It’s Always Happening | What Little Wins Can You Find

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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?

  It's always happening. Because it's sad, we don't want to notice it. We don't want to think about it. But that doesn't mean it's not happening. In 2017, at Daily Stoic, we interviewed the writer and Southern Stoic, Peter Lawler. He passed away a short while after. We had the great Paul Woodruff on this podcast to talk about his love of Marcus Aurelius, and we didn't even know he was dying. We've talked before about the wonderful videos of the philosopher Michael Sugru, and he too, as the New York Times belatedly reported, passed away. Just nine months ago, we interviewed the indelible Dr. Sue Johnson, who wrote one of my favorite books, Hold Me Tight. And she sadly passed away this April. Daily Stoic hasn't been around that long, but there you have it.

• 1:24Ryan Holiday?

  Guests we've loved, guests whose work has had an enormous impact on us are gone, already receding into memory. This is life. It is always happening. In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius would note this timeless, unstoppable process, the way he said that names once familiar, once powerful, die and fall away. He would also note the number of doctors who, after sitting at so many deathbeds, would eventually find themselves at their own. These philosophers of Stoicism, who would have read and spoken about and prepared for death, that essential and inevitable part of the art of living, eventually found themselves having to practice it themselves, as we ourselves will also have to practice. It could be a sudden accident, it could be a slow and painful illness, it could be old age or in one's prime.

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  But none of us last forever. None of us are invincible. None of us are exempt from the process that cut down Marcus Aurelius and his children, Seneca and Nero alike, Daily Stoic guests and the people we went to school with. We have to notice this. We have to think about it. We can't stop death from happening. We are all marked souls living on borrowed time. Let's not waste what time we have left. Memento mori.

• 2:44Ryan Holiday?

  What little wins can you find? Zeno, the Phoenician merchant who founded the Stoic School on the painted porch, the Sto apo kilae of the Agora after a shipwreck, said that happiness was a matter of small steps. While the Stoics believed in the perfectibility of human beings, they knew that so much stood in the way of realizing that potential. So they would be skeptical of the so-called epic wins and quantum leaps that our culture obsesses over today. Instead, they would urge you to focus on your daily duties, on making incremental progress. Spend your time this week thinking about small wins, what little gains can be had from this improvement or that one, a decision here or a decision

• 3:25Ryan Holiday?

  there. Be satisfied with each small step. Keep moving and don't give up. This is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living, from yours truly. You can find this anywhere books are sold. And of course, we also have signed books in the Daily Stoic store. But we have a quote from Marcus, a quote from Epictetus, and a quote from Zeno today. "Do what your nature demands," Marcus Aurelius says in Meditations 9:29. "Get right to it if it's in your power. Don't look around to see if people will know about it. Don't await the perfection of Plato's Republic, but be satisfied with even the smallest step forward and regard the outcome

• 4:06Ryan Holiday?

  itself as a small thing." Then Epictetus says, "We don't abandon our pursuits because we despair of ever perfecting them." That's Discourses 1:2. "Well-being is realized by small steps," Zeno says, according to Diogenes Laertus, "but it is no small thing." I was actually just thinking about this this morning. I'm in the middle of writing the book that I'm working on now. And there's a great writing rule, you know, just a couple crappy pages a day. Just put in the time, put in the work. That'll get you to a manuscript, like a draft one. Then you can edit draft one, but you can't edit what doesn't exist. So people, as Epictetus says, who despair of progress because it's not perfection,

• 4:51Ryan Holiday?

  they never get there. But the person who shows up and does work every day gets there. So I was actually writing this in my journal today. And as I was writing this in the journal, I was thinking, put your ass in the chair, be at the desk. And then this story popped in my head because I've been trying to write this chapter about like keeping your workstation clean. That'll be in like two books from now. But the point is, as I was thinking about this, I remembered this little thing that I'd read about Robert Moses in Robert Caro's book, The Power Broker. And I wrote down on my note card and boom, the chapter just unlocked itself. So my point is, I was thinking about the process when the process got to work and solved a problem that I was having trouble solving. I got to my desk, I got to sit down, I pulled the power broker off the shelf, started going

• 5:35Ryan Holiday?

  through my folded pages and there on about page 280, something was it, the exact story that I needed. And about an hour, I busted out the first draft of this chapter. And that was all I have to do for today's contribution to the book. Now, a lot of days like this add up. As George Washington was fond of saying, many mickles make a muckle. You show up enough days, you do this enough times, gets you to phase one, then you improve, then you go on to phase two, phase three, and finally you get your completed product. So today, it's not about sort of big, huge wins. Like this was a minor, minor win. This is maybe three paragraphs. And who knows, maybe it'll even get cut from the book.

• 6:17Ryan Holiday?

  But the point is, I followed the process, I showed up, I did the work, I didn't wait around. I put my ass where I wanted my heart to be, quote Stephen Pressfield, and I made the smallest step forward, as Marcus said. I'm not going to get too high about this. I'm not going to get too excited. I'm going to, as Marcus says, regard it as a small thing, but I'm also confident enough, experienced enough to know that these small things add up. And that's what I'm excited about. And I know that I just have to do this enough times for long enough that I'll eventually get to the other side of where I need to go. And that is true for your problems, for your projects, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, show up, put your ass in the chair, do the work, let the process guide you to the eventual inevitable accomplishment.

• 7:07Ryan 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.