You Become What You Give Your Attention To | The Real Power You Have

The Stoics were all about routine and repetition. They talked about fueling the habit bonfire. They would have agreed with Aristotle: we are what we repeatedly do. We become what we repeatedly study and focus on.📕 We created a premium leather-bound edition of Meditations - To learn more and to pick up your own copy of this beautiful new edition of Meditations, visit dailystoic.com/meditations✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 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.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Bienvenidos al Daily Stoic Podcast. Cada día te traemos una meditación inspirada por los antiguos estoicos, ilustrada con historias de la historia, eventos actuales y literatura para ayudarte a ser mejor en lo que haces. Y al principio de la semana intentamos hacer un profundísimo descubrimiento, estableciendo una especie de intención estoica para la semana, algo para meditar, algo para pensar, algo para dejarte con, para journalizar, lo que sea que estés feliz de estar haciendo. Así que vamos a entrar.

• 0:39Ryan Holiday?

  "成什么你给你的注意力."

• 0:45Ryan Holiday?

  Los estoicos eran todos sobre rutina y repetición. Hablaban de apoderar el fuego de la costumbre. Hubieran acordado con Aristóteles: "Somos lo que repetitamente hacemos." "成什么 repetitivamente estudiamos y nos enfocamos." Epictetus, de hecho, dijo eso: "成什么你给你的注意力", dijo. "Si tú mismo no eliges qué pensamientos y imágenes te expones a ti mismo, alguien más lo hará." Seneca diría que estudiar la filosofía era anexar el pasado a nuestro propio tiempo. Hablaba de inmersarte repetidamente en los grandes textos de la historia. "Debes permanecer bajo un pequeño número de pensadores maestros y digerir sus trabajos", dijo, "si derivas ideas que ganarán firme en tu mente."

• 1:30Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus Aurelius, por su parte, nos muestra en las meditaciones que, por todas las cuestiones del estado que se le ocurrió, todas las personas y lugares que tenía que conocer y trabajar, lo que pasó el más tiempo pensando fue la filosofía. Lo que le prestó más atención fue la virtud. De hecho, casi todas las páginas de las meditaciones tienen alguna cita o alusión a Epictetus, referencias a los trabajos de Panateus, Crisippus, Zeno, Euripides y Sócrates. ¿Cómo se desarrolla una recuerda así? ¿Cómo se hizo Marcus tan sabio, no solo en la página sino en la vida? Repetición y práctica, por beber los mismos textos antiguos hasta que las ideas tomaron firme en su mente, hasta que se absorbieron, hasta que se convirtieron en memoria muscular infundida en su propio tren de pensamientos.

• 2:15Ryan Holiday?

  Marcus would later talk about how the philosopher is one with their weapon, like a boxer more than a swordsman. A boxer just clenches their fist. A fencer has to pick something up. That's what we're trying to do as we study. We're trying to create a practice, get the reps that fuses us with our philosophy, that makes us one with it, that inserts into it our own train of thoughts. Make that your goal. It's not about skimming a couple thousand books. It's not about getting the gist of it, as Marcus derided. It's about making it part of your life and part of your mind. It's about deciding who you want to be and then giving your full attention to the thoughts and ideas and master thinkers who will help you get there. That's one of the reasons I keep Meditations on my bedside table.

• 2:59Ryan Holiday?

  And having done this for 16 or so years now, my copy is a little worse for wear. And that's why I wanted to make something like a Bible that could really stand the test of time. So we've been, we worked with this awesome printer in the UK. I bought the rights to the Gregory Hayes translation, which is the one I love the most. And now we have this premium leather edition of Meditations that you can get exclusively in the Daily Stoic store. It'll be sold in retailers eventually, but right now, we're doing this preorder campaign for it, for the first couple thousand copies, which we want people to grab before they sell out, and they will sell out, and then we've got to go make some more. But you can grab that at dailystoic.com/meditations. Genuine leather cover.

• 3:42Ryan Holiday?

  It's got this foil stamped, gold foil stamped cover. There's a ribbon, so you can mark your page. I had these illustrations done for each of the books. And it comes in this cool box, so it makes a great gift. And then I wrote a life of Marcus that we tack on at the end to complement Gregory Hayes' wonderful introduction. It ships this week if you want to grab it. We do have, as I said, some limitations in the quantity available, so grab one before we run out at dailystoic.com/meditations. I'll link to it in today's show notes as well. I hope you check it out. I'm really proud of this. And I was reading mine last night. I'll read it again tonight. It's the perfect thing to sit on your nightstand.

