This Is a Very Important Conversation You’re A Part Of | Jaimie Alexander’s Daily Stoic Practice

That’s how this conversation survives. Someone reads something. Thinks about it. Shares it. Helps another person see something they might have missed. Thenew 10th Anniversary Edition of https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10The Daily Stoic https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10is out NOW! 👉 Grabhttps://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10your copy here: https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/the-daily-stoic-10 Watch Jaimie Alexander and Ryan's conversation here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHGiOoHuQbc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHGiOoHuQbc 🎟️https://www.dailystoiclive.com/DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ 🎙️AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing toThe Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content:https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email athttps://dailystoic.com/dailyemail -- Stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. Visit ironwall.com/DAILYSTOIC and request a free Risk Assessment to see exactly how exposed your executives are. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

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• 0:41Ryan Holiday?

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• 1:23Ryan Holiday?

  Around 2,300 years ago, a man stood on a porch in Athens and started a conversation. His name was Zeno. The porch was the stoa pokile, the painted porch. The conversation was about how to live, what matters. What do we owe each other? How do we become better people? Pliandis and Chrysippus carried this conversation forward. Diogenes brought it to Rome. Seneca explored these questions in Letters to a Friend. Epictetus discussed them with his students. Marcus Aurelius took them up in his private journal, quoting earlier thinkers, wrestling with their ideas, bringing them to bear in his own life. Between them and after them were generations and generations of Stoics,

• 2:06Ryan Holiday?

  reading, talking about, translating, publishing those works. Montaigne picked up the conversation in his essays. Elizabeth Carter translated Epictetus into English. Thomas Wentworth Higginson brought out an edition for American readers. Stockdale was introduced to it at Stanford. Years later, Steve Hanselman, my co-writer on The Daily Stoic, encountered Higginson's Epictetus while studying at Harvard Divinity School. That book led him into Stoicism. And eventually, we collaborated on this book that became The Daily Stoic. And maybe that's how you were introduced to Stoicism. That's how this conversation goes and is going. Someone reads something, they think about it, they share it. They help another person see something that they missed.

• 2:51Ryan Holiday?

  And 10 years ago now, we added our own contribution to that conversation when we published The Daily Stoic, the idea of one page a day of Stoic philosophy. But the conversation didn't stop there, right? I studied and wrote about and thought about and read about the Stoics in the intervening decade. And so I just had this recent chance to go back through the book and make it better. And that's what we're calling the Daily Stoic 10th Anniversary Edition. It's got new quotes, it's got new stories, it's got new meditations. I think it's a much better book. There are more voices in it now, more ideas, more context,

• 3:34Ryan Holiday?

  more of the ideas that Steve and I have learned since we first put it together. Now, the words of the Stoics themselves haven't changed, but what matters is what they mean. The world around us has changed. And you have changed too. You have become a part of this, when you've emailed me, when you've underlined a passage, when you've shared it, when you've highlighted something. And so that conversation that began on a porch in Athens 2,300 years later is still going strong. And that's amazing, and that's lovely. And it's been such an incredible privilege to be a part of it. And I want to keep it going, and I have no plans to stop. You can grab the 10th Anniversary Edition of The Daily Stoic, signed and numbered first editions at dailystoic.com/ds10.

• 4:18Ryan Holiday?

  You can also grab the new leather-bound edition, which is really, really cool. Hopefully, that'll last you the next 10 years. All of that at dailystoic.com/ds10.

• 4:33Ryan Holiday?

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• 5:17Ryan Holiday?

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• 6:01Ryan Holiday?

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• 6:43Ryan Holiday?

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• 7:11Ryan Holiday?

  I read somewhere that you read a Stoic passage every day.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Okay, I do. I actually brought my Daily Stoic book, because whether you like it or not, you're going to sign it.

• 7:18Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  So I used to have meditations, and I would read that. And I would, you know, sometimes I don't have a ton of time to sit and meditate on it. So what I love that you've done is you've brought this ancient philosophy, and you have made it so much more digestible for the modern person. These teachings, honestly, they were popular at some points in history, right? Like repeatedly. But in all honesty, when I mention Stoicism, a lot of people are like, what's that? Like, you're Stoic, like you're strong, you stand up tall. And you're like, not quite. And so when I start to talk about it, they're always like, wow. I mean, yeah, I've felt that way, or I've felt that way. And so I recommend your book, because I say, look, not only are you just getting Marcus Aurelius, you're getting Epictetus, you're getting Seneca,

• 8:01Speaker 01

  you're getting all these different avenues of Stoicism, of the philosophy, and you're getting somebody who is alive right now that's putting it out there in real time. So that if you say, you know, if you read a text and you're like, hmm, I'm not quite sure what that means. It's like, you know what? Here's an interpretation at the bottom of the page.

• 8:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Does that, does that give you something to think about? And so what I do is every morning, I wake up. This is part of my morning routine to keep my head screwed on straight. I wake up, I write a gratitude list that's half a page. And it can be silly things, it can be something grand. I just say, look, it's, again, the whole spectrum, right? I have a lot to be grateful for. And it puts my, my mind in a state of focus on what's working. Like, well, it's going good, you know? Because there's a lot of stuff. I mean, you can have something bad happen in your life, and then that's all you see. And it's like, hold on. Two things can be happening at the same time, and even more. So I do that. Actually, wrong. Right before I do the gratitude list, I read a passage from the Daily Stoic.

• 8:59Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, wow.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  And then I take that and I think about it. And I say, hmm, I'm going to carry that with me today. And I'm going to apply the lesson. And, and, and I catch, sometimes I'll take a screen grab on my phone if it's a little longer because I want to read it again.

• 9:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  And so then I write the gratitude list. Then I have these little intention cards that I found that I've had for like 15 years or something. And I'll just pull a random card and also carry that intention. And then I start my day and I, I just, I feel grounded because I feel very aligned with this philosophy. And look, yes, as a woman saying this, you know, I haven't encountered many female Stoics. I have encountered a lot of women that I think already sort of have this philosophy within them.

• 9:45Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  That don't realize that it matches Stoicism, but I can't say that the Stoics treated women very well. You know, there's a lot of history in there that's a little dodgy, but it's sign of the times and whatnot. And I'm sure there were female Stoics.

• 9:56Ryan Holiday?

  There were.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  They just weren't recorded as often because they couldn't be.

• 10:00Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I mean, this is a world where like, all the women in your line of family would just have the same name. So it's like.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. That's true.

• 10:09Ryan Holiday?

  Julius Caesar, Julius Caesar, Julius Caesar. You know, it's just like how it would go. So yeah, we, we don't have great records.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  But not to say that that can't, you know, you doing what you're doing. It's like, this is part of the legacy and this is how I see it. Just coming from my perspective is like, you are taking something that is so profound that I have found that helps me in my daily life, that has helped give me a sense of peace that I have trouble reaching on my own. You've taken it, made it accessible, and that's part of your legacy.

• 10:41Ryan Holiday?

  That's very nice. You were talking about being a service. Someone did that for me and I'm just sort of paying that forward. That's what sort of gets me going.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Is it Green? Is that who you're talking about?

• 10:50Ryan Holiday?

  You want to know who introduced me to Stoicism? Dr. Drew.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Even, oh, I knew that.

• 10:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  I read, I remember hearing about that.

• 10:56Ryan Holiday?

  It was a very random set of circumstances.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  But see, perfect. Got you to pay attention.

• 10:59Ryan Holiday?

  Somebody gives you the book and then, I mean, you can give someone the tools and then do, you know, it's ultimately on them to read it or apply it or do what they are going to do with it. But yeah, I found this thing. It did something for me. And then you're sort of, I feel like life is about paying it forward.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  I agree. I love that philosophy. So how do you feel now knowing? I mean, again, and this isn't from an egoic perspective. It's like, do you feel like you are very much in line and aligned with why you were put on this planet?

• 11:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. I mean, I feel like this is what I'm meant to do. In a way, the success of it complicates it because there's just a lot of people involved. And I don't just mean there's like a lot of, there's like a big team, which there is, is not just me. But I, I mean, there's just like a lot of people involved with me and the thing that I would also quietly be spending time with.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:50Ryan Holiday?

  Anyway, like as helpful as it's been to me, as much as I try to apply it to my life, my personal application of it is a constant struggle like it is for everyone. But there's also just like, this is like the thing that's creatively and artistically fulfilling to me. But then it involves lots of people. Does that make sense?

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:10Ryan Holiday?

  That's the weirder part.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  But would you say that that might be how you know that it is your purpose? Is that you would be doing it without the notoriety as well?

• 12:19Ryan Holiday?

  I think so. Yeah.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's naturally in you. It's something that you.

• 12:23Ryan Holiday?

  And then it's also like, what I feel like, I think Stoicism is a philosophy that I'm lit up by. But then writing is the profession that I'm lit up by. And they just happen to have merged. And so that's a weird, do you know what I mean? If I was like personally into Stoic philosophy and then I wrote, you know, like.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  A murder mystery?

• 12:41Ryan Holiday?

  Murder mysteries or, or, you know, historical fiction or whatever, they, it would be, there would be a separate, there'd be like a church and state there, but there isn't. So it's, it's a little, it can be a little weird.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  I actually find that to be very similar to Marcus Aurelius.

• 12:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, maybe.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  In, in the, in the sense that like, he did this thing as a way to help himself stay grounded and help him rule in the best way that he saw fit. So it's kind of one of those things where he was constantly humbled every day by these two things that were intersecting quite often.

• 13:14Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think it's like, if you had asked him at 20, what he wanted to do with his life.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  It wouldn't have been that.

• 13:18Ryan Holiday?

  He would have said, I want to be a philosopher.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:21Ryan Holiday?

  And then he gets sort of selected or drafted into being the emperor. And I think there, what I would make up, and if I was doing it in fiction, I would, I would show him as being quite torn by this.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah.

• 13:34Ryan Holiday?

  And not, and only later in life, after a lot of struggle and resistance, does he realize that they're the same thing.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:41Ryan Holiday?

  And that actually, he was uniquely suited to be a king who was a philosopher, as opposed to a philosopher who had opinions about how a king should be.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 13:50Ryan Holiday?

  But I think that's common. It's like, we think our job or our path or what we were chosen for is this. And it's actually this. And it's only in understanding that they're much more similar that eventually they converge. That we're sort of really doing what we're supposed to be doing.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think that's a big relief in life.

• 14:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. When, when you stop trying to fight, you're like, no, no, I don't want that thing. I want this thing. And you realize actually, in some ways, this thing is what's actually going to allow you to do that thing.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like facilitates it. It preps it. It like, and again, like I see that with Epictetus as well. You know, you're, you're looking at this guy and you're just like, God, he's like the, I mean, talk about like a shitty deck of cards.

• 14:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  But he didn't let it stop him from writing what he, you know, wrote down. And that sense of like going, these are the lessons I'm learning in also weird parallel to Marcus Aurelius.

• 14:41Ryan Holiday?

  One is dealt a shittier objectively deck of cards.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Yes, objectively.

• 14:45Ryan Holiday?

  But like, neither of them is dealt the hand they would have chosen. And that's what they share in common, I think.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  And that's where the meditations come from.

• 14:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  That is where this philosophy comes from. You, I, I don't think it would have been possible without that two halves of a whole dueling situation that they were both put in. That of course then helps me where I'm at in my life and will continue to help me to, to keep that perspective of like, hmm.

• 15:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. You don't know.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 15:14Ryan Holiday?

  That goes to the curiosity. You think your job is X, but the world is telling you, the world's over here trying to hire you for Y.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:23Ryan Holiday?

  And you're like, well, maybe I, instead of fighting it, I'll see if that's actually what I'm supposed to do.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  What have I got to lose? Like, why not? Like, I, I think society has given us a template of what we feel because we've seen it. And a lot of people know, most of them are miserable, but we go, oh, everybody else has said it's this. So I guess they're right. And it's like, oh no. Well, how do you feel?

• 15:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  You know, what do you feel to be true? And I think we all have it in us. We all have that inner knowing. And it's just our external world and the people in it. We've allowed them to consciously or unconsciously take us away from our inner knowing. And things like this, meditations, you know, Stoicism in general, has helped me get in touch with my inner knowing that I felt or that I feel now has always been there. And I just, it's always been accessible.

• 16:23Speaker 02

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