This Is How They Found Peace and Priority | Just Say No To Future Misery

An explorer at Jamestown in the 17th century. A London gentleman during the Stuart Period. An unidentified person with the initials T. S. who lived during the Renaissance. Another with the initials E. R. who lived sometime during the 16th century. We hardly know anything about them. They almost certainly didn’t know each other. But they have two things in common. First, they are dead. Second, while they were alive, they each reminded themselves every day that they would one day be dead. How do we know? Because they each carried a reminder of it on them at all times via their signet ring.---And in today's reading from The Daily Stoic Journal, Ryan discusses why the Stoics believed that to give in to hope of a better outcome - an outcome that is out of your control - is the same as giving into fear.💍 Signet rings are still being used today to help remind the wearer of an important symbol or message. Which is why we created the Memento Mori Premium Signet Ring. Grab yours at dailystoic.com/MMring. ✉️ 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. 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.

• 0:43Ryan Holiday?

  This is how they found peace and priority. An explorer at Jamestown in the 17th century, a London gentleman during the Stuart period, an unidentified person with the initials T.S. who lived during the Renaissance, another with the initials E.R. who lived sometime during the 19th century. We hardly know anything about them. They almost certainly didn't know each other, but they had two things in common. First, they are dead. And second, while they were alive, they each reminded themselves every day that they would one day be dead. How do we know? Because each wore a Memento Mori signet ring. Plagues and wars and massacres aside, people of the 15th and 16th and 17th centuries dealt

• 1:27Ryan Holiday?

  with some of the highest infant mortality rates in history. Without vaccines to control illness, mothers buried their newborns if they survived childbirth themselves. Infection was a silent killer. Healthcare was nonexistent. To say that death was on the public's mind would perhaps be an understatement. Death was everywhere, in the streets, in your home. Yet people even then were in denial of it. The human tendency to not want to think about something unpleasant, to assume you had all the time in the world, was there. So much so that wise people took some form of daily reminder: the skull on the philosopher's desk, the painting in the hallway, the signet ring on the finger. This wasn't supposed to be depressing.

• 2:09Ryan Holiday?

  It wasn't to create panic, but priority, humility, urgency, and appreciation.

• 2:16Ryan Holiday?

  We must remember, especially now, that life is ephemeral, that life is finite, that life is fragile. Things may be more secure than they were in Marcus Aurelius's time, but still fundamentally out of our control. We remain the same mortal beings. The prophecy that we all get at birth is delayed, but the message remains timelessly and tragically true. We will all die. This should humble us. It should also empower us. It should put everything in perspective. As wonderful as it would be if there was no such thing as death, we have to use death as a tool. We have to use it as a spur to move us forward. We have to use it as a reminder of what's truly important, and we have to be made better by the fact that we don't know how much time we have left. We

• 3:01Ryan Holiday?

  never do, we never have, and we never will. Memento Mori. You may have actually seen me, this is, you know, tapping against my desk here. You may have seen me in talks or podcasts or videos. I usually wear this memento mori signet ring on my finger. It's got the skull and the hourglass, the flower, life, time, death, memento mori. And then on the inside, it says, "You could leave life right now." And the second half of that quote from Marcus is, "Let that determine what you do and say and think." We made a really early Daily Stoic signet ring a couple of years ago, and then we've been working with this awesome drooler in Brooklyn who handcrafts these

• 3:46Ryan Holiday?

  amazing new, I think even better ones. And I'm really excited to tell you about it. You can grab it. I'll link to it in today's show notes. The idea of the ring is that it reminds us not to obsess over trivialities or worry too much about what other people think, try to make more money than we could possibly spend, or assume we're invincible, or make plans too far off in the future, because all these things are humbled, negated by death, and we've got to stop pretending otherwise. That's one of the reasons I try to make cool stuff, though, that I'm proud of now, rather than, you know, cutting corners and, you know, saying I'll make up for it later. This one was designed and crafted by LHN Jewelry, based in Brooklyn. They use this

• 4:28Ryan Holiday?

  ancient process that they carve it into wax, and they cast the brass and the silver. They sketched this by hand. They used the model of the coin, one of the first Daily Stoic products, the hourglass, the skull, the flower, and then...

• 4:45Ryan Holiday?

