It’s Not Much, But It Adds Up

"Don’t think of wisdom as something you get via epiphany or even a couple years of graduate school. No, it’s something you accumulate day by day—action by action, as Marcus Aurelius put it—over the course of a lifetime."Ryan points out the wisdom that can build up from small steps on today's Daily Stoic Podcast. And for another source of daily wisdom, get your 2021 Daily Stoic Page-a-Day Calendar! They're available now at the Daily Stoic web store: https://store.dailystoic.com/products/daily-stoic-calendar***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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 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. It's not much, but it adds up. In his letters to Lucilius, Seneca maintains an ongoing exchange with his dear friend. Indeed, you could argue this was the sole or the sole purpose of their letters. Seneca, having instructed his friend to find one thing each day that would fortify him against death, despair, fear, or adversity, does his best

• 0:51Ryan Holiday?

  in these letters to provide him with such a takeaway each time. Sometimes it's a quote from one of the Stoics, sometimes it's a quote from Epicurus, that crafty rival of theirs. Sometimes it's an exercise, or a story, or a command. But in each case, Seneca is explicit. "Here's your lesson for the day," he says. "Here's your one thing." Now, "one thing" might not seem like a lot, but that's not the point. The point is that not much adds up if you do it a lot. That was Zeno's point when he said that well-being is realized by small steps but is no small thing, a nugget worthy of one of Seneca's letters, to be sure. And George Washington's favorite expression was that many mickeys make a muckle. That's the same idea. Don't think of wisdom as something you get via

• 1:36Ryan Holiday?

  epiphany or even a couple of years of graduate school. No, it's something you accumulate day in and day out over the course of a lifetime. Imagine what you'd know and what you'd have learned if you just found one good, eye-opening, thought-provoking thing each day. Imagine how much wiser Lucilius became after reading each of those 124 letters from his friend. One thing every day, one thing that fortifies you, teaches you, challenges you, makes you question, gets you to see. It's not much, but man, it does add up. And look, if you want one quote a day, just like the kind that Seneca was talking about, good news, our Daily Stoic 2021 calendar is now back in stock. These sell out fast each year, so order now in the Daily Stoic store.