How The Stoics Got Rich | Stop Caring What People Think

When you think of Stoicism, you don’t usually think of words like “rich” or “wealthy.”But you should. Before he founded Stoicism, Zeno was a wealthy and successful merchant from a family of wealthy and successful merchants. Seneca was so wealthy that when he called in some of his loans to the Roman colony in Britain, it crashed their economy and sparked a rebellion. Marcus Aurelius was born with ordinary bloodlines but–in part because of his serious study of philosophy–he became the richest and most powerful man in the Roman Empire. The point is most—not all, but most—of the Stoics, ancient or modern, built some kind of wealth.---And in today's Daily Stoic Journal excerpt reading, Ryan discusses how the Stoics handled the opinions of others, and why getting comfortable with being judged by others will help you maintain a healthy mindset.💵 Visit dailystoic.com/wealth to sign up for The Wealthy Stoic wealth management course today.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, 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.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from The Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

• 0:43Ryan Holiday?

  How the Stoics Got Rich. When you think of Stoicism, you don't usually think of words like rich or wealthy, but you should. Before he founded Stoicism, Zeno was a wealthy and successful merchant from a family of wealthy and successful merchants. Seneca was so wealthy that when he called in some of his loans to the Roman colony in Britain, it crashed their economy and sparked rebellion. Marcus Aurelius was born with ordinary bloodlines, but in part because of his serious study of philosophy, he became the richest and most powerful man in Rome. Caesar came from a self-made family and then made his own fortune as he climbed the legal and political ladder in Rome. And more recently, Stoicism has guided entrepreneur and investor Tim Ferriss, people like Arianna Huffington,

• 1:27Ryan Holiday?

  the billionaire founder and CEO of Shopify, Toby Lutke, CEO of the San Antonio Spurs, R.C. Buford, global pop star Camila Cabello. That's just naming a few. But the point is, most, but not all, but most of the Stoics in the ancient or modern world built some kind of wealth. And in fact, if you study any successful man or woman, you will inevitably find that they followed, sometimes unknowingly, many of the principles and habits and mindsets the core of Stoic philosophy. This is not a coincidence. Stoicism was designed to help people live what the ancients referred to as the good life, and its foundational concepts and daily practices were designed to teach people how to thrive and succeed and live a rich and happy life.

• 2:12Ryan Holiday?

  If that's the kind of life you want, the Stoics can show you the way. And that's why I'm really excited to announce this new course that we've been talking about, where we take the best Stoic insights about how to live a wealthy life. We call it The Wealthy Stoic: A Daily Stoic Guide to Being Rich, Free, and Happy, which will set you on a path to happiness and prosperity using the wisdom of the Stoics, as well as the experts we've interviewed in the course, as well as my own entrepreneurial and financial journey to wrapping your heads around money, about defining financial security, about taking the steps, doing the things you need to do to have that financial security.

• 2:56Ryan Holiday?

  It's an awesome course. It's nine weeks. We're going to dive deep every single week. Emails from me, almost a book's worth of content. We're going to look at how a slave became the richest Stoic, how the richest man in Rome was actually one of the poorest Stoics, the ambitions and the motivations that fueled the Stoics in their understanding of money, how the Stoics spent and saved, what they prized more than money, how they dealt with setbacks and adversity and uncertainty and risk. All of these things are in the challenge. I'm really proud of this one. I think it's great. There's live video sessions with me. There's a bunch of resources that come along

• 3:38Ryan Holiday?

  with it. If you've done any of our courses, you know we always over-deliver, and we're going to do that in this one. Today is the launch. It's going to start in just a few weeks, but you've got to sign up now to secure your spot. It's a live course. We're all going to be doing it together. I want to see you in there. If you've said any of these things to yourself that we were talking about, like, hey, I know I got to get started. I know I should do better, blah, blah, blah. Stop, stop, right? Just get started. Take this with us today. I think it's going to be awesome. I can't wait to see you in there. The Wealthy Stoic: A Daily Stoic Guide to Being Rich, Free, and Happy. Can't wait to see you in the course. Also, remember, if you sign up for Daily Stoic Life at DailyStoicLife.com, you get this course and all our courses for free. It's a way to save money and also invest in yourself. And I'll see you in the course. I'll link to it in today's show notes. More

• 4:23Ryan Holiday?

  from us on the course soon, but sign up now while there are still spots.

