These Days You Need Double What It Takes | Reignite Your Thoughts

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

• 0:05Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

• 0:56Ryan Holiday?

  These days, you need double what it takes. You think Marcus Aurelius wasn't prepared? Of course he was. Almost no one received more on-the-job training than he did. Roughly two decades under Antoninus. He had fantastic teachers. He was trained in Stoicism, a philosophy which not only prepared for the worst, but never expected the best. And still, still, life rocked him. His reign was marked by an unending series of troubles. Misfortune after misfortune befell him. Plagues, war, the death of his children, an unfaithful wife. Surely, this exhausted his reserves.

• 1:39Ryan Holiday?

  Surely, this taxed him beyond capacity. And yet, yet still, he had to keep going, as we all do. Sometimes, life feels like it's out to get us. It throws every type of adversity at us. Illness, financial troubles, relationship issues, inequality and injustice. But still, we must keep going. We can train, we can prepare, we can stock up, we can rehearse in our minds what we need to do. This will not be enough because more will be expected of us still. More will be piled onto our plates. Enough is not enough.

• 2:23Ryan Holiday?

  We'll need double, maybe more, especially these days. We'll need to reach deep down inside us to find some more. We'll need to keep going, even on empty, because it's going to take what it's going to take. And all we can do is take it or not.

• 2:52Ryan Holiday?

  Reignite your thoughts. This is today's entry in the Daily Stoic. I'm holding the leather bound edition today in my hands. "Your principles can't be extinguished unless you snuff out the thoughts that feed them, for it is continually in your power to reignite new ones. It's possible to start living again, see things anew as you once did. This is how to restart life." That's Marcus Aurelius's Meditations 7:2. Have you had a bad couple of weeks? Have you been drifting away from the principles and beliefs that you hold dear? It's perfectly fine. It happens to all of us. In fact, it probably happened to Marcus. That's why he scribbled this note to himself. Perhaps he was dealing with difficult senators

• 3:36Ryan Holiday?

  or having difficulties with his troubled son. Perhaps in these scenarios, he lost his temper, became depressed, or stopped checking in with himself. Who wouldn't? But the reminder here is that no matter what happens, no matter how disappointing our behavior has been in the past, the principles remain unchanged. We can return and embrace them at any moment. What happened yesterday, what happened five minutes ago, is in the past. We can reignite and restart whenever we like. Why not do it now?

• 4:11Ryan Holiday?

  I think it's, it's pretty lovely that although Marcus seems like this impossible ideal, this philosopher king, this magnificent peerless human being, several times in meditations, he talks about picking himself up when he fails. He talks about getting back up when you fail because he did fail. He fell short a lot, right? He must have. He writes this in meditations. He says that we shouldn't feel exasperated or defeated or despondent because your days aren't packed with wise and moral actions. He said, but try to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human, however imperfectly,

• 4:54Ryan Holiday?

  and fully embrace the pursuit that you've embarked on. He's saying that not to you, but to himself because like you, he fell short. He screwed up. I think, again, we think of self-discipline like someone who's in great shape, someone who sticks to a diet, someone who has good habits. We think of them as perfect. That's really not what they are. Actually, part of that is having the high standard, falling short, and then not writing yourself off or giving in to that new thing, right? To be able to come back to the habit, to reset, to recommit when one falls short. You know, we want to say, ah, what the hell? Does it even matter? We throw in the towel, we quit because we screwed

• 5:35Ryan Holiday?

  up or we fell short. But I think what Marcus is saying is like, look, you can screw up, you can fail. Or like, things can knock you off your block. Like, life can happen to you. You don't control that, but you always control whether you get back up, whether you come back to it or not, right? He says, we can't be extinguished, only we can snuff it out. To me, that's what he's saying, that we always have the power to come back to it, to start anew, to restart, to recommit. So, you know, maybe you're doing the new year new challenge with us right now. Maybe you've already fallen short on some of your resolutions. Maybe, maybe you relapsed. I don't know. Maybe you lost your temper this

• 6:16Ryan Holiday?

  morning. I don't know. But you can come back to it, right? You can start living again. It's in your power to reignite, to come back to it, to pick yourself up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human being, to fully embrace the pursuit that you've embarked on. Don't be exasperated, Marcus is saying. Don't be defeated. Don't be despondent. You're not perfect. No one thinks that you are. It was silly to expect that you could be. I like the advice from Oprah where she says like, just because you ate one of the Oreos doesn't mean you have to finish the sleeve, right? Like, pick yourself back up. Don't snuff it out. Don't quit. Don't quit on yourself. Keep going. Don't give up. That's what today's message is.

• 6:58Ryan Holiday?

  Reignite. Come back to the philosophy. Recommit to it. I know you can do it. Let's have a great year together.

• 7:09Ryan Holiday?

  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. 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.