Turn Down These Voices Inside Your Head | Always Ask Yourself This Question

It is not enough, of course, to simply tune out the noise around you. One can turn off social media. One can cultivate the quiet country life, as the Stoics did on occasion. One can ignore what is inessential, pay no attention to what makes no difference. And still there is noise. To get to ataraxia, or a place of stillness and peace, the Stoics knew that controlling for externals was not enough. We had to develop an inner calm too, an ability to recognize our own destructive thought patterns and stop them.---And with today's passage from the Daily Stoic Journal, Ryan discusses why the Stoics believe that the key to being happier is doing less by doing only what is essential.✉️ 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?

  Turn down these voices inside your head. It is not enough, of course, to simply tune out the noise around you. One can turn off social media. One can cultivate the quiet country life as the Stoics did on occasion. One can ignore what is inessential, pay no attention to what makes no difference. And there is still noise, because the calls are coming from inside the house, so to speak. We have the voices of doubt and anxiety, of envy and ambition, of fear and frustration. We have that ceaseless running monologue that worries about this, resents that, wonders about this, obsesses over that. To get to Ataraxia, or a place of stillness and peace, the Stoics knew that controlling for externals was not enough. We had to develop an inner calm too,

• 1:28Ryan Holiday?

  an ability to recognize our own destructive thought patterns and stop them. And this is what Marcus Aurelius was really doing in meditations. He was trying to turn down the voices inside his head, the ones that made him afraid, the ones that made him angry, the ones that annoyed him or indulged his anxieties. Just as you learn from actual meditation, the process of journaling is a way to discover that you do not have to identify with your own thoughts. You can simply observe them, let them float by without disturbing them. You can hear them without listening to them. The path to peace is not found through the escape to exotic locales or the elimination of external impositions. It's an inner journey. It's a battle against the voice in our heads,

• 2:12Ryan Holiday?

  not the noise out in the world. Because of that, it is well within our control.

• 2:32Ryan Holiday?

  Always ask yourself this question. Much of what we do and say during the course of a week is completely unnecessary. Meetings, material possessions, confrontations, pursuits, pointless distractions and problems. They take us away from tranquility and purpose. And a Stoic cuts through these temptations and obligations by asking a simple question, a question that should lead you in your journaling and thinking this week. It is this: Before speaking, enacting, or buying something, just ask, "Is this a necessary thing?" Today's quotes, we have one long quote from Marcus Aurelius and one short one from Seneca.

• 3:14Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus Aurelius says, "It is said that if you want to have peace of mind, busy yourself with little. But wouldn't a better saying be, 'Do what you must and as required of a rational being created for public life? For this brings not only the peace of mind of doing few things, but the greater peace of doing them well.'" Since the vast majority of our words and actions are unnecessary, corralling them will create an abundance of leisure and tranquility. As a result, we shouldn't forget at each moment to ask, "Is this one of the unnecessary things?" But we must corral not only unnecessary actions, but unnecessary thoughts too, so needless acts don't tag along after them. That's our translation from The Daily Stoic and The Daily Stoic Journal.

• 3:58Ryan Holiday?

  Let me give you Gregory Hayes, which I also really like. He says, "If you seek tranquility, do less, or more accurately, do what is essential, what the logos of a social being requires, and in the requisite way, which brings a double satisfaction, to do less better." Because most of what we do and say is not essential. If you can eliminate this, you'll have more time and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, "Is this necessary?" But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well, to eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow. And then our second quote from Seneca is, "I was shipwrecked before I even boarded. The journey showed me this.

• 4:43Ryan Holiday?

  But how much of what we have is unnecessary? And how easily we can decide to rid ourselves of these things whenever it's necessary? And thus never suffering the loss." That's Moral Letters 87:1. So you really need to stop and ask yourself this question. Is what I'm doing necessary? Why am I doing? Is it just the way people have always done it? Again, most of what we do and say and think is not necessary. It's not even particularly effective or well thought out. And so to question this is really important. And it's not just like, oh, you're privileged. You don't, you don't, you have a choice. That's why you're not doing it. It's actually not about privilege at all. In fact, it's the privileged people who can afford to do more unnecessary things,

• 5:28Ryan Holiday?

  more pointless things, right? It's actually, at this point in my career, I had the luxury of, you know, taking a lot of time off to, let's say, do press for a book. It was actually earlier in my career that the costs of agreeing to this pointless stuff were much higher, but I wasn't aware of it. I wasn't fully understanding of the opportunity cost, how much this was taking me away from writing, how much this was taking me away from relationships, how much this was just taking me away from recovering and refreshing so I could go back to my work from a fresher point of view. And this is what I wanted to leave you with today. Take a minute, stop, ask yourself, is what I'm doing necessary? How much of what I'm doing is unnecessary? And how can I eliminate some of that stuff

• 6:10Ryan Holiday?

  so I can do the essential things better, right? I'm doing less, but I'm doing all my stuff better now. And that's part of the new normal that I'm trying to protect. And I hope that's true for you as well.