Freedom to Do What? | Protect Your Own Good

“Yesterday was July 4th, which as most of you know, is a day that marks the celebration of the declaration of independence for the newly formed United States. That idea of freedom is an important one and there’s no question that the founding of America was a step forward in the march for freedom across the world (though by no means a complete one).”Ryan asks you to reflect on what freedom means, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. Blinkist is the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow 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 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. Freedom to do what? Yesterday was July 4th, which, as most of you know, is a day that marks the celebration

• 0:49Ryan Holiday?

  of the Declaration of Independence for the newly-formed United States. That idea of freedom is an important one, and there's no question that the founding of America was a step forward in the march for freedom across the world, though by no means a complete one. But it's worth taking a minute today, the day after the festivities and celebrations, to reflect freedom to do what? Independence from what? We live in a time of unprecedented prosperity. Old constraints, religious, social, political, have broken down, mostly for the better. Yet so many people are miserable. So many people are imprisoned in lives of excess, meaninglessness, and stress.

• 1:31Ryan Holiday?

  We struggle with the tension between what we can do and what we should do. This is, in fact, a timeless struggle. Anyone who has read Thomas Rix's wonderful book, First Principles, or listened to my great interview with him here on the Daily Stoic Podcast, you know that the philosophically inspired founders believed very deeply that liberty from the state was always intended to be checked by private virtue. What Stoicism is, properly understood, is a voluntary system of self-restraint, a framework for unsolicited courage, self-directed education, and uncoerced commitment to treat others well.

• 2:12Ryan Holiday?

  And this is most necessary in a society where one has the choice to do otherwise.

• 2:19Ryan Holiday?

  James Stockdale spoke movingly of the flipside of all the freedoms we have in this modern world. He said, "It's that we're still our brother's keeper." Eisenhower, for his part, tried to remember that freedom was really just the opportunity for self-discipline. Marcus Aurelius could do whatever he wanted. He could have been Nero, or Tiberius, or Hadrian. Instead, he chose to be good. He chose to care about other people. He chose moderation. He chose wisdom. He chose justice. It was a deeply courageous thing to do.

• 2:56Ryan Holiday?

  Protect your own good. Musonius Rufus, one of Epictetus's teachers, taught that human beings are all born with an innate goodness, or as he put it, "with an inclination to virtue." It's our choices that decide whether that goodness comes out or not. We're not bad people, essentially, though we might sometimes do bad things. The purpose of Stoicism, then, is to remind us of that goodness and to help us work hard to protect it. So spend some time this week writing about the choices you can make, the actions you can take to do just that. And this is from the Daily Stoic Journal, "366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Journaling, on the Art of Living," which I use myself every morning. I love the little

• 3:40Ryan Holiday?

  prompts. Here is Epictetus's Discourses, who, as you know, Epictetus was Musonius Rufus's student. "Protect your own good in all that you do, and as concerns everything else, take what is given as far as you can make reasoned use of it. If you don't, you'll be unlucky, prone to failure, hindered, and stymied." That's Discourses 4:3. And then Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. Marcus, then influenced by Epictetus, so Musonius teaches Stoicism to Epictetus, whose writings then survive and make their way to Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius, as it happens, is introduced to Stoicism through Junius Risticus, who loans him his

• 4:20Ryan Holiday?

  copy of Epictetus. "Dig deep within yourself," Marcus writes in Meditation 759. "For there is a fountain of goodness ever ready to flow if you will keep digging." I guess what the Stoics are doing here is really pushing back on this notion of original sin, that we're toxic, broken, horrible people, that human nature is something to be feared.

• 4:40Ryan Holiday?

  You know, there is a darkness in us, but there's also incredible good. And I think the Stoics are talking about what side of you are you gonna nurture? What side is gonna come out? What side are you gonna look for? What side are you gonna reveal? And Musonius and Epictetus and Marcus are all tested in incredible ways. Musonius is exiled three times, perhaps four. Epictetus, you know, experiences the incredible injustices of slavery. Marcus Aurelius is given absolute power. And as they say, power reveals. But I think also adversity reveals.

• 5:21Ryan Holiday?

  And in both Musonius and Epictetus's case, adversity revealed a goodness, an unbreakable goodness, a commitment, a tenacity, a perseverance, an unswerving belief in these principles that we're talking about now. And in Marcus Aurelius, you know, he wasn't challenged the same way, although life did challenge him with loss and grief and pain and sickness, but it also challenged him with a great bounty of good fortune. And that too tested his character. It tested whether there really was goodness inside of him and what side of him he was going to reveal. So as you go out into the world this week, think about who you really are underneath.

• 6:06Ryan Holiday?

  Think about what kind of character you've been cultivating. Let's show people who we are and who we can be and what we actually believe. As Marcus says, let's not waste time arguing what a good man should be. Let's be one. Let's be the best we can for ourselves, for our family, for our world. And I'll talk to you soon. Those four virtues, courage, justice, temperance, wisdom, those are the checks, the balances I try to keep in my own life. I carry this Four Virtues coin in my pocket, which you can check out, store.dailystoic.com. But those four virtues, remember, you're free to do whatever you want, mostly whatever you want.

• 6:46Ryan Holiday?

  But the system, the virtues, the code you live by has to tell you what you should do, not just what you can do. So check that out. Talk soon. So check that out. Happy Fourth of July. Talk soon.