• 4:35Ryan Holiday?

  Stop caring what people think. This is May 26th, the Daily Stoic. And the quote today is from Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12:14. "I'm constantly amazed by how easily we love ourselves above all others, yet we put more stock in the opinions of others than in our own estimation of self. How much credence we give to the opinions of our peers and how little to our very own." Then the meditation says, "How quickly we disregard our own feelings about something and adopt someone else's. We think a shirt looks good at the store but view it with shame and scorn if our spouse or coworker makes an offhanded remark.

• 5:17Ryan Holiday?

  We can be immensely happy with our own lives until we find out that someone we don't like has even more. Or worse or more precariously, we can feel good about our accomplishments or talents until some third party validates them. Like most Stoic exercises, this one attempts to teach us that although we control our own opinions, we don't control what other people think about ourselves, least of all. And for this reason, putting ourselves at the mercy of these opinions and trying to gain the approval of others are a dangerous endeavor. Don't spend too much time thinking about what other people think. Think about what you think. Think instead about the results, about the impact, and about whether it is the right thing to do."

• 6:02Ryan Holiday?

  I think about Cato when I think about this idea. So Cato famously is very wealthy, but he lives quite frugally. He doesn't wear a hat when he walks outside in Rome. He doesn't wear a fancy toga. He's often barefoot. These are things that people would have thought to be low class or out of style. So Cato sort of marches to the beat of his own drummer. And... I think those things he was pursuing were good unto themselves, but what I think he was really doing is practicing not caring what other people thought about him, not caring about his reputation. And so famously, when public opinion changes in Rome, Caesar appeals to the masses, Rome

• 6:45Ryan Holiday?

  is going in a dangerous direction. Cato doesn't go with the tide. He stands for what's right. He stands for what he believes. He doesn't care that he's often the odd man out, that people are questioning him, that people are judging him. He's practiced for this very moment. And I don't think it's just big stuff like this. I mean, it's about cultivating that sense of what you need to do, what you think about what's right for your family, what's right for yourself, and then being okay being judged or looked at askance or whatever. I mean, being a parent has been very good for me in this, right? Like, you know, maybe you're, you don't like to hurt other people's feelings, you don't

• 7:27Ryan Holiday?

  like to say no, you don't want people to know how you think about things. But with a kid, you're like, oh, no, this isn't about me. If I say yes, yes, yes to all this stuff I don't want to do, that comes out of the time that I spend with my family. Or if you are really conscious about what other people think about you, if they think you look silly or stupid, think about the laughs that deprives you of with your kids. Think about the memories that this deprives you of with your kids. Think about how buttoned up and restrained this makes you. I'm thinking about this actually right now. Like, so I'm, I'm about to fly, I've got to go do a talk, then I'm back, and then to talk, and then back for a day and a half, and then to talk. It's a, it's a lot of travel. It's lucrative.

• 8:12Ryan Holiday?

  So, look, it'd be fun for me to go do stuff on the trip, but I have to think about what my obligations are to my son. I have to be okay, people not understanding what I'm doing. Maybe even as I'm saying this to you, right? I could have chosen another example, and probably one that more people would have agreed with or approved of. But that's sort of the point. I don't care what you think. I care what I think. But the point is, I've come this far. I'm not going to give up on that because I feel like I have an obligation to my son, and it doesn't cost me much, right? Besides...

• 8:49Ryan Holiday?

  What other people think, which I don't control, right? And this is what Marcus is saying. We respect ourselves. We know what's important to us. We know what we value. So why do we care what other people think? Right? We don't control it. And we have to get comfortable being judged. We have to be comfortable sitting with our own self estimation. We have to be comfortable with what we know is the right thing to do about what the results are of our decisions about the impact we're trying to have. And that's what matters.