Difficult Things Are Good For You | A Simple Way To Measure Our Days

When one thinks of a philosopher, they usually picture something like an ancient figure in a toga, or they think of a college professor in a tweed jacket. They don’t think of an athlete. They don’t think muscles, right? They think brains, not brawn. But in the ancient world philosophers were warriors, athletes, hunters, boxers, wrestlers, and distance runners. They did hard things. They pushed their physical limitations.---In today's Daily Stoic Journal reading, Ryan examines Marcus Aurelius' Meditation 7.69, and why the Stoics didn't believe that striving for perfection should be our primary goal in life.---You can reserve your spot right now in the 2023 Daily Stoic New Year, New you Challenge, at daily stoic.com/challenge. To check out Discipline is Destiny and other books, visit thepaintedporch.com ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check 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.

• 0:03Ryan 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.

• 0:48Ryan Holiday?

  Difficult things are good for you.

• 0:53Ryan Holiday?

  When one thinks of a philosopher, they picture something like an ancient figure in a toga from a painting, or they think of a college professor in a tweed jacket. They don't think of an athlete. They don't think muscles, right? They think brains, not brawn. But in the ancient world, philosophers were warriors, athletes, hunters, boxers, wrestlers, and distance runners. They did hard things. They pushed their physical limitations. Socrates was a soldier. He was admired for his ability to endure cold weather. Marcus Aurelius was a wrestler. Cleanthes was a boxer. These philosophers were practitioners, true believers in the ethos that Joe Rogan recently expressed when I was on the podcast, sounding a bit like Seneca, when he said, "Difficult things are good for you.

• 1:38Ryan Holiday?

  They are good for your mind." Because doing physically difficult things takes discipline. As Rogan said, "Discipline is a part of the mind." It's counterintuitive, but true. One of the best ways to increase your mental capabilities is to do things that are physically challenging. "We treat the body rigorously," Seneca said, "so it will not be disobedient to the mind." We do difficult things because they are good for us. They are good for our bodies and our minds. They make us stronger. They assert control over our bodies in a way that is transferable to the next time we are tempted by some impulse or inclined to take the easier route. They make us better at doing the next hard thing that life has in store for us. Difficult things are good for you.

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  They make us better, not just physiologically, but philosophically. That's why I think discipline is one of the four cardinal virtues, right? Courage, self-discipline, justice, and wisdom. And self-discipline is one we have to practice physically, I think. It's why the first part of Discipline is Destiny is about physical discipline. It's why I spent so much time thinking about it. And I think it's why the book is resonating with people. It's been awesome to see it come out of the gate so hot. I'm honored that so many of you have read it. If you haven't yet, I'd love for you to check it out and get Discipline is Destiny, The Power of Self-Control, anywhere books are sold. I'll sign your copy if you buy it from stewart.dailystoic.com and click the sign copy button, or you can pick up signed copies here at the Painted

• 3:07Ryan Holiday?

  Porch in Bastrop, Texas, or grab the audiobook or any other version in any other bookstore you like. But I'd love for you to check out Discipline is Destiny. Just go to dailystoic.com/discipline.

• 3:26Ryan Holiday?

  A simple way to measure our days. This is the December 15th entry in The Daily Stoic. 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, "Every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand. Write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them." You can check out The Daily Stoic Journal anywhere books are sold and also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoic store at stewart.dailystoic.com.

• 4:07Ryan Holiday?

  This is the mark of perfection of character, Marcus Aurelius says in Meditation 769. "To spend each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, laziness, or any pretending." The Stoics didn't think that we could be perfect. The idea of becoming a sage, the highest aspiration of a philosopher, it wasn't realistic. This was just their platonic ideal. Still, they started every day trying to get a little closer to that mark. There was so much to gain in the trying. Can you actually live today as if it were your last? Is it even possible to embody completeness or perfection in our ethos, our character? Effortlessly doing the right thing for a full 24 hours? Is it possible to do it for even a minute?

• 4:52Ryan Holiday?

  Maybe not. But if trying was enough for the Stoics, it should be enough for us too. And I think as, as we get older, as we go through life, we should get better at this, better at not wasting our time, better at not taking it for granted, better at rejecting the busyness or the chaos, the laziness and the procrastination, ceasing to pretend or try to impress other people or other things that don't matter, but being content and contained within ourselves, concentrating like a Roman, as Marcus really says in Meditations, right?

• 5:32Ryan Holiday?

  Facing the day with responsibility and poise and dignity and self-control, doing what has to be done,

• 5:42Ryan Holiday?

  doing it well, right? Doing the things, right, that have to be done, but not the things that don't have to be done.

• 5:51Ryan Holiday?

  Focusing, living, loving, living each day, not just as if it was your last, but as a complete day, as a representation of the person that you want to be, that you aspire to be. And I look back on my days in my twenties, I see I wasn't as good as it as I am now. I look back at my teenager, I was even more ridiculous. Look back when my kid was one, now there's six. You know, I, I feel like I'm getting better at it. That's what progress is. It's not perfection of character that we're after, right? But it is about perfecting, right? Improving, making strides in our character.

• 6:36Ryan Holiday?

  That's what we're after. That's what we're doing here. And the fact that we don't have that long should put an exclamation point on all of it. It should hang over it like the sword of Damocles, put it in perspective. Let you know that you can't waste a minute of it. That's what we're meditating on in this final month of the Daily Stoic. And it's also what we've built the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge about, which is going to start in roughly two weeks. Again, I'm not promising you perfection through it. I don't think anyone can be perfect, but we can get better. We can be a little less frenzied, a little less lazy, have a little less pretending.

• 7:19Ryan Holiday?

  We can be more in line with the ephemerality of life, do the things that really matter. And I hope you join us in the challenge. You can sign up now at dailystoic.com/challenge. Speaking of laziness, procrastination, busyness, it's always funny. I watch and wait as people get to the very last minute, right? They hear me talk about it on the 15th and then they're, they say, oh yeah, I meant to sign up for that. And then they email us frantically on the first, hey, you know, I want to sign up. Is it too late? Is it too late? Is it too late? That's one of the things we don't want to do or be like in 2023. So if you're thinking about signing up, will you join us now? And I look forward to seeing you all in the Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge. You can sign up at dailystoic.com/challenge. And let's measure our days.

• 8:03Ryan Holiday?

  Let's measure who we are this upcoming year by how unfrenzied we are, how diligent we are, that is to say, not lazy, a little pretending we do. And do we spend each of those days as if we were fully aware of how unpredictable and non-guaranteed the future happens to be?

• 8:30Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoic Store. You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend. The Obstacle is the Way, He Goes the Enemy, Stillness is the Key, the leather bound edition of the Daily Stoic. We have them all in the Daily Stoic Store, which you can check out at store.dailystoic.com.