7 Life Changing Stoic Ideas That You Can Practice Daily

Stoicism is a practical philosophy, which means it is made to be PRACTICED. In this podcast, Ryan discusses 7 key ideas of Stoicism that will help you develop a daily practice and respond to challenging situations in your life. Stoicism provides exercises to help manage stress, excessive thought, anger, depression, worry, and other destructive mindstates. Stoic practices can help develop a sense of inner peace and calmWatch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0lmSRCSGIU&t=12sAs a member of Daily Stoic Life, you get all our current and future courses, 100+ additional Daily Stoic email meditations, 4 live Q&As with bestselling author Ryan Holiday (and guests), and 10% off your next purchase from the Daily Stoic Store. Sign up at https://dailystoic.com/life/ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck 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.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Bienvenidos a la edición de fin de semana del Daily Stoic. Cada viernes, te traemos una meditación inspirada por los antiguos estoicos, algo que te ayude a cumplir con esas cuatro virtudes estoicas de coraje, justicia, temperance y sabiduría. Y aquí en el fin de semana, nos enteramos más profundo de esos mismos temas. Intervemos a filósofos estoicos, exploramos a largo plazo cómo estas ideas estoicas pueden ser aplicadas a nuestras vidas reales y a los problemas desafiantes de nuestro tiempo. Aquí, en el fin de semana, cuando tienes un poco más de espacio, cuando las cosas se han detenido, asegúrate de tomarte un tiempo para pensar, para ir a caminar, para sentarte con tu diario

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  y, lo más importante, para prepararte para lo que puede traer la semana que viene. Hola a todos, bienvenidos a otro episodio de fin de semana del Daily Stoic Podcast. Sabes, como he escrito todos estos artículos y piezas y correos electrónicos a lo largo de los años, a veces me gusta retroceder y tratar de organizarlos en algún tipo de sistema o proceso que tenga sentido. Sabes, es un poco adhóca, no era siempre así como pensaba sobre ello, pero puede ser interesante cómo estas cosas se unieron. Y creo que uno de los ejemplos de eso es lo que vamos a hablar hoy. Quería formar siete ejercicios de cambio de vida, conceptos de los estoicos que puedes aplicar durante los próximos siete días.

• 1:31Ryan Holiday?

  No lo spoilé, pero quería pasar por siete ideas rápidas sobre las que he escrito, hablado, incluso he creado algunos de estos monedas de desafío. Creo que este será un gran episodio, solo una forma de, como vas adelante a la próxima semana, puedes aplicar el estoicismo a lo que estás haciendo, a lo que estás pensando y a cualquier dificultad o éxito que puedas experimentar. Así que disfruta este episodio y te hablo pronto.

• 2:03Ryan Holiday?

  There's a lot of exercises in Stoicism, but I think these seven are really the core of what you might call the Stoic code. How to be a good person, how to understand how you fit in the world, how to always prioritize the right thing in the right way, how to make sure you're not acting out of ego, how to turn bad things into good things. These are Stoic virtues, these Stoic exercises. You have to practice every day and you have to practice them in any and all situations. But if you can do it, you can do it consistently. I think you'll be amazed at what you can accomplish and the kind of person you turn into being.

• 2:38Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus Aurelius wanted to remind himself that you have to do the right thing. He says, "Just that you do the right thing, the rest doesn't matter." So the highest good to the Stoics was virtue, was working for that common good. It was seeing obstacles as opportunities. But it was doing the right thing in the right way for the right reasons. If you're not acting according to your moral code, it doesn't matter how successful you are. It doesn't matter how famous you are. You are going to be unhappy. So in Christianity, there's this idea that if you sin and if you violate the 10 commandments, you will go to hell. I think the Stoic argument is like, if you're a bad person, if you lie, cheat, steal, act out of selfishness, in fact, you live in hell. Your life is a hell. It's without meaning. It's without purpose. You have no faith in other people.

• 3:23Ryan Holiday?

  And so at the core of Stoicism is that idea of summum bonum, the highest good. And the highest good to the Stoics is virtue. They said virtue is the sole good. Doing the right thing the right way, regardless of the consequence, was the only thing that matters.

• 3:41Ryan Holiday?

  One of the most powerful exercises in Stoicism is the exercise of amor fati, the idea that there is no such thing as an obstacle. There's only fuel. So Marcus Aurelius talks about fire being the metaphor for the life of a Stoic. Everything you throw in front of a fire, he says, is fuel for the fire. "It turns obstacles into brightness and flame," he says. So you want to go through your life not thinking about all the problems and all the difficulties. You want to think about all that these obstacles and difficulties are offering you, the fuel that it's providing for you. So a Stoic loves everything. That's what amor fati translates to, a love of fate. And it means that there is nothing that can slow you down because everything is actually taking you exactly in the direction that you want to go.

• 4:28Ryan Holiday?

  This seems like a weird one, but the Stoics want you to have really low expectations. Seneca talks about premeditatio malorum, about thinking about the worst-case scenario. If you have such a tight grip on how you want things to go and be, you're never going to be happy because what can go wrong will go wrong. But if you're willing to be fluid, if you're willing to let go, if you can think a little bit in advance about how things might not go your way, you can anticipate it, you'll be better. So Seneca says like, "The expected blows of fortune fall less heavily than the unexpected blows." The happier person is the one who realizes that things are not always going to go their way, that knows the world is not sunshine and kittens, that sees things honestly and accurately. That person has lower expectations,

• 5:10Ryan Holiday?

  and then they're pleasantly surprised when things exceed those expectations versus the person who is constantly disappointed with how cruel and unfair the world is.

