You Don’t Have The Right | 9 Habits To QUIT (From The Stoics)

We must all see the pursuit of philosophy as both a mental and physical exercise. Mens sana in corpore sano—a strong mind in a strong body. 🎥 Check out the Arnold Schwarzenegger episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBQlSMOVTAg📕 Grab a signed copy of Discipline is Destiny by Ryan Holiday 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and 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.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:55Ryan Holiday?

  You don't have the right. When we think of philosophy, we think of the mind. We think of Seneca pouring over his books. We think of Epictetus sitting and listening to the lectures of Musonius Rufus. We see Marcus Aurelius writing his meditations. It is an academic pursuit, right? A mental journey. Yet the most famous philosopher who ever lived, Socrates, was no sedentary academic. He was not a weakling. He was active and tough. He was always on the move. "No citizen has any right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training," he once said. "To be able to be of use to his country, to his family, to his cause, a person had to have a physical practice, had to always be training not just his mind, but his body," Socrates believed. "Besides," Socrates said, "it was a disgrace

• 1:40Ryan Holiday?

  for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and the strength of which his body is capable." Indeed, we see the Stoics' practices across the board. Marcus hunted and wrestled. Chrysippus, an early Stoic, was a runner. Cleiantheus was a boxer. Seneca, although he lived a rich and sometimes luxurious life, subsisted on such lean fare, often foraging for his food himself in the countryside, that Nero had trouble finding an opportunity to poison him. Today, a majority of young people could not qualify to join the armed forces if they wanted to. That's how out of shape they are. Obesity and diabetes are public health crises of epic proportions. People are not active enough, not disciplined enough

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  for their basic health needs, let alone to come close to knowing the beauty and strength of what their body is capable of. And this is tragic. It is sad, and it is also very avoidable. We must all see the pursuit of philosophy as both a mental and a physical exercise. Mensana, incorpore sano, a strong mind in a strong body. None of us can reach our destiny without discipline. None of us can make our full contributions to the country, our family, our cause, if we are not taking care of ourselves, if we're not pushing ourselves to see what we are capable of. Anyways, I talked to Arnold Schwarzenegger about this in the episode of the podcast we did. I'll link to that in today's show notes. I think

• 3:08Ryan Holiday?

  it's worth checking out. And then, of course, Discipline is Destiny is out there also, which you can grab as an ebook, audiobook, or a signed copy at store.dailystoic.com.

• 3:26Ryan Holiday?

  Rome was a dirty, dusty place. Life is a dirty, dusty thing. It always has been, and it always will be. We wake up in the morning, and we're fresh and clean. And by the end of the day, we are covered in dust and dirt metaphorically and literally, the dust of work, the dust of stress. I think about how fresh and new a new year seemed just three months ago. You know, we had the best of intentions. We were turning over a new leaf. We were starting a new page. And here we are, just a few months later. Old habits have come back. New bad habits have formed. Stuff has already piled up.

• 4:06Ryan Holiday?

  We are already behind. And I think that's why we have spring cleaning. We've got pounds to lose. We've got vices to quit. We've got things to declutter. We have a chance to bring a new us to a new season. And that's what we're going to talk about in today's video.

• 4:30Ryan Holiday?

  The Stoics speak of this idea of the inner citadel, this sort of part inside yourself that can't be touched by externals, good news, bad news, good fortune, misfortune. Marcus Serrilis writes that "stuff cannot touch the soul." And I think that's what we see. Despite all the things that we know happened to Marcus in his life, all the good fortune that he did not meet with, all the misfortune that he did not deserve, nothing touches the inner goodness inside him. That's what meditation shows. It shows that despite the filth, the dust, the stress of life, what remains is the goodness. He keeps that pure bubbling up always.

• 5:10Ryan Holiday?

  Part of the reason your life sucks is because your thoughts suck. Marcus Serrilis says that our life is dyed by the color of our thoughts. So if we see only negative, if we only see the worst in people, if we only see what's impossible, if we only see how we screwed up, that's gonna color our perception of reality. Your life is dyed by the color of your thoughts.

• 5:37Ryan Holiday?

  "There's a limit of the amount of time that's assigned to each of us," Marcus Serrilis would say. "And if you don't use that time to free yourself," he said, "it'll be gone forever and it will never return." His point was, you can't wait until tomorrow. He says, "That's what we do. We could be good today. Instead, we choose tomorrow. We put it off. We don't say we're never gonna do it. We say we're gonna do it later." But the result is the same. We never end up doing. We don't end up making the changes. We don't end up becoming what we're capable of being, who we know we should be, what we know we ought to be. When a new season is upon you, it's a chance to ask yourself, "How many more winters am I gonna let go by? How many more springs am I gonna waste? Am I gonna wait until summer, until fall,

• 6:21Ryan Holiday?

  until another 365 days around, another rotation of the earth before I get serious about this? Before I do what I know I need to do? Before I do what I know would be good for me?" The Stoics would say, "You gotta stop thinking about it and you gotta start doing it." And there's no better time than right now.

