Can You Help Others First?

"Here we are in tough times. A global pandemic has struck wide swaths of the population. Governments are struggling under the load. Economies are crashing. These are the kinds of moments that make average people want to shrink, to turn inward, to focus on themselves. A Stoic resists that impulse."Find out what a Stoic does instead, in today's Daily Stoic podcast.****If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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 Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com.

• 0:29Ryan Holiday?

  Can you help others first? Stoicism, it was said by one early 20th-century historian, was the stern nurse of heroes in the ancient world. As a philosophy, it was tough, it was demanding, but it made great men and women. It created heroes that those tough and scary times required: your Catos, your Porsches, your Epictetuses, and your Marcus Aureliuses. Well, here we are, again, in tough times. A global pandemic has struck wide swaths of the population. Governments are struggling under the load, economies are crashing. These are the kinds of moments that make average people want to shrink,

• 1:10Ryan Holiday?

  to turn inward, to focus on themselves. But a Stoic resists that impulse. Remember what we believe, what we hold up as the highest virtues: courage, self-discipline, justice, wisdom. That is, not being afraid, not giving in to our baser instincts, not putting yourself above others, not getting lost in what's up close, but seeing the bigger picture. The next few weeks and months may call for you to exercise all of those traits, as crises often do. Most of all, they're going to call for you to be heroic, which we can define as putting others above yourself. That means, yes, eating the loss of some trip you already paid for to reduce the chance of spreading germs. That means, yes, sharing resources

• 1:54Ryan Holiday?

  with others less fortunate. That may mean paying people for jobs they're not able to do at the moment, or it may mean doing a job if you have an essential occupation at risk to yourself. That may mean declining to go to the doctor for some Minor ailment or routine matter, so as not to tax the system. It may mean if things get really bad, insisting that someone, be they your children or some stranger, gets treatment before you do. That's what the Stoics have always done when events turn. That's what it means to believe in courage, self-discipline, justice, and wisdom. Remember what Epictetus said about embodying philosophy, not just studying it.

• 2:35Ryan Holiday?

  Remember Marcus Aurelius, "There comes a time when we have to stop talking about what a good person is like and actually be one." We have to show what this philosophy is about. We have to put others first. We have to be heroic. I'm holding in my hand our Four Virtues medallion for Daily Stoic. Courage, justice, temperance, wisdom. Try not to exchange these for others. You know, it's always good for me to have physical reminders of these things. I know I've heard from a lot of people that have said the same thing. So if you want to check that out, you can do it at dailystoic.com/virtues. But most of all, I hope you really take this advice seriously. Be good to each other, be safe, be prepared, and we'll get through this.