Pod Insights The Daily Stoic | Wondery+ It’s All About How You Close | Timeless (Stoic) Habits To Transform Your Future About this episode What matters is how we bring the show to a close, what matters is the ending we give each scene. 📕 Pick up a copy of Lives of the Stoics by Ryan Holiday | https://store.dailystoic.com/📚 Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero by James Romm at The Painted Porch https://www.thepaintedporch.com/ 🎙️Listen to James Romm’s interview on the Daily Stoic✉️ 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.
Transcript 0:02 Speaker 00 Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.
0:29 Speaker 00 It's all about how you close. Seneca was a playwright, so he knew that he had messed up. He knew that he had been hypocritical. He knew that he had stayed too long in Nero's service and that in so doing, he had undermined his philosophy. He knew that he had debased himself as he had enriched himself. He knew that he'd made enemies. He knew that he'd made a mess of things. Yet he also knew fundamentally that audiences will forgive flaws in characters, indeed in the plot itself, if they manage to redeem themselves, if the ending, if there is a shot at redemption. "Life is like a play," he tells Lucilius in one of their letters, "just give it a good ending." Seneca was late in walking away from Nero. He was
1:10 Speaker 00 late in turning on the deranged emperor, but it was the right turn in the story. And when the goons came to kill him, he was ready with the performance of a lifetime. "Who knew not Nero's cruelty?" he said to his weeping friends who were surprised by the death sentence. Seneca didn't try to run. He stepped forward bravely. He had the perfect one-liners at the ready. "Why weep over this part of life?" he said to his wife. "The whole thing calls for tears." "I leave you my example," he said to his friends, "as my final gift." Amidst the fumbling of the executioners, he never complained. He never wavered. And then soon enough, he was gone. But that example he left to his friends would live on far after him.
1:54 Speaker 00 It would outshine and outshadow the flaws of his middle age, soften his hypocrisy and cover the holes in his story. And that is how it goes for us too, in matters big and small, that we got off to the wrong start, that we made mistakes, that we delivered an underwhelming performance. What matters is how we bring the show to a close. What matters is the ending we give each scene, and indeed, life itself. If you want to learn more about Seneca and sort of how he wrapped things up, I definitely recommend James Romm's Dying Every Day. I'll link to that. It's one of my favorite books in the bookstore. Yeah, check that out. He's been on the podcast a couple of times. I'll link to that. And I also get into the contradictions of Seneca's character in Lives of the Stoics. You can check that out.
2:38 Speaker 00 How he illustrates the challenges of living as a Stoic in a complex and often corrupt world. You can grab that at the Daily Stoic store if you want me to sign your copy. But fascinating man, and you can see why I keep returning to this scene, especially with the world is as it is right now. Lots of lessons, good and bad, from Seneca's complicated life and legacy.
3:08 Speaker 00 You know that you could be better. You know, you could be more generous. You could be more kind, more dependable. There's all these things we would like to be. We know we should be, but that's what Stoicism is.
3:24 Speaker 00 The Stoics thought that what you held dear would manifest itself in your behavior. Right? That's what they meant when they said, "character is fate." And that's what we're going to talk about in today's video. 10 Ways to Improve Your Character to Set Some Bedrock Values That Will Help You Be and Do and Act Better.
3:47 Speaker 00 We've all said it unthinkingly, right? I'm gonna be honest with you. Let me be straight with you here. Well, Marcus Aurelius said that this is actually kind of a pathetic thing to say. He said, "The implication is that you're not normally honest." So this decision to tell the truth, to be someone who speaks up when people ask you for your opinion, when people are asking for feedback, or when you are speaking up, are you telling the truth or are you lying? Are you taking the easy way out or are you telling those hard truths? And Stoic tries to be the person who doesn't have to preface what they're saying by letting you know that in this exception, they are going to be telling the truth.
4:30 Speaker 00 One of the most important habits you can practice is patience. One of the things I learned with this bookstore is the truth of what they call Hofstadter's Law. It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account. We want our progress now. We want our success now. We want our rewards now. But if you can practice delayed gratification, if you can understand that it takes a while, that it's part of a process, you're almost always going to be more successful, right? You think of Marcus Aurelius. He's told he's gonna be emperor, but Antoninus is gonna rule first. And they think it's gonna be one, or two, or three, or four, or five years. It's like 20 years.
5:11 Speaker 00 He has to wait 20 years before he can become the emperor of Rome. So if Marcus doesn't have patience, if life doesn't force him to practice the virtue of patience, he'd have gone crazy. He'd have lost his mind. And then he wouldn't have actually been as good as he was as emperor. All things require patience, whether you're writing books, whether you're being a leader, whether you have kids. Learning how to practice patience is critical. And what I think when I'm stuck in traffic, when a flight is delayed, when my book's going slower than I thought, I go, "This isn't frustrating. This isn't annoying." Although it is those things. I say, "This is an opportunity to get reps with patience. This is the opportunity to practice patience, and I will be better for having gone through this."
