This is How To Be Smart (Or At Least Not Dumb) | Following The Doctor's Orders

We can avoid being swept up in the newest fad or the oldest con. We can stop reliving the same mistake. 📖 Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan Holiday is out NOW! Grab a copy here: https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work📘 Grab the hardcover edition of The Daily Stoic here: https://store.dailystoic.com/🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 📢 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 Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  This is How to Be Smart, or at least, Not Dumb. Look, some people are just not right. They didn't receive much of an education, or they weren't much interested when they were getting one. Some people receive genetic gifts and others don't. Some people get kicked in the head, or a worm eats part of their brain. Maybe we ourselves are not exactly geniuses. But you know what? That doesn't really matter. Success and happiness in life doesn't require being a genius. It begins with not being a fool. This is one of the ideas at the center of the new book, Wisdom Takes Work, which is the fourth book in the Stoic approach series about wisdom. In fact, the whole middle of the book

• 1:40Ryan Holiday?

  is about avoiding the traps that make really smart people really stupid, which, again, is key. For instance, Marcus Rilis doesn't credit Rusticus, his philosophy teacher, with making him brilliant. He thanks him for two things: for teaching him not to be satisfied with just getting the gist of things, and for showing him how not to fall for every smooth talker. That is, to say he helped him to avoid two timeless pitfalls in life: superficiality and grifters.

• 2:12Ryan Holiday?

  If we can avoid ego, if we can cultivate a smidge of self-awareness, if we can try not to let our emotions blind us, we have already struck enormous blows against stupidity in life. We can avoid being swept up in the newest fad or the oldest con, and we can remain ever curious, wanting to actually go deep into things and not just stay on the surface. And if we can do that, we're already winning. By the way, we still have some signed first editions of Wisdom Takes Work. If you're interested, you can grab one right now at dailystoic.com/wisdom. We will run out. I will stop signing them here very, very shortly. And I would appreciate it if you supported the new book. Thanks to everyone who read it. Thanks to everyone who reviewed it on Amazon. All that means so much to me.

• 2:57Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks for supporting me on this crazy journey the last six years. I really appreciate it, and I hope you like the new book.

• 3:14Ryan Holiday?

  Following the doctor's orders, this is today's entry in The Daily Stoic. Just as we commonly hear people say that the doctor prescribed someone particular riding exercises, or ice baths, or walking without shoes, we should, in the same way that nature prescribed someone to be diseased or disabled, or to suffer any kind of impairment. In the case of the doctor, prescribed means something ordered to help aid someone's healing. But in the case of nature, it means that what happens to each of us is ordered to help aid our destiny. Marcus Aurelius's Meditations 5:8. It is funny, right, to think about in the Roman days, someone being prescribed to walk without shoes,

• 3:57Ryan Holiday?

  or to ride a horse, also, I guess, better than being prescribed bleeding. But we'll get to today's meditation. The Stoics were masters at analogies and used them as a tool to help strengthen their reasoning. Here, Marcus Aurelius observes how willingly we will put up with unpleasantness if commanded by the magic words "doctor's orders." The doctor says that you've got to take this nasty medicine, and you'll do it. The doctor tells you that you have to start sleeping. Hanging upside down like a bat, you'll feel silly, but soon enough you'll get to dangling because you think it will make you better. On the other hand, when it comes to external events, we fight like hell if anything happens contrary to our plans. But what if, Marcus asked, the doctor had prescribed the exact same thing as a part of our treatment?

• 4:41Ryan Holiday?

  What if it's as good as taking our medicine? What's so magical about those words the doctor orders is that feel like we don't have a choice. Of course, you don't have to listen to the doctor. I guess some people don't listen to their doctors, but you go, oh, well, they know better. They chose this for me. That's what the treatment of this disease ailment sickness is. Who am I to object? I will accept it and I will go along with it because I want to get better. But then when you're stuck in traffic or you're a job turns out to be harder than you thought, or a relationship turns out to be more difficult than you thought, you have to do anything that you didn't expect,

• 5:21Ryan Holiday?

  you didn't want, you don't like, because you feel like you have a choice in the matter, you don't want to do it. But what if, Marcus is saying, actually, this too is chosen to make you better. And in a sense, that's what the obstacle is the way as a philosophy is really about. It's this idea that these things aren't things we have to do. They're things we get to do, things that were chosen for us. You can see it as some sort of higher power, if you want. You can see it as fate, if you want. You could just simply see it as a thing, but that it is something that's going to make you better, that it was assigned to you, right? In meditations, Marcus Rios talks about how he goes, it's unfortunate that this happened.

• 6:06Ryan Holiday?

  And then it catches him, no, it's fortunate that it happens to me, right? He was saying, oh, no, wait, this was chosen for me. I am right for this. This is right for me. So stop fighting, stop pushing against the thing and see it as a prescription. See it as part of the process. See it as an assignment you've been given. How will you handle it? Are you going to be a good patient or a bad patient, a good student or a bad student? This is everything. These things were chosen for you and all you have to do in turn is choose them back.

• 6:49Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please, spread the word. Tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.