Do This To Get That

In a sense, this is also the secret to happiness. No one can give us step-by-step instructions for achieving happiness—not even the Stoics. But they did teach us how to be resilient, how to think, how to manage frustration, how to do hard things, how to endure, how to laugh, how to focus on process vs outcomes, to try to be useful, to be empathetic, how to love. It’s with these tools—with the ability to adapt to circumstances, to find the opportunity in obstacles big and small—that we’re able to experience happiness.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://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 the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday 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, dailystoic.com. Do this to get that. Obviously, we want to be happy. But as we all know, it's not as simple as that. Happiness isn't something that just happens. It's not something anyone can give us or that we can purchase, nor is it something that any of us can hold on to. It's a rather fleeting thing. So how do we get it? What do we do? There's a great exchange between Epictetus — if you haven't read his Discourses, you should.

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  I've got some good copies I recommend in the Paint and Porch. But the exchange is between Epictetus and one of his students. And the student is asking Epictetus to show him what to do so he can be wise and successful. "This is the wrong request," Epictetus says. "It would be better to ask how to be adaptable to circumstances." In a sense, this is also the secret to happiness. No one can give us step-by-step instructions for achieving happiness, not even the Stoics. But they did teach us how to be resilient, how to think, how to manage frustration, how to do hard things, how to endure, how to laugh, how to focus on process versus outcomes, to try to be useful, to be empathetic, how to love. And it's with these tools, with the ability to adapt to circumstances,

• 1:30Ryan Holiday?

  to find the opportunity and obstacles, big and small, that we're able to experience happiness. None of us will be happy all the time — because that's impossible. But Stoicism does set us up to be happier than most people. It sets us up to be happy in ways and in places that most people can't be happy. And we should be pretty happy about that.