• 4:25Ryan Holiday?

  The new premium edition of Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, which you can grab at dailystoic.com/meditations.

• 4:38Ryan Holiday?

  The Real Power You Have. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, "Every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand. Write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them." You can check out the Daily Stoic Journal anywhere books are sold. You can also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoic store at store.dailystoic.com. There is fleeting power, and there is real power. Fleeting power can be taken away while

• 5:23Ryan Holiday?

  real power is in our minds and our bones. The former tends to be along the lines of wealth, fame, high position, and the leverage that all those things give us over others. The Stoics thought that this kind of power was inferior to the real power that each person possesses, the power of our minds to reason and make judgments and choices based on the real worth of things. You can have both kinds of power too, but only if you keep the first kind of power subject to the kind of power that the Stoics actually cared about. So Chrysippus, who I talk about in Lives of the Stoics as well, he says, "This is the very thing which makes up the virtue of the happy person in a well-flowing life, when the affairs of life are in every way tuned to the harmony between the individual

• 6:08Ryan Holiday?

  divine spirit and the will of the director of the universe." Then Epictetus says, "Don't trust in your reputation, your money, or position, but in the strength that is yours, namely your judgments about the things that you control and don't control. For this alone is what makes us free and unfettered, that picks us up by the neck from the depths and lifts us eye to eye with the rich and the powerful." That's Discourses 326. And then Marcus Aurelius in Meditations 1219 says, "Understand at last that you have something in you more powerful and divine that causes the bodily passions and pulls you like a mere puppet. What thoughts now occupy my mind? Is it not fear, suspicion, desire?" Something like that.

• 6:51Ryan Holiday?

  I think the fact that we can talk about Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus as peers, even though one was utterly powerless and the other possessed all the worldly power there was, is an amazing illustration of what Epictetus is saying when he says, "For this alone is what makes us free and unfettered, that picks us up by the neck from the depths and lifts us eye to eye with the rich and the powerful." And in fact, you know, Epictetus works in Nero's court. He is a slave of one of Nero's high-ranking officials or secretaries. And in Epictetus's writing, we get a sense, we get him really realizing and trying to

• 7:31Ryan Holiday?

  communicate later to his students that like, he realized that as a slave, he had a better life than many of these people, that he was freer. He watches at one point, somebody sucking up to Nero's cobbler, like the guy that makes Nero's shoes is getting flattery because the person wants to get closer to the emperor. And Epictetus realizes that that person who's doing that is of course freer and richer and more privileged than Epictetus in essentially every way, but is then voluntarily debasing themselves, is a slave to their need for power or recognition or money or whatever

• 8:14Ryan Holiday?

  it is, that person is willingly a slave. And Seneca in that same court talks about this. He says, you know, "Nothing is more shameful than this sort of form of voluntary slavery. Nothing is more shameful than these people who are addicted to a mistress, to their estates, to, you know, being the most famous or popular person in Rome." And so I just, I think it is a powerful statement that amongst the Stoics, some of the most powerful and influential and inspiring were the least powerful and recognized. Cleianthe's is a manual laborer, but he's considered a peer of Hercules because of

• 8:55Ryan Holiday?

  his ability to endure things, because of his judgments, because of his incorruptibility. Marcus Aurelius was not the greatest conqueror of the Roman emperors, but he is one of the most impressive because he conquered himself. He possessed the throne. The throne did not possess him.

• 9:17Ryan Holiday?

  And so this idea of being free, of chasing the real power, which is power over oneself, power over one's wants, power over one's opinions, power over one's actions, power over those impulses that might drive you to do this or that, that's real power. There's a line in one of Steven Pressfield's books where Alexander the Great is taunting this philosopher, and he says, "What have you done? I've conquered the world." The philosopher says, "I have conquered the need to conquer the world." And I think Pressfield is saying the same thing the Stoics are saying, the same thing that Epictetus is saying. He's probably drawing on Diogenes, the cynic,

• 9:58Ryan Holiday?

  but that there is a level of power above the level of raw power that people chase and debase themselves with. So that's your question, your thing to think about today. What kind of power are you chasing? What are you pursuing? Are you really as powerful as you think you are? Or does power have power over you?

• 10:33Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode.