Recognize These Signs of Weakness | 7 Daily Habits That Will Change Your Life

To the untrained eye, ego can be mistaken for confidence. In reality, the person doesn’t feel that way inside at all. 📚 Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday https://store.dailystoic.com/products/ego-is-the-enemy-signed-edition | https://store.dailystoic.com/ https://store.dailystoic.com/products/ego-is-the-enemy-signed-edition 🪙 Whatever we’re doing in life—whether we’re aspiring to do something, experiencing success or in the middle of difficulty—ego is the enemy https://store.dailystoic.com/collections/coins/products/ego-is-the-enemy-medallion every step along the way. Carry the Ego is the Enemy Medallion https://store.dailystoic.com/collections/coins/products/ego-is-the-enemy-medallion to remind yourself of this. | https://store.dailystoic.com/collections/coins/products/ego-is-the-enemy-medallion 🎟️DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ 🎙️AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing toThe Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content:https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ 🎥 VIDEO EPISODES https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos| Watch the video episodes onThe Daily Stoic YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos:https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email athttps://dailystoic.com/dailyemail See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  There are some things that look like strength but aren't. An aggressive, mean person can seem strong, but oftentimes they aren't. It's an act. "All cruelty," Seneca wrote, "springs from weakness." The bully, almost invariably, has been bullied. And so it goes for ego. To the untrained eye, it can be mistaken for confidence, the person's self-centerness, their certainty, their entitlement. This seems like the way that only the most important and gifted person in the world could get away with acting. In reality, that person doesn't feel that way inside at all. On the contrary, they feel very small. Nero, for instance, demanded that enormous audiences celebrate his greatness. This was also the same emperor who banished a poet from Rome for being too talented and thus a threat.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  We have to be wise enough to recognize these signs of weakness in our leaders, in our bosses, and the people that we look up to. But most of all, we have to recognize it in ourselves. Confidence is quiet. It doesn't need to be celebrated or worshipped. True strength and power are restrained. They are not easily threatened. They don't need to make themselves felt, except for in the most extraordinary of circumstances. Ego is not just the enemy. It is the canary in the coal mine. It is a sign that you're going in the wrong direction, that you're not as good, or as strong, or as secure as you think you are. Ego is the enemy. I mean, I got it tattooed on my arm. And of course, I wrote a book about it, which you can grab signed copies of here at The Painted Porch or at store.dailystoic.com. And we have the "Ego is the Enemy" coin,

• 1:46Speaker 01

  which I know plenty of people carry around with them. I've seen coaches hand them out to their teams. You can check all that out at store.dailystoic.com.

• 2:03Ryan Holiday?

  Seven things you should do every day according to the ancient Stoics. Number one, you gotta wake up early. The most famous passage in Meditations is Marcus Aurelius struggling to get out of bed at dawn. He says, "I have to go to work as a human being." He says, "I'm not meant to huddle under the covers and stay warm. No, I'm put here to do things, to make things, to be of service to people, to make the world a better place." And you were not meant to huddle under the covers and stay warm either. So get up early and get after it. Number two, you gotta exercise. You have to be active. And now, we're not exercising for vanity purposes. We're not building muscles so we can look jacked, right?

• 2:46Ryan Holiday?

  We are trying to cultivate strength, physical and mental. Seneca said, "We treat the body rigorously so that it's not disobedient to the mind." We are cultivating discipline, right? And many of the Stoics were active. When you think of a philosopher, you don't think of an athlete. But in the ancient world, many of them were. Chrysippus was a runner. Cleanthes was a boxer. Marcus Aurelius was a wrestler. I run and swim and bike. The point is, get active, get moving. You need a strong mind in a strong body, and that means doing it every day. Number three, if you're not journaling, you are not practicing Stoicism. Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, all the ancient Stoics praised the benefits of journaling.

• 3:30Ryan Holiday?

  Putting it down on the page, working it out on the page. That is to say, instead of on other people, instead of just having it pinging around inside your head. You gotta be reflecting, you gotta be analyzing, you gotta be exploring. You have to be repeating over and over again the lessons from the ancients and the values you are trying to apply in your life. How does Marcus Aurelius become Marcus Aurelius? Through his journal. We see in Meditations Marcus Aurelius fighting to be the person that philosophy tried to make him. He is journaling as an active philosophical practice, which you must do. Also, that's what meditations is, by the way, the private thoughts of the most powerful man in the world.

• 4:13Ryan Holiday?

  Number four, you have to be reading, not a little bit, but all the time. We must linger on the works of the master thinkers, Seneca said. Over and over again, we have to return to them, right? The Stoics aren't something you have read. They are something you need to be reading all of your life. And in fact, there is no good life without study and reflection and wisdom. You have to read and not just read, but read actively, read strenuously. As Epictetus says, it's not enough to read. You have to read the right things in the right way. Number five, go for a walk. I'm not saying walking will solve all your problems. I'm saying very few of your problems will be made worse for walking. Seneca said, we need to take these wandering outdoor walks

• 4:56Ryan Holiday?

  so that the mind can be nourished and refreshed by open air and deep breathing. It calms you down. It gets you out of your head. It gets you out of your room. It gets you outdoors into the world, into the beauty of the natural world. It gets your mind moving. It will make you better. Number six, make time for some deep work and focus and reflection. In Marcus really says meditations. He says, you have to concentrate on this task before you like a Roman. Says, do it like it's the last thing you're doing in your life. I would say, do it like it's the only thing in your life. Put the phone away, close all the tabs in your browser.

• 5:36Ryan Holiday?

  Don't multitask, lock in and focus for a large uninterrupted block. This is what Marcus really is doing in meditations. This is what the Stoics were doing in their philosophical classes, right? Stop drifting about, stop wandering and focus. Seven, finally, you have to think about death. Memento mori, you are mortal. You don't have forever. It's not that life is short, Seneca says. It's that we waste a lot of it and we waste a lot of it because we think we have more of it than we actually do. The clock is ticking away. Your time here is evaporating at this very second. Don't fool yourself into thinking you have forever. Don't be good tomorrow, Marcus really says, be good today.

• 6:21Ryan Holiday?

  Be good now, because it's the only thing you have for certain. Hey there. Just a heads up, I'm gonna be on tour this summer and fall. You can come see me in San Francisco and Portland in June. You can see me in Australia and New Zealand in October. In August, I'm mixing my months up here, but in August, you can see me in Chicago and Minneapolis and Detroit. Then I'll be on the East Coast sometime in November and December. Anyways, grab tickets to that, dailystoiclive.com. Hope to see you there.