Are You Too Much Of A Coward? | Where Philosophy Begins

It’s good that you’re tough. It’s good that you’re a fighter—maybe even trained in wrestling, as so many of the Stoics were. It’s good that you’re a risk taker, that you’ve put yourself out there, pushed through fear and doubt to do what others were afraid to do. But it’s important you don’t forget that there is more to the virtue of courage than just this. There’s a great song that talks about “being too much a coward to admit when you’re in need.” Marcus Aurelius makes a similar note to himself in Meditations, reminding himself that even the bravest, toughest soldiers sometimes have to reach a hand up and ask a comrade for help. What of it, he basically says, that’s part of the job too.-In today's Daily Stoic excerpt, Ryan reminds us that philosophy is intimidating, that we begin our journey into philosophy when we become aware of the ability to analyze our own minds. You can grab the leatherbound edition of The Daily Stoic here.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee 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.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from The Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

• 0:42Ryan Holiday?

  Are you too much of a coward? It's good that you're tough. It's good that you're a fighter, maybe even trained in wrestling, as so many of the Stoics were. It's good that you're a risk taker, that you've put yourself out there, pushed through fear and doubt to do what others are afraid to do. But it's important that you don't forget that there is much more to the virtue of courage than just this. There's a great song that talks about being too much of a coward to admit when you are in need. Marcus Rilis makes a similar note to himself in Meditations, reminding himself that even the bravest, toughest soldiers sometimes have to reach a hand up and ask a comrade for help. "What of it?" he basically says, "That's part of the job, too." Stoicism is not just invulnerability,

• 1:23Ryan Holiday?

  if such a thing exists. Stoicism is having the self-awareness to know when you are struggling. It's having the courage to admit when you could use a hand. It's having the wisdom not to pretend that you know the answer. "You can't learn what you think you already know," Epictetus says. "It takes daring and toughness to go to therapy," perhaps more than just white knuckling it does. "It's a brave thing to share your struggles with a friend, or hire a coach or an expert to help you get better at something." It takes a confident person to ask a question or admit, "I don't know." Don't be like the cowards who are too fragile or fearful to do this. Be truly courageous. That's obviously the idea behind Courage is Calling, my book on the first of the Stoic

• 2:05Ryan Holiday?

  virtues, which, you know, spends a good time talking about. Courage is not just running into a burning building, or, you know, betting it all on some crazy idea. It's also asking for help. It's being vulnerable. It's sharing, opening up, all that stuff. So if you haven't read Courage is Calling yet, I think you'll like it.

• 2:37Ryan Holiday?

  Where Philosophy Begins. This is the March 1st entry in The Daily Stoic. Today's quote, it's from Epictetus's Discourses. This ends our streak of like, five weeks of Marcus Aurelius entries in a row. I swear, the book actually is a mix of coincidence, just a coincidence, I guess. But this is from Epictetus's Discourses 126. "An important place to begin in philosophy is this: a clear perception of one's own ruling principle." Philosophy is intimidating. Where does one start? With books? With lectures? With the sale of your worldly possessions? None of these things.

• 3:22Ryan Holiday?

  Epictetus is saying that one becomes a philosopher when they begin to exercise their guiding reason and start to question the emotions and beliefs and even the language that others take for granted. It is thought that an animal has self-awareness when it is able to fully recognize itself in a mirror. Perhaps we could say that we begin our own journey into philosophy when we become aware of the ability to analyze our own minds. Can you start with that step today? When you do, you'll find that from it, we really come alive, that we live lives, to paraphrase Socrates, that are actually worth living. You know, it's funny, as I was reading this, I was thinking of the other thing from Socrates.

• 4:06Ryan Holiday?

  Socrates takes, one of, Socrates has two famous encounters with the oracle at Delphi. The first one says, you know, "Is there any man wiser than Socrates?" And the Delphi says, "No." I was actually just reading Emily Wilson's fascinating little biography of Socrates, and she says, you know, "One way to think about this is that actually, the Delphi was saying, there's no one wiser than Socrates." Not that Socrates is wiser, that the Delphi was saying, basically, or that the oracle was basically saying, "Everyone is dumb and not very wise." But that's neither here nor there. The thing that Socrates takes from the oracle, that he basically founds his philosophical thinking and practice around, which...

• 4:49Ryan Holiday?

  The Stoics love and admire and talk about so much and ultimately sort of trace their lineage back to Socrates takes his cue from a famous inscription at the oracle that the one that says, "Know thyself," right? And I think that's what Epictetus is saying here. When we have the ability, the philosophy starts at home. It starts by knowing the self, by asking the self questions, by getting in touch with this power we have, which is our rational mind, and also understanding, I think, that we are not always inherently rational, right?

• 5:30Ryan Holiday?

  And so, of course, philosophy is also big theoretical questions and it requires enormous brain power and study, but it also, I think, starts somewhere much simpler, much more accessible. What we're doing here in this podcast, what we do in the books, what we do by just thinking about this stuff and asking ourselves questions, questioning what we think, questioning other people, right? That's what Socrates did. He went around and he asked questions. Then he asked questions about those answers and he kept going and going and going. He didn't necessarily

• 6:11Ryan Holiday?

  get to an answer exactly, but he did somehow get to some clarity in that. And even, you know, to go back to the thing about is anyone wiser than Socrates, right? Socrates gets this sort of enigmatic answer and he just goes and he asks and he has to think about himself too. He goes, "I don't feel wise. I don't think that I'm smarter than other people. So why, why would I be considered potentially the wisest man in Athens?"

• 6:45Ryan Holiday?

  And that's where he slowly eventually comes to this realization that maybe his the wisdom, maybe his superpower is that he knows what he doesn't know, or he knows that he knows little. And from this place of intellectual humility, but fundamentally from this place of self-awareness, the ability to examine himself, to put himself up to the test, to know himself. That's where his wisdom began. That's what it was all about. And to me, that's, you know, such a great entry point in to Stoic philosophy and a

• 7:23Ryan Holiday?

  great entry point in to the month of March. Hopefully, the weather is warming up where you are. Hopefully, things are getting better. Hopefully, you're coming out of maybe that winter funk a little bit. I'll give you like, knowing that I tend to get a little depressed in the winter, then I get grouchy and that the longer it goes on, like, just, just when I feel like I can't keep doing this, I gotta make major changes in my life, you know, the, the seasons start to shift and suddenly I feel better. I got more energy, like, the, there's light at the end of the tunnel, all of that is going, oh, okay. And then it's only somewhat recently, after being alive for three plus decades, that I have the awareness

• 8:04Ryan Holiday?

  to go, oh, that's a force that's operating on me here, that's changing and influencing and directing, you know, my opinions, my emotions, my actions, my aversions and desires. And hopefully, I'll be a little better at that this year. Talk to y'all soon.

• 8:39Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.