It’s Producing Something Good | 20 Inspiring Moments Of Stoicism

The regular person in us is frustrated by all this. But the Stoic in us knows that this is leading us, teaching us, shaping us. Seneca said that misfortune toughens us up, forges us the way that fire tests gold. Epictetus said that life pairs us with these sparring partners for a reason—to turn us into Olympic-class material. And the Book of Romans says that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”The hope is really our sense of our capacity. It’s the confidence that comes from being tested and passing that test. It’s knowing that we really can wrestle with the toughest stuff that life can throw at us. Pandemics, the whiplash of the market, extreme weather events, political unrest, personal disasters, tragedy, heartbreak. We’ve been through it. We’re still here. We’ve suffered and that suffering has produced character, character that gives us hope, gives us faith, gives us strength. The obstacles have been the way. They have produced something good. Something we can count on. Something we can believe in…our own capacity. P. S. “The impediment to action advances action,” Marcus Aurelius writes. “What stands in the way becomes the way.” In a world that is constantly testing us, we need to carry that timeless, life-changing lesson with us more than ever. That’s why we created the Obstacle is the Way medallion with Marcus’s words on the back so you can always remember that no matter the challenges life throws our way, we can always grow stronger and better. Grab one today or snag the leather-bound edition of The Obstacle is The Way and receive the Obstacle medallion for free!-We all need a little motivation from time to time. A swift kick when we’re feeling a bit uninspired. The struggle to find motivation isn’t new. Woven throughout the most famous Stoic texts are wisely chosen words designed to motivate one’s self. They knew then, as we know now, that the right words, at the right time, can inspire action. So today, as you’re looking for a little extra motivation to get after the task at hand, listen to these clips inspired by the time tested wisdom of the ancient Stoics.✉️ 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 and how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

• 0:24Ryan Holiday?

  It's producing something good. It's been a rough couple of years, not just in the world, but for each of us. We've been dealing with projects that went sideways. We've been dumped. We've been working nights and weekends. We've been sick. We've been screwed over. We've been trying everything to turn things around. The regular person in us is frustrated by all this, but the Stoic in us knows that this is leading us, teaching us, shaping us. Seneca said that "fortune toughens us up, forges us the way that fire tests gold." Epictetus said that "life pairs us up with these sparring partners for a reason: to turn us into Olympic-class material." And the Book of Romans says that "suffering

• 1:07Ryan Holiday?

  produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope." This hope is really our sense of our capacity. It's the confidence that comes from being tested and passing the test. It's knowing that we can really wrestle with the toughest stuff that life can throw at us: pandemics, the whiplash of the market, extreme weather events, political unrest, personal disasters, tragedy, heartbreak. We've been through it. We're still here. We've suffered, and that suffering has produced character. Character that gives us hope, gives us faith, gives us strength. The obstacles have been the way. They have produced something good, something we can count on, something we can believe

• 1:52Ryan Holiday?

  in, our own capacity.

• 1:56Ryan Holiday?

  I'm actually sitting here right now and finishing up the 10 year anniversary of The Obstacle is the Way, which will come out in the end of 2024, I think. And I was just sort of cataloging what I've been through since that book came out. And funny enough, a demonstration of that very idea. Like, it's been a lot. The last 10 years have been a lot. A lot of great stuff, which is a lot generally, a lot of not so great stuff. But those things have produced goodness, confidence, endurance, strength, hope, character, hopefully. And that's what The Obstacle is the Way is really about. So if you haven't read the book, you can grab that anywhere. We've got a cool leather edition now in the Daily Stoic store. And then if you want like a challenge coin or a medallion, you can grab that at store.dailystoic.com.

• 2:50Ryan Holiday?

  You're too zoomed in and you gotta zoom way out and you see the beauty. You can't tie your success to externals, to what other people say, other people's approval. Focus on the part of this thing that is up to you and trust, if you follow the process, that more times than not, you'll get the outcome you want.

• 3:13Ryan Holiday?

