8 Stoic Don'ts For A Better Life

“If you seek tranquillity,” Marcus Aurelius said, “do less.”And then he follows the note to himself with some clarification. Not nothing, less. Do only what’s essential. Ryan Holiday's 8 Stoic don'ts will help you determine the things are essential, and those that aren't. Follow these tips today and everyday. This is the simple recipe for improvement and for happiness. So much of what we think we must do, so much of what we end up doing is not essential. We do it out of habit. We do it out of guilt. We do it out of laziness or we do it out of greedy ambition. And then we wonder why our performance suffers. We wonder why our heart isn’t really in it. But if we could do less inessential stuff, we’d be able to better do what is essential. InsideTracker provides you with a personalized plan to improve your metabolism, reduce stress, improve sleep, and optimize your health for the long haul. For a limited time, get 20% off the entire InsideTracker store. Just go to insidetracker.com/STOIC to claim this deal. 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.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Weekend Edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:49Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  All the Stoics were active in life, trying to make a difference, trying to have a positive impact on the world. They were suspicious of the pen and ink philosophers, of people who just wrote about stuff who didn't do it. But we've talked before about how you're only on this planet for like 4,000 weeks. Let's say you work for 40 years of that time. That's 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year for 40 years. That's 80,000 hours. Your career is roughly 80,000 hours. It's a lot of time, but it's also not a lot of time. You really can't afford to waste it. But if you dedicate yourself and end that time productively and effectively, you can have a huge positive impact on the world. You can serve the common good, as the Stoics talk about.

• 1:38Ryan Holiday?

  Well, 80,000 hours is a nonprofit that provides free research and support to help people do just that, to have a positive impact with their career. You can join their newsletter. They'll send you a free in-depth guide that takes you through all the steps, all the way to a concrete career plan. They host an awesome job board with nearly 1,000 open, high-impact career opportunities, and they offer free, one-on-one advice to help you switch paths. There's also a great 80,000 Hours podcast, which hosts super in-depth conversations with experts about how to best tackle Pressing global problems. You can join the newsletter right now. Get a free copy of their in-depth career guide sent right to your inbox. Just sign up at 80,000hours.org/stoic.

• 2:19Ryan Holiday?

  That's 80, the number 80,000 spelled out hours.org/stoic, 8-0-000-hours.org/stoic. And just to be clear, they're a nonprofit and everything they provide is free always. They're fully philanthropically funded. Their only goal is to help you have more impact in your career with those 80,000 hours that you have on this planet. To get started planning a career that works, sign up at 80,000hours.org/stoic.

• 2:51Ryan Holiday?

  You know, Stoicism isn't just what we do, it's also what we don't do. Epictetus said you could define Stoicism in two words, persist and resist. Some things you do, some things you have to resist doing. And in today's episode, that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to give you some Stoic don'ts. Marcus Rios talks about how so much of what we do and say is not essential. And then when you eliminate the inessential, or you eliminate the destructive, it leaves room for the essential and the constructive. That's what we're going to talk about in today's episode, eight Stoic don'ts that will help you find not just what is essential, but help you act essentially decently, productively, effectively, et cetera. And I hope you like this episode.

• 3:39Ryan Holiday?

  Generally, Stoics aren't, try not to be afraid of things. But of all the things a Stoic tries specifically not to fear, it's change. Marcus Rios says, "All things are born from change." Right? Everything good that ever happened to you in your life came from change. A Stoic doesn't fear change because they're prepared for stuff, because they know they can handle anything. Marcus Rios in meditation says, "What am I going to do about tomorrow?" He says, "I'm going to meet it with the same weapons that I met today." Right? Knowing what you're capable of, knowing what you can handle, means you don't have to fear change. You don't need to cling to make everything the same. And part of the Stoic idea of indifference, it doesn't mean you don't care, but it means you're good either way. So because of the preparation a Stoic does, they don't need

• 4:23Ryan Holiday?

  things to be a certain way. Stoic doesn't have to have a preference about how things are going to go tomorrow, whether it's going to be rainy or beautiful. Whether it's going to be hot or cold, whether people are going to love them or hate them, they know what they're supposed to do. They can handle anything. So Stoic doesn't fear change, doesn't have preferences, right? Because we don't need to. We can handle anything that life throws us.

• 4:48Ryan Holiday?

  A lot of stuff happens every day, every minute. But here's the thing, most of it doesn't matter, right? Marcus Aurelius says you're better off not giving small things more attention than they're worth. Basically, don't sweat the small stuff, right? The stuff that's not up to you, the stuff that doesn't move you closer to where you want to get in life, the stuff that distracts you from what you actually should be doing, you have to tune it out. We talked about this in one of the other videos, the idea that you don't have to have an opinion about this. It doesn't even have to register with you. You can ignore it. You can stay focused on what matters. You can ask yourself, is this essential? Doesn't matter. And if it doesn't, what do you do? You ignore it.