5:59 Speaker 00 When you think of Stoicism, when you think of a philosopher, you don't think of love, right? You don't think of emotions at all. That was supposed to be the whole point of Stoicism is that they didn't have any emotions. That's actually a misreading of Stoicism entirely. Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations that one of the things he learns from his philosophy teacher, he says, is to be free of the passions but full of love. And in fact, one of the stories we have of Marcus is him grieving over a teacher that had died and how sad he was because he loved this person dearly. And so, yeah, the Stoics try not to be angry, the Stoics try not to be jealous, the Stoics try not to be driven or ruled by emotions, but largely they're trying to avoid the destructive emotions.
6:44 Speaker 00 And what they're trying to put instead in there is compassion, empathy, love, and connection. James Walden said hatred has never failed to destroy the person who hated. He said, "This is an immutable law." So the Stoics are trying to push out toxic, destructive emotions like that and in its place, put the love that Marcus Aurelius is talking about. The question to me is, as you get older, as you go through the world, as you go through life, are you getting more jaded and cynical? Are you getting sick of people? Or are you actually feeling more compassion, more affinity, more connection to them? Stoicism has this idea of the circles of concern, right? We start off as selfish, but they say as we go, there are these other rings, other
7:28 Speaker 00 people, animals, the environment. And they said, "It's this beautiful madness to pull these outer rings inward." So that's what Stoicism actually is. You should become more caring, more interested, not more detached, more disinterested. Marcus Aurelius considered himself a very wealthy man. It wasn't that he had money, although he did. He said he considered himself wealthy because whenever there was someone who needed help, he was always in a position to give it, that he was never told, "Sorry, you can't afford to help that person." And I love this idea of generosity as like, it's not how much you have, it's how generous you are able to be. And we should...
8:14 Speaker 00 Cultivate generosity as a habit, right? I tell the story in Write Thing Right Now about Rabbi Harold Kushner, who every day before he would sit down to write, he would write out a small donation to a charity that he and his wife supported. It was like making an offering. But I think it was also like building a habit. And so how do you build the habit to be generous? And also understanding that money is just one form of generosity. How can you be generous with your time, with your praise, with credit? Generosity can come in so many different forms. And how do you practice those forms? How do you build the habit of giving? Again, understanding, as Aristotle would say,
8:58 Speaker 00 that virtue isn't so much a noun, but a verb. So if you want to be a generous person, you become a generous person by generous actions. And that's what Marcus Aurelius was talking about.
9:12 Speaker 00 In one of the greatest essays ever written, I think one of her most stoic pieces of writing, the novelist Joan Didion, this is actually her table. I'm sitting in a chair that was once in her house. She said that self-respect frees us from the expectations of others. It gives us back to ourselves. That's the great singular power of self-respect. You realize that respect isn't something you get from other people. Respect comes from in here. And by respecting oneself, holding oneself to a certain standard. The Stoics have this great concept. It's actually in a play about Cato. They were saying, nothing can guarantee you success, but there's something better still that's deserving it, being worthy of it.
9:54 Speaker 00 Obviously, Cato appreciated the fact that people saw him as Cato. But what mattered was that he was actually worthy of it, that he lived a life, that he was a person worthy of that success. And that starts from how he saw himself. That starts from the character that he cultivated. And the same is true for us.
10:15 Speaker 00 Marcus Aurelius was a strict guy, but he tried to be strict with himself, tolerant of others. He has this stepbrother, Lucius Verus. They could not have been more different. But what he writes in Meditations is how grateful he is for his stepbrother, for teaching him, showing him things, for helping him improve his own character. What Marcus Aurelius was really good at was finding the good in other people. Even ancient historians would talk about this at the time, that he always found a role for someone, that he was able to use flawed people for the good of the empire. Lincoln was great at this. His so-called "team of rivals", he builds together a cabinet of people who disagree with him, people whose personalities he probably found obnoxious and annoying in many cases.
11:00 Speaker 00 But he saw when they could contribute, and he wanted that contribution from them. In Meditations, we see Marcus Aurelius, who again, is a strict person, who is a high-character person, who has lots of, who has very strong values. And he would have existed in a time where most people were not like that. But instead of being sick of people, instead of being disgusted with people, instead of disengaging from people, he tried to find connection, affinity, compassion, love for these people. He tried to work for and with them. He names his brother "co-emperor", and he finds a role for him. And so, we have to remember that we're strict with ourselves, tolerant with others, and we have to actively work to find the good in others,
11:43 Speaker 00 find the opportunities for them to contribute, to find the good and praise it, as Alex Haley said, "the job of a writer was". That's what we have to do as people and as leaders. Find the good in people. Don't write people off. Don't cut them out of your life if you can help it. Try to find the good in people, work with it, and make the most of it.
