A Reason To Stick Around | Learn, Practice, Train

Ryan talks about the Stoics view on suicide, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day. If you or someone you know is in a mental health crisis and you live in the USA, please call 1-800-273-8255 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline today. You can also text 741741 for help in a crisis. KiwiCo is a subscription service that delivers everything your kids will need to make, create and play. Get 50% off your first month plus FREE shipping on ANY crate line with code STOIC at kiwico.com. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow 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

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

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Bienvenidos a otro episodio del Podcast Daily Stoic. El jueves hacemos el doble trabajo, no solo leyendo nuestra meditación diaria, sino también leyendo un pasaje del libro "El Daily Stoic: 366 Meditaciones sobre la Wisdom, Perseverancia y la Art of Living", que escribí con mi maravillosa coautora y colaborador, Stephen Hanselman. Así que hoy os daremos una rápida meditación de uno de los estoicos, de Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, luego mi análisis y luego os enviaremos al mundo a hacer lo mejor posible para convertir estas palabras en obras.

• 0:43Ryan Holiday?

  Una razón para seguir. Es uno de los temas más oscuros y más sensibles en el estoicismo: el suicidio. Cato tomó su propia vida en lugar de someterse a César. Seneca tomó su propia vida bajo el presidio de Nero. Los estoicos hablaron del suicidio como la puerta abierta, una opción abierta para nosotros en cualquier momento. Dado los tiranos, el mal, la esclavitud y la tortura que los estoicos enfrentaron en su día, su contemplación del suicidio tiene sentido. Aquí en el mundo moderno, en el tiempo de una pandemia y de incertidumbre económica que tiene un aumento de las tasas de depresión, vale la pena tomarnos un momento para recordarnos que este es un tema que no debería ser tomado con calma o hablado de desgraciadamente.

• 1:26Ryan Holiday?

  Los estoicos pueden haber creído que el suicidio era una opción que todos tenemos, pero todavía eran bastante claros: fue la opción equivocada. Marcus Aurelius fue claramente depresivo por naturaleza. Estaba arrastrado por el dolor constante. Trató de lidiar con una tragedia profunda. No se debería enterrar a un niño. Tenía inmensas cargas en sus hombros. Y aún así, se mantuvo. Trató de luchar porque sabía que la vida valía la pena. Sabía que había oscuridad por delante. Ya había visto mucha oscuridad. Pero también sabía que habría puntos brillantes también, puntos brillantes que se rompieron y despejaron la oscuridad. Probablemente también hubiera concordado con la observación clásica de Hamlet:

• 2:09Ryan Holiday?

  "Para gritar y sudar bajo una vida cansada, pero que el miedo de algo después de la muerte, el país desconocido, de donde no vino ningún viajero, desenfada la voluntad y nos hace preferir soportar esos males que tenemos que volar a otros que no conocemos". It's the perfect Stoic logic applied to a sensitive topic. What makes you so sure that what's on the other side is a relief? Sure, science and religion give us hints, but no assurances. Marcus Aurelius reminds himself in meditations to push through the pain because it will either end, or he will. He knew it was arrogant to assume that he could find a way around it. He knew that to mess with fate was to potentially invite a worse fate. So he stuck around.

• 2:53Ryan Holiday?

  He did the best he could, which is all we can do, which is what we have to do. You, me, everyone. No one is saying that life is perfect. We're just suggesting that a little humility in the form of surrender to the uncomfortable realities of life. Don't fly off to something worse. Bear what you can now, because you can bear it. We know that you can. If you live in the United States and are in a suicidal crisis or emotional distress, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. Seriously, call. A Stoic can't be afraid to ask for help. It's not a surrender in any way.

• 3:36Ryan Holiday?

  And if you're in another country, you can actually pull up a list of suicide crisis hotlines. I found one on Wikipedia. Just Google it. Seriously, if you're struggling with it, don't go through the open door. Ask for help. It's not giving up. It will make a difference. Don't go anywhere.

• 3:56Ryan Holiday?

  Learn, practice, train.

• 4:00Ryan Holiday?

  And I'm reading to you today from The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by yours truly, my co-author and translator, Stephen Hanselman. You can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoic store. Over a million copies of The Daily Stoic in print now. It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. It's been more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the Bestsellers. It's just an awesome experience. But I hope you check it out. We have a premium leather edition at store.dailystoic.com as well. But let's get on with today's reading. And the first quote comes to us from Epictetus 2:19 in the Discourses. "That's why philosophers warn us not to be satisfied with mere learning, but to add practice and then training," he says.

• 4:44Ryan Holiday?

  "For as time passes, we forget what we learned and end up doing the opposite and hold opinions the opposite of what we should hold." And then we meditate. Very few people can simply watch an instructional video or hear something explained and then know backward and forward how to do it. Most of us actually have to do something several times in order to truly learn. One of the hallmarks of the martial arts, military training, athletic training of almost any kind is the hours upon hours of monotonous practice. An athlete at the highest level will train for years to perform movements that can last mere seconds or less. The two-minute Joe, how to escape from a chokehold, the perfect jumper, simply knowing isn't enough. It must be absorbed into the muscles in the body.

