This Is Why You Have to Slow Down

"There’s no question that we are facing a number of pressing issues as a planet: Public health dangers. Homelessness. The rise of authoritarian China. Police brutality. Failures of the regulatory state. It’s an interesting question: Are these crises suddenly coming to a head now? Or is it that we’re just finally noticing them?"Ryan describes the importance of slowing down, so that we don't miss all these trends, in 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 @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee 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.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good 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. This is why you have to slow down. There's no question that we are facing a number of pressing issues as a planet: public health dangers, homelessness, the rise of authoritarian China, police brutality, failures of the regulatory state. It's an interesting question:

• 0:47Ryan Holiday?

  are these crises suddenly coming to a head now, or is it that we're just finally noticing them? When the Stoics talked about slowing down, about stillness, we have to realize that they weren't talking about checking out. What they were talking about was tuning in. It can't be argued that the murder of innocent people or racism are somehow new events in American life, for instance. All that's changed is that people, because of the pandemic, are a little less busy and finally able to see what is happening. Nothing new is happening in China. It's just the noise of other issues is falling away now, and it's impossible to ignore what had been growing all the while. And so it goes for

• 1:29Ryan Holiday?

  all the other major issues of our time. They've been here for some time. We were just too blind to notice, too self-absorbed to care. Marcus Aurelius said we had to stop being bounced around by life. He said we had to concentrate. He was saying, as philosophers have said for all time, that we have to see the here and the now. And this is the hardest thing, but it is the most important thing. No one who is frenzied, who is jerked around by social media, who is doing way too many inessential things, has the time or the quiet necessary to do deep thinking. Their minds cannot compute what is obvious to those who are still or have perspective. No one who is roiled by anxiety, stress, distraction,

• 2:14Ryan Holiday?

  or anger can develop the insights required to solve these difficult problems. We have to slow down. We have to see. We have to do the work. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. And if you don't get the Daily Stoic email, go to dailystoic.com/email.