Pod Insights The Daily Stoic Premium (🔓) Have You Done This? | 13 Stoic Strategies For Conquering Your Anxiety About this episode Find ways to be of service. Find ways to pay forward the acts of charity and grace that we would not be here without. Locate a blood bank near you: redcrossblood.org🎥 Watch Sebastian Junger's interview on the Daily Stoic Podcast YouTube Channel📚 Check out Sebastian Junger’s books at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com🪙 We are the creators of our anxiety. Which means we can also be the ones to do something about it. Gain a powerful tool in your fight against anxiety and get the Daily Stoic Anxiety Coin today! https://store.dailystoic.com/📕 Grab a signed copy of Right Thing, Right Now by Ryan Holiday | https://store.dailystoic.com/✉️ 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 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
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Ryan Holiday? Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy.
0:29 Ryan Holiday? Have you done this? "It was a lovely afternoon at his home in Cape Cod. He was with his wife. They had nowhere to be and nothing to do. They were enjoying the stillness of the Massachusetts summer. They were enjoying each other. They did not know, they could not know, that death was in the room with them." Sebastian Junger, who's appeared on the Daily Stoic Podcast, absolute must-listen episodes, had ruptured an undiagnosed aneurysm in his pancreatic artery. He was bleeding to death internally, not even aware something was wrong until it was nearly too late. But this is not a memento mori lesson, although his amazing book, In My Time of Dying, is filled with an extended meditation on this idea, because
1:13 Ryan Holiday? Sebastian Junger lived. He was saved by 10 units of blood at a Cape Cod hospital. In other words, he writes, "10 anonymous blood donors saved my life." As a result, Junger now donates blood as often as possible, roughly three to four times a year. I myself donated last month, and I have my appointment to donate next month, exactly two months later. "Please donate at your nearest blood bank," he pleads. "You may well save the life of a child or a parent, and one day you may need blood yourself. There aren't many ways to be part of something greater than yourself," he writes, "and donating blood is one of the easiest and finest."
1:55 Ryan Holiday? The virtue of justice is not about law courts and judges and juries, as I explain in Right Thing Right Now. It's about things like this: finding ways to be of service, finding ways to pay forward the acts of charity and grace that we would not be here without, finding ways to be part of something bigger than yourself, finding ways to pull those rings from Hyrcles's circles, pull them inward to help people you have never met and will never know. I started giving blood, I think, two years ago. I don't know why I'd never done it before. And it's now one of the things I'm most proudest of having sort of built into my life. I'll link to where to find your local blood bank in today's show notes. But just
2:40 Ryan Holiday? Google "giving blood near you" and go do it. Go do it. You never know whose person you're gonna help. And as we said, it's about justice and charity and grace.
2:58 Ryan Holiday? Almost none of the things we worry about day to day are actually new.
3:06 Ryan Holiday? Humans have been worried about them, stressed about them, anxious about them for as long as there have been people. Marcus Aurelius lived through a plague. He lived through a series of historic floods. There were wars happening in distant parts of the empire. Seneca lived under political tyranny. So did Socrates. Zeno lost everything in a shipwreck and ended up basically bankrupt and destitute and had to rebuild his life. For all of human history, people have been dealing with disruptive technology. They've worried about their kids. They've worried about their own health. They've worried about whether they were gonna get promoted or not. These aspects of the human condition are timeless and relentless. This
3:51 Ryan Holiday? is why the Stoics talked so much about anxiety, about stress, about managing our emotions and not being ruled by them. I'm the same way. I have anxiety. I have stress. No amount of philosophy is just gonna eliminate- But there are tools and strategies that the Stoics can teach us about being less anxious, about not being ruled by our fears, and not being made miserable because we don't control what's going to happen next. And that's what I want to talk about in today's episode, some Stoic strategies for conquering your anxiety.
4:32 Ryan Holiday? No amount of philosophy, Seneca says, takes away our natural feelings or inclinations. I still get nervous before almost any talk. I have anxiety, I have nerves. One of the things I've been doing lately, I have this cool Stoic coin, and it's kind of a fidget, and I just spin it. I like to touch, it's got a hole in the middle, I just touch it like this. It has this quote from Epictetus on the front. Is this in my control, or is this not in my control? Is this up to me, or not up to me? That's the essence of Stoic philosophy. And I just kind of remember, Marx really says that you have to remember that thing is not causing us anxiety, we're causing the anxiety in ourselves. It's within us, which means that we can let it go. We don't have to give ourselves over to it. And so that's just one of the little things I remind myself. You have to remember, Stoic
5:13 Ryan Holiday? philosophy isn't this magical thing that removes all the flaws, and problems, and urges, and temptations we have inside of us. No, it's a framework for working through them, it's a set of tools for dealing with them. That's how I think about anxiety, and that's why I carry this with me.
