'm, I'm sort of inching my way to understanding that way. So thanks, this is another great episode of Ask Daily Stoic. Keep your questions coming. You can email them to us at [email protected].