It Blows You Away | Just Say No to Future Misery

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:44Ryan Holiday?

  It blows you away.

• 0:48Ryan Holiday?

  There's an initial skepticism to any ancient philosophy. How could these dusty, old, dead guys, usually rich, white guys, possibly relate to my life? What could they possibly understand about the modern world? But perhaps that's what makes the first time one reads the Stoics such a powerful experience, as Joe Rogan recently talked about when he had me as a guest. You pick up even a half decent translation of Marcus Aurelius, and somehow, space and time and status falls away, and you're communing with the emperor of Rome. The same thing with the writings of Epictetus. How could you possibly relate to the experiences of a slave? Yet Stockdale did, finding that Epictetus explained everything he needed to know after being shot out of the sky in a jet

• 1:33Ryan Holiday?

  and taken prisoner by a communist guerrilla army. Why is this? Well, the Stoics would dispute any credit to their brilliant writing style or philosophical genius, though both were true. It's because, as the philosophy teaches, people are people, and life is life. The ancient world was very different than ours, but it was also exactly the same. People were ambitious. Siblings argued over money. Marriages were pulled apart by betrayal and temptation. Fate delivered painful news. What could go wrong, did. Plagues, wars, political dysfunction, that was their world then, just as it is our world now. And the things they discovered about themselves living in that world, while they're as simple and as true today as they were then, focus on what you control.

• 2:16Ryan Holiday?

  Be good, be brave. Avail yourself of the wisdom of the past.

• 2:28Ryan Holiday?

  Just say no to future misery.

• 2:33Ryan Holiday?

  How often we make ourselves miserable in advance, out of fear of this, out of desperate hope for that. When we focus on pining for, avoiding a certain future, we make ourselves miserable here in the present. Hikado of Rhodes, a great student of the Middle Stoic scholar Panatius, taught that this misery is always tied to hopes and fears that we have of imagined future outcomes. And so from this, Seneca reminds us to say no to both, because indulging in hope or fear robs us of the ability to enjoy the present. So today, try not to think so much about the future, what you hope will happen, what you fear might, and just focus

• 3:15Ryan Holiday?

  on right now. Be where you are with what you're doing, what you're thinking right now. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living by yours truly, Ryan Holiday. You can pick this up anywhere books are sold. I use this journal myself every single day. And you can also pick up a signed copy at store.dailystoic.com. "It's ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery," Seneca writes in Moral Letters, "engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its own until the very end. For such a soul will never be at rest by longing

• 3:55Ryan Holiday?

  for things to come that will lose the ability to enjoy present things." Then Seneca, again, "There is no reason to live and no limit to our miseries if we let our fears predominate." And then, going back to the original quote, Seneca in Moral Letter says, "Hikado says, cease to hope and you will cease to fear. Primary cause of both these ills, that instead of adapting ourselves to the present circumstances, we send out our thoughts too far ahead." You know, it's funny, in my podcast interview with Oliver Berkman in his new book, 4,000 Hours, he quoted something that he said is a real British expression, but I had actually heard a couple of days earlier in Ted Lasso, the idea that it's the hope that kills you.

• 4:43Ryan Holiday?

  Which it's not that the Stoics are nihilists who, you know, don't hope, it's that they try to get to a place of indifference where they're just like, whatever will be, will be, I'm gonna be good with it. This is also a theme that came up in my interview with Dr. Edith Egger, who wrote The Choice, which was about her experience in the Holocaust. And she talks about how there was a person who knew she knew in the camps, who thought they would get out, be freed by a certain date. And then the woman died on that day of despair, of disappointment. And Admiral Stockdale talks about this, that it was the optimists who got crushed. Right? Because they said, oh, in March, oh, in June, oh, by Christmas. But this was not something in their control. And so in a way, hope is the same as fear.

• 5:28Ryan Holiday?

  It's to hand over your happiness, your contentment, your ability to continue on to some arbitrary thing, or event, or person, or intervention in the future, which is not up to you. I've been trying to think about that during the pandemic. It just is, man, it just is. It'll be over at some point, but I don't need it to be over by any point. I'm gonna adjust to what is. I'm gonna accept it unflinchingly, in the sense that it simply is. I'm gonna adapt to it, I'm gonna adjust to it, I'm gonna make the most of it. I'm gonna be here now. I'm not going to rob myself of the present.

• 6:12Ryan Holiday?

  Right? The person who needs it to be a certain way, or needs it to not be that way. And that's why they're afraid. Seneca's right, that soul will never be at rest. And by longing for things, or by fearing things, we lose the ability to enjoy present things. I thought this little phrase is particularly a good one. And I think it's worth repeating again, where he says, "To be miserable in advance of misery."

• 6:39Ryan Holiday?

  That's what fear is, right? But hope is just the opposite of that. It's just being delusional in anticipation of an event outside your control, which often will be misery. So just try to put fear or hope aside. Just try to be, be here with this, whatever it is, wherever you are, whether that's a plane ride you have today, whether that's traffic you're stuck in, whether it's a job you have a couple more months left in, or maybe it's just, maybe it's battling an illness or a blown out knee. Just is, don't magically hope it's going to get better. Don't fear it getting worse. Just be with it now.

• 7:23Ryan Holiday?

  Focus on what you can do now. Enjoy present things as best you can. Be indifferent, as the Stoics say, which is to say, good with any of the possibilities, because you are good, you are capable. And that's the Stoic prescription for you this week. Say no to future misery. It's not worth it. I'll talk to you soon.

• 7:58Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at dailystoic.com/email.