5:34 Ryan Holiday? There's a tension in Stoicism. So on the one hand, Seneca says we should imagine all the things that could possibly happen. This is premeditatio malorum, says the unexpected blow lands heaviest. If you're just naively going through the world expecting everything to be wonderful, never considering that this might happen, or that might happen, you're going to be caught off guard, and it's going to rattle you and hurt you worse than if you had some ability to anticipate this. At the same time, he says, he who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary. He was talking about the way that we can sort of spiral and catastrophize. So it's important when we think about this premeditatio malorum, the Stoic idea of anticipating and considering what happens, it's not to torture ourselves, it's not just to go down this spiral of negativity and dumerism, it's to think proactively. Example, Napoleon said that three times a day, a general should say to themselves,
6:19 Ryan Holiday? "What if the enemy appeared over here? What if the enemy appeared over here? What if the enemy appeared over here?" He wasn't saying that he just wanted his generals to be really anxious and worried all the time. He was having them run through thought exercises. "If this happens, I'll do this. If this happens, I'll do this. If this happens, I'll do this." So when we think about this Stoic practice, it's not just for generalized anxiety or worry. It's constructive. Okay, if this happens, here's what I'm gonna do. If this happens, here's what I'm gonna do. It's focusing on how we might respond to this. So it should actually be empowering in some way, as opposed to disempowering and scary and alarming. You're thinking, "Here are the constructive things I can do about these hypotheticals. I believe that I have agency and power to solve this scenario if it were to happen."
7:06 Ryan Holiday? It's not just that we suffer more in imagination than we do in reality, as Seneca says. It's that we add suffering, right? So we're dreading this thing that might happen. Indeed, it might happen. But by thinking about it, walking ourselves through it, going over it, over and over and over again, living in it right now as if it will happen. What we're effectively doing is borrowing that suffering. We're like, "I want to deal with it now. I want to sit in it now. I want to feel it for longer." So we have to remember that this use of our creativity, the way we're thinking about the thing over and over again, we're living in it, we're actually just adding suffering on top of the thing that may or may not actually even happen.
7:48 Ryan Holiday? He began to study philosophy. His teacher, Kreides, gave him a bunch of weird tasks. One of them was to carry this pot of lentils through the Athenian agora. And Zeno had no idea why he was doing this, but the reason was that Kreides understood that his student was anxious and nervous and he cared way too much what other people thought of him. So as he's walking through the Athenian agora, where all of Athens is, Kreides sneaks up on him, smacks the pot with his staff, and it spills lentils all over him. And as Zeno stood there mortified, Kreides says, "Courage, my little Phoenician. It's just a little bit of soup."
8:25 Ryan Holiday? Therapy. He was trying to show him that it wasn't that bad, that this was all in his head. In fact, most people weren't paying attention. Nobody really cared. And even if they were, this embarrassment, this worst case scenario was not actually that bad. That he hadn't died, that it wasn't nearly as mortifying as he thought. Just trying to expose this to him, to toughen him up, to show him that the thing that he was so worried about wasn't so bad. A lot of Stoic philosophy is like this. It's to really put these impressions, these opinions, these worst case scenarios we've made up in our head to the test. And realize that the one thing they all have in common is us. In Meditations, Marcus Rios talks about how he escapes anxiety. He has a good day. And then he realizes, no, I didn't avoid it. I discarded it. It was within me. It was in my perception. And that's the lesson that Cradis is trying to teach Zeno in that story.
9:10 Ryan Holiday? He had the power to either be mortified or not mortified. And we have to practice this as Stoic philosophers.
9:21 Ryan Holiday? I do a pretty good job managing my finances. I make pretty good money. But I have one really expensive habit that I'm trying to quit. And it's an expensive habit that's cost me so much, that's caused me a lot of misery, a lot of frustration. It's caused me to miss out on a lot of things that are important to me. I don't have some secret gambling addiction. I don't have some terrible vice. Actually, I do. It is a vice. What I'm talking about is anxiety. And I would say nothing in my life has cost me more than anxiety. And I've gotten so little pleasure out of it. That's the terrible thing. It's no fun. There's no reward except a tiny bit of relief you get when the bad thing you were so worried about doesn't happen. And we don't tend to think of anxiety as an expensive habit, but it is.