  This is not only one of the greatest books ever written, it's maybe the only one of its kind. It's written by the most powerful man in the world, who has no intention of publication, who'd probably be mortified that his thoughts on everything from losing his temper to his fear of death would ever be known to people. It's a person who had enormous wealth, enormous fame, and yet he's talking to himself about justice, self-discipline, wisdom, and courage. And the writing is so beautiful, so specific, and yet so universal at the same time, that there's never been a book like it before, and there'll probably never be a book like it again. Talking about Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. If you haven't read it, you must.

• 3:58Ryan Holiday?

  One of the Stoics said, "We treat the body rigorously so that it's not disobedient to the mind." When we feel that resistance, when we feel that doubt, when our body says, "No, you can't run two more miles, or you can't do two more reps," and you push through that, you have to cultivate that sort of meta-muscle that pushes through hard stuff.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I sometimes try to make it simpler. The rule is don't think, because I feel like a lot of people, when they get up, their mind starts wandering. It's a natural thing. We all do that. But if you make it a rule where you say, "Okay, there's certain things that I would do before I start thinking, and that is, I'm gonna work out for now." So now, if your mind tells you, "Man, you know, the day is okay. I mean, what the hell, it's Sunday. No one will know. I mean, let's just go and have some pancakes instead." And you say, "Wait a minute. What did I just do? I thought, and I promised myself I'm not gonna think." So it's the thinking that makes me want to go and change my mind. So that's my idea.

• 4:59Ryan Holiday?

  The Stoics say you need to stop doing these five things. Don't suffer imagined trouble. Seneca says, "He who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary." Number two, don't have an opinion about everything. We can ignore it. Don't have to have an opinion. We don't have to make judgments about everything we see and hear. Just let things be. Don't complain. Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations, again, not thinking anyone would read it, he says, "Never be overheard complaining, not even to yourself." If you have fewer opinions, if you just accept things as they are, you have less to complain about. Number four, Marcus Aurelius was a busy guy. He's the emperor of millions of people. He has this philosophical work he's trying to do, but he says, "Don't be all about business."

• 5:43Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus Aurelius says, "Step by step, action by action. No one can stop you from that. Focus on the part of this thing that is up to you, and trust, if you follow the process, that more times than not, you'll get the outcome you want."

• 6:00Ryan Holiday?

  For those who don't know, a Stoic philosopher, what are the tenets of Stoicism? Stoicism, if I had to summarize it in one sentence, I would say it's this idea that we don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life. And the Stoics say that basically every situation, big ones, small ones, ones you wanted, ones you didn't want, it's all an opportunity to respond with these four virtues. The virtues are courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom. So the idea is that that is what life is asking from you. One or all of those virtues in some kind of a combination, that's what it's demanding of you. And what's cool about the Stoics is, like, I think when people hear philosopher, they think like, you know, a tweed jacket

• 6:44Ryan Holiday?

  or an old white guy in a toga or whatever. Sure. But the Stoics were philosophers. They were thinkers, but they were also doers. The most well-known Stoic is Marcus Aurelius, who's the emperor of Rome, the philosopher king. But there were Stoics who were slaves, who were soldiers, who were artists. There were men and women. They were people trying to do what we're all trying to do, which is make sense of the crazy world that we live in.

• 7:13Ryan Holiday?

  You know the movie Gladiator, one of the greatest movies of all time. I don't know why it didn't hit me until I was rewatching it, but the opening scene in Gladiator, Maximus is standing there. It's cold, you can see the steam coming off the ground. He looks at this branch, a bird lands on it, the wheat bending low under its own weight, to borrow a phrase from Marcus Aurelius in Stoics. It's this beautiful scene, right? You think it's beautiful, and then it zooms out just a little bit, and you realize he's on the front. They're about to fight this terrible battle in this nasty, violent place. I love that idea. You think about movies as a metaphor here. You choose the lens, the zoomed-in lens, it's beautiful. The zoomed-out lens, it's not beautiful. But sometimes it's the opposite. Sometimes you're too zoomed in and you gotta zoom way out and you see the beauty.

• 7:57Ryan Holiday?

  It's all about the lens and the angle of the camera that we decide to look at the world.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  Whenever you're sitting there and you're going like, "Man, I need a vacation."

• 8:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Like, "I just need to be in Mexico right now." I find it so funny because I'm like, "Do you actually want to be in Mexico right now? Or do you like the person you think you're gonna be in Mexico right now?"