• 6:44Ryan Holiday?

  A philosopher goes to the house of a Stoic named Agrippinus. And he says, "Hey, I've been asked to attend this party that Nero's throwing on. We all know Nero is awful and corrupt and evil. I'm wondering whether I should go or not. I'm thinking about it, you know, should I go?" And Agrippinus says, "Yes, you should go." And the guy says, "Why? You're not going." And he says, "Yeah, but I didn't even think about going." His point is, Agrippinus wasn't, "Ah, do I want to? Do I not?" He wouldn't even consider doing something like that that would be so compromising or corruptive. The sort of hell yes or hell no rule. He's saying this for effect a tad, and so is the hell yes, hell no thing. But the idea is, we should be really clear about what we are willing to do and what we

• 7:28Ryan Holiday?

  aren't willing to do, the things we accept and the things we don't accept. We should have a clear sense of our moral compass, also our priorities, so we're not hemming and hawing, we're not having to ask for advice, we're not even thinking about it. It's a hard pass, or it's an enthusiastic yes.

• 7:50Ryan Holiday?

  Actually, Ramit Sethi said this to me once. He said, "You don't owe anyone a response." And his point was that, you know, just because an unsolicited email comes in doesn't mean you have to reply to that person. There was a time early in my life when I believed in inbox zero, and that that plan has had to get abandoned as I've gotten older and more successful, because I value other things. So, of course, again, I want to reply, and there are people I do get back quickly to, but I've had to realize that the preconceived notion I have of what being caught up is, is actually preventing me from getting caught up on what's truly important. Eisenhower has that decision matrix about what's urgent and what's important. And sometimes the things that come in, the inbound inquiries, they feel important, but actually, they're just urgent.

• 8:33Ryan Holiday?

  And as you're tackling them, what you're ignoring is what's actually important, but not necessarily urgent.

• 8:44Ryan Holiday?

  You make haste slowly. This is a Latin proverb. It's actually the favorite of the Emperor Augustus. Fustina lente. Make haste slowly. You know, we're driven. We want to go quickly. We want to hustle. We want to get there. But oftentimes, that's the slowest way to do it. There's the expression, measure twice, cut once. There's the expression in the military that slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Of course, we want to rush. Of course, we want to do it with all deliberate speed. But the deliberate part is the word there. You have to be disciplined about this. You have to make haste slowly.

• 9:23Ryan Holiday?

  The grudge you're holding, it's meaningless. Marcus Verus says, "Look at the people who held these grudges, who raged about things, who held on to things." He says, "Where are they now?" "They're dead and gone." The grudge went nowhere. And the same is going to happen to your thing. Whatever it is you're upset about, however significant it was for you, eventually it disappears along with you. So how can you work on letting it go? How can you move on? How can you process? How can you not carry it around? How can you not let it consume you?

• 9:58Ryan Holiday?

  It's easy to get swept away, to get carried away, to get worked up. There are forces that have always been howling and blowing at people. Today, it's the news and social media. But in the past, it was the frenzy of the mob or public opinion, floor of the Colosseum. Our job, the task of Stoicism, is to help us keep that even keel. Marcus Verus says, "To be like the rocks that the waves crash over. Eventually, the sea falls still around." Chrysippus, one of the early Stoics, he said, "Look, if I wanted to follow the mob, I wouldn't have become a philosopher." Our task, the purpose of Stoicism, is to help us slow down, to act with some restraint, to be able to reflect, to put every impression or opinion to the test, as Epictetus said,

• 10:39Ryan Holiday?

  to not get swept away, to not be buffeted by forces beyond our control, to keep our bearings, to keep our values, to keep from losing our minds when everyone else around us is losing theirs.

• 10:56Ryan Holiday?

  At one point in Meditations, Marcus Aurelius says, "Avoid false friendship at all costs." Says, "Nothing is more painful, nothing is worse." And he knows this from experience. "I tell, an obstacle is the way." The story of Marcus being betrayed by Evidius Cassius, his most trusted general, one of his best friends. He declares himself emperor. He essentially attempts to orchestrate a coup. Marcus Aurelius knew that although we wanted to be trusting of people, although we wanted to assume the best in people, we had to understand that people were not perfect. People could be led astray. People could have evil intentions in their heart. We have to be aware of this, and we have to be prepared for it.