10:06 Ryan Holiday? How many moments were you taken out of? How many experiences did you lose? How much strain was placed on relationships or connections because you were worried? You were stressed. You were scared. You were spiraling. You were thinking about not this moment that you're in, but this hypothetical moment of something that lay ahead. And that's really what anxiety is. Seneca says, "We suffer more in imagination than in reality." The emphasis there has to be on the suffering that anxiety. Causes us. I have this little reminder that I carry with me. Stoic philosophy is this quote from Epictetus about whether something is in our control or not in our control. That's what I try to ask myself when I'm getting worked up about something. Is this up to me? Is what I'm feeling about this thing, this, is it gonna happen?
10:50 Ryan Holiday? Are we gonna make the connection? Am I gonna get to the airport in time? Is it gonna be delivered? Is it gonna go my way here? You know, what I'm feeling, the stress that I'm feeling in that moment, isn't changing the outcome in any way, right? That's, that's why Epictetus was saying, we have to ask ourselves, is this up to me, or is it not up to me? Seneca says that he who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary. That's the reminder on the back. On the front, it's the auroboris is this image of the snake swallowing its own tail. And that's what we are doing. We are punishing ourselves. We are feasting on our own thoughts, our own worries, and it comes at an immense cost. And so it's something I'm trying to do better at. I'm not perfect at, but I hope to get better
11:30 Ryan Holiday? at it every day, and I hope you do too. By the way, you can check this out, dailystoic.com/anxiety.
11:42 Ryan Holiday? It may be reasonable that you're concerned about this thing. It would cause trouble if it happened. Again, so when the Stoics talk about how some things are in our control, some things are not in our control, what they're saying is, well, focus on what you control about this situation. Reminding yourself that, hey, just feeling anxiety, emoting about the problem, biting your nails about it, talking about it incessantly to people, it's not making it any more or less likely to happen. So try to put that energy to constructive use. Try to think about, okay, here's what I'm gonna do, here's what I can do, here are ways that I can influence this situation, or at least prepare myself to be resilient, or endure, or bounce back from it if it does happen, right? Put yourself to constructive use. Put yourself working on something that makes a
12:24 Ryan Holiday? difference. Just make sure you're not confusing spending mental bandwidth and energy and torturing yourself emotionally. Don't confuse that with making a positive difference.
12:39 Ryan Holiday? A Stoic is not someone who stuffs their emotions down. That's not it at all. The Stoics processed their emotions. This is why they journaled. Socrates went around asking these questions. This is why Seneca would write these letters to his friend Lucilius. We even have some of Marcus Aurelius's letters that survive. The Stoics were not stuffing their emotions down, pretending they don't have them. They were exploring them. The Stoics talk about taking an emotion when it hits you and putting it up to the test, observing it, meditating on it, processing it, getting to the bottom of it. If you just ignore your emotions, if you just conquer them, to me, it's like putting it on a credit card. Sure, you're not having to pay for it now, but eventually it's going to come due and the interest is going to make it even more expensive. So don't shut your emotions down.
13:23 Ryan Holiday? Deal with them, process them, explore them, get through them. Don't be ruled by them. But in ignoring them, you are guaranteeing that later, it's going to be an even bigger deal and you're going to be even more powerless over that emotion. So work on your emotions. Do not fall into this trap that the Stoics suppress their emotions. They domesticate them, as Nassim Taleb says. But first, that requires facing them and exploring them and coming to terms with them.
13:53 Ryan Holiday? You're being robbed and maybe you don't even see it. And what's worse is you're robbing yourself. Think about the times you left way earlier than you needed to because you were nervous or stressed. Think about that thing you went to and you were wrecked the whole time because you were thinking that something might go wrong while you were gone. Think about all that dread you felt these last couple of months convincing yourself that this bad news was inevitably going to come. And how did all that end up going? What became of it? You missed time with your family. You spent it instead, you know, waiting at the gate at the airport. You missed the vacation. You missed the outing with friends because although you were there, you were not actually present. You built up this whole scenario in your head that turned out to be way worse compared to what actually happened. This is why Seneca said, "We suffer more in imagination than in reality."