• 5:29Ryan Holiday?

  It must become part of us, or we risk losing it the second we experience stress or difficulty. And this is true with philosophical principles as well. You can't just hear something once and expect to rely on it when the world is crashing down around us. Remember, Marx and Realist wasn't writing his meditations for other people. He was actively meditating for himself. Even as a successful wise and experienced man, he was, until the last days of his life, practicing and training to do the right thing. Like a black belt, he was still showing up to the dojo every day to rule. Like a professional athlete, he still showed up to practice each week, even though others thought it was unnecessary.

• 6:08Ryan Holiday?

  I just, it's funny, I'm recording this shortly after I just got off recording the podcast with Admiral James Stavridis. His new book, To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts in the Crucible Decision, which was a great book, I recommend it. I'm not sure if this is coming out before or after the interview, but it doesn't really matter. One of the things we talked about in that interview was his sort of framework for responding well to the crucible of decision. And he says that you have to prepare in advance, right? You have to train. As they say, in the military, you don't rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training. You have to meditate on this stuff over and over and over again. And he says, two big things.

• 6:52Ryan Holiday?

  He says, one, you have to know what you believe. You have to know your standards. He talks about in his other great book, which I recommend, Sailing True North. And he's basically saying, what's true north? What do you believe? What do you hold important? What do you ascribe to? Right? And that's partly why we study the Stoics, to learn what we hold sacred or dear, what the right thing is. And he says, you also have to know yourself, what you're capable of, what your weaknesses are, what your tendencies are, what your biases are. So then in that moment of stress or difficulty or pressure, you know what you need to think about, what you need to turn to, what you default to.

• 7:34Ryan Holiday?

  It's spring here in Texas and one of the great things about spring is doing outdoor projects with my kids. One of the best KiwiCo kits that I've done with my kids, they built this stomp rocket and we just spent hours out in the yard, shooting it up in the air, tracking it down, shooting it up in the air, tracking it down. They just had an amazing time. If you're looking to have some outside, non-screen time play, hands-on, science-based, work with your hands projects, KiwiCo is it. Kids can discover the engineering and mechanics behind everyday objects, the science and chemistry of cooking, geography and culture, brand new art and design techniques, all through these fun,

• 8:14Ryan Holiday?

  hands-on projects that you can do together. I strongly suggest you check it out. Step into spring and celebrate the season of discovery with KiwiCo subscription. Get 30% off your first month plus free shipping on any crate line with code STOIC at kiwico.com. That's 30% off your first month. K I W I C O dot com promo code STOIC.

• 8:42Ryan Holiday?

  Epictetus says that the key of Stoicism is so that when life hits you with stuff, you're able to say, "This is what I trained for." And I do feel when I think about the pandemic, I mean, it's stressful and difficult and I messed it up in so many ways and there's things I would do differently. But I do feel some gratitude for what Stoicism prepared me for and I feel pride in how I deployed and used that Stoicism to keep myself safe, to keep my family safe, to know what to value, to know what my obligations were, to how to get through it, how to get through the boredom of it and the difficulty of it and the stress of it and all those things. I had prepared for it, right?

• 9:24Ryan Holiday?

  And I think Epictetus is reminding us though that it's not a single preparation. And if you prepare once, the second you stop, Entropy is working on that preparation. There's an expiration date to it. You have to constantly be updating and reinforcing and adding and reevaluating and going over it, over it, over it. And that's what meditation is to me. It's Marcus Aurelius saying stuff that he already knows. He knows this stuff. He's studied it a bazillion times. He's heard it a billion times, but he's playing his scales each morning. He's reviewing his note cards before the test each day. Right?

• 10:04Ryan Holiday?

  He's going back over the advice from his father and stepfather and mentors and heroes. He's getting it fresh in his mind. He's reminding himself of who he is, what he needs to do, what true north is. So that in those moments of crisis, in his case, an actual pandemic, a war, a flood, a coup, all this stuff, he was there. And think about Epictetus, right? First off, he studies and learns Stoicism while he's a slave, becomes a philosopher. But then, right? Exile comes for him and he has to go through that again. But if he hadn't been preparing and thinking and talking, keeping these thoughts at hand, that's the other Stoic idea to write these things down, talk about them, post them up,

• 10:48Ryan Holiday?

  you know, go through it over and over and over again. Keep it top of mind. That's what this is about. That's what we're doing here at Daily Stoic. That's why this is a daily practice. That's why I wrote the daily book. That's why the journal is there. It's about the daily practice and the daily training of it. And I hope you avail yourself of it. So when that moment comes, when you find yourself in the crucible of decision, you can do what you need to do. You can meet destiny as it hopes you will. And that's the thought for today. Do check out To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts in the Crucible of Decision. It's a great new book by Admiral James Stavridis. Carry it at the painted porch. You can get it anywhere books are sold. It's probably a great audiobook too. And I really appreciated him coming on the podcast. So stay tuned or look at that interview if you haven't checked it out already.

• 11:33Ryan Holiday?

  And I'll talk to you soon.

• 11:38Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at dailystoic.com/email.