Stress Is a Fact. Being Stressed Is A Choice | A Little Knowledge Is Dangerous

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epictetus Marcus Aurelius Seneca, then some analysis from me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

• 0:52Ryan Holiday?

  To say that Marcus Aurelius had a stressful life would be a preposterous understatement. He ran the largest empire in the world, had a troublesome son, he had a nagging and painful stomach issue. There was a palace coup led by one of his closest friends. There were rumors that his wife was unfaithful. The Parthenians invaded the empire, triggering a war that lasted five years. The Antinous plague struck in 165 AD and killed, by conservative estimates, more than 10 million people. The Tiber River had one of the worst floods in history, destroying homes and livestock, and leaving Rome in famine. Should we be surprised that he talks openly in meditations about his anxiety, about losing

• 1:36Ryan Holiday?

  his temper, that he sometimes felt grinded down and exhausted by life? Of course he did. He had all her problems, and more. He was besieged by stress. And yet, this is exactly why he inspires us, because he conquered that stress, just like we can. "Today, I escaped my anxiety," he writes, "or no, I discarded it because it was within me, in my own perceptions, not outside." So how did he do it? What can he show us about slaying that demon of stress that we all suffer from? Turns out, a lot. For starters, the fact that we even know about his anxiety is because of one of those strategies.

• 2:18Ryan Holiday?

  It was in the pages of his journal that Marcus worked through his problems. Instead of letting racing thoughts dominate his mind and drive him crazy, he put them down on paper. It was also in these pages that Marcus prepared himself for difficulties in advance. He reminded himself that the people he was going to meet during the day would be troublesome. He reminded himself that things were not going to go perfectly. He reminded himself that getting angry never made things better. By taking the time to journal and write, he was chipping away at his anxiety, just as we all can, in the morning, at night, on our lunch break. Never. To calm his anxiety, Marcus was also constantly trying to get perspective. Sometimes he zoomed way, way out.

• 3:03Ryan Holiday?

  He meditated on his insignificance. "The infinity of past and future gapes before us," he wrote, "a chasm whose depths we cannot see." So it would take an idiot to feel self-importance for distress. Other times, he zoomed way, way in, telling himself to take things step by step, moment by moment. "No one can stop you from that," he said. "Concentrate like a Roman," he said, "on what's in front of you, like it's the last thing you're doing in your life." Don't worry about what's happened in the past or what might happen in the future. And this idea of being present was key to overcoming his stress. We are often anxious because of what we fear will happen next, or after what happens next.

• 3:48Ryan Holiday?

  We worry about worst-case scenarios. We dread potential obstacles. But Marcus, from Epictetus, knew that man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems. And that's why Marcus Aurelius spent so much time trying to be present, reminding himself to return to the present moment, where nothing is novel or hard to deal with, but familiar and easily handled. Like all busy people, Marcus Aurelius had a million things going on. But he also knew that much of what people expected of him, or even that he found himself focusing on, was not important or necessary. So to reduce stress, he tried hard to separate the essential from the inessential.

• 4:31Ryan Holiday?

  "If you seek tranquility," he said, "do less." But then he makes a critical clarification. He says, "Or, more accurately, do what's essential, because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate that," he said, "you'll have more time." Was there stuff he had to do that he did not want to do? Of course, problems he was stuck with that he'd rather not be stuck with? Of course, you bet. That's life, which is why he and all of us have to practice acceptance. That's all we need, he said, willing acceptance in every moment. He said, "You can scream until you're blue in the face and curse the world as if the world would notice, or you can accept the obstacle and work with what you're given."

• 5:14Ryan Holiday?

  But ultimately, Marcus worked hard to be a good friend to himself. He was firm and strong and self-disciplined. He did not with himself. He knew that it was inevitable that he would mess up. We all do. The key, he said, is to just focus on getting back on track. Don't dwell. Don't call yourself an idiot. Don't smack your forehead and angry. No, he said, "Get back up when you fail. Celebrate behaving like a human." Or, "When jarred unavoidably by circumstances," he said, "Revert at once to yourself and don't lose the rhythm more than you can help." He said, "You'll have a better grasp of harmony if you can keep going back to this." It would be wonderful if none of this was necessary, if life was easy, if things always went right.

• 5:59Ryan Holiday?

