This is a Line Worth Remembering | A Cure For The Self

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

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:15Ryan Holiday?

  This is a line worth remembering. Have you ever read a line in a book that helps you understand life in a new way? A song lyric that nails exactly how you're feeling? A piece of advice that gives you a rule to follow in countless situations? You're not the only one. We see Marcus Aurelius do this in meditations repeatedly, quoting lines from Epictetus, from poems, from plays. And as it happens, George Washington did this too. His favorite play was Cato by Joseph Addison. This play about the Roman senator and Stoic philosopher was written in 1712, was hugely famous in the 18th century. And Washington liked to quote one line that must have resonated

• 0:58Ryan Holiday?

  with him the way certain quotes resonate with us today. "Free," he said in a letter to a friend after the revolution about his return to private life, "from the bustle of camp and the intrigues of court, I shall view the busy world in the calm light of mild philosophy."

• 1:18Ryan Holiday?

  In fact, in a single two-week period in 1797, Washington quoted that same line, "the calm light of mild philosophy." Three different letters. And later, in one of Washington's greatest, but probably least known moments, when he talked down the mutinous troops who were plotting to overthrow the US government in Newburgh, he quoted the same line as he urged them away from acting in anger and frustration. "In the calm light of mild philosophy." That's Stoicism. That's using reason to temper our impulses and our emotions. As Epictetus said, "It's about putting our impressions up to the test." It's what Marcus Aurelius talked about when he said that "our life is what our thoughts make it,

• 2:02Ryan Holiday?

  that what we choose to see determines how we will feel." And we must continue this advice today. It served Cato well, and Washington even better. "All that we see and all that we think we see clearly should be held up to the calm light of mild philosophy, so that we can see what it really is, so that we don't do anything that we regret, so we can enjoy this wonderful gift of life that we possess, whatever our station."

• 2:41Ryan Holiday?

  A cure for the self. A person who has practiced philosophy as a cure for the self becomes great of soul, filled with confidence, invincible, greater as you draw near. This is Seneca's Moral Letters, 111. This is an entry from The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday, translated by the wonderful Steve Hanselman. You can get this anywhere books are sold. There's an audio version, a physical version. There's even a special premium leather-bound edition to the Daily Stoic store. You can check out it at store.dailystoic.com. What is a cure for the self? Perhaps Seneca means that through nature and nurture, we develop a unique set of characteristics,

• 3:24Ryan Holiday?

  some positive, some negative. When those negative characteristics begin to have consequences in our lives, some of us turn to therapy, psychoanalysis, with the help of a support group, the point to cure certain selfish, destructive parts of ourselves. But of all the avenues for curing our negative characteristics, philosophy has existed the longest and helped the most people. It is concerned not just with mitigating the effects of mental illness or neuroses, but it is designed to encourage human flourishing. It's designed to help you live the good life. Don't you deserve to flourish? Wouldn't you like to be great of soul, filled with confidence and invincible to external events?

• 4:08Ryan Holiday?

  Wouldn't you like to be the proverbial onion packed with layers of greatness? Well, then, practice philosophy. That's something Seneca says. He says, "What does philosophy offer?" He says, "Philosophy offers counsel." Marcus Aurelius repeatedly compares philosophy to medicine. It's like an ointment. It reduces pain and suffering. That's what this philosophy is there for. As we said a bunch of times, go to therapy, seek medical help, go to recovery groups. Be religious too. Stoicism is not mutually exclusive with anything. But all these things are designed to do what Seneca's talking about, which is the cure for the self. The more you work on yourself, the more you address the problems, the issues,

• 4:53Ryan Holiday?

  the childhood wounds that you have, the better you'll be at whatever it is that you're doing. Last year, I've worked on so many issues, issues with my parents, issues with my childhood, issues with compulsions. Or I've really found that anxiety was more of a pronounced force in my life than I wanted it to be. And so I dealt with it, and I'm still dealing with it, trying to cure myself. I'm trying to get better every single day, as you're trying to do. That's what we are doing here, trying to get better. That's the problem with ego or delusion. If you think you're perfect, there's nothing you're going to work on. There's no way you're going to get better. If you think you're an irredeemable piece of crap, probably not going to get any better either.

• 5:35Ryan Holiday?

  But the point is, you're good, but you can be better. And if you dealt with this, if you faced that, if you explored this, if you opened up about that, what could you be capable of? How much greater could you be? Who could you be there for? What could you be capable of doing? So, the cure for the self. It's not that you're broken. It's not that you're diseased. But we all have issues. And in having the courage and the discipline and the counsel of philosophy to guide us, we can make real progress at that. When I look at who I was when I first picked up Marcus Aurelius at 19, I've cured a lot of things. I wouldn't say they're all in remission. I wouldn't say they're all perfectly gone, but I'm in remission on a lot of them.

• 6:20Ryan Holiday?

  And now I'm turning to additional things too. So, that's what we're doing here. I hope you're making that progress. Hope you're not afraid to ask for help. Hope you're not afraid to look in the mirror, because it gets better when you do. Talk soon.