Do You Want To Join These Ranks? | The Portable Retreat

Ryan talks about the importance of studying philosophy, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal.🎓 Sign up for Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy For Your Actual Life - https://dailystoic.com/101Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and 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.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:35Ryan Holiday?

  Do you want to join these ranks? We have this notion that philosophers are academics. And although many of the Stoics were teachers, this was rarely, if ever, their full occupation or their day-to-day profession. Across the first 500 years of Stoic history, the members form an astonishing spectrum of the stations in life. They were soldiers, and emperors, and public servants, and merchants, and writers, and athletes, and parents, and daughters, and diplomats. And these ancients would then influence and inspire many of history's greats and some of today's greats. Theodore Roosevelt brought Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius on his deadly River of Doubt expedition. Thomas Jefferson had Seneca on his nightstand when he died.

• 1:19Ryan Holiday?

  Toussaint Leventur, the leader of the Haitian Revolution, studied Epictetus as he rose against Napoleon. Beatrice Webb, who not only helped found the London School of Economics and first conceptualized the idea of collective bargaining, called Meditations "her manual of devotion." And more recently, Stoicism has found its largest and most diverse audience ever. "Stoicism has given me the tools," said the pop star Camila Cabello, "to give her peace and authenticity when she works and when she writes and when she sits down on her craft." And she says she's blessed that she didn't get taught those tools in school. As he told ESPN a couple of years ago,

• 1:59Ryan Holiday?

  Alabama football coach Nick Saban uses the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius to prepare for big games. You can read about how whenever General James Mattis is deployed, he packed a copy of Meditations with him. Actors, Olympians, bestselling authors, Navy SEALs, entrepreneurs, journalists, distance runners, men, women, moms, dads, sons, daughters. We could go on and on with the list of who have read and studied and quoted. Try to live by the ideas in the Stoics. It doesn't matter what you do, or where you're from, or what your station is in life. You can join those ranks. There is no role, Marcus Aurelius would write, so well suited to philosophy as the one you happen to be in right now. The role of parent, the role of spouse, the role of person waiting in line, the role

• 2:41Ryan Holiday?

  of a person who has just been given bad news, the role of a person who is rich, the role of a person sent into exile or delivered into bankruptcy, the role of a person who finds themselves enslaved, literally or otherwise. All of these are suited to philosophy. There is no role in which Stoicism cannot be of service. Which is why we can confidently say that whatever you're doing, whoever you are, this course we've made, Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life, will be of use. Because as we've been saying, this 14-day course was designed, was created around the Stoic belief that the only reason to study philosophy is to become a better person, to live a better life, to be better at what you do. And that's exactly what Stoicism 101 has done for some of the people that we've talked

• 3:26Ryan Holiday?

  to that went through the course last year. They said that Stoicism has changed their life, but the course took their understanding of that to the next level. That although Stoicism had piqued their interest, this course helped bring some real tangible improvements in their study. And people who had read my books, or just heard of my books, this was like their entry point into getting serious about Stoicism. And we got real serious making this course. In 14 custom emails delivered daily, that's 20,000 words of content, basically a short book. We talk about who the Stoics were, things a Stoic does, things a Stoic doesn't do, what sets the Stoics apart from other philosophies and philosophers. The key components of living a good Stoic day, the Stoic secrets to success, the Stoic

• 4:11Ryan Holiday?

  secrets to resilience, the Stoic secrets to productivity. And there's three live video sessions with me, we're calling them office hours, plus you get access to the ones I did the last go around. So that's hours and hours of deep dives into the big Stoic questions. I have some experience talking about Stoicism and people have done it all over the world, the audiences, big and small, elite and ordinary. And I've already done this course before, so I'm really excited to bring all that wisdom to you, but it's a live course and it begins tomorrow, March 22nd. You don't have much time. All participants are going to be moving through the course together, so please sign up now. Today is the last day to register. Registration closes tonight at midnight,

• 4:56Ryan Holiday?

  so I want to have you sign up. Do that now before it's too late. Sign up at dailystoic.com/101 or check it out in the Daily Stoic store. And remember, if you sign up for Daily Stoic Life, you get this course and all the other Stoicism courses for free, plus a lot of other cool stuff. So if you've been thinking about doing that, now is a good excuse. You can sign up there at dailystoiclife.com.

• 5:21Ryan Holiday?