• 5:23Ryan Holiday?

  Another one is related to Amor fati, but it's the idea that the obstacle is the way. That's what Marcus really says. This is the impediment to action, advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. Sure, things are going to happen that you don't want to happen, but you can instead focus on how you can use this, on how you can move the ball forward because of it. So if someone cuts you off in traffic, okay, that's not what you wanted, but this is a chance to practice forgiveness. You make a mistake, it's a chance for you to practice forgiveness to yourself, right? Your car is stuck, or your trip is delayed, this is a chance for you to catch up on things that you've been putting off. How can you use everything that's happening to you, all the obstacles, as opportunities to practice different virtues? So you might set out to do one thing, and then that gets impeded,

• 6:06Ryan Holiday?

  but what that allows you to do is go do a different thing instead. So the Stoic is always thinking, "The obstacle is the way. This is an opportunity. The impediment is actually showing me the direction that I want to go." There's an old Zen story about a king who felt like his people were becoming complacent. And so he put a large boulder on the one path on the way into town. And he stood in a tree and he watched as people came up to this boulder, this obstacle. You know, people cursed him, people pushed at it, it turned around and went home. Some people just sat down and waited for it. For someone to do something about it for him. And finally, a man walks up and he actually attempts to climb over the boulder. He attempts to go around. He pushes at it. He can't get it to budge. And finally, he goes off into the woods and he comes back with a big stick or a log, and he jams it under the rock.

• 6:51Ryan Holiday?

  And finally, cranking it like a lever, he gets it to move. And what he finds underneath the boulder was a small purse of gold coins and a note attached to it that actually the king had left. And it said, "Never forget that inside every obstacle is a chance to improve your condition. The obstacle in the path is the path." And that's at the essence of Stoicism. The obstacle is the way. "The impediment to action advances action," Marcus Aurelius said. "What stands in the way is the way." So we want to see obstacles not as things that are blocking us from where we want to go, but that actually in struggling with them or going around them or trying things because we can't get through them, we end up discovering new things about ourselves and about the world.

• 7:35Ryan Holiday?

  There is almost no philosophical school that says ego is a good thing. The Greeks and the Romans spoke of hubris. Almost all the plays of history and the myths of religions are about the dangers of pride. Pride goeth before the fall. So the Stoics believed that ego was the enemy. Epictetus said, "You cannot learn that which you think you already know." So the Stoic is constantly asking themselves, "Why am I doing this? What is my motivation? Am I doing this for other people? Am I doing it because it makes the world better? Or am I doing it to feel superior to other people as fuel for my arrogance? Or is this fueling humility?" And so essential in Stoicism is just the idea that you are not special. The world does not revolve around you.

• 8:17Ryan Holiday?

  And if you make decisions or take actions thinking that, thinking that the world revolves around you, thinking that the rules don't apply, you'll be rudely awakened when you come crashing down to earth and lose everything you worked so hard for.

• 8:33Ryan Holiday?

  The Stoics, as individualistic as they were, as much as they were about individual empowerment, deeply believed in our connection to other people and other things. Something like 80 times Marcus Aurelius talks about the common good in meditation. Seneca spoke of sympathia, the idea that we were just a small part of a larger organism. Marcus Aurelius says, "What's bad for the hive is bad for the bee." So in this time of self-absorption and self-interest, of self-aggrandizement, the Stoics offer a different way of thinking about things. They think about it in terms of, "How can I make sure I'm helping other people? How can I make sure that my success isn't coming at the expense of others? How can I see myself as a citizen, as a piece of a larger organism?

• 9:18Ryan Holiday?

  And that this makes sure that we're good, it makes sure we're doing work for other people, it makes us more selfless and less selfish, and thus allows us to contribute more to society."

• 9:31Ryan Holiday?

  You might think that meditating on your mortality is a way to be unhappy, that the fact that you're gonna die, that you could die at any moment, this is depressing. In fact, the Stoics thought it was the key to happiness. Because when you realize life can go away, you are grateful for the life you do have. So Seneca says, "Look, if you go into every evening thinking, 'I have lived, I have lived my life, that's it,' when you wake up in the morning, you're like, 'Oh, this is wonderful, I get a free bonus day.'" The Stoic wants to live life as though you're playing with house money. Because you are, each one of us was born knowing we're gonna die, and every extra day we get is a gift, is extra. So this idea of memento mori, of meditating on our mortality, is not morbid, it's actually the best way to be happy.

• 10:16Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. If you want to take your study of Stoicism to the next level, I want to invite you to join us over at Daily Stoic Life. We have daily conversations about the podcast episodes, about the daily email. We actually do a special weekend set of emails for everyone. You get all our Daily Stoic courses and challenges totally for free. That's hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our New Year, New You Challenge, which we're gonna launch in January. You get a Special Clothbound edition of the best of meditations that we've done. You get a bunch of cool stuff. It's an awesome community. I've loved being a part of it. I've loved getting to meet everyone who's trying to take their study of Stoicism to the next level. Love to have you join us. Check us out at DailyStoicLife.com.

• 11:00Ryan Holiday?

  We'd love to have you and join us on this digital stoa that we've staked out together and get better every day.