It’s Hard To Be a Person In This World | Your Actual Needs Are Small

Even if the changes are positive, we can appreciate that they’ve been difficult for people. There is so much to navigate, to be sensitive to in this modern world of ours. People are expected to be tolerant of things that just a few years ago were considered totally out of the mainstream. Words and descriptors, even the names of countries (or the pronunciations of the names of cities) seem to change by the day (with painful consequences if you screw them up)...📕 Ryan Holiday's new book "Discipline Is Destiny" is available for pre-order now! We’ve put together a bunch of cool preorder bonuses—among them is a signed and numbered page from the original manuscript of the book. You can learn more about those and how to receive them over at Dailystoic.com/preorder. ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 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.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, then some analysis from me. And then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

• 0:51Ryan Holiday?

  It's hard to be a person in this world.

• 0:57Ryan Holiday?

  Even if the changes are positive, we can appreciate that they've been difficult for people. There is so much to navigate, to be sensitive to, in this modern world of ours. People are expected to be tolerant of things that just a few years ago were considered totally out of the mainstream. Words and descriptors, even the names of countries or the pronunciations of the names of cities seem to change by the day with painful consequences if you screw up. There is an incredible amount of news thrown at us and no small amount of technology required to access it, to say nothing of the brain power to make sense of it all. We're expected to give things to our children to meet expectations emotionally, financially, time-wise, that no generation before was asked to do.

• 1:40Ryan Holiday?

  And this is not a controversial argument. The future is wonderful in many ways, but it's been harder on some than others. We can imagine that if Cato was alive today, he might struggle with the fluidity and the newness of a lot of it, as his own great-grandfather did back in ancient Rome. We can also imagine that if Marcus Aurelius was alive today, he might be found writing in his meditations reminders to be patient with these people, to try to understand things from their perspective. They're scared, he might say, because change is difficult. And Marcus himself might be struggling with resistance to some of these changes himself. No one is wrong on purpose, he might say. They're just cut off from truth.

• 2:21Ryan Holiday?

  Their resistance, or intransigence, or reactionary responses are not coming from a bad place. They're just having a hard time. And of course, he'd also remember that it has never not been true in history that a certain percentage of the population just resists progress because they can't handle new ways of doing things, even if those things make the world better and more fair for everyone. It's hard to be a person in this world. Maybe not as much for you, but definitely it is for some people. So you must be patient. You must be understanding. You must not assume the worst. You must do what you can to help and put up with the people that you can't. Things are hard enough. You don't need to make them harder for them or yourself.

• 3:08Ryan Holiday?

  Your actual needs are small.

• 3:13Ryan Holiday?

  This is the September 29th entry in The Daily Stoic. And I'm reading to you today from The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by yours truly and 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. Spend more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the bestseller list. 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. "Nothing can satisfy greed, but even a small measure satisfies nature.

• 3:55Ryan Holiday?

  So it is that the poverty of an exile brings no misfortune, for no place of exile is so barren as to not produce ample support for a person." This is Seneca in his consolation to his mother. "It can be beneficial to reflect on what you used to accept as normal. Consider your first paycheck and how big that seemed, or your first apartment with its own bedroom and bathroom and the ramen you gladly scarfed down in the kitchen. Today, as you become more successful, these conditions would hardly feel sufficient. In fact, you probably want even more than what you have right now." Yet just a few years ago, these paltry conditions were not only enough, they felt great. When we become successful, we forget

• 4:40Ryan Holiday?

  how strong we used to be. We are so used to what we have, we half believe that we'd die without it. Of course, this is just the comfort talking. In the days of world wars, our grandparents and parents made do with rationed gas, butter, and electricity. They were fine, just as you have been fine when you had less. Remember today that you are okay if things suddenly go wrong. Your actual needs are quite small. There is very little that could happen that would truly threaten your survival. Think about that and adjust your worries and fears accordingly. To get personal for a second, I think about the job that I dropped out of college for. I tell I've told this story before, but I remember I was offered $30,000. That was my salary.

• 5:25Ryan Holiday?

  And I remember thinking, I may have even said it out loud, and I'm both mortified and find it hilarious. I remember thinking, what am I going to do with all this money? That was so much money to me. As it happens, like, two days after I started, they knocked my salary down because the partner who'd hired me hadn't cleared it with the other partners. And I actually made more like 26 or something. But it was more than enough for me. I think about what I got paid for my first book. When I think about what I'm getting paid on now my 12th, or like, it's all so much extra, so much more than I was once happy to have. And that success should make you

• 6:08Ryan Holiday?

  grateful. It shouldn't make you paranoid, right? That success should like, that's if you take it for granted, you're being ungrateful, I guess is what I'm saying. And when you realize how little you need, it allows you to feel the true wealth that you have, the true excess that you have, and realize how much fat, how much space is there. You don't need to protect it so tightly. It's house money at this point. You know, it's funny, because Discipline is Destiny just came out two days ago. We're still offering the preorder bonus. You can get that at dailystoic.com/preorder, pick up the book anywhere books are sold, including here at the Painted Porch. But there is a passage where I talk about this in

• 6:53Ryan Holiday?

  Discipline is Destiny, which let me grab real fast. Galley here, so I'm recording this before the thing. But we talk about seeking, avoiding, I talk in part one about avoiding the superfluous, right? And I tell the story of Cato, the elder, and he says, nothing is cheap if it is superfluous. He's talking about cultivating a place where, where you don't have more than you need and people can't take that from you, right? And I say this in the, in the chapter, I say, think about how content you were with less just a few years ago, how much more frugal you were by necessity, how much less you got by on.

• 7:37Ryan Holiday?

  Do you look back at those younger years when you were striving and struggling as somehow lacking, as something you're bitter about? Usually, those were happy days. We almost missed them. Things were simpler then, cleaner. There was more clarity. Most of the luxuries that lay in the future, we did not even know about. We didn't pine for them. We were ignorant of even their possibility. And when you realize this, that the less you desire, the richer you are, the freer you are, the more powerful you are, you have something that can't be taken away from you. So that's what the Stoics were trying to think about. I even think about Seneca. Seneca's writing this letter to his mother. He's in exile, but this is the second time this has happened to him.

• 8:20Ryan Holiday?

  He realized that he couldn't cling too tightly to any of these things. And I think that gave him a kind of strength. It's what allowed him to comfort her in this difficult moment. So that's what we're talking about here. We're not saying you starve yourself. We're not saying you experience nothing. You just realize that it's extra and you don't need it all. And that's a little preview of the new book, Discipline is Destiny, which you can grab now anywhere books are sold. I appreciate all the support of the book. Thank you, everyone. How it does first week, I have no idea, especially as I'm recording this well in advance. But I already am grateful for what everyone has said and the support that I've heard about from the book, and I appreciate you supporting it.

• 9:03Ryan Holiday?

  If you haven't yet, you can check it out at dailystoic.com/preorder or get Discipline is Destiny, The Power of Self-Control, anywhere books are sold, including audiobook, ebook, whatever. Thanks, everyone.

• 9:21Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode.