How Will You Measure Your Life? | Fueling the Habit Bonfire

“Of people who rise to positions of power, there are two types. Those who think they can do it alone and those who know that that is insane.”Ryan explains where the true value in life lies, and reads The Daily Stoic’s entry of the day, on today’s Daily Stoic Podcast. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. The new Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. You can add the Cover to any mattress, and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. Go to eightsleep.com/dailystoic to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Daily Stoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation, but also reading a passage from the book The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator Stephen Hanselman. And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, then some analysis from me. And then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  How will you measure your life? It's tempting, natural even, to measure your life by what you've accomplished, how many battles you've won, how much money you've made, the pleasure you've had, all the honors you've received. But the Stoics know that ultimately, these things are meaningless. In the end, they are nothing. "What happened to Alexander the Great?" Marcus asked. "He was buried in the same ground as his mule driver. Look at the things the conquerors and the tyrants and the perverts have given up to get what they chased," he said. "Where is the applause now? What is that applause now? What was the cheering ever really? Dust, nothing, a clacking of tongues." No, we have to measure our life by only one thing: virtue.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Did we do right? Did we hold true? Whether we did so on an epic scale or in the quiet confines of our own home, that's what matters. Socrates and Cato were great men, according to the Stoics, not because of the fame they achieved, but because of the unswerving commitment they had to principle. That this brought them fame was an accident. It was irrelevant. Summa bonum, the highest good virtue, that's what we measure a life by. In these trying times, in the good times too, what did we do for others? Did we embody good character? Did we embody the philosophy? Not just talk about it. That's what success is. That's what we're reaching for.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  Fueling the Habit Bonfire. This is today, May 13th entry from The Daily Stoic. 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. Written, published by yours truly. You can get an audiobook. Physical, we even have a leather bound edition in the Daily Stoic store. Here is Epictetus. "Every habit and capability is confirmed and grows in its corresponding actions, walking by walking, running by running. Therefore, if you want to do something, make a habit of it. If you don't want to do it, don't, but make a habit of something else instead. The same principle is at work on our state of mind. When you get angry, you've not only experienced that evil,

• 2:54Speaker 00

  but you've reinforced a bad habit, adding fuel to the fire." That's Epictetus's discourses. "We are what we repeatedly do," Aristotle supposedly said. "Therefore, excellence is not an act, but a habit." The Stoics add to that, that we are a product of our thoughts. "Such are your habitual thoughts. Such also will be the character of your mind," Marcus Aurelius put it. "Think about your activities of the last week, as well as what you've planned for today and the week that follows. The person you'd like to be, or the person you see yourself as, how closely do your actions actually correspond to him or her? Which fire are you fueling?

• 3:36Speaker 00

  Which person are you becoming?" I love this idea that with every action we take, every decision we make, everything that we say, we're voting. We're voting as to which person we are going to be. We're voting whether we believe what we say, whether we believe who we are, or who we actually are. With which each thing we're voting, we're making a statement, right? About our true priorities. And so you have to break down and look at your days. Are you fueling the right habit bonfire, right? You say you care about health, but what was your breakfast this morning? You say that you're committed to losing weight, but did you exercise? You say that...

• 4:21Speaker 00

  You know, you're a good, that being a good father, a good spouse is important to you. But what actions did you take today, right? What habit bonfire are you fueling? Are you fueling the one that makes you better? Or are you fueling the, the, the worst angels of your nature, right? Who are you? I heard a great expression that like sort of love doesn't exist, only loving actions, right? What actions are you taking? What habits are you fueling? I think that's the idea. We have who we want to be, but then our decisions, our actions, the things we do, that, that is what reveals who we really are. So today, think about fueling the habit bonfire. I would add to this, and we had him on the podcast recently, James Clear's idea of atomic habits,

• 5:06Speaker 00

  that sort of the most powerful, like atomic doesn't just mean small, also means sort of transformatively powerful. You don't just want to like, hey, throw a little fuel on the fire, but ideally, you know, you want to create those explosive habits, the habits that really take things up a notch. So I don't just think about habits, but I think about the sort of life-changing habits, that the habits that ripple through the course of the rest of my life. So think about habits a little bit today. Of course, we also have the Daily Stoic Habits Challenge, which you can check out at dailystoic.com/habits. The point is, we are what we do. We are the choices we make. We are the habits that we fuel. You gotta make sure you're fueling the right habits.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  And, and conversely, that you are depriving the wrong habits, the wrong traits from that same fuel, right? And, and I think this is important, so it's, it's not just, hey, I'm gonna not eat that bad thing, but I'm also not going to buy it at the store. It's not going to be in my house, right? Because these things are cumulative, they add up to each other. Make good decisions, fuel the right bonfire. Be the person, as Marcus really has said, that philosophy is fighting to make you. That's what habits are all about. Get out there. I'll talk to you soon.