• 8:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  And I think it's kind of the same theme from your book. It's just you get what you are.

• 8:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  So just be the best version of yourself as possible.

• 8:27Ryan Holiday?

  It's funny, in Meditations, there's a passage where Marcus Aurelius is doing exactly that. "I know you think you want to get away from it all, in the country, or beach, or whatever." And he's like, "But actually, whatever you need is inside of you right now." You can retreat and go on vacation inside your own soul right now. And I think it's true, right? We think, "Okay, if I can just get away from all these external things, then I won't feel what I'm feeling." Sometimes that's what we do, and then sometimes we do like a substance, or a thought pattern, or whatever, the other version of escape. But what we really just have to deal with is whatever that feeling is. If you can deal with that feeling and process it and work on it, that's actually a more sustainable and permanent solution to that thing.

• 9:07Ryan Holiday?

  The Stoics are masters of one-liners, and I want to give you five of the best all-time Stoic one-liners. Number one, from Epictetus, "If you want to be beautiful, make beautiful choices." Number two, from Seneca, "We suffer more in imagination than reality." Number three, from Marcus Aurelius, "We love ourselves more than other people, but for some reason, we care about their opinions more than our own." Four, from Marcus Aurelius, "You always have the right to have no opinion about this. You can always think nothing about this." And finally, Zeno, "You have two ears, but only one mouth for a reason."

• 9:49Ryan Holiday?

  I was maybe 20 years old. I was working at this talent agency in Hollywood, and I got invited to this big, important meeting, and they were talking about stuff, and I interjected and I said something. And my mentor took me aside after, and he said, "Why did you say that? Did you think it actually needed to be said?" Or did you just feel like you wanted to have something to say? And I think about that all the time. It's in the 48 Laws of Power. Always say less than necessary. There's an exchange between a Spartan who's sitting at this dinner. He doesn't say anything. And finally, another Spartan says like, what are you stupid? You're not saying anything. And he says, a stupid person wouldn't be able to be quiet. It would have been better had I sat there and listened, had I kept my thoughts to myself, not embarrassed myself. And so saying less than necessary, not interjecting at every chance we get.

• 10:33Ryan Holiday?

  This is actually the mark, not just of a very self-disciplined person, but also a very smart and wise person.

• 10:44Ryan Holiday?

  Three Stoic one-liners that will help you beat anxiety. Number one, Epictetus says, it's not things that upset us. It's our opinion about things. It's what we think about them that's upsetting, not the things themselves. Number two, Seneca says, he who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary. He says, we suffer more in imagination than in reality. What he means is we anticipate what could happen, what might happen. We torture ourselves about it in advance. That's what anxiety is. And then three, this is Marcus Aurelius beating anxiety. He writes in Meditations, today I escaped my anxiety. Then he says, wait, no, no, no. Actually, I discarded it because it was within me.

• 11:27Ryan Holiday?

  Things don't make us anxious, as Epictetus was saying. We make ourselves anxious. We have control over it, which means we can solve for it.

• 11:41Ryan Holiday?

  Three brutally honest Stoic reminders. Number one, your opinions are your problem. Epictetus says, look, when you're offended, you have to realize that it takes two to tangle. He says, we are complicit in the taking of offense. You don't have to have an opinion about this. You don't have to take it personally. You can think the best of it. You can ignore it. You can realize that in many cases, you probably got off easy. Let it go, move on, don't take it personally. Number two, most things are not in your control. Your opinions are up to you, but pretty much everything else isn't. You don't control what happens. You control how you respond to what happens. That is the basis of Stoicism and it's the basis of being a mature, responsible adult in the world.

• 12:25Ryan Holiday?

  And number three, this is the bluntest of them all. You are going to die. You could die tomorrow, you could die the day after tomorrow, but it is a certainty, you are going to die. You could leave life right now. Marcus really says, let that determine what you do and say and think.

• 12:44Ryan Holiday?

  This is what's crazy about Marcus. Marcus lives in Rome, the Romans speak Latin, but the philosophical language at that time was Greek. So Marcus was writing to himself in Greek. When you read those passages or you listen to them and you're just like, that is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. Like, there's this one passage, talks about like this, a stalk of grain bending low under its own weight, the way olive falls to the ground. He talks about the way that when you put bread in the oven, it breaks open on top. We don't know why that happens. It's just this like beautiful inadvertent act of nature. He's just like writing like a poet, like a great writer. And again, he's writing in his non-native tongue to himself, never expecting anyone would see it.

