You Can’t Predict the Future, But You Can Predict This | Judge Yourself, Not Others

"Few saw the pandemic coming. But certainly the woefully inadequate response, at all levels, was predicted by many. The same is true for most events, in politics, in sports, in business, in life. It’s next to impossible to know what adversity or what good luck will fall in someone’s lap. How they’ll be able to handle this—whether they’ll rise to the occasion, be corrupted or destroyed by it—on the other hand? That’s much easier to see coming. A simple Stoic maxim guides us: Character is fate."Ryan shows how character predicts so much about our fate, and also reads over the week's intention from the Daily Stoic Journal, on today's Daily Stoic Podcast. This episode is brought to you by Neuro. Neuro makes mints and gums that help you retain focus and clarity wherever you go. Made with a proprietary blend of caffeine, L-theanine, and other focus-building compounds, Neuro’s products are great for anyone who needs help focusing in these trying times. Try out Neuro’s gums and mints at getneuro.com—and use discount code STOIC at checkout to save 15% on your order.***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 Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: 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.

• 0:02Ryan 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.

• 0:32Ryan Holiday?

  You can't predict the future, but you can predict this. Few saw the pandemic coming, but certainly, the woefully inadequate response at all levels was predicted by many. The same is true for most events, in politics, in sports, in business, in life. It's impossible to know what adversity or what good luck will fall in someone's lap, how they'll be able to handle this, whether they'll rise to the occasion, be corrupted or destroyed by it. On the other hand, that's much easier to see coming. A simple Stoic maxim guides us: "Character is fate." If someone is egotistical, selfish, and capable of processing information that contradicts what they want to hear, they will not do well in a crisis. If an organization or a person is poorly prepared,

• 1:17Ryan Holiday?

  if they are obsessed with distractions, if they value ideology over truth, posturing over process, they will not do well either. If a sports team suddenly finds itself in a critical game, but the team's culture is a bad one, it won't matter how talented they are. Conversely, if a person or a team cares about other people, if they have put in the work, if they know how to learn and grow and adjust, they will find a way to succeed. There is also a better chance that they'll remain uncorrupted and spoiled by this success if it occurs. Look at Marcus Aurelius. He was granted all sorts of incredible power. How did he manage to remain good when so many others, from Nero to Tiberius, had been broken by it? The same way he managed not to be broken by the incredible adversity of the Antonine Plague.

• 2:02Ryan Holiday?

  It was his good character that protected and guided him. That's what the expression "character is fate" means. It predetermined the outcome, just as it assured that Nero never would have been a good emperor, even without the Great Fire and the opposition he faced. We can't predict the future, but character is predictive. It tells us how we will respond to the future, which, in the end, is all we need to know.

• 2:32Ryan Holiday?

  Judge yourself, not others. There's nothing less philosophical than being a know-it-all. This is especially true of people who use their knowledge to scold others for their mistakes while proclaiming the superiority of their knowledge or insights. The Stoics taught that behaving this way was to miss the entire purpose of philosophy, that it was a tool for self-correction, medicine for our own souls, not a weapon for putting others down. Seneca's letters twice employ the metaphor of scrubbing down or scraping off our faults. "We need to see ourselves in the care of philosophy's principles," he said, or, as Epictetus put it later when referring to the philosopher's lecture hall, "we need to see it as a hospital for our own therapy."

• 3:17Ryan Holiday?

  "Don't let yourself write down a single complaint or problem of another person this week. Don't even be heard saying it out loud, as Marcus said, 'Focus only on what ails you.'" "When philosophy is wielded with arrogance and stubbornly, it is a cause for ruin of many. Let philosophy scrape off your own faults rather than be a way to rail against the faults of others." That's Seneca in his letters, letter 103. "Some people with exceptional minds quickly grasp virtue or produce it within themselves, but other dim and lazy types hindered by bad habits must have their rusty souls constantly scrubbed down. The weaker sort will be helpful and lifted from their bad opinions. We put them in the care of philosophy's principles."

• 4:02Ryan Holiday?

  That's Seneca, letter 95 this time. "Men, the philosopher's lecture hall is a hospital. You shouldn't walk out of it feeling pleasure but pain, for you aren't well when you enter it." That's Epictetus's Discourses. I think the other way to think about this, and it's something that we see in Marcus's writings, he talks about being tolerant with others, strict with yourself. So it's really important this week that you see Stoicism as a set of guidelines and virtues and principles for you, that it's not something you project at other people or hold other people to. Right? You decided to study Stoicism. You are a practicing Stoic.

• 4:44Ryan Holiday?

  You've got to wrap your head around the fact that nobody else is, or the vast majority of people are not. There's this great image, I forget who I heard it from, but they were saying, one way a Christian could go through the world is that you believe you have free will, but you believe that other people don't. And this helps you understand not just why they're behaving the way that they're behaving, but it helps you not take it so personally. And I kind of think about this too. It's like, when I think about all the things that I've messed up in my life, I have a lot of rationalizations, a lot of excuses. I have a lot of explanations, mitigating factors. But then other people, I go, oh, they're a bad person. Oh, they're awful. Oh, they're the worst. But actually, it's precisely the reverse of how it should be. We have to hold ourselves to a very strict standard.

• 5:29Ryan Holiday?

  We can't excuse our mistakes and flaws, especially if they hurt other people. Meanwhile, other people, we want to be as forgiving of as possible because again, we don't know what they signed up for. We don't know what what's going on with them. They're certainly not on the track or the level that we're on. So it's just really important that Stoicism doesn't contribute to making you more condescending, making you more aloof, making you superior, making you more judgmental. It should actually make you kinder, more forgiving, more understanding, more patient. That's the kind of energy we want to be on this week. That's what we want to be cultivating. So as you're journaling, then you catch yourself complaining. No, unless that complaint is directed at your own behavior,

• 6:11Ryan Holiday?

  it's not your concern. You actually want to be understanding, explaining, empathizing with the mistakes that other people are on. And this is just a really hard thing, I think, for smart, talented, disciplined people to wrap their head around. There was a, that was one of the criticisms of Kobe Bryant when he was alive is that, and playing is that he held all the other players to the Kobe Bryant standard, but the truth is Kobe's like a one in a billion human being. And, and sure, a certain amount of, of high expectations can bring out the best in other people, but he often clashed and had conflict with teammates because, you know, they just weren't in the same universe as he was. So I just want you to think about that this week. Try to be kind, try to be patient, try to be understanding.

• 6:55Ryan Holiday?

  Try to calm down, try to focus inwardly on what you control. Again, that's where the dichotomy of control comes in. It's about us, it's about what we do. Got to ignore the rest, let it be. Focus on ourselves, focus on what we do. If we do that right, we'll have a great week. We'll be coming out at the right way. And frankly, we'll be more pleasant to be around by other people. So get out there, I'll talk to you soon. If you're liking this podcast, we would love for you to subscribe. Please leave us a review on iTunes or any of your favorite podcast listening apps. It really helps and tell a friend.