Do You Know How To Wait?

"Shakespeare waited out a plague. So did Isaac Newton. The poet John Keats spent 10 days in a harbor, waiting out a typhus epidemic. Think of the soldiers who spent years being posted overseas. Think about the ones who spent years recovering from their wounds. Life is full of waiting. It’s filled with moments of forced stillness. We’re delusional to think we’ll be exempted from this—that things are going to happen at our pace and on our terms."Ryan talks about dealing with periods of forced stillness in today's Daily Stoic Podcast. Get Stillness Is the Key for just $3.99 here: https://geni.us/StillnessSale***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?

  Do you know how to wait? In the ancient world, as you can imagine, there was so much waiting. It took weeks or months for mail to arrive. It took weeks or months to travel, even relatively short distances. Imagine you're Seneca and you come down with tuberculosis. Your doctor tells you that you have to travel to Egypt to recuperate in a different climate. He's not talking about a few days. Seneca was gone for nearly a decade, nearly a decade of waiting, not in control of patience and powerlessness. History is full of moments like that, moments just like the one we're in now. Shakespeare waited out a plague. So did Isaac Newton.

• 1:09Ryan Holiday?

  The poet John Keats spent months in a harbor waiting out an outbreak of disease. Think of all the soldiers who spent years being posted overseas. Think about the ones who spent years recovering from their wounds. Life is full of waiting. It's filled with moments of forced stillness. We're delusional to think that we'll be exempted from this, that things are going to happen at our pace and on our terms. So these few months we've spent here feel like an eternity. Yeah, so? Are you incapable of that Stoic virtue of self-discipline and temperance, that you're going to make it worse by rushing into things? Sure, you need to work. You need to go to the doctor, and there's a way to do those things intelligently. But do you really need to go golfing with friends? You can't cook

• 1:53Ryan Holiday?

  for yourself? You can't go without crowding into a public movie theater with a bunch of idiots and endanger yourself, them, and everyone else? Come on. We don't control what happens. We control how we respond. That's what this philosophy is. Courage, yes, that's a virtue, but sometimes it takes courage to not do things. Wisdom is a virtue too, and justice in moderation. We need those things from you today and always. We need you to figure out how to wait, how to be patient, how to be smart, and how to be still. Hey, just a quick heads up. Stillness is the key. I think it's my best book, number one New York Times bestseller about, I think, one of the most important things in life, which is slowing down even as you are charging ahead.

• 2:36Ryan Holiday?

  It's for sale as an ebook right now at a steeply discounted price of $3.99. You can get that anywhere books are sold, but especially Amazon. Click the link in the show notes. Check it out. Stillness is the key, $3.99.