No Man Ever Reads The Same Book Twice | The Sphere of Choice

Ryan talks about the importance of re-reading the greats, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. For a limited time, the Daily Stoic ebook is $1.99 in the US and UK this week only. We have a premium leather bound version available at dailystoic.com/leather. GiveWell is the best site for figuring out how and where to donate your money to have the greatest impact. Go to Givewell.org to read more about their research or donate to any of their recommended charities. Enter Daily Stoic at checkout so they know we sent you. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/emailFollow 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.

• 0:04Ryan 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.

• 0:33Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus really says at the beginning of meditations that one of the things he's most proud of is that anytime anyone needed anything, he was in a position to be charitable, to be generous. Generosity, giving back, serving the common good. This is a core idea in Stoicism, and it is a core idea behind one of my favorite organizations in the world. I'm talking about GiveWell. GiveWell spends 20,000 hours each year researching charitable organizations and recommending only a few of the highest impact, evidence-backed charities that they've found for you to donate to. Over 50,000 donors, including myself, have used GiveWell to donate more than $750 million.

• 1:16Ryan Holiday?

  Rigorous evidence suggests that these donations will save tens of thousands of lives. Go to GiveWell.org to read more about the research. Donate to any of the recommended charities. I like Against Malaria, for instance. That's GiveWell.org. Enter Daily Stoic at checkout so they know we sent you. Check it out.

• 1:36Ryan Holiday?

  No one ever reads the same book twice. Think of a book that's changed your life. How long ago was that? How long ago was it written? Now, think of all the things that have changed since that reading, in the world, in you, perhaps even our understanding of science or history, or the biography of the person who wrote it has changed. All of that is why you have to go pick up that book. Indeed, many of the books that have influenced you, read them again. Books remain the same, the beloved writer Italo Calvino once said, but we certainly have changed. And this later encounter is therefore completely new. Or as that favorite poet of Marcus Aurelius, Herakles said, no man ever steps in the same river

• 2:21Ryan Holiday?

  twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man. As we change and our contexts change, what we discover and get out of a book changes too. This is why Marcus was reading Epictetus when he was in line for the throne and when he was emperor. That book that he read at 25 was with him always and each time he picked it up, it was different. This is why Stockdale read Epictetus when he was training to become a fighter pilot and why he returned to it after he was released as a prisoner of war, even writing his own book about it, Courage Under Fire. This is why General Mattis carried Marcus Aurelius with him on every campaign.

• 3:03Ryan Holiday?

  And this is why we too must return again and again to our favorite books and writers. You will benefit anew from every encounter. Look, if you've read The Daily Stoic, if you go through it every day, I've got some good news. As an ebook, it's for sale for $1.99 on Amazon right now. That's like as cheap as it will be. If there's someone you might want to give the book to, if you just wanted it in another format, this is as cheap as it'll get and I just wanted to pass that along. I hope you can pick it up and support it. It's $1.99 on Amazon in the US. I think iBooks too, also discounted in the UK and whatever markets they have the rights to.

• 3:44Ryan Holiday?

  Or if you've reread it and you want something a tad more durable, the cloth bound, lay flat hardcover that we published, you can get signed copies of that in the Daily Stoic store. But if you didn't know, there's also a leather edition. Now that we're five years into the book, I wanted to make sure it could stand the test of time, it could put up with the stresses that people put on it. And if you want... I want to pick up one of those, but you can pick that up at DailyStoic.com/Leather, or you can get it on Amazon as well. But I hope you pick up and reread The Daily Stoic this year. I'm going to be rereading Marcus Aurelius, as I do every year, and a bunch of the Stoics, because every time I step into there, I bring something back out. And I reread a bunch of books last year, including some of my favorite novels, that I took a

• 4:29Ryan Holiday?

  lot out of as well. So I hope you're reading and rereading this year, and do check out this discounted edition of The Daily Stoic.

• 4:38Ryan Holiday?

  The Sphere of Choice. If the first step is to discern what is or isn't in our control, the second step in Stoic philosophy is to focus the energy on the things we have a choice about. The Stoics viewed the soul as a sphere, that when well tuned, well directed, was an invincible fortress against any trial or circumstance. Protected by our reason, this sphere of choice was like a sacred temple, and it is the only thing we truly possess in this life. We are the product of our choices, so it is essential that we choose well. This week, consider and reflect on the choices you have about your emotions, your actions, your beliefs, and your priorities. Keep this thought at the ready at daybreak, and through

• 5:23Ryan Holiday?

  the day and night. There is only one path to happiness, and that is in giving up all that is outside your sphere of choice, regarding nothing else is your possession, surrendering all else to God and fortune. Epictetus, Discourses 4:4. Who then is invincible? The one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice. Epictetus, Discourses 1:18. The soul is a sphere, true to itself. It neither projects itself towards any external thing, nor does it collapse on itself, but instead radiates a light which it shows itself, the truth of all things, and truth in it of itself. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11:12.

