You Just Keep Going | Hero or Nero

“It has been a series of body blows, hasn’t it? The economy. Politics. Our health. Maybe you lost your job. Maybe you’ve lost your hope. All of us are concerned. Each of us is unsure of lays in the future, and what kind of shape we’ll be in when it comes.”Ryan discusses the Stoic’s formula for endurance, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. This episode is brought to you by Beekeeper’s Naturals, the company that’s reinventing your medicine with clean, effective products that actually work. Beekeepers Naturals has great products like Propolis Spray and B. LXR. Beekeeper’s Naturals created a whole hive of products packed with immune-loving essentials so you can feel your best all day, every day. As a listener of the Daily Stoic Podcast you can receive 15% off your first order. Just go to beekeepersnaturals.com/STOIC or use code STOIC at checkout to claim this deal.***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, and some analysis from me. And then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

• 0:41Ryan Holiday?

  "You just keep going." "It has been a series of body blows, hasn't it? The economy, politics, our health. Maybe you lost your job, maybe you've lost your hope. All of us are concerned. Each of us is unsure what lays in the future and what kind of shape we'll be in when it comes. The Stoics who endured some 15 years of the plague in Marcus's reign cannot offer us much guidance there. They can't tell us how to solve this. They can't tell us when this will end. So what do we do? We keep going. The Stoics were at least pretty sure about that. You keep going, step by step, action by action. You don't need hope, you don't need fear either, Seneca said. You just keep going, taking it day by day. In Cormac McCarthy's haunting novel, The Road,

• 1:25Ryan Holiday?

  the man believed that everything depended on reaching the coast. Yet waking in the night, he knew that all of this was empty and had no substance to it. The coast was just an idea, a distant point on the horizon that served as something to measure progress against. No more, no less. So the man kept going. He pushed his cart, he protected his son, he carried the fire. He tried to do what was right, tried not to be broken down by all that was happening, tried not to be corrupted by it. All we can do is keep going. We keep buggering on, as Churchill did. We fight on, we stick to it, we endure, we survive. Maybe things will get better soon, maybe they won't, but we'll definitely keep moving. We'll carry the fire, we'll do what's right. We won't be broken down.

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  We'll make it where we need to go."

• 2:15Ryan Holiday?

  Hero or Nero? Our soul is sometimes a king and sometimes a tyrant. A king by attending to what is honorable protects the good health of the body in its care and gives it no base or sordid command. But an uncontrolled desire fueled an overindulged soul is turned from a king into the most feared and detested thing: a tyrant. That's Seneca's Moral Letters, Letter 114. There is that saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely. And at first glance, that's true. Seneca's pupil Nero and his litany of crimes and murders is a perfect example. Another emperor, Domitian, arbitrarily banished all philosophers from Rome, and Epictetus was forced to flee as a result. Many of Rome's emperors were tyrants.

• 2:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yet, not many years later, Epictetus would become a close friend of another emperor, Hadrian, who would help Marcus Aurelius to the throne, one of the truest examples of a wise philosopher-king. So it's not clear that power always corrupts. In fact, it looks like it comes down to, in many ways, the inner strength and self-awareness of the individuals, what they value, the desires they keep in check, whether their understanding of fairness and justice can counteract the temptations of unlimited wealth and deference. And the same is true for you, both personally and professionally. Tyrant or king, hero or Nero, which will you be? Robert Caro says that it's not the power corrupts. He says that's too simple. He says, "Power reveals." I think that's an interesting way to think about it.

• 3:43Ryan Holiday?

  In Marcus's case, power was what made him great, made him better. It showed who he really was underneath. In Nero's case, the exact opposite was true. And that was true for a lot of emperors. So the question for you, as you go through life, is, are the things you experience, the stresses and the successes, the temptations and the challenges, are they going to make you better or worse? Are they going to reveal...

• 4:08Ryan Holiday?

  The good stuff underneath? Or are they going to show how rotten you are to the core? And, you know, February in The Daily Stoic, the month is about passions and emotions. It's not that the Stoics believed we shouldn't have any emotions. That's ridiculous. But they wanted us to be in control of them, rather than our emotions be in control of us. So it's okay to have ambition. We have a good video on this in The Daily Stoic. But it's not good for your ambition to determine your worth as a human being, to be in charge of you. So you have to figure out a way that you are, your ruling reason is in charge. Your ethics are in charge. Your purpose is in charge, not your passions, not your urges, not all these other things.

• 4:51Ryan Holiday?

  And so I think we can take a minute today. And that question, hero or Nero? Am I the good guy here? Am I the bad guy here? Am I, is what I'm experiencing making me better or worse? That's a really, it's a really good question. I think about this as a parent, you know? The stresses and the difficulties of this, are they making me better? Or are they making me worse? Is the responsibilities and rewards of being a writer, is it making me a better human or a worse human? And I always, obviously, obviously, you want it to be the better part. Is it making you more generous, more kind, more disciplined? You know, Eisenhower's line about how freedom is the opportunity for discipline. Success is that way. Power is that way. Stress and challenges are that way, too. Are they making you better?

• 5:36Ryan Holiday?

  What are they revealing? Only you can answer that question. And let's just try our best today to have a good answer. Thanks so much for listening. If you could leave a review for the podcast, we'd really appreciate it. Do the reviews make a difference? And of course, every nice review from a nice person helps balance out the crazy people who get triggered and angry anytime we say something they disagree with. So if you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and would really help the show. We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode.