Have You Considered This? | What Stoicism Can Teach Us About Mental Health

Things go wrong. We get screwed over. We make mistakes. It happens. The idea that it shouldn’t affect a Stoic? Preposterous. No amount of training, Seneca writes, takes away natural feelings. So it’s OK that you don’t like what happened. What matters is what happens next.---Ryan also talks about how Stoicism has improved his mental health and how it can improve yours too.✉️ 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.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

• 0:25Ryan Holiday?

  You can be this, just don't be that. Things go wrong. We get screwed over. We make mistakes. It happens. The idea that it shouldn't affect a Stoic, this is preposterous. "No amount of training," Seneca writes, "takes away natural feelings." So it's okay that you don't like what happened. What matters is what happens next. Take the NFL coach Steve Wilks, for instance, who was just passed over for a head coaching job he more than deserved. He took over as the interim coach for the alien Carolina Panthers when they were 1-4, and he led the team to a 7-10 finish. He won the overwhelming support of the locker room, and he impressed the league. And yet, there he was, passed over for the job for

• 1:10Ryan Holiday?

  a white head coach who had just been fired months before, after leading the Colts to a 3-5-1 record. Was there a racial component to this? Maybe. Wilks has certainly experienced that before. But whether it is or isn't, doesn't change the fact that it's still a thing that sucks for him. No one wants to lose out on a job. And if it is, in fact, another example of the race problem in the NFL, it only makes things more frustrating and painful. And this is why Wilks's comments, after he didn't get the job, are so perfect. "The sun rose this morning, and by the grace of God, so did I," he explained. "I am disappointed,

• 1:51Ryan Holiday?

  but not defeated. Most people aren't built for this," he said, "but I know what it means to persevere and see it through." Disappointed, but not defeated. The Stoics knew disappointment well, but they rarely despaired. They would have liked Wilkes's attitude, as well as the distinction that Hemingway made in The Old Man in the Sea. "Man is not made for defeat. A man could be destroyed, but not defeated." You don't control what the fates decide for you. You don't choose to be passed over for a job. Nobody wants to come face to face with an error or an unpleasant reality. But you do control whether you give up, whether you let it break your heart, whether

• 2:36Ryan Holiday?

  you are defeated.

• 2:44Ryan Holiday?

  You're getting Stoicism totally wrong if you imagine the Stoics as these sort of emotionless, invulnerable, like, superhuman men and women. They weren't. They were people like you and us, which, men, they had problems like the rest of us. I've also had to use Stoicism in my own life, going through breakups, going through disappointments. Stoicism is there to help us with the problems of life. And so in today's episode, we're going to talk about some Stoic strategies for improving your mental health and your mental wealth. Seneca said that the mind must be taken on wandering walks. He said, "Otherwise, you'll break. You'll be too tense." I totally agree. I try to start my day with a walk, and I try to end my day with a walk.

• 3:29Ryan Holiday?

  I don't even consider it exercise, although it is that. To me, it's putting the body in motion. It's slowing the mind down. I'm getting outside. I'm connected with nature. Maybe I'm having a conversation with someone else that I care about. And even though I'm moving, I'm getting closer to a place of stillness. Walking, to me, is a magical cure-all. So, listen to the Stoics and take a walk.

• 3:54Ryan Holiday?

  Instead of talking about happiness, Aristotle uses this word "eudaimonia", which basically means "human flourishing", which I think is a better way of thinking about happiness. Happiness isn't exuberance, it's not excitement, it's not getting everything you want. I think it's a deeper place. It's when you're realizing the potential that you have as a human being in all your forms. And so if we can think then of happiness as that, the byproduct of doing all the things right in your life, wanting the right things, living the right way, prioritizing the right things, doing the right thing. Happiness is the byproduct of that. I think it's a better way to think about it. Viktor Frankl talks about how happiness must ensue.

• 4:38Ryan Holiday?

