It’s Not Something You’ve Done. It’s Something You’re Doing. | 9 Stoic Keys To Building Character That Lasts

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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, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  It's not something you've done, it's something you're doing. Some things are made to be read once. A tweet, an article, even most books. They're there to entertain, to inform, to tell you about a place you might be visiting, or explain why something is the way that it is. But then there is another kind of book, one you're supposed to come to over and over again. For Marcus Aurelius, this was Epictetus, whose discourses he read from the time he was 25 to the time of his death. Stockdale had a similar experience after he was introduced to Stoicism. "On my bedside table, no matter what carrier I was aboard," he explained of his deployments, "there were my Epictetus books: Incurdian Discourses, Zenith's Memorabilia of Socrates, and the Iliad and the Odyssey,"

• 1:41Ryan Holiday?

  because Epictetus expected his students to know Homer. He said, "I didn't have time to be a bookworm, but I spent several hours each week buried in them." Now, of course, that is the definition of being a bookworm, but it's also the prescription that Seneca himself gave. "You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers and digest their works," he wrote, "if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind." The Stoics are not something you have read. They are something you are reading always, at every age and era of your life. The world is constantly changing. We are constantly changing and therefore what we get out of these books changes too. That's obviously what The Daily Stoic is built around.

• 2:26Ryan Holiday?

  To put the best of these master thinkers in one place. It was a book designed for daily reading, daily reflection and daily application of timeless Stoic wisdom. And when we released it 10 years ago, we couldn't have dreamed that millions of people would be reading it each day all over the world, but they are. And it's consistently one of Amazon's top 20 most read books each morning for a reason. Because people like you crack it open and spend a few minutes meditating on what Marcus really said. Epictetus and Seneca and Musonius, Rufus and Cato laid down all those centuries ago. They are treating Stoicism as it was meant to be treated, a daily practice. Some read The Daily Stoic digitally and actually right now it's $1.99. You can grab it on Amazon. I'll link to it in the show notes.

• 3:11Ryan Holiday?

  Some people have well-worn hardcovers and we've got signed ones in the Daily Stoic store. And then many people, after several years of cycling through the book, have upgraded to the premium edition, the leather one, which is meant to last a lifetime. It's got a leather cover. It's printed on this munk and cream paper. We use this amazing facility in the UK. It's supposed to be a book that you're proud to display on your shelves, even after years of picking it up and reading it every day. Because that's what the philosophy is meant to be. Not something you tear through and shell, but wisdom that you sit with, that you digest slowly, that you return to, that you bring with you, that you live with and let inside you. Like I said, The Daily Stoic ebook is $1.99. Wherever you get your ebooks, I'll link to that.

• 3:55Ryan Holiday?

  And over at the Daily Stoic store, we've got signed hardcovers and leather bound editions, which make for a great gift. I think they'll stand the test of time pretty well. I'll link to that right now. I believe you grab that at dailystoic.com/leather, but I will link to that in today's show notes. Thanks to everyone who has been reading it all these years. It means a lot to me. Every time I see it on that Amazon chart, I'm just blown away. I love that and I really appreciate you and all your support. Enjoy.

• 4:29Ryan Holiday?

  If you don't sweat the small stuff, the details that matter, that add up in a big way, you could lose everything. You could end up very far from where you want to be.

• 4:42Ryan Holiday?

  The most valuable asset a person can have, the Stoics would say, is character. In fact, there was an ancient expression, "character is fate." Character determined your destiny. If you had bad character, you might be successful in the short term. You might win honors, but eventually that would prove to be your undoing. Your hubris and your lack of ethics would eventually lead to your demise. If you had character, you'd be all right. That wasn't saying that life would be a piece of cake, that you'd get everything you wanted, but you'd be all right. So Stoicism was really about that, the cultivation of virtue, the cultivation of character. Right? Marcus Aurelius said, "The whole point of life is to cultivate good character and do works for the common good." And that's what we're going to talk about in today's episode. I'm Ryan Holiday,

• 5:26Ryan Holiday?

  the author of a number of books about Stoic philosophy. I've spoken to the NBA, the NFL, sitting senators, special forces leaders. And in today's episode, we're going to talk about how the Stoics cultivate character, how you can cultivate a better character. Because yes, character is destiny, but that doesn't mean that you can't shape and improve and reform your character.

• 5:52Ryan Holiday?

  We say, "Oh, I'm ruined. I've been screwed over. This broke me. I'll never be the same." No. According to Marcus Aurelius, it can only ruin your life. It can only harm you if it ruins your character. So you have to know, the bankruptcy, the divorce, the scandal, none of it actually matters in the big scheme of things. It only matters if you let it affect your character. Everything else is recoverable from. You can come back from everything but that. It only ruins your life if it ruins your character.

• 6:24Ryan Holiday?

  Three things I learned from the great George Raveling, Hall of Fame basketball coach, civil rights activist. The first one is always be reading. He told me that his grandmother told him that the slave masters used to keep money in books because they thought the slaves would never read them. The point being, there's money in books, there's freedom in books, and there's a reason powerful people don't want you to read. Number two, he has a great question. He says, "Are you going to be a positive difference maker today?" That's his question. "Are you going to be a positive difference maker today?" And that's a question I think about all the time, and I got that from him. And the third one is, you can learn from anyone. George Raveling once said, "I was his mentor in an interview," which of course is preposterous, but I'll take the point,

• 7:06Ryan Holiday?

  which is that you can learn from anyone, including people who are younger than you. You can learn from anyone, even if they live very different lives than you, even if you disagree with them about 99% of stuff. You can learn from anyone. Anyone can be your mentor, and I learned that from George Raveling.

