This Is What Discipline Looks Like | Think About It From The Other Person's Perspective

Marcus Aurelius was strict with himself. He slept on a hard mattress. He didn’t drink or eat to excess. He didn’t have affairs or lose his temper. Cato was strict with himself too. He didn’t wear fancy clothes or live a life of ease. But what’s remarkable about both these men, given this strictness, is the love and affection they both had for their brothers–who had very different approaches to life.---And in today's Daily Stoic Journal excerpt, Ryan discusses the importance of questioning our own perspective while trying to understand and empathize with others'.✉️ 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.

• 0:38Ryan Holiday?

  This is what discipline looks like. Marcus Aurelius was strict with himself. He slept on a hard mattress. He didn't drink or eat to excess. He didn't have affairs or lose his temper. Cato was strict with himself, too. He didn't wear fancy clothes or live a life of ease. But what's remarkable about both these men, given this strictness, is the love and affection they both had for their brothers, who had very different approaches to life. Cato's brother wore nice clothes and fine perfumes. Marcus Aurelius's stepbrother liked to party. Yet Marcus wrote in Meditations how much Lucius Verus enriched his life and helped Marcus improve his own character. Cato was overcome with grief when he lost his brother.

• 1:23Ryan Holiday?

  This strictness, it was said, was limited only to themselves, as it should be. That's why it's called self-discipline, after all. Gandhi was notoriously strict with himself. He subsisted on next to nothing. He did not drink alcohol or basically anything but water. He thought others should follow his example. But he also thought it perfectly fine that his wife disagreed. "My wife takes tea in spite of the fact that she lives with me. She also takes coffee," Gandhi once told a biographer. But the most beautiful part was what he added after that. "I would even lovingly prepare it for her." A stoic is not a scold, and nor are they a tyrant.

• 2:07Ryan Holiday?

  We are strict with ourselves, tolerant with others. Our discipline is our discipline, as it should be. Our own struggle should keep us busy enough that we shouldn't even consider getting up in other people's business to fix theirs. Instead, let's meet others where they are, accept and love them as they are, because anything else is outside our control. It's actually funny, the original title of Discipline is Destiny, because I wanted to make this distinction so clear. It was going to be Self Discipline is Salvation. I ended up going with Discipline is Destiny. It was shorter or anything prettier, but when I sign copies of the book, and I do it a bunch, you can actually get them in the painted portrait at [email protected].

• 2:52Ryan Holiday?

  I often just double underline "self" in the subtitle, just to make that distinction. It's self-discipline. Tolerant with others, strict with ourselves. That was Marcus Aurelius's rule. It's actually a chapter about that at the end of the book. Anyways, you're listening to this on the podcast. Check out the audiobook of Discipline is Destiny anywhere audiobooks are sold. I'll link to it in today's show notes. If you want a signed copy, you can grab it at the painted porch or [email protected]. Do check out the book. I think discipline is super, super, super important, but as I have been on my own journey towards being more disciplined, I have become, in the tradition of Marcus and Cato, I've had to become more tolerant of others, even as I've become stricter with myself. That's just how it works.

• 3:33Ryan Holiday?

  That's just the only way to be, if you want to be happy and not miserable because of your discipline. So, check it out. Discipline is Destiny, anywhere books are sold, and tolerant with others, strict with ourselves.

• 3:51Ryan Holiday?

  Think about it from the other person's perspective.

• 3:56Ryan Holiday?

  We tend to assume the best about our own intentions and the worst about other people's. Then we wonder why life is so full of conflict. The Stoics flipped this habit around, reminding themselves to be suspicious of their own first reaction and approach others first with sympathy. Powerful people are often surprisingly terrible at behaving this way. But Marcus Aurelius, the most powerful man on earth during his reign, was renowned for his humanity in dealing with others. He told himself always to take a moment to remember his own failings and to contemplate how another might see the situation. He reminded himself, as we should, that most people are trying their best, even though

• 4:40Ryan Holiday?

  that's easy to lose sight of in the rough and tumble of daily life. Let's remember that today and think about each interaction from more than just our own point of view. That's the Daily Stoic Journal Weekly Entry. And we've got some quotes from Marcus Aurelius here. He says, "Whenever someone has done wrong by you, immediately consider what notion of good or evil they had in doing it. For when you see that, you'll find compassion instead of astonishment or rage. For you yourself may have had the same notions of good and evil or similar ones, in which case you'll make an allowance for what they've done. But if you no longer hold the same notion, you'll be more readily gracious for their

• 5:25Ryan Holiday?

  error." Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7, 26. And then he says, "When your sparring partner scratches or headbutts you, you don't then make a show of it, or protest, or view him with suspicion, or as plotting against you. And yet you keep an eye on him, not as an enemy or with suspicion, but with a healthy avoidance. You should act this way with all things in life. We should give a pass to many things with our fellow trainees, for, as I've said, it's possible to avoid without suspicion or hate."

• 5:59Ryan Holiday?

  You know, I tell the story, and stillness is the key. I open part one, the perception part of the book, the story of Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy and Khrushchev face off over some nuclear ballistic missiles placed on the island of Cuba. And what's so remarkable about this moment, why I look at Kennedy and why I think he embodies what Marcus Aurelius is talking about, in both senses, both in the why did they do this, what are they trying to do, and also, you know, people are not great, they're going to try to cheat or pull one over on you, but you can't let that break you or make you bitter. You've got to be cognizant and aware of it. Kennedy thinks, not just what he's going to do, but he's conscious enough to think,

• 6:44Ryan Holiday?

  what is Khrushchev going to do? What is Khrushchev trying to do with this? And in fact, Khrushchev's real fatal calculation is that he doesn't have a good read on Kennedy. He'd sort of bullied Kennedy at a conference, had seen Kennedy bungle the Bay of Pigs. He thought he knew Kennedy, and he thought he knew America, but he didn't. He could not have, he couldn't conceive of how America would react to these missiles right on that island. And Kennedy, though, realizes, especially when his military advisers are telling him, you got to bomb Cuba, you got to bomb the shit out of Cuba, is going to be, you know, we got to, we got to go in to avoid World War III. Kennedy knows that to do that, he thinks about Khrushchev, how they're in the same position.

• 7:29Ryan Holiday?

  They're both leading these sort of loose coalitions and with divergent interests and are human beings, but also heads of state. He's really able to think about Khrushchev's position. And he says, look, I'm not worried even about what Khrushchev's going to do in response to what I'm going to do. I'm worried about like step six or seven in this chain of escalation. And so we think about things from people's perspective, not just because empathy is good, not just because justice is important, but strategically, it's essential, right? I talked, when I was in public relations, you would... See, people get so consumed with the truth of what they had to say, or their own experience, or their own point of view,

• 8:12Ryan Holiday?

  they couldn't conceive that the reporter has their own interests, that the public has their own interests and position. To effectively navigate the world, to be successful, you've got to understand other people's perspective. You've got to think about what's going on with them. And this allows you to not only be more patient, more forgiving, and more gracious, as Marcus says, but it also allows you to be more effective and successful at whatever it is that you are doing. So I urge you today to spend some time practicing, let's call it strategic empathy. It will make you better. But most importantly, as we saw in the Kennedy and Cuban Missile Crisis example, it may well save the world. It makes the world a better place if we are more empathetic with each other.

• 8:56Ryan Holiday?

  As Seneca said, "We're all wicked people in a wicked world." If we can understand this, if we can be kind and patient and tolerant and understanding, we will all get more of what we want and need.