• 5:30Ryan Holiday?

  When someone criticizes me, I do this exercise for Marcus Aurelius. He says, "Think about this person. Think about what they just submitted to. Think about who they are. Think about what they're addicted to. Think about what they've ever accomplished." And what you realize is that this person, whose opinion you were about to let supersede your own evaluation of yourself and your work, is actually worse than meaningless. They're like the opposite of who you're trying to be. So it's good that they don't like what you're doing. You don't want their approval. Focus on what you think. Focus on who you want to be. As he says, "We love ourselves more than other people, but then for some reason, we care about other people's opinions more than our own." That's insanity. You've got to focus on who you are, on your own internal scorecard, on your sense of self. That's what you measure yourself against,

• 6:15Ryan Holiday?

  not the nonsense of other people, not the worthless opinions, these people who, quite frankly, you don't respect anyway.

• 6:24Ryan Holiday?

  A stoic doesn't need to get even. Marcus Aurelius says the best revenge is to not be like that. And this is a person who experienced coups, who was lied about, who was attacked constantly, right? Said the best revenge is to not be like the person who wronged you. Seneca says that we get angry about things, but how ridiculous that is. He says, "You never return a kick to a mule or a bite to a dog." A stoic understands that by nature of what we do, who we are, we're gonna get attacked, we're gonna get criticized. People suck, they're gonna hurt us, they're gonna do things. But what a stoic doesn't do, what you have to stop doing, is need to get revenge, need to get even, need to get your pound of flesh because someone did something to you. You're fine, you weren't harmed by it, you're gonna be alright, and you can let it go.

• 7:12Ryan Holiday?

  People wake up and what's the first thing they do? They check their text messages, they check their email. They basically make themselves an item on someone else's to-do list. The quality of their day is determined about what so-and-so tweeted, or what message came in, or what the latest breaking piece of news is. And that's no way to live. Marcus Aurelius says you have to stop being jerked around like a puppet. You have to slow down. You wanna be in control of your morning, you wanna be in control of the inputs that are coming into you. You don't wanna be starting the day from behind, you don't wanna be starting from this place of freneticness. You wanna be in control. So I think it's really important that you start the morning off right, that you start your day off right, and that you don't let things coming in determine the quality of your day, the quality of your life.

• 7:57Ryan Holiday?

  There's a great story about Napoleon who famously wouldn't read his mail until three weeks after it arrived. He knew that most problems will resolve themselves. But if you're checking constantly, if you're so reachable, you'll be inserting yourself into things that you don't need to be inserted in, you'll be spending time on things that will resolve themselves. You can imagine Marcus Aurelius doing a similar strategy, or Epictetus, or Seneca. The idea of responding to everything in real time, to being on top of everything in real time. Not only is this not a recipe for productivity, it's a recipe for misery too. You have to be willing not to know every single thing that's going on, to not be so reachable that anyone can interrupt you in your concentration at any time. Follow Napoleon's advice: sleep with your phone in the other room, leave your phone

• 8:40Ryan Holiday?

  in the other room when you're going to do something important, don't be so reachable.

• 8:47Ryan Holiday?

  "You don't have to let this get to you," Marcus Spilius says. "You don't have to let it upset you. You always have the option to have no opinion," he says. "You can just let it go. You can let it drift by like clouds," as the Buddhists talk about when they talk about thoughts. "You don't have to let it sink in, don't have to let it harm you, you don't have to let it get you riled up, you don't have to get worked up, you don't have to respond. You can just let it go. I want you to know that. Don't have to let this get to you. You can just let it go."

• 9:21Ryan Holiday?

  Epictetus says that when you look outside yourself for approval, you have settled, you've handed over your happiness or your autonomy. Meaning, and this is such a critical Stoic idea when we talk about what's in our control, what's not in our control, how you should judge yourself, whether you're getting better, whether you're a success, whether you're rich, whether you're...whatever it is, it can't be determined by other people. What you've done is hand over your life on a platter to other people. Obviously, this is wonderful when people are celebrating you and saying you're awesome, but what happens when that turns? Or, right, what happens if the crowd is wrong? What happens if the times that you're in are valuing the wrong things? So Epictetus is saying that you want to look inward, you want to create your own standards, your own scorecard for what's important to you.

• 10:04Ryan Holiday?

  So a Stoic doesn't look to outside sources, outside people, outside benchmarks for their success, for their happiness, for their self-worth. You find that internally.

• 10:19Ryan 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.