• 7:24Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus Aurelius reminds us to meditate often on the interconnectedness of everything in the world. He talks about at night, when you see the stars, he says, "Imagine yourself running alongside them. Imagine yourself up there." Whenever I watch a sunset, whenever I people watch, whenever I look at some beautiful piece of scenery, I try to think about humanity as one giant whole. I try to think about all the generations that have ever lived, all the ones that will ever come. And I try to remind myself that we're all connected. We're all part of this. We're all one enormous organism. As the Stoics try to remind us, what's bad for that organism is bad for us. We're all connected. We're all part of this. We all share this. And I try to never forget that.

• 8:09Ryan Holiday?

  Don't sweat the small stuff. It's great advice, but also details matter. Xeno, one of the founders of Stoicism, said, "Well, being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing." If you don't sweat the small stuff, the details that matter, that add up in a big way, you could lose everything. You could end up very far from where you want to be. So the key isn't that you don't sweat any small things, but you know what are the irrelevant small things and what are the essential small things.

• 8:41Ryan Holiday?

  Musonius Rufus says, "If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good remains." He says, "If you do something shameful in the pursuit of pleasure, pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures." Remember that. Working hard to do something good and the good lasts forever. If you do something shameful for something short-term, for something pleasurable, to get one over on someone else, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame, the stain, remains.

• 9:09Ryan Holiday?

  People suck. It's just a fact. And one of the fascinating things about Marcus Aurelius's meditations is how often he returns to this very theme. He opens the book with a catalog of the kind of people you're gonna meet in the day. Frustrating people, jealous people, stupid people. It's just a fact. Even his famous passage about how the obstacle is the way, the impediment to action, advances action, you know what he's talking about? He's talking about difficult people. He's not saying you write them off. He's not saying you cut them out. He's not saying you give up on humanity. He's saying that difficult people aren't an opportunity to be kind, to be patient, to be good, to get the most out of them. The obstacle is the way, even is about this very idea. Difficult people exist, and we have to put up with them and figure out a way to work with them. And we have to rise to the occasion of the people that we interact with.

• 9:58Ryan Holiday?

  There's this amazing story about Ulysses S. Grant. He's this promising young military officer. He serves honorably in the Mexican-American War. But then something goes wrong. He basically ends up working for his dad, selling firewood by the side of the road. And one of his old friends from West Point comes by one day, and he says, "Good God, Grant, what are you doing?" And Ulysses S. Grant just looks at him and he says, "I'm solving the problem of poverty." Meaning that Grant doesn't care that he's doing a so-called menial job, or that it's a humiliating occupation. All he cares about is that he's providing for his family, he's doing a good job. He knows that it doesn't say anything about him as a person. It's crazy to think that just a few years later, Grant would be the head of an enormous army, and a few years after that, he'd be the President of the United States.

• 10:43Ryan Holiday?

  To accept it without arrogance, to let it go with indifference. You don't let the lowly position change who you are, and you don't let the high position change who you are either. None of it goes to your head. You know none of it says anything about you as a person, and that's what really matters.

• 11:01Ryan Holiday?

  One of my favorite lines in Meditations, he says, "To accept it without arrogance, to let it go with indifference." Meaning that good things happen, we get awards, we succeed, we make money, awesome, but that doesn't say anything about you as a person. We fail, we fall short, we get criticized. Great, that doesn't say anything about you as a person. Another translation, it says, "Receive without pride, let go without attachment." Sort of even keel, not being affected, not getting too high or too low, not identifying with any of it, not identifying solely with your character.

• 11:34Ryan Holiday?

  In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius reminds himself not to be Caesarified, not to be stained purple by the cloak of the emperor. And this is ultimately the problem that Caesar faces, right? Caesar is corrupted by what happens to him. He's corrupted by power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Marcus Aurelius is the one exception to that rule, of course, but Caesar doesn't escape it. Ultimately, he's killed over it. But he's changed by his endless ambition, his drive, his need to be in control, his need to get his way. And this is why Cato resists him. This is why Cato fights against him. He knew that one person shouldn't have that power. The Roman Republic was not perfect, but Cato knew that it was better than the alternative. He knew that power had to be distributed, it had to be spread out,

• 12:18Ryan Holiday?

  there had to be checks and balances. And that's why Cato resisted Caesar so much.

• 12:26Ryan Holiday?

  When I wrote The Daily Stoic eight years ago, I had this crazy idea that I would just keep it going. The book was 366 meditations, but I'd write one more every single day and I'd give it away for free as an email. I thought maybe a few people would sign up. Couldn't have even comprehended a future in which three-quarters of a million people would get this email every single day and would for almost a decade. If you want to get the email, if you want to be part of a community that is the largest group of Stoics ever assembled in human history, I'd love for you to join us. You can sign up and get the email totally for free. No spam. You can unsubscribe whenever you want at dailystoic.com/email.