5 Powerful Insights From Stoic Women

The Stoics believed this philosophy transcended any individual human being or society with it being based on the universal principles of life. In this episode Ryan Holiday outlines 5 of the most powerful insights that he’s gathered from Stoic women. Musonius Rufus—Epictetus’s teacher—was the most vocal on the matter: “It is not men alone who possess eagerness and a natural inclination towards virtue, but women also. Women are pleased no less than men by noble and just deeds, and reject the opposite of such actions. Since that is so, why is it appropriate for men to seek out and examine how they might live well, that is, to practise philosophy, but not women?“Watch the video: https://youtu.be/puJa6Ls1PGATalkspace is an online and mobile therapy company. Visit talkspace.com and get $100 off your first month when you use promo code STOIC at sign-up. That’s $100 off at talkspace.com, promo code STOIC. As a member of Daily Stoic Life, you get all our current and future courses, 100+ additional Daily Stoic email meditations, 4 live Q&As with bestselling author Ryan Holiday (and guests), and 10% off your next purchase from the Daily Stoic Store. Sign up at https://dailystoic.com/life/ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck 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.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Weekend Edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:49Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to a Sunday episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I was just doing this quick talk with a, I guess it was a women's group, or it was all women, but it was a wonderful little book club that had read Stillness is the Key. And they asked me this interesting question. What would Stoicism look like had it been led by women? And it's something I've thought a lot about, obviously, in Lives of the Stoics. I tried to speak about not just Stoicism's pioneering belief that men and women should both be taught philosophy, but Portia Cato, Cato's daughter, who's such a brilliant and inspiring embodiment of the Stoic virtues. But Stoicism, like all history, is unfortunately

• 1:40Ryan Holiday?

  very masculine and male-driven, not because that's representative of who is or isn't Stoic, but just because of how society was structured. And so in today's episode, I want to talk about some Stoic insights from inspiring women. I want to talk about the feminine side of Stoicism, what we can learn from Stoic women. And I'm excited to share it from you. As Musonius Rufus, that's Epictetus' teacher, reminds us, "It is not men alone who possess eagerness and a natural inclination towards virtue, but women also. Women are pleased no less by men than noble and just deeds, and reject the opposite of such actions. Since that is so, why is it appropriate for men

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  to seek out and examine how they might live well? That is, to practice philosophy, but not women?" That he said that 2,000 years ago is wonderfully progressive and open-minded. And that's why in today's episode, I'm going to share some powerful insights I have learned from women in my life and in history about the wonderful Stoic principles that we talk about so often here.

• 2:49Ryan Holiday?

  Someone once thanked Eleanor Roosevelt for her passionate support of a piece of legislation. And she said, passionate, that word doesn't apply to me. And this is a really important distinction. The Stoics warn against the passions, being caught up in a passion about something, whether that's anger, or excitement, or enthusiasm, or anything like that. You know, there's this cliche that women are more emotional than men. I don't, I haven't found that to be true at all in my experience. But I have found that leaders are actually not passionate, or at least that passion can be a disadvantage for a leader. Right? George Bush is passionate about invading Iraq. A lot of the biggest mistakes I've made, the things I've jumped into, I was too passionate to see objectively. So the Stoics try to strip the passion out.

• 3:29Ryan Holiday?

  They try to look at it calmly, clearly, effectively, objectively, not driven by or blinded by passion. That doesn't mean you don't care about things. That doesn't mean you don't try to do things. You don't want to be driven by passion. You don't want to be described as passionate, as Eleanor Roosevelt said. You want to be something different.

• 3:51Ryan Holiday?

  Florence Nightingale is 16 years old when she first gets what she refers to now as "the call." It was calling her to something. She wasn't sure exactly, but she came to believe that this was nursing, helping wounded veterans of war. But one of the main reasons she doesn't pursue this call is she's scared of what her parents will think. They'd sooner she become a prostitute than a nurse. But eight years later, she waits for eight years, she gets the call again. And this time, the call says, "You're going to let what other people think get in the way of answering my call?" This time, she realizes that no, she has to do it. But it's still, it takes her another 18 years. The courage was calling, but she declines it for 16 years. But eventually, she's brave enough to do it. She plunges into this field.

• 4:34Ryan Holiday?

  Just a few months after she answers the call, she's in a hospital in the Crimea, revolutionizing nursing. So we all get the call. The question is, how soon are we going to answer it? Are we going to be brave enough to answer it? And are we going to let other things get in the way of the call that's calling us to whom we're meant to be?

