Take Back Control With This | Two Tasks

Imagine if you had the tools to be less angry, less distracted, less impulsive. Imagine if the news and social media didn’t make your blood boil, your heart race. That’s what Stoicism can help you do. Because it’s a philosophy designed for the real world, to solve real problems.💡 The Stoicism 101 2024 LIVE course begins in just THREE days on MONDAY, OCTOBER 28TH. Head here to sign up today: https://dailystoic.com/101📓 Grab your own leather bound signed edition of The Daily Stoic! Check it out at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow 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.

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Friday, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from The Daily Stoic, my book, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful collaborator, translator, and literary agent, Stephen Hanselman. So today, we'll give you a quick meditation from the Stoics with some analysis from me, and then we'll send you out into the world to turn these words into works.

• 0:44Ryan Holiday?

  Take back control with this. It often feels like the world is spinning out of control. And lately, it sure looks like it. There's all this uncertainty around the economy and the upcoming election. There's natural disasters and ongoing wars that are wreaking havoc and destruction upon those undeserving. But in a way, it's always been thus. In meditations, Marcus Aurelius reminds himself that in the age of Vespasian, a forgotten emperor, people were lying and killing and stealing just as readily as they were smiling, raising children, and writing books. The age of Trajan, which came a half-century later, was the same. As the emperor of Rome, Marcus Aurelius experienced plagues and war

• 1:26Ryan Holiday?

  and floods and tragedies. He buried his own children. He was betrayed in a coup attempt by a trusted ally. So what helped him through? How did he remain grounded and kind and true to himself during such turmoil? How did he survive, let alone manage to be good and decent and effective? In a word, the answer is Stoicism. Because whether it's by learning to differentiate what is or isn't within our control, how to turn obstacles into advantages, or how to be a master of yourself, Stoicism provided decades of support to Marcus Aurelius, and it can provide us practical solutions to the problems of life in a world spinning off its axis. And this is what we talk about in Stoicism 101, Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life.

• 2:08Ryan Holiday?

  We wanted to build a course that's the best practices and routines that Stoicism has to offer. And it's a two-week deep dive into why Stoicism matters and what's so awesome about it. Imagine if you had the tools to be less angry, less distracted, less impulsive. Imagine if the news and social media didn't make your blood boil or your heart race. Imagine if you felt like you had enough, like you were enough. Would that help you be calmer, experience more peace? Yeah. Would you make better decisions, establish healthier relationships, pursue more fulfilling work? If you felt more in control of yourself and your life, would it still feel like the world was so out of control? As Marcus Aurelius once urged himself, "It's time you realize that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet."

• 2:54Ryan Holiday?

  That's what Stoicism can help you do, because it's a philosophy designed for the real world to solve real problems. It's a tool in the pursuit of self-mastery and perseverance and wisdom. It's a way to live the good life. And in Stoicism 101, which I'm so proud of, you'll learn how to apply this philosophy in your actual life. This is me, Ryan. Obviously, I've written some of these books, maybe you've heard of. I'm going to be the instructor of the course, and we're going to get into it together. This is Stoicism 101 that I wish I could have taken in college. And by the way, it's way less than I paid to take my real Philosophy 101 class when I was in university. It's two weeks of emails, over 20,000 words of content. There's two live office hours Q and As with me, where you can ask me a bunch of Stoicism-related questions.

• 3:39Ryan Holiday?

  There's a private discussion board. You can ask questions. You can share thoughts. You can find accountability partners in the course. You get all the other previously-recorded office hours with me, plus a calendar to mark your progress as you go. So whether you're a beginner at Stoicism, or you've been studying it for years, I think there's a bunch of stuff in here that you can get if you get up and go to school, because learning, as Marcus Aurelius said, is always a good thing. And look, registration is only open until Monday, October 28th. It's closing very soon. We're all going to do this course together, like we would in college. So you can head to dailystoic.com/101 to sign up today. And remember, if you sign up for Daily Stoic Life, you get this course and all the Daily Stoic courses for free.

• 4:25Ryan Holiday?

  Two tasks. This is today's entry in The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. I am holding what, yeah, I think this is a first edition cloth bound from when the book came out in 2016. We've got a leather bound edition now, which you can check out in the Daily Stoic store. It seems crazy to me. This book came out in 2016. This is the eighth year that it's out, which is nuts. But also, it's like, time flies, Tempest Fugue. But here's how you really know time flies. I record the weekly episode where I read one day a week from the book. But I did a bunch of them at the beginning of the year. I was like, you know what, like, I really got in rhythm.

• 5:09Ryan Holiday?

  And I did like, the first nine or so months of the year. I just took like, a couple hours and I sat down and did it. And I was like, and then I won't have to think about this forever. And then here we are. I'm back to week to week. You get a buffer. And then what's happening? Every day, every minute, every second is chipping away at that buffer. And I think, wow, nine months is gone. Nine months that I'll never get back. What do I have to show for those nine months? I created that buffer so I could be really productive, not have to think about this for nine months. Did I use it? I don't know. It's just crazy to me. But anyways, here's today's entry. It starts with a quote from Epictetus's Discourses

• 5:49Ryan Holiday?

  4:1. "What then makes a person free from hindrance and self-determining? For wealth doesn't, neither does high office, state, or kingdom. Or rather, something else must be found. In the case of living, it is the knowledge of how to live." You have two essential tasks in life. This is where I add my little interpretation. You have two essential tasks in life, to be a good person and to pursue the occupation you love. Everything else is a waste of time and energy and a squandering of your potential. How does one do that? Okay, that's a tougher question. But the philosophy we see from the Stoics makes it simple enough. Say no to distractions, to destructive emotions, to outside pressure.

• 6:34Ryan Holiday?

  Ask yourself, what is it that only I can do? What is the best use of my limited time on this planet? Try to do the right thing when the situation calls for it. Treat other people the way you would hope to be treated. And understand that every small choice and even tiny matters are an opportunity to practice these larger principles. That's it. That's what goes into the most important skill of all. How to live. I would say two things. Maybe Epictetus wouldn't have agreed that you have to pursue the occupation that you love because, you know, he lived in a time where people had a lot less control. Maybe he would have firmly put that in the camp of things that are not up to us. Marcus Verdi didn't seem to think he had much

• 7:19Ryan Holiday?

  say over whether he was emperor or not, but of course, we've made some progress now. You don't have to follow in your father's footsteps. You don't have to be another link in a long chain of accountants or police officers or politicians or notaries or whatever, you can do what you want to do. At the same time, I don't know if Epictetus thought he had that much control because he didn't. He was enslaved. He eventually found his freedom. He did find what he was good at, what he was meant to do. So maybe he would have agreed. We do know there's something from Epictetus and Musonius Rufus where they say basically like they're talking to a young kid who says, you know, my father won't let me study philosophy. And he says, um, you know, if you really wanted to study philosophy, your father can't possibly prevent you from doing that.

• 8:05Ryan Holiday?

  I think that's true. Anyways, that's advice, a little mantra I try to remind myself. Be a good person, do what you love. Focus on what's right. And look, when you do that, I think you find what I was saying earlier, which is time flies by, you lose track of time. I, I think that's a sign. If you don't lose track of time, if you don't forget what day it is, maybe you don't like what you do that much, right? If time feels like it's going by intermittently slow. You're probably focused on the wrong things. Anyways, that is today's entry. You can check out The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living Anywhere. Books are sold. I'll talk to you soon, and I'm going to try to get a little buffer on these things going.

• 8:48Ryan Holiday?

  So I'm not rushed week to week, recording this on a Sunday night before I put my kids in bed.

• 8:58Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out, dailystoic.com/email.