  They engraved in the inside of the ring. Let that determine what you do and say and think. All the sawing and engraving and hammering and soldering was done with precision and care right here in the US. The Memento Mori Premium Signet Ring is made of sterling silver and brass. The front has this cool antique patina on it. It's 17 millimeters by 17 millimeters. You've probably seen me wearing it a million times. I am, like I said, wearing it right now. You can go to dailystoic.com/mmring to purchase or just click in today's show notes.

• 5:31Ryan Holiday?

  Just say no to future misery. How often we make ourselves miserable in advance, out of fear of this, out of desperate hope for that. When we focus on pining for avoiding a certain future, we make ourselves miserable here in the present. Hikado of Rhodes, a great student of the Middle Stoic scholar Panathius, taught that this misery is always tied to hopes and fears that we have of imagined future outcomes. And so from this, Seneca reminds us to say no to both because indulging in hope or fear robs us of the ability to enjoy the present. So today, try not to think so much about the future, what you hope will happen, what

• 6:15Ryan Holiday?

  you fear might, and just focus on right now. Be where you are with what you're doing, what you're thinking right now. "It's ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery," Seneca writes in Moral Letters. "Engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its own until the very end. For such a soul will never be at rest. By longing for things to come, it will lose the ability to enjoy present things." Then Seneca, again, there is no reason to live and no limit to our miseries if we let our fears predominate. And then going back to the original quote, Seneca in Moral Letter says, "Hiccupo says cease to hope and you will cease to fear." The primary cause of

• 6:59Ryan Holiday?

  both these ills is that instead of adapting ourselves to the present circumstances, we send out our thoughts too far ahead. You know, it's funny, in my podcast interview with Oliver Berkman in his new book, 4,000 Hours, he quoted something that he said is a real British expression, but I had actually heard a couple of days earlier in Ted Lasso, the idea that it's the hope that kills you. Which, it's not that the Stoics are nihilists who, you know, don't hope, it's that they try to get to a place of indifference, where they're just like, whatever will be, will be, I'm gonna be good with it. This is also a theme that came up in my interview with Dr. Edith Egger, who wrote The Choice, which was about

• 7:44Ryan Holiday?

  her experience in the Holocaust. And she talked about how there was a person who knew, she knew in the camps who thought they would get out, be freed by a certain date. And then the woman died on that day, of despair, of disappointment. And Admiral Stockdale talks about this, that it was the optimists who got crushed, right? Because they said, oh, in March, oh, in June, oh, by Christmas. But this was not something in their control. And so, in a way, hope is the same as fear. It's to hand over your happiness, your contentment, your ability to continue on, to some arbitrary thing, or event, or person, or intervention

• 8:23Ryan Holiday?

  in the future, which is not up to you. It just is, man. It just is. It'll be over at some point, but I don't need it to be over by any point. I'm gonna adjust to what is. I'm gonna accept it unflinchingly, in the sense that it simply is. I'm gonna adapt to it, I'm gonna adjust to it, I'm gonna make the most of it. I'm gonna be here now. I'm not going to rob myself of the present, right? The person who needs it to be a certain way, or needs it to not be that way, and that's why they're afraid. Seneca's right. That soul will never be at rest. And by longing for things, or by fearing things, we lose the ability to enjoy present things.

• 9:08Ryan Holiday?

  I thought this little phrase is particularly a good one, and I think it's worth repeating again, where he says, "To be miserable in advance of misery." That's what fear is, right? But hope is just, hope is just the opposite of that. It's just being delusional in anticipation of an event outside your control, which often will be misery. So just try to put fear or hope aside. Just try to be, be here with this, whatever it is, wherever you are, whether that's a plane ride you have today, whether that's traffic you're stuck in, whether it's a job you have a couple more months left in,

• 9:52Ryan Holiday?

  or maybe it's just, maybe it's battling an illness or a blown out knee. Just is, don't magically hope it's going to get better. Don't fear it getting worse. Just be with it now. Focus on what you can do now. Enjoy present things as best you can. Be indifferent, as the Stoics say, which is to say, "Good with any of the possibilities," because you are good, you are capable. And that's the Stoic prescription for you this week. Say no to future misery. It's not worth it. I'll talk to you soon.