Are You Better or Worse?

Ryan talks about why you should look inward and examine yourself critically. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and 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 Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday 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.

• 0:28Ryan Holiday?

  Are you better or worse? As we said yesterday, the last two years have been an ordeal, an almost biblical test of all of us, individually and collectively. In 165 AD, Marcus Aurelius and Rome were struck with a plague. It had been brought from the east by soldiers, but it soon overwhelmed the country in the empire. Bodies piled up in the streets, the economy was devastated, civic institutions crumbled. Like all such trials, Marcus Aurelius decided to see this as a test. Would he be made better or worse by what happened? Would he practice the virtues of courage and justice and temperance and wisdom? Or the vices of fear and selfishness and ignorance and recklessness? And so it goes for us. We were tested.

• 1:13Ryan Holiday?

  And now it's worth evaluating. What were the results? Recently, we spoke about the tangible stuff. How many books did you read? What habits did you form? How did you adapt and adjust your routine for this new world? Well, today, it's worth looking at some more important metrics: your character. Marcus Aurelius, writing during the Antonine Plague, talked about how a pandemic could take your life as well as destroy your character. Well, how did yours do? Did you fall prey to conspiracy theories? Were you safe or stupid? Did you get addicted to the news and outrage? Or did you take care of your community as best you could? Did you take your frustrations out on your family? Did you lose your compassion for others? Or did it grow? Perhaps you're lucky to say that no one you know has died in this terrible pandemic.

• 1:58Ryan Holiday?

  But sadly, all of us know people who were made worse by it. They started drinking again. They were radicalized politically. They became selfish or cruel. Perhaps you did that. Well, this is why the Stoics stopped and reflected, why they journaled, why they turned constantly back to their philosophy. So they could improve, so they could protect their character, so they could assess their decisions and adapt when necessary. You must do the same. You must look inward. You must examine yourself critically. You must journal on the prompt. The last two years have been a test. Have they made you a better person or a worse one?

• 2:34Ryan 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.