You Get Bad Breaks… and Good Ones | A Morning Ritual

“In the year 41 CE, Seneca was banished by the emperor Claudius for supposedly sleeping with Julia Livilla, the sister of Caligula. We don’t know if he was completely innocent of the accusation, but we do know that the incident was hardly an exemplar of justice. The historian Suetonius tells us that Seneca’s ‘charge was vague and the accused was given no opportunity to defend himself.’”Ryan explains how Seneca’s fortune lead him to great depths and great heights, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. This episode is brought to you by Blinkist, the app that gets you fifteen-minute summaries of the best nonfiction books out there. Blinkist lets you get the topline information and the most important points from the most important nonfiction books out there, whether it’s Ryan’s own The Daily Stoic, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and more. Go to blinkist.com/stoic, try it free for 7 days, and save 25% off your new subscription, too.***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.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, then some analysis from me. And then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

• 0:42Ryan Holiday?

  "You get bad breaks and good ones. In the year 41 AD, Seneca was banished by the Emperor Claudius for supposedly sleeping with the Sister of Caligula. We don't know if he was completely innocent of the accusation, but we do know that the incident was hardly an exemplar of justice. The historian Suetonius tells us that Seneca's charge was vague, and the accused was given no opportunity to defend himself. It was a bad break that would cost Seneca eight years of his life in exile. In 49 AD, as Seneca tired of the burden and the distance of his punishment, he was suddenly recalled to Rome by the wife of the emperor in order to serve as the tutor of her son. In the words of the historian Richard M. Gueunier,

• 1:27Ryan Holiday?

  'Fortune, whom Seneca, as a Stoic often ridicules, came to his rescue.' Within a few years, Seneca would be one of the richest men in Rome, his fame and power assured influencing world events with the snap of his fingers. Life is like this. It gives us bad breaks, heartbreaking bad breaks, and it also gives us incredibly lucky breaks. Sometimes the ball that should have gone in bounces out. Sometimes the ball that had no business going in surprises both the athlete and the crowd when it goes through the net. When we are going through a bad break, we should never forget fortune's power to redeem us. When we're singing in the roses, we should never forget how easily and how quickly we can be humbled. Sometimes life goes your way, sometimes it doesn't.

• 2:11Ryan Holiday?

  The only thing we can do is be ready for either one."

• 2:18Ryan Holiday?

  A morning ritual. Now, we've done this list of questions before from Epictetus, but I think it's so good, it's worth repeating again. Ask yourself the following first thing in the morning. What am I lacking in attaining freedom from passion? What for tranquility? What am I, a mere body, a stateholder, or a reputation? None of these things. What then? A rational being. What then is demanded of me? Meditate on your actions. How did I steer away from serenity? What did I do that was unfriendly, unsocial, or uncaring? What did I fail to do in all these things? That's Epictetus from the Discourses. Many successful people have a ritual. For some, it's meditation. For others, it's exercise.

• 3:02Ryan Holiday?

  For many, it's journaling, just a few pages where they write down their thoughts, their fears, their hopes. In these cases, the point is not so much the activity itself as it is the ritualized reflection, the idea to take some time to look inward and examine. Taking that time is what the Stoics advocated more than almost anything else. We don't know whether Marcus Aurelius wrote his meditations in the morning or at night, but we know he carved out moments of quiet time alone, that he wrote for himself, not for anyone else. And if you're looking for a place to start your own ritual, you could do worse than Marcus's example or Epictetus's checklist. Every day, starting today, ask yourself these same tough questions. Let philosophy and hard work guide you to better answers,

• 3:46Ryan Holiday?

  one morning at a time, over the course of a life. I just love those questions, man, they're so good. What is demanded of me? Meditate on your actions. What's taking me away from serenity? What's costing me tranquility? What did I do that was wrong? Where did I fail? So, taking that time to ask those questions, it's important, but... You need stillness and space to do that. The person who wakes up and the first thing they do is turn on their phone and then they turn on the news and then they run around like, you know, a chicken, their head cut off to get the kids to school, to get to work, to get breakfast, blah, blah, blah, blah. Of course, they're not going to ask those tough questions. They don't have the time, they don't have the mental bandwidth.

• 4:28Ryan Holiday?

  And so carving out time for stillness, particularly in the morning, is essential. I think that's why getting up is important, but I guess it really doesn't matter if you can be disciplined enough to make the space for it. But I just don't want to start the day on the back foot. I want to start my day with space. I want to start my day intentionally. And I want to start my day with some reflection and self-awareness and I want to point myself in the right direction. And you've got to do that, too. You certainly deserve to do that. We all do. So we carve out time in the mornings, we make the ritual, and we know that enough of these mornings in a row, whether it's five minutes or 10 minutes, or maybe you're meditating for 30 minutes or an hour, you're spending an hour at the gym. I don't know and I don't care.

• 5:12Ryan Holiday?

  But the point is, the results are the compounded practice over time. And if you do the routine enough, it becomes ritual. There becomes almost a religious element to it. And from that, we get the reflection and the insights and the peace and the tranquility. And when Epictetus says, "What are you lacking in attaining freedom from passion, what for tranquility?" What most of us are lacking is precisely what he says, the space and time to meditate on our actions, and that steers us away from serenity. We deserve better, starting today. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say, we so appreciate it. We love serving you.

• 5:56Ryan Holiday?

  It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please, spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything, I just wanted to say, thank you.