Do You Have One Of These?

Whether we’re beginning some creative work or we’re trying to solve some complex problem, we should never be starting from zero. 📖Wisdom Takes Work https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work by Ryan Holiday is out! Grab a copy here:https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work 👉 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/ 🎥 Watch the video episodes onThe Daily Stoic YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos:https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast onInstagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/?hl=en:https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email athttps://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 https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/,Twitter https://twitter.com/dailystoic,YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic,TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic?lang=en, andFacebook https://www.facebook.com/dailystoic 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.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:57Ryan Holiday?

  Do you have one of these? One of the most interesting things you come to understand about meditations is how unoriginal it is. It's largely made up of short quotes and passages from other writers. On one page, we see Marcus Aurelius using a metaphor from Panathеus. On another, he's quoting Epictetus from memory and then riffing on something he heard from Rusticus. Here he is quoting a lost line from Euripides' play, "You shouldn't give circumstances the power to rouse anger, for they don't care at all." Here he is quoting Chrysippus, and then it's Socrates, and then Homer, and Plato, and Herakles, and Democritus, and then Aristophanes, and Pindar, and Hesiod, and on and on and on.

• 1:39Ryan Holiday?

  In a way, meditations is really Marcus Aurelius's commonplace book, a place where, for centuries, even before Marcus, lovers of books and ideas have collected observations, quotes, ideas, diary entries, and anecdotes that they wanted to preserve. In fact, it was Goethe who said that "a collection of anecdotes and maxims is the greatest treasure for a man of the world." He said, "We can draw on them..." Not just in conversation, but in moments of crisis. Montaigne's essays, filled with so many quotes, read as if they might have been torn directly from his commonplace book. Emerson referred to his journals as his savings bank, and it's true, many of his best talks and writing first appeared there.

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  Anne Frank filled her diary with passages from biographies and history books she was reading, celebrating sentences she liked and anecdotes that meant something to her. Look, The Daily Stoic itself would not exist without my habit of collecting stories and quotes and ideas on four by six note cards, which I learned how to do as a research assistant. Every one of those cards is a story, a quote, a lesson, a moment I wrestled with, an insight. Those cards become chapters, those chapters become books, sometimes those become Daily Stoic emails and episodes. The Daily Stoic is here because of my commonplace book, and if you're not keeping one, you're missing out.

• 3:06Ryan Holiday?

  Whether we're beginning some creative work or we're trying to solve some complex problem, we should never be starting from zero. Invariably, at some point in our lives, we will have seen or heard or read something that could be of use in this situation. The question is, will we remember it? Will we have access to it? So whether it's in a journal like Marcus, a diary like Anne Frank, or index cards like me, you should keep a commonplace book so that in the end, it can keep you. And the new book, Wisdom Takes Work, has a whole chapter about how to keep a commonplace book, the power of journaling, and the power of clarifying your thinking on the page. I'm really proud of this new book. It's out now. Thanks to everyone who's been supporting it. It's meant a lot.

• 3:51Ryan Holiday?

  And if you haven't read it, you can grab it at dailystoic.com/wisdom. Thanks, everyone.