  The Portable Retreat. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, "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. You can also get a signed, personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoic store at store.dailystoic.com. It is in the future, on a vacation, on your day off, that's when we plan to get

• 6:04Ryan Holiday?

  out into nature. We think there we'll find peace and release from the crush of the everyday demands of life. Yet this never seems to really happen as often as we think, does it? And when we do get that peace, it is difficult to keep it once we go back into the fray. So for a Stoic, all this is madness. The true retreat is to the freedom of our own mind and our own soul, to consider the gifts we already have that can be a refuge for all time, if we take the time, daily, to do so.

• 6:38Ryan Holiday?

  That's from the Daily Stoic Weekly Meditation in the Daily Stoic Journal, which I hope you'll check out. We've got some quotes from Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus here to round it out. "People seek retreat for themselves in the country, by the sea, or in the mountains. You are very much in the habit of yearning for those same things. But this is entirely the trait of a base person, when you can at any moment find such a retreat in yourself. For nowhere can you find a more peaceful and less busy retreat than in your own soul, especially if, on close inspection, it is filled with ease, which I say is nothing more than being well ordered. Treat yourself often to this retreat

• 7:19Ryan Holiday?

  and be renewed." Marcus Aurelius's Meditations 4.3. "Remember that it is not only the desire for wealth and position that debases and subjugates us, but also the desire for peace, leisure, travel, and learning. It doesn't matter what the external thing is. The value we place on it subjugates us to another. Where our heart is set, there are impediment lies." That's Epictetus's Discourses 4.4. "Remember that your ruling reason becomes unconquerable when it rallies and relies on itself, so that it won't do anything contrary to its own will, even if its position is

• 7:59Ryan Holiday?

  irrational. How much more unconquerable if its judgments are careful and made rationally? Therefore, the mind free from passions is an impenetrable fortress, and a person has no more secure place of refuge for all time." That's Marcus Aurelius's Meditations 8.48. You know, it must have been really hard to be Marcus. I mean, we think about, sometimes the American media teases presidents for how much they play golf, or, you know, jet off to Mar-a-Lago, or Camp David, or any of those sort of retreats. But the truth is, it must be extraordinarily hard to be the head of state. Endless meetings, endless

• 8:40Ryan Holiday?

  responsibilities, endless criticism, endless pressure. You're trapped in this house. You live at the office, literally. And so leaders need escapes. They need hobbies. Talk about this in Stillness is a Key, Churchill's hobby of bricklaying and painting. Eisenhower plays golf. All that's important. But what Marcus realist is saying is, and I think this is true for all of us, you're not actually able to get away from it all with a hobby, with a trip, with a vacation. And in fact, in my own experience, often I come back to the office from vacation more stressed out. When I had Matt Berninger on the podcast from The National, we talked about how you think, hey, I'm going to take a couple of week vacation and relax, get down to a lower pace of life,

• 9:24Ryan Holiday?

  recharge, then when I come back, I'll be better. It probably took me like eight, nine months into the pandemic to really detox from the daily grind of work to adjust to a slower pace of life. So the idea that two weeks or a trip to the beach or a trip to the mountains is going to help you get away from it all, that a seven day meditation retreat is going to do it for you. It's not. It can help, but it's not a magic. There's no magical solution. There's no pill you can take. There's no trip you can take. There's no dark room in the back of your house you can go to. There's no beautiful landscaped backyard that will do it. No, you have to be able to turn inward. You have to be able to cultivate that peace in yourself. And that's

• 10:06Ryan Holiday?

  better, too. Don't you want it on demand? Vacations are expensive. You got to get on planes, or they can be blocked from a pandemic, or scrutiny from a whatever. You can't flee. Epicurus says, every man flees himself. Emerson has a great essay on travel, and he talks about how many of us bring ruins to the ruins we visit. No, you stay put, you do the internal work, you find the retreat, the refuge inside your own mind, inside your own soul, inside your own principles, inside your own meditation, inside your own journaling, inside the walk that you take, right? You got to be able to find it and cultivate it on demand. Much better for

• 10:50Ryan Holiday?

  you, I promise. Focus on that. Focus on cultivating the inward retreat as Marcus had to do.

• 10:58Ryan Holiday?

  You never know, right? A pandemic, a war, things can block us from the trips, right? A travel delay, bad weather, things can prevent us from having that. But if we have it on the inside, you can feel at peace and serene even as you are sitting in the airport, waiting for your delayed and delayed and delayed flight. That's what you want. You can have it even at court, as Marcus really said, you can have it even when you're president. Good systems, good internal discipline, good thoughts, a good soul. This is the best place of refuge and relaxation. So I hope you give yourself that gift and I hope you put in the work so you can have it when you need it. 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.

• 11:42Ryan Holiday?

  Check it out at dailystoic.com/email.