12:07 Speaker 00 Marcus Vilius didn't just respect Antoninus because he was a good person, although he was. What you see in the beginning of Meditations, where Marcus Vilius acknowledges all the things that he learned from Antoninus, what runs through it is his respect for Antoninus's competence. You know, he talks about his searching questions at meetings, his ability to trust and use experts, how he listened to anyone who could contribute to the public good, his hard work. Basically, he's saying that, and this is so rare, he's saying Antoninus was a competent ruler. Like, he didn't just have good values, which are of course important, but he was good at his job.
12:52 Speaker 00 He brought those values to bear on his craft or his profession that he was good with. So sometimes when we think about justice, or we think about being a good person, we just think about intentions. But intentions don't matter that much. As I say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Cato, a great person, very ineffective politician. Caesar, bad person, very effective politician, right? And ultimately Caesar triumphs. Cato goes down swinging. He is pure and true, but he fails. So how do you have the competence so when good goes against evil, good can win?
13:33 Speaker 00 At his most vulnerable moment, Marcus Vilius was betrayed. He was sick, he was struggling, people didn't know if he would survive or not. One of his trusted generals, Avidius Cassius, declares himself emperor. This not only is a betrayal of their relationship, it puts Marcus Vilius and his family in grave danger. So Marcus had every reason to seek revenge, and he doesn't. In fact, he uses it as this opportunity, he says, to teach future Roman generations how to deal with civil strife. When Marcus Vilius talks in Meditations about revenge, he's not just talking about this theoretically or abstract. He knew it intimately. We know what it means when someone we trust takes from us or hurts us. But Marcus Vilius says you can't let this break or change you.
14:17 Speaker 00 He says the best revenge is to not be like that. So we don't control what other people do, but we control who we are in a world where those things can happen. And that's Marcus Vilius's advice on not getting revenge.
14:33 Speaker 00 It's one of the most remarkable turn of events in all of human history. How does Marcus Aurelius, a philosopher, become the emperor of Rome? His father was an emperor, his grandfather was an emperor. He had no royal claim to the throne. What happened is that the Emperor Hadrian did not have a son. He saw something in this young kid that he told the truth, that he was good, that he was smart, that he was decent. And he wanted to make him emperor, but he thought that Marcus Aurelius was too young. So Hadrian adopted a man named Antoninus, who in turn adopted Marcus Aurelius to groom Marcus Aurelius for the throne. But how did Hadrian know that Antoninus was up for the task? That he would honor his wishes, that he would train Marcus Aurelius to be emperor? Hadrian watched Antoninus help his elderly stepfather up a flight of stairs.
15:18 Speaker 00 Antoninus didn't know anyone was watching. It wasn't for attention, it wasn't performative. Here he was, just helping someone out. This was a glimpse for Hadrian into Antoninus's character, that for all his power, his prestige, his success in politics and business, that he was a good person. And when we say the character's fate, this is what we're talking about. How do you treat people who can't do anything for you? How do you act when no one's watching? These are the things that tell us something about who we are and how we're going to perform and behave under stress, under temptation, when we've been given a great amount of power. And so Antoninus's kindness was something that made him very successful. And what about you? Has anyone ever caught you doing something like that? How do you act when no one's watching?
16:01 Speaker 00 This says everything about you and your future.
16:07 Speaker 00 "You can call me anything you want," Arnold Schwarzenegger once told me. "Just don't call me a self-made man." His point was like, the voters made him who he was. America made him who he was. The mentors, friends, his family members, people who supported him. That's how he became what he's become. And actually, he mentions Marcus Aurelius as an example of this. He says, "What does Marcus Aurelius open his meditations with? A list of the depths and lessons, the things he learned from, the gifts he was given, the insights he gained, the shoulders that he stood upon." And it's a super important thing for us all to realize. None of us are self-made. Some of us have overcome greater odds than others.
16:49 Speaker 00 But all of us are here because somebody took care of us when we were small. All of us have taken advantage of opportunities and breakthroughs that other people had before us. We're all here because of and for other people. If you want more wisdom inspired from the Stoics, I send out one Stoic-themed email every single morning, totally for free. You can sign up at dailystoic.com/email. No spam, you can unsubscribe at any time. I think it's the best thing that I do. It's a community of hundreds of thousands of Stoics all over the world. We'd love to have you at dailystoic.com/email.
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