• 13:26Ryan Holiday?

  It'd be like finding out that comedian is like funny in their diary. You're just like, wow, you're just naturally that. You're not turning it on or off. It's just like intuitively part of you.

• 13:40Ryan Holiday?

  What do you do when you meet a jerk? Marcus really says, you say to yourself, is a world without jerks possible? He said, is a world without shameless people possible? The answer, of course, is no. A certain percentage of people are going to be those kinds of people. And so he says, when you start to see them as a percentage of a whole, an inevitability, you can accept it, you can tolerate it, you can even have a little sympathy for them. They've been assigned a bad role. They are just doing what they are supposed to do, what their ride on this planet is supposed to be. And you're lucky that that's not yours. So you accept it, you move on, and you try not to be like them.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  Somewhere in the late 90s, I got a phone call from my office. I reached out to pick up the phone and my hand stopped. And I remember looking at the phone and then looking at my hand going, "Why did your hand stop mid grab?" You don't want to pick up the phone call from your office. What are you doing? I let that phone ring out and as it did, I picked the phone back up, dialed my lawyer and said, "I want to shut down my music label and I want to shut down my production office. I want to pay a solid severance to everybody, but I want to work on my charity, I want to work on my family, and I want to be an actor for hire." I had like eight proverbial campfires on my desk every morning. So what I did is I got rid of about five of the campfires and I was left with the three things that were most important to me. And those three campfires turned into bonfires.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  So I majored in my majors and I got rid of five minors that I was trying to major in. And I was kind of making C pluses in everything. And when I got rid of five classes and concentrated on the three that I really wanted, I started making A's.

• 15:20Ryan Holiday?

  All fools in life have one thing in common, according to the Stoics. Seneca says, "What they all have in common is that they're always getting ready to start. They are delaying to live because they think they have the future they think they have forever." They say, "I'm not ready," or they say, "I'm going to do it after. I'm going to do it once this thing happens, when conditions are more favorable." They never say to themselves, "I'm never going to do it." They say, "I'm going to do it later." No one knows what the future holds. No one knows how much time we have left. Life is happening right now, this second. In fact, the time ticks by, the Stoics say, belongs to death. It's dead. It can never be recovered. So don't be a fool. Don't delay. You could be good today, Marcus Aurelius reminds us. Instead, you choose tomorrow.

• 16:07Ryan Holiday?

  Six Things a Stoic Should Never Do. Number one is don't be hard on others. Yes, one of the Stoic virtues is discipline, but they mean self-discipline. The next is, Seneca says that when we look outside ourselves, we've compromised our integrity. You have to keep your own inner scorecard and not care about what other people think. Keep good company. Epictetus says it's a proverb that if you live with a lame man, you will learn how to limp. And he was saying that as someone who was disabled. His point was we become like the people we spend time with. Don't be a know it all. The brilliance of Socrates, of course, was his knowledge about his own ignorance and his willingness, his interest, doing something about that. If you focus on how much you have left to learn to get better,

• 16:51Ryan Holiday?

  if you focus on how much you know, you stay where you are. Finally, don't put stuff off. It's arrogant to act as if you have till tomorrow. Marcus Aurelius says you could be good today. Instead, you choose tomorrow. The reason we practice memento mori is to remind ourselves that tomorrow cannot be taken for granted.

• 17:11Ryan Holiday?

  At one point in meditations, Marcus Aurelius says, "Avoid false friendship at all costs." Says, "Nothing is more painful, nothing is worse." And he knows this from experience. I tell "An obstacle is the way." The story of Marcus being betrayed by Evidius Cassius, his most trusted general, one of his best friends. He declares himself emperor. He essentially attempts to orchestrate a coup. Marcus Aurelius knew that although we wanted to be trusting of people, although we wanted to assume the best in people, we had to understand that people were not perfect. People could be led astray. People could have evil intentions in their heart. We have to be aware of this. We have to be prepared for it.

• 17:53Ryan Holiday?