14:38 Ryan Holiday? And what he was talking about is our anxiety. He was talking about our worries. And I want you to think about how much anxiety has stolen from you. Those racing thoughts, those worries, those doubts, that dread. Think about how much you missed because of it. How often did it actually turn out to benefit you? How often were you actually right? That's the funny thing. Anxiety is sometimes right, way more often than not. It's totally. Off the mark. And the problem with this idea that we suffer more in imagination than we do in reality, we are suffering in reality. Seneca says, "He who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary." We are suffering on top of the thing that may or may not actually happen. But it's so hard to remember that when you're in that vice grip of anxiety or worry,
15:23 Ryan Holiday? that spiral, what about this? What about this? What about this? And this is something that the Stoics think a lot about. Epictetus's critical question was, "Is this in my control?" Because so much of what we're emoting about, worried about, thinking about, isn't affecting the outcome in any way. It's not making a difference at all.
15:45 Ryan Holiday? So this thing that you're anxious about, that you're dreading, that you don't want to happen. One question you can ask yourself, Marx realized, is, "How does it stop you?" This other person, this unfairness, this bad act, how does it stop you from acting with courage and justice and wisdom and discipline? How does it stop you from acting with the four virtues? And you realize it doesn't. Look, there can be a whole bunch of things that you don't want to happen. And they're not going to be fun if they happen, that are going to cause problems. But they can't prevent you from doing your main job, from doing what's actually important, from acting and living with virtue. Not only can these things not stop you from acting with courage and discipline and justice and wisdom, but in fact, they're opportunities to act with courage and justice and discipline and wisdom.
16:26 Ryan Holiday? Look, it's a bad use of your creativity. The time you're spending imagining what might happen, the conversations you're making up in your head, the things that you think people are thinking about you. This is a bad way to deploy your creativity. You're using it to make yourself miserable. You're imagining these terrible scenarios. Notice you're never imagining things going well, people liking you. You're putting your imagination to work on your anxiety, on your self-consciousness, on your doubt, and it's just not a good use of it. The Stoics would say our mind is this incredibly powerful thing. How are you going to deploy it? How are you going to use it? Are you going to use it to torture yourself? Are you going to use it to move yourself forward, to solve problems or create them?
17:12 Ryan Holiday? Marcus Aurelius writes to himself, he says, "Fight to be the person philosophy wants you to be." And I just love that so much. It's that Stoicism has this ideal for you to be, someone who's resilient, someone who's strong, someone who's virtuous, someone who's kind, who cares about the common good, someone who isn't easily rattled, someone who's committed to bettering themselves. That's what Stoicism wants for you. That's what the Stoics have been writing about for centuries. That's what we do in these videos and the daily Stoic email. That's the ideal. But the question is, are you fighting for yourself? Are you fighting to be that thing? Are you striving today to get a little bit closer to that perfect ideal? Are you fighting for yourself? The Stoics can't make you be or do anything.
17:56 Ryan Holiday? They can just lay out the formula, but it's ultimately on you to follow it, to step up and actually be it. That's what I want you to think about today.
18:10 Ryan Holiday? One thing that's never changed about the world is how much of it's out of our control. 2,000 years ago, it was largely out of the control of all the Stoics. Even Marcus Aurelius, the most powerful man in the world, most things are not in his control. When we have a way we'd like things to go, we know they might not go that way. What does that create? That creates anxiety. And so for thousands of years, the Stoics have been dealing with this thing that you and I are still dealing with today. We get nervous, we worry, we have anxiety, we have fears and dread. Marcus Aurelius in Meditations talks about how he had a good day because he escaped anxiety. And then he actually corrects himself. He goes, "Actually, no, I didn't escape it. I discarded it because it was within me." He's realizing that he is the common variable in all the situations that cause him anxiety, just as you are.
18:54 Ryan Holiday? Anxiety is within us, so we want to work on it and think about it so it doesn't rule our lives or ruin our lives.
19:05 Ryan Holiday? I try to remind myself constantly that this moment is enough. I don't need to be anywhere. I don't need to do anything. I don't need to become anything other than I am at this very moment in time, at this very place that I am, in this very instant. That's it. It's enough. The Stoics talk about poverty being not just a thing about your finances, but about needing, desiring, wishing, hoping, fearing that you are anything but what you are at this very instant. To become present, to lock in, that's the key to everything to me. That's what stillness is about. And that's really what happiness is too.
19:42 Ryan Holiday? If you want more wisdom inspired from the Stoics, I send out one Stoic-themed email every single morning, totally for free. You can sign up at dailystoic.com/email. No spam. You can unsubscribe at any time. I think it's the best thing that I do. It's a community of hundreds of thousands of Stoics all over the world. We'd love to have you at dailystoic.com/email.
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