Take The Interior Voyage

“Have you ever noticed that we often refer to Marcus Aurelius just as Marcus? You likely read those references without breaking stride. Because you, like us, feel connected to Marcus. So much so that there’s a vivid picture of him painted in your head. So much so that you could describe Marcus more thoroughly than you can most co-workers, or clients, or friends, even. Isn’t it incredible to feel like you’re on a first name basis with a Roman Emperor who lived more than two thousand years ago?”Ryan explains the importance of journaling, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic See 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, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom, designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

• 0:26Ryan Holiday?

  Take the interior voyage. Have you ever noticed that we often refer to Marcus Aurelius just as Marcus? You'll likely read those references without breaking astride, because you, like us, feel connected to this man, so much so that there's a vivid picture of him painted in your head, so much so that you could describe Marcus more thoroughly than you might be able to describe a coworker, or clients, or friends even. Isn't it incredible to feel like you're on a first-name basis with a Roman emperor who lived more than 2,000 years ago? Why is this? How could we possibly feel we know someone who lived and died so long ago, more than we know those we physically interact with? It's because of how well he knew himself, and that familiarity comes through when you read meditations. If you have a journaling practice,

• 1:11Ryan Holiday?

  you no doubt would agree that the contents of your journals are a fuller, more thorough reflection of you than you. It's truly a bizarre thing. You learn about yourself when you write in them or read old entries. You discover what you believe. You recognize patterns in your thinking. You gain clarity on things you care about. The author Christina Baldwin once described journal writing as "a voyage to the interior." Beautiful. Marcus took that voyage, and now we benefit from it. Now we learn from it. And now the question is whether you are journaling and taking that voyage inside yourself to the far reaches of your own interior. Because if you aren't journaling, if you aren't taking the interior voyage, if you aren't exploring who you are and what you believe, how is anyone, even you,

• 1:55Ryan Holiday?

  supposed to discover who you are and what you believe? The people you respect and admire, the people who seem to be so self-aware, so in touch with themselves, the chances that they keep a journaling practice is nearly a guarantee, not only because the list of known journalers... Throughout history is comically long, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, John Steinback, Sylvia Plath, and East Ninn, Martina Navratilova, and Ben Franklin, just to name a few. But because it's impossible to become wise without taking that interior voyage. That's what the greats realized. That's why they journaled. It wasn't to be immortalized in history. It wasn't to produce Nobel Prize worthy prose.

• 2:36Ryan Holiday?

  It wasn't so other people might learn who they are. No, it was so they themselves might learn who they are. So what are you waiting for? Take the interior voyage. If you're looking for a place to start with a journal, obviously, I'm a little biased, but I would check out the Daily Stoic Journal. It's a journal I use every morning. There's a prompt each day based on the entry in the Daily Stoic, but you could just as easily apply the prompt to the podcast you're listening to right now. So I sit down and I reflect. And then in the evenings, I try to take some time to reflect on how I did with the ideas that I was reflecting on in the morning. So you can check out the Daily Stoic Journal anywhere journals are sold. But really, what's important to me is that you just start journaling. So pick up anything, do it on your phone, don't care, but start journaling. It matters.