  I moved to New Orleans more than 10 years ago. I lived in this little apartment building. And one of the things I did when I moved here was I didn't tell a single person that I was writing a book for two Stoic reasons. Number one, I found out afterwards that a bunch of my friends thought that I just didn't have a job. They thought I was basically just a bum, which is an important Stoic concept. Epictetus says, "If you wish to improve, if you wish to become good at something, you must be content to be seen as stupid or foolish." I didn't care what anyone thought about me. I knew the work that I was doing. I knew that it would pay off eventually. And when the announcement came out, everyone was surprised. Oh, Ryan was working on something. He wasn't just hanging out in his apartment. And then number two, a Stoic doesn't talk about it. A Stoic is about it. I've always believed that talking about what you're doing and doing it fight for the same resources. So I didn't want to get credit for writing a book.

• 18:38Ryan Holiday?

  I didn't want people to ask me about the book. I didn't want validation for the book. I wanted to spend every day actually working on the project. That's what paid off. That's what put me on the track that I eventually got on. That's why I never talk about what I'm doing until after I've done it. And you probably shouldn't either.

• 18:57Ryan Holiday?

  Seven Stoic rules for a better life. Focus on what you control. You gotta design your day. Set a routine, set a schedule. Is part of that gonna be outside your control? You're gonna have to adjust? Sure, but life without design is erratic. There's two types of time in life. There's alive time, there's dead time. Dead time is when you're passive. Alive time is when you're making the most of a moment. Focus on the part of that time that's in your control and use it to fully live and be alive. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. What's the most important priority? Make sure you design your day. Make sure you focus your energy towards that and you let other things go. My friend Tim Ferriss has a sign in his house and just says, "Simplify." Says whenever he's feeling stressed or overwhelmed or like things aren't going the way that he wants them to be,

• 19:41Ryan Holiday?

  it's probably because things have become too complicated and he says, "Simplify." Ask yourself what you want to be and then do that thing. And then finally, Stoic practice of plenitum mortem. By focusing on our mortality, it allows us to concentrate on every moment, as Marx really says, "as if it was the last thing we were doing in our life."

• 20:01Ryan Holiday?

  Four reasons you're not your best self. You didn't get up early enough today. You slept in, you went to bed late. You didn't set yourself up for success. "Under the blankets is no way to fame," the poet Dante said. Two, you're not making time to read. Why would you learn by experience what you could learn from the experiences of others? Why would you not annex into your own life all of the wisdom and experiences and lessons that people have learned before you? Number three, you're putting stuff off. You're procrastinating. Maybe it's because you're a perfectionist or maybe it's because you're lazy, but the result is the same. Just a couple crappy pages a day. That's my writing rule. I try to make a positive contribution every day. Marx really says, "You could be good today. Instead, you choose tomorrow. Stop choosing tomorrow."

• 20:46Ryan Holiday?

  Number four is related to that. You're not meditating on the effemorality of life. Memento mori, the Stoics would say. It's arrogant to think you can put it off. It's arrogant to think that you have forever. Try to be the best you can be right now.

• 21:03Ryan Holiday?

  Three Stoic insights from Marcus Aurelius that will help you stop caring what other people think and care less if they criticize you. So number one from Marcus Aurelius, he says, "Why do you care about posthumous fame? You won't be around to enjoy it." And he says, "More importantly, the people in the future will be just as dumb and stupid as the people who are alive today, so stop caring what they think." Number two, he says, "Well-being is tying our success to our own actions." He says, "In sanity, ambition is tying it to what other people say or do." The point is, you can't tie your success to externals, to what other people say, other people's approval. It's got to be rooted in what you do, your actions. No one can stop you from that.

• 21:47Ryan Holiday?

  And then the third from Marcus Aurelius, which is actually my favorite, he says, "We all love ourselves more than other people. We're all selfish." But he says, "For some strange reason, we care about their opinions more than our own." If you want to keep your Stoicism-inspired journey going, sign up for the Daily Stoic email at dailystoic.com/email. It's one Stoic-inspired email every single day. Wisdom to help you with the problems of life, as Stoicism is intended. Sign up at dailystoic.com/email. Unsubscribe whenever you want. I'd love for you to join us.