Don't Think About It, ACT On It | What's In Your Way Is The Way

Ryan talks about the importance of living out philosophy, and reads this week’s meditation from The Daily Stoic Journal. InsideTracker provides you with a personalized plan to improve your metabolism, reduce stress, improve sleep, and optimize your health for the long haul. For a limited time, get 20% off the entire InsideTracker store. Just go to insidetracker.com/STOIC to claim this deal.✉️ 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.

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  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

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  Look, the Stoics practiced the art of memento mori. They know that life is short and unpredictable. But that doesn't mean they're trying to die faster, right? Marx realized as a doctor, he wants to live as long as that's possible, as long as that's within his control. And if you're looking for ways to extend your lifespan, or slow down the aging process, the key to that is in your blood. And that's why today's sponsor, InsideTracker, provides you with a personal plan to improve your metabolism, reduce stress, improve sleep, and optimize your health for the long haul. Created by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometrics, InsideTracker analyzes your blood, your DNA, and your fitness tracking data, like from a smartwatch or smartphone, to identify where you're optimized, where

• 1:17Speaker 00

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  Don't think about it, act on it.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  The 16th century English poet, Robert Southwell, stared at a picture each day. Each day, he would look at a little totem to and then read a little inscription, all of it for one purpose: to remind him. To remind him of what? That he would die. And yet, even with this trinity of daily reminders, he struggled, as we all do. As his poem reads, continually at my bed's head, a hearth doth hang which doth tell me, that I ere morning may be dread, though now I feel myself fully well. But yet, alas, for all of this, I have little mind that I must die.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  The gown which I do use to wear, the knife wherewith I cut my meat, and eke that old and ancient chair which is my only usual seat. All these do tell me I must die, yet my life amend, not I. Does this sound familiar? Is that not us? Memento mori is something easy to pay lip service to. You can read Marcus Aurelius, you can read Seneca, perhaps even the recent collection, How to Die. Maybe you even carry one of our memento mori coins. Or like Southwell, you have a Dance of Death print aimed right at eye level. All good. But this isn't an intellectual exercise.

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  It's about changing your life. Marcus Aurelius said, "You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think." He was saying the same thing: amend your life before it's too late, while you still can, while there is still time.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  What's in your way is the way. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, "366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living", by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, "Every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand, write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them." You can check out the Daily Stoic Journal anywhere books are sold. You can also get a signed, personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoic store at store.dailystoic.com.

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  Obstacles are a fact of life. Even the most powerful and lucky of us are not exempt from this reality, but we have a superpower at our hands through Stoic philosophy in that our purposes, our intentions, our attitudes can adapt to any conditions to find a way forward. The Stoics talk about acting with a reserve clause that allows us to reconsider and set a new course of action if needed. And Marcus Aurelius tells us that any obstacle can actually become raw material for a new purpose. So that's what you should think about today and this week. How might the obstacles you're facing reveal a new path?

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  We've got three quotes from Marcus Aurelius along these lines today. "While it's true that someone can impede our actions, they can't impede our intentions or our attitudes, which have the power of being conditional and adaptable. For the mind adapts and converts any obstacle to its actions into a means of achieving it. And that which is the obstacle to action is turned to advance action. The obstacle on the path becomes the way." That's Meditations 520. Marcus also says in 835, "Just as nature turns to its own purpose, any obstacle or any opposition sets its place in the destined order and co-ops it so every rational person can convert

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  any obstacle into the raw material for their own purpose." And then Meditations 832. So clearly, he thinks about this a lot. He says, "You must build up your life action by action and be content if each one achieves its goal as far as possible, and no one can keep you from this. But there will be some external obstacle, perhaps," he says, "but no obstacle to acting with justice, self-control, and wisdom. But what if some area of my action is thwarted? Well, gladly accept the obstacle for what it is and shift your attention to what is given, and another action will immediately take its place, one that better fits the life you are building." And as you know, this is what I built. The obstacle is the way around these ideas. But

• 6:57Speaker 00

  let me read you Gregory Hayes's translation in that same line, 520, because it's obviously been so instrumental to me. And I think Hayes does it quite well also. He says, and it's interesting, he's clearly referring, Marcus, not to a specific kind of obstacle, difficult people. "In a sense, people are our proper occupation." This is Meditations 520. "Our job is to do them good and put up with them. But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us, like the sun, wind, or animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions, because we

• 7:37Speaker 00

  can't accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." And then let's, let's look at the Robin Waterfield translation, the same line. All right, here's 520.

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  "From one point of view, nothing is more proper to me than a human being, insofar as it's my job to do people good and tolerate them. But insofar as some people threaten my proper work, I count a human being as just another indifferent, no less than the sun, or the wind, or a wild animal. These things may impede some of my activities, but they can't impede my impulses or my state of mind, because I have powers of reservation and adaption and adaptation. The mind can adapt and alter every impediment to action to serve its purpose. Something that might have hindered a task contributes to it instead, and something that was an obstacle on the road helps you on your way." And then here's Waterfield's note. He says, again, Marcus stresses the independence of

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  the mind and the possibility of seeing the world in a positive light. So it doesn't matter which translation you read, the message is the same. Stuff happens, stuff gets in our way, but it presents us the opportunity to do something different. So in this sense, the obstacle is the way. It's not that, you know, life erects this wall in front of you and the way is through that wall. It's that when the door shuts, a window opens. It's that when you wanted everything to go well, and then someone screws it up, now it's a chance to practice patience. Now it's a chance to practice forgiveness. Now it's a chance to start over. Now it's a chance to, you know, extricate yourself from this toxic relationship, whatever

• 9:28Speaker 00

  it is, right? What Marcus is saying is that everything that happens in life, every obstacle, as maddening and frustrating and painful as they might be, they are opportunities to practice a different virtue, that virtue is always the way, and that nothing stops us from being able to do that. I just love that passage so much. If I had the time, I'd grab the Pierre Hidot chapter on this very idea, which also helped inspire The Obstacle is the Way. He talks about sort of the art of turning obstacles upside down. To me, this is a central practice in Stoicism. It's why I've got it tattooed on my arm. It's why I wrote a book about it. It's why we talk about it so much. It's the idea of amor fati. We accept, and then we use what's happened to our advantage.

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  That's the essence of Stoicism. I hope that inspires you a little bit today. People are our proper occupation. We tolerate them, we put up with them, and all the obstacles they roll into our way, all the problems they cause us, are actually not problems, but opportunities to practice the very virtues of courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. That's what we're doing here. And by the way, we do have the new leather-bound edition of The Obstacle is the Way, which comes with the Obstacle is the Way Challenge Coin as well. Really proud of this thing. You can check that out at dailystoic.com/ObstacleLeather. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out at dailystoic.com/email.