Don’t Let It Turn You Upside Down | Suspend Your Opinions

We have to remind ourselves, as Marcus Aurelius did, that no matter what other people do (or what other people get away with), our job is to be good. 📓 Pick up a signed edition of The Daily Stoic Journal: 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on The Art of Living: https://store.dailystoic.com/Protect your Daily Stoic Journal from the wear and tear of everyday use with the Leather Cover: https://store.dailystoic.com/🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow 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.

• 0:02Ryan 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.

• 0:42Ryan Holiday?

  Don't let it turn you upside down. There was corruption everywhere. Dishonesty was endemic. Excess and venality were widely accepted. Cato's Rome was a messed up place, and so was Marcus Aurelius's. Then, like now, it would have been disorienting and disillusioning. People who cheated, people who lied, people who did horrible things to get ahead, were, well, getting ahead. It was enough to make one question, maybe I'm the one who is thinking and doing this all wrong. David Brooks, writing of "Our Moment," recently talked about the moral inversion of contemporary politics. Instead of scandals ending someone's career in today's world, it's almost a badge of honor. Lawsuits, convictions, divorces, affairs,

• 1:27Ryan Holiday?

  sexual harassment, damning on-the-record comments, these things swirl around our public figures who shamelessly shrug them off. Not just in politics, but business and tech and entertainment all have their share of unrepentant cheaters and monsters. Is this what it takes to get ahead these days? We have to remind ourselves, as Marcus Aurelius did, that no matter what other people do, or what other people get away with, our job is to be good. Our job is to resist this moral inversion, to not fall prey to what psychologists have called the "what the hell effect." Like Cato, we might be living in the dregs of Romulus, but we don't have to be bottom feeders. We don't have to be corrupted or degraded by

• 2:08Ryan Holiday?

  the moment we're living in. Marcus Aurelius didn't. He rose above it. He shone through it. And so must we.

• 2:24Ryan Holiday?

  Suspend your opinions. 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. Epictetus would teach that opinions were the cause of a troubled mind,

• 3:06Ryan Holiday?

  opinions about the way we think things should be or need to be. One of the Stoic words for opinion is dogma. And the practice of Stoicism begins with a relentless attempt to suspend this dogmatic way of living, a cessation of the belief that you can force your opinions and expectations onto the world. "We have the power to hold no opinion about a thing and not let it upset our state of mind, for things have no natural power to shape our judgments." It's Marcus Rilis in Meditations. "Today I escaped from the crush of circumstances, or better put, I threw them out, for the crush wasn't from outside me, but in my own assumptions." It's Marcus Rilis in Meditations. "There are two things that must be rooted out in human beings, arrogant opinion and mistrust.

• 3:50Ryan Holiday?

  Arrogant opinion expects that there is nothing further needed, and mistrust assumes, under the torrent of circumstances, there can be no happiness." That's Epictetus's Discourses. "Throw out your conceited opinions, for it is impossible for a person to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." From Epictetus. This idea of having no opinion is, man, it's so powerful. Epictetus also talks about, you know, can you be content to be seen as clueless or stupid about some things? I mean, but I don't think ignorance is admirable. But I do think that we often sort of track in real time a whole bunch of information we don't need. We have too many thoughts or judgments about other people's personal lives, the things our neighbors are doing.

• 4:33Ryan Holiday?

  You know, life is better when you have fewer opinions, because then it just is. You have fewer expectations, so you're not disappointed. You also don't take things for granted. And so I think for the Stoics, it's about getting to a kind of a zen-like place where you just see things as they are and you don't need them to be different. You don't need them to be otherwise. You didn't expect them to be this way or that way. You just went with the flow of it. I think this is obviously what social media is designed to make us not do, right? Facebook says, what are you, what's on your mind? What are you thinking about? What's going on in your life? Twitter says the same thing. Snapchat and Instagram say, take a video of this, share it, let other people know. Give your thoughts, react to this. Do you ever feel that much better doing that? Or does it just create new problems for you? And now, did anyone like it? Do people agree?

• 5:18Ryan Holiday?

  Why is this idiot responding in the comments? Why aren't people understanding? Why aren't they appreciating? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You have the power to have no opinion. That's such a beautiful freeing idea from Marcus Aurelius. And look, he's not saying, don't have an opinion about injustice. Don't be involved civically. Of course, that's not what the Stoics think. Their whole lives are a testament to the contrary. But I guess they're just saying, it's like, look, if somebody you know is having an affair, that can eat you up inside, it can bother you. Why are they doing this? Why do people do this? Why, you know, be disappointed in your fellow humans? And it's like, it's none of your business, man. It's not up to you. You're not doing it. You know why you're not doing it. Let them do them. They will face the consequences for that. You don't need to get involved. You've got enough to focus on with you.

• 6:03Ryan Holiday?

  You've got enough that's in your control that you're not focusing on. And so going through life in a dogmatic way, trying to project and force your opinions on other people is a miserable way to live. It's also a tyrannical way to live. And so we've got to practice this sort of, I don't want to call it detachment, but it's it's looking inward instead of outward. And I think that creates a happier life, that creates a better flowing life. It also gives people the freedom to make their mistakes, to learn their own lessons, to do their own things. Something, you know, I'm learning about with my kids as well, is like, look, you do you, man, and I'm here if you need me. And, uh, and I think that's a good way to live. And so let's focus on having fewer opinions today. Let's, let's focus on the things that are up to us. Let's leave the things that are not up to us, to the other people, to the makers, to the people they are up to.

• 6:48Ryan Holiday?

  And, uh, I think that'll all help us get along, certainly be happier and certainly have more tranquility. So just have no opinion, move on. I don't have an opinion about your opinion, and that's exactly how it should be. All right. Have a good week, everyone.

• 7:04Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please, spread the word. Tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.