Daily Stoic Sundays: How a Stoic Deals with Bad News

Ryan describes how a Stoic can deal with bad news—and not just move past it, but use it to fuel their success. See 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.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Sunday edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. My name's Ryan Holiday. For over a decade, I've been writing and thinking and talking about Stoicism. And so each Sunday now, we're going to be rolling out a special episode that will be either me riffing on a number of topics, maybe me riffing or expanding on an article that I've written, or deep diving into an idea that I think's important, that I think you'll benefit from. So I hope you like it. Support our sponsors who make this episode possible. And of course, keep studying, keep reading, and thank you. The inevitable fact of life is that so-called bad news is gonna happen, right?

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  We're gonna hear things that we weren't planning to hear, that we didn't want to hear, that hurt, that make us sad, that surprise us. That's just life. It'd be wonderful if everyone we knew stayed together. It'd be wonderful if everything worked out. It'd be wonderful if there was never a plane delayed. It'd be wonderful if no one was ever killed or wounded, right? It'd be wonderful if there was only good news. But the reality is that everyone has gotten bad news, and everyone knows they will continue to get bad news. So I think the question for the Stoics is, how do we respond to that? How do we deal with bad news? So I think the first thing the Stoic would think about is like, let's look at those labels really fast. The Stoics try to be objective as possible. So they go like, why are we calling this bad news? Shakespeare's line was, "Nothing neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so."

• 1:30Ryan Holiday?

  But I think going back to Epictetus, there's the idea that things are objective, our judgment about things are not objective. So the stock market drops 100 points, 500 points, we're quick to call that bad. But if we had massively hedged against the market, or we were massively short the market, that would be good. The event is objective, we just have opinions about it. And realizing that we have these opinions, that we have the power to decide what they are, and that what's good for us might be bad for others, and vice versa, is, I think, an important way to kind of take the edge off things, to go, okay, the event is the event, it's information. And then that leads into the, I think, one of the most important tenets of Stoicism, which is... Is how do we respond to that thing?

• 2:12Ryan Holiday?

  Donald Robertson, one of the great modern writers about Stoicism, he says, you know, the Stoic tells themselves that sure, life is frightening, the situation might be frightening, but the truly important thing is how we choose to respond, right? What are we going to do with this information? The information is objective, but what will our response be? How do we make this into something? That's where our power is. That's, that's what we can choose to do. The third part is like, accepting that shit happens, right? That it's not all good, that sometimes it doesn't go the way we plan, that, you know, you win some, you lose some. And I think these three things tie together really great. And this awesome quote from Marcus Aurelius I love, you know, he says, "Objective judgment now at this very moment, unselfish action now at this very moment,

• 2:57Ryan Holiday?

  willing acceptance now at this very moment, that's all you need." So that's kind of how, I think, the framework for how a Stoic responds to bad news, that's like the mindset that you want to bring to it. But really what we're talking about is controlling yourself, not getting too emotional, not immediately reacting, not being too rattled by it, not giving in to anxiety or fear or resentment. And then focus on what we're going to do about it, what our response is going to be. And then what's the good in it? How can we use this to serve others? How can we use this to toughen ourselves up? How can we use this as an opportunity to improve? How can we use this as an opportunity to be grateful? What's a lesson we can learn from it? That's what the Stoics are focusing on.

• 3:38Ryan Holiday?

  The Seneca's line is that a wise man dies events to their own color and we turn whatever happens to benefit. That's how we want to respond to bad news. And look, this is easy to do when the, the news is that this person you were looking forward to meeting had to cancel, or this is news that, you know, your friend borrowed your car and, and scratched up the door. But how do you deal to, to real bad news, real tragedy? Of course, this is harder. I often think of that, that great observation from Mr. Rogers, who was sort of Stoic in a way, whether he knew it or not. Or he talked about, I think he said this is long ago, is RFK's assassination. He says like, "Look for the..." And this sort of news goes viral each time there's a tragedy.

• 4:23Ryan Holiday?

  But it's like, you know, on September 11th, it's like, look for the helpers. After a terrorist attack, it's like, look for the helpers. After a fire or a tragedy or a loss, it's like, look for the people doing good. Find reassurance in, in the fact that we can rush in and help others and be of use. That we have the power to decide, to see the best in people, in humanity, in a situation. We have the power to see the worst. And how we make this choice is going to determine, you know, whether we are made worse by bad news, whether we are wrecked by bad news, or rather, whether we're able to sort of rise above it and be improved by it and persevere through it. One of the ways we take the edge off bad news, of course, is by, you know, not being surprised by it.

• 5:05Ryan Holiday?

  So when Seneca talks about premeditatio malorum, when he talks about how nothing happens to the wise man contrary to our expectation, that we never utter that phrase, well, I didn't think that could happen, because we've thought about it in advance. You know, to the Stoics, they'd rather be pleasantly surprised that something bad didn't happen than unpleasantly surprised that something bad did happen. So that premeditatio malorum is really important and ultimately about preparing for a world in which bad stuff is going to happen. It's a matter of when and not if. When Marcus is talking about how we focus on what we're going to do about it, the willing acceptance of things that are outside of our control, that goes into this Stoic idea

• 5:49Ryan Holiday?

  we've talked a lot about here, the idea of morfaki, right, a love of fate. You know, he says that everything you throw in front of a fire is fuel for the fire, that it turns all of its obstacles into flame and brightness. That's the attitude we want to cultivate towards bad news, which is like, I can deal with this. Actually, not even, I can deal with this, but then I'm going to deal with this. I'm going to make some good out of it. If we have that approach, then we don't walk around fearful of bad news. We're never going to look forward to bad news, but we're going to embrace it, whatever it is, whatever terms it's been delivered to us, because that's really all that we can do. If you're liking this podcast, we would love for you to subscribe. Please leave us a review on iTunes or any of your favorite podcast listening apps. It really helps. And tell a friend.