• 6:08Ryan Holiday?

  And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, "366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living" by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon. Then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, "Every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand. Write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them." You can check out the Daily Stoic Journal anywhere books are sold. You can also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoic store at store.dailystoic.com. Well, here we are. We were talking about this last week. You know, you only have so many energy points. You only have so much, so many resources. How are you going to spend them? Are you going to spend them on what's up to you?

• 6:53Ryan Holiday?

  Or are you going to spend them on what's not up to you? Are you going to emote about things and pretend that that makes a difference? Or are you going to spend your energy trying to do something about this thing that you found so upsetting? Right, so I think people think that Stoicism is about resignation. It's not. It's about allocation, right? It's resigned to the things that make no difference, where you can make no difference. But it's very focused, intensely focused, on the areas that you can make a difference, right? So you could despair about the larger, you know, political trends in your country because you're one person

• 7:37Ryan Holiday?

  and you're, you know, at odds with the majority. But maybe you can make a difference with your family, with your community. You could run for school board or mayor or something like that, right? What can you do as the individual? That's not to say the Stoics aren't interested in collective action. I'm just saying, I'm going to focus my energy where it's going to make a difference. And as a Stoic, I'd be indifferent to the things where I can make no difference. Right? Where can you make a difference, right? You know, it gets tempting as a writer, right? Because our job as writers is to have opinions about things. That's a really dangerous way to go through your life, thinking that the world gives a shit about your opinion, right? And that having the opinion is the thing that matters. And it doesn't matter, right? What matters is what you do.

• 8:22Ryan Holiday?

  What are the actions, right? We ended the year with the idea from the Stoics about turning words into works. Well, what are you providing? Where are you putting your resources? And are you putting them towards where they have input? Where they have, where they have... Efficacy, right? So a Stoic is resigned in some sense to, look, I'm not gonna get involved in that nonsense. I'm not gonna waste time regretting the past either. What I'm gonna try to do is move forward. What I'm gonna try to do is move ahead. What I'm gonna try to do is make some change, where I can make some change. And, and yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna be indifferent to the, the things where that's not true. And that's what we're talking about here, right? That's what the sphere of choice is about.

• 9:06Ryan Holiday?

  And, and, and it's an easy thing to forget. And that's why Epictetus is saying, keep it ready in the morning, think about it throughout the day, and think about it at night. He's saying there's one path to happiness. It's giving up the things that are outside your sphere of choice, focusing on what else is in your possession, surrendering everything else. So it's being zen about the things that are not up to you. But there's a kind of invincibility in that zen, right? Because if it wasn't, if I didn't make the call, I didn't do it. If it wasn't something that was up to me, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna get upset by it. Remember Marx is saying, you don't have to have an opinion about this. You don't have to get upset. But you should be upset about your own choices. Why did I do that? Why didn't I do that?

• 9:50Ryan Holiday?

  Why did I, you know, why did I make this mistake? Why did I do this thing again that I told myself I was gonna stop doing? Focus on you, focus on your choices, make good choices. That's how you exert control over the world. Something I, you know, I remind myself, you see what's going on in the world and you can despair, you can feel sad, or you can go, look, I've got two little kids in my house who I'm responsible for. The biggest multi-generational impact I can have is in raising them well. And then I go, and this is something Seneca failed. It's like Seneca spent all these years beating his head against the wall trying to change Nero. He's affected far more people, had far more impact in his writing, where, which he did control.

• 10:30Ryan Holiday?

  So I go, okay, and look, I, I'm not gonna, you know, yell at some, some person I know on social media for being, for being silly and have the impact on one person. But I, I am gonna sit down and write about this or talk about this on the podcast in a way that, that can reach a lot of people, right? Let's stay in our lanes, let's do what we can do, let's try to make a difference where we can. And if we all do that cumulatively, that is collective action and that does have a big impact. So this is a short lesson today. It's a straightforward one, but it's so hard. And that's why Seneca is saying, you've got to remind yourself constantly throughout the day, I'm going to focus on what's in my sphere of choice. That's where I have impact.

• 11:12Ryan Holiday?

  I'm going to focus on allocating my energy properly, not going to waste it on regret, not going to waste it on bitterness, on resentment, on anger, on fear, on worry, on hope. I'm going to focus on what I control. I'm going to make a difference there. So that's what Stoic does.

• 11:30Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Again, if you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. You just go to dailystoic.com/ email. So check it out, dailystoic.com/ email.