Remove These Three Words From Your Life

"You’ve said them a thousand times. You said them when you were a kid. You said them last year. You’ve caught yourself saying them recently as you watched the world tear apart your carefully made plans. It’s not fair."Find out how to get "it's not fair" out of your system on today's Daily Stoic Podcast.***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 @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:06Speaker 00

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Remove these three words from your life. You've said them a thousand times. You said them when you were a kid. You said them last year. You caught yourself saying them recently as you watched the world tear apart your carefully-made plans. It's not fair. They are three words favored by kids and angry adults alike when we want things to be otherwise, when we are caught by surprise, when we, the people who pay our taxes, who try to always do what's right, get stuck with the consequences of something that wasn't our fault. When we talked to Tim Ferriss a few weeks ago for the Daily Stoic podcast, if you don't listen to our weekend episodes, you should, he advised that you strip these three words out of your vocabulary because they are impotent and meaningless, because

• 1:13Speaker 01

  they don't do anything but make you upset. No one promised you that the world was fair. Certainly, the Stoics never did. No, the Stoics told you that life was going to be hard. They warned you that fortune was capricious and cruel. They told you that bad things happened to good people. They told you to get ready, that preparation and endurance were the only options on an unpredictable planet. Remember what Marcus Aurelius said, "It's choosing to feel harmed that adds pain on top of objective events." Trying to project standards of fairness and order onto a pandemic, onto cancer, onto something as random as the economy or the climate, it's only going to make you miserable. It's only going to

• 1:54Speