A Stoic Isn’t Born. They’re Made.

Marcus Aurelius wasn’t born Marcus Aurelius (literally, his name was Marcus Catilius Severus Annius Verus). Epictetus wasn’t born a sage–to say he was would be to deprive him of the enormous credit due to a man who went from a lowly slave to a wise and powerful philosopher. No, becoming a Stoic takes work. It takes practice.🎧 For a limited time, you can purchase The Daily Stoic ebook for only $1.99 on Kindle✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more, including the Premium Leather Edition of the Daily Stoic Journal.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us, dailystoic.com.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  A Stoic isn't born, they're made. Marcus Aurelius wasn't born Marcus Aurelius. Literally, his name was Marcus Catalys Severus Annius Verus. Epictetus wasn't born a sage, and to say he was would be to deprive him of the enormous credit due to a man who went from a lowly slave to a wise and powerful philosopher. No, becoming a Stoic takes work. It takes practice. And we've been talking this month about the idea of spiritual exercising, a term coined by Pierre Hidot, a great writer about the Stoics. "Well, philosophy wasn't this thing you were taught," he said. "It was a thing you did, through reading, through journaling, through practice in the real world."

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Just as one becomes strong through lifting weights or skilled at woodworking through time in their workshop, we become adept and able at philosophy through a similar process. Stoicism is designed to be that, a practice and a routine. It's not a philosophy you read once and magically understand at a soul level. No, it's a lifelong pursuit that requires diligence and repetition and concentration. That's part of the benefit of a page-a-day book with monthly themes, like we built the Daily Stoic about. By the way, it's $1.89 as an ebook right now. I'll link to that later. That's also the premise of the Daily Stoic Journal, right? You're meditating, you're writing about the themes every day. And we were talking about, we have the leather cover, which you can check out also.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  But the idea is that you put one thing up for review, to have at hand, to fully digest each day, not in passing, not just once, but every single day over the course of a year, preferably year in and year out. That's also... What we do and the challenges, right? Marcus would say that a student of philosophy was like a boxer. Through training and practice and repetition, a boxer becomes one with their weapon. And through training and practice and repetition, reading, writing in a journal, listening to the Stoics in conversation, we become one with the philosophy. So make that your goal this year, to create a practice, to get the reps, to make Stoicism a part of your life and mind.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  By the way, the book, if you haven't checked it out, is $1.99 as an ebook right now. Only going to last for a few more days. You can get it on Amazon and get it on iBooks, anywhere in the US and the UK. And then the new leather cover is out also. I think this is really, really cool. I love this tannery that we're working with. This was a project long in the making, but a perfect time to launch it here with the new year. You can check that out at store.dailystoic.com. And if you haven't read The Daily Stoic, or you want to give it as a gift, this is as cheap as it'll ever get. So check that out. I'll link to it in today's show notes, but enjoy.

• 3:23Speaker 00

  Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoic store. You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend. The Obstacle is the Way, He Goes the Enemy, Stillness is the Key, the leather-bound edition of The Daily Stoic. We have them all in the Daily Stoic store, which you can check out at store.dailystoic.com.