  It cannot be pursued. It's not a thing you get as a reward here. It's actually the day-to-day-ness of living and acting rightly, or for the Stoics, living and acting with virtue. I try to remind myself as many times as I can, every day and every minute, that this moment is enough. I don't need to be anywhere. I don't need to do anything. Nothing is expected of me but presence, just to be present. That is like the hardest thing in the world, but it's also the most wonderful thing in the world. You look out, you experience where you are. You're not wishing for things to be otherwise. That's what Stoicism is about to me. It's about becoming present. It's about locking in where you are, not needing or wanting anything else but what is in front of you right now.

• 5:25Ryan Holiday?

  It starts with the little choices, the decision to get up early, the decision to go work out, the decision to not check your phone first thing in the morning. Epictetus says, "If you want to be beautiful, make beautiful choices." And I think about that all the time. Am I making the good choice? Or am I making the lazy choice? Am I making the short-term choice or the long-term choice? Make good choices and it gets you where you want to go. Zeno says that well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. Those little choices matter and it starts there. And I would say it starts the second you wake up. In fact, it starts with the time that you decide to wake up. One of my favorite pages in one of my favorite books that I like to read to my kids says, "Asking for help isn't giving up, it's refusing to give up."

• 6:08Ryan Holiday?

  I have no shame or compunction about having gone to therapy, about going to therapy. In fact, I've gone to almost every kind of therapy you can imagine, which actually brings us to today's sponsor, BetterHelp, which helps you do exactly that. BetterHelp offers licensed therapists who are trained to listen and help you. You can talk to a therapist in a private, online environment at your convenience. You schedule your first phone or video session, plus you get unlimited text messages with your therapist as well, which is awesome and convenient. You have access to something like 20,000 licensed psychologists and therapists. You fill out a questionnaire that helps you identify your specific needs and get you matched with a therapist within 48 hours. You can request a new therapist with no charges till you find the right person for you.

• 6:53Ryan Holiday?

  Join the 2 million-plus people who have taken charge of their mental health with BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/dailystoic, which I'll link in the description below, betterhelp.com/dailystoic.

• 7:08Ryan Holiday?

  We suffer more in imagination than in reality. What does that mean? I think what Seneca is saying is that most of the things that we're anxious about, that we torture ourselves about, that we dread, that we catastrophize in our head, they never actually end up happening. Sure, bad stuff does happen in life, but our nightmares are usually worse than reality. Don't suffer unnecessarily. Don't borrow suffering from the future. The present should keep you plenty occupied enough. Focus on what's in front of you. Prepare, be adaptable, be ready, but don't suffer more in imagination than you have to in reality.

• 7:46Ryan Holiday?

  What is tranquility? What is happiness? Seneca says it's the sense that you're on the right path and the ability not to be distracted by all the paths that crisscross yours. He said, "Especially the path of footsteps of the people who are hopelessly lost." The sense of why you're here, what you're meant to do, what you're working on, why you're working on it, that's the really clarifying thing that allows you to feel at peace, to feel good, to feel secure, and you have to cultivate. It doesn't just happen. It comes from introspection. It comes from goal-setting. It comes from saying no to things. It comes from really locking in to what you are meant to do, why you're doing it, ignoring, shutting out, turning away from everything else.

• 8:27Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus really writes to himself, he says, "Fight to be the person philosophy wants you to be." And I just love that so much. It's that Stoicism has this ideal for you to be, someone who's resilient, someone who's strong, someone who's virtuous, someone who's kind, who cares about the common good, someone who isn't easily rattled, someone who's committed to bettering themselves. That's what Stoicism wants for you. That's what the Stoics have been writing about for centuries. That's what we do in these videos and the Daily Stoic email. That's the ideal. But the question is, are you fighting for yourself? Are you fighting to be that thing? Are you striving today to get a little bit closer to that perfect ideal? Are you fighting for yourself? The Stoics can't make you be or do anything.

• 9:10Ryan Holiday?

  They can just lay out the formula, but it's ultimately on you to follow it, to step up and actually be it.