  But that's not possible. Stress is an inevitable part of life. It is the friction of the plates of our responsibilities rubbing against each other. But if stress is an inevitability, anxiety and anger and worry are not. Marcus believed that these things were a choice, that we could work past them, through them, that we could discard them, as he said, because they are within us, or at least up to us. We can slay our stress because it's not an external enemy. It is an inner battle. Of course, I also suggest you check out our Slay Your Stress Challenge that we're doing at Daily Stoic. It's 12 days of Stoic wisdom inspired to help you conquer your anxiety,

• 6:42Ryan Holiday?

  your worry, your fears, your frustrations, your depression, all the things that Stoics dealt with, that we deal with here in modern life, and that Stoic wisdom and Stoic philosophy is designed to help us conquer. You can check it out. It's something I've been working on. Using myself, we've melded in some of the best insights from modern psychiatry and psychology. We've looked at characters from history and literature. We've put together what are a number of invaluable, actionable strategies that will help you manage your stress, get perspective, stop sweating the small stuff, feel some peace, feel good about yourself, and of course, do what you need to do. And you can check that out, dailystoic.com/stress.

• 7:38Ryan Holiday?

  A little knowledge is dangerous.

• 7:44Ryan Holiday?

  This is the July 14 entry in the Daily Stoic. "Every great power is dangerous for the beginner," Epictetus says in Discourses 3:13. "You must therefore wield them as you are able, but in harmony with nature." Great teachers are usually hardest on their most promising students. When teachers see potential, they want it to be fully realized. But great teachers are also aware that natural ability and quick comprehension can be quite dangerous to the student if left alone. Early promise can lead to overconfidence and create bad habits. Those who pick things up quickly are notorious for skipping the basic lessons

• 8:22Ryan Holiday?

  and ignoring the fundamentals. Don't get carried away. Take it slowly. Train with humility. In Lives of the Stoics, I talk about Musonius Rufus quite a bit. Musonius Rufus being Epictetus's teacher. He was called the Roman Socrates for what a great writer and thinker he was. But he was also a very difficult teacher. I take it from the anecdotes we have from Epictetus. I'm just pulling up this little page. Let's see.

• 8:56Ryan Holiday?

  We're told, for instance, that when Musonius Rufus spoke, he expected rapt attention from his students. If they were reacting, or clapping, or cheering for the audience, he's like, "You're not getting it. I'm not blowing your mind enough." He was just a strict teacher. And then we're told this, this story about Epictetus making a mistake. And he tries to blow it off to Musonius. He says, "Hey, it's not like I burned down the Capitol." And Musonius Rufus says, "Who says you didn't?" Right? The point being, I think Musonius realized, as, as Zeno said, that conceit is the impediment to knowledge. Epictetus would say, "It's impossible to learn that which you think you already know."

• 9:39Ryan Holiday?

  I think what they were taking from Musonius is a kind of key intellectual humility. That when you start to get arrogant, when you start to think you've graduated, that you've arrived, this is precisely when you cease to learn and stop improving. When I sign "Ego is the Enemy," I often, sort of riffing on Epictetus, I say, "Always stay a student." Because when we stay a student of philosophy of a great master, it humbles us, keeps us quiet. Whenever I'm around Robert Greene, I get this same sense. Robert's very kind and patient and would never sort of humiliate or, or rebuke.

• 10:20Ryan Holiday?

  But he has a way of catching you if you're lazy or imprecise in your language, or the assumptions that you're making. And it is always good, it's a good experience because it keeps me, you know, keeps me in the right headspace. And I think that's, that's, that's important as you learn. Maybe you're familiar with the Dunning Kruger effect. The problem with being stupid is that you're often not aware of just how stupid you are. Maybe the converse of that is the problem with being smart is that people, smart people often are aware of how smart they are. Or they think they're smarter than they are, and this is a problem. So I don't know, I guess today's message is to leave you with a little intellectual humility.

• 11:04Ryan Holiday?

  Don't think that you've arrived. Understand that knowledge is power, and it's a power that has to be taken responsibly, has to be taken humbly, has to be part of a lifelong and ongoing pursuit. You do not arrive, you do not graduate, you never do. This is the famous story about Marx's realist leaving the palace. Some man asked him where he's going, and he says, "I'm off to see Sextus the philosopher to learn that which I do not yet know." Focus on that, focus on what you do not yet know. And that's how I think you keep, it's like in the way that a gun, you always act like a gun is loaded, that keeps you safe and honest with it. You never point it at something that you don't intend to kill and/or destroy. The same thing goes with knowledge, right?

• 11:49Ryan Holiday?

  Treat it as something that is always insufficient, it's always a little bit dangerous, point it towards what you have yet to learn, and focus on that, and it keeps you honest, keeps you safe, keeps you smart. And that's today's message. Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoic store. You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend. The Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy, Stillness is the Key, the leather-bound edition of the Daily Stoic, we have them all in the Daily Stoic store, which you can check out at store.dailystoic.com.