• 4:57Ryan Holiday?

  Three lessons I learned from my wife Samantha. I remember we got in an argument once and I said something like, "You're frustrating me." She said, "Nobody can frustrate you. You're responsible for your own emotions." Which is true. The Stoics would say, "You can't make me angry." Epictetus says, "When you're offended, remember you're complicit in taking the offense." And I think about that always and we catch each other doing it to each other all the time. Number two, you can't watch a woman go through childbirth and not be amazed at the ordinary and also extraordinary courage of this dangerous, painful, insane thing that women not only do, but do for some reason often without anesthetic. It's totally insane.

• 5:40Ryan Holiday?

  But when you watch someone go through it, you realize it's not men who are tough. It's women who are tough at a level that men can't even comprehend. Number three, my wife likes to joke that one of us is a Stoic and the other writes about Stoicism, which is a great way of expressing something Epictetus said, which is, "Don't talk about your philosophy embodied." I actually find my wife is much more naturally Stoic than I am. In a lot of situations, I try to think to myself, "What would my wife naturally do in this situation?" That's what I have to will myself to do. And Stoicism is all about finding examples of people who inspire you to be what you're capable of being. And my wife has always been that for me.

• 6:19Ryan Holiday?

  There's a story I tell about Margaret Thatcher in the new book Courage is Calling. She's a young woman. She's an aspiring chemist and she's being interviewed at this big company. And she can see on the interviewer's paper across the table from her, she can read this upside down. He's written, "This woman is much too difficult to work here." And you can see how that could just suck the life, suck the ambition out of a person. It could make you doubt yourself and who you are. But this is why courage is so important. We have to have the courage to be ourselves, to not let things or life change us. Agrippinus, one of the early Stoics, talks about how he wants to be the red thread in a garment, the one that pops out. He doesn't want to be like everyone else. And neither should you. You have to have the courage to be who you are, to not be changed,

• 7:02Ryan Holiday?

  to not be beaten down by the status quo, by conventional wisdom, by how everyone else thinks and acts. You have to have the courage to be yourself.

• 7:14Ryan Holiday?

  Of all the Stoic philosophers, there was something different about Portia Cato. And you don't have to hear much about her to understand why she's been so inspiring for so many thousands of years. Portia was introduced to Stoicism as a child by her father, the towering Stoic Cato the Younger, and she quickly dedicated herself to this philosophy, even after her own husband was killed during Rome's civil war, even after the fall of the Republic that her family had cherished, even after the tragic death of her first child, we're told that Portia remained resolute. And still more true, Plutarch wrote, is that the daughter of Cato was deficient neither in prudence or in courage.

• 7:58Ryan Holiday?

  In fact, Portia picked up the pieces of her shattered life and eventually remarried to a man named Brutus. As a knowing wife, she quickly intuited that her husband was planning something in 44 B.C., but she wasn't sure what. Instead of demanding that he explain himself, she decided she would prove her trustworthiness and fortitude. Plutarch writes that Portia took a small knife and stabbed herself in the thigh and then waited to see how long she could stand the pain. Bleeding profusely and shaking in near delirium from her wound, when her husband finally came home, she grabbed him and said, "Brutus, I am Cato's daughter, and I was brought into your house not as a concubine to share your bed and board,

• 8:42Ryan Holiday?

  but to be a partner in your joys and in your troubles. You are faultless as a husband," she said, "but how can I show you my service if I am to share neither in your suffering or anxiety, which craves a loyal confidant? I know that women's nature is thought too weak to endure a secret," she said, "but good rearing and excellent companionship have gone far towards strengthening my character, and it is my happy lot to be both the daughter of Cato and the wife of Brutus." Before this, referring to her wound, she said, "I put less confidence in my advantages, but now I know that I am superior even to pain." Brutus was so moved by what he witnessed. That he not only informed his wife of the plot to kill Julius Caesar,

• 9:26Ryan Holiday?

  but committed to proving himself worthy of her courage and commitment. And on the Ides of March, we get a sense of that courage, and how large it loomed in Brutus's mind. He and the conspirators descended on Caesar with a savagery that surprised both the victim and himself. The historians tell us that Portia was out of her mind with worry, and yet she remained strong, waiting for her husband to come home. Civil war would follow the assassination, and Portia and Brutus would be separated. As he left his wife, Brutus realized he was leaving behind no Penelope, but that his wife was a warrior, a conspirator, more than his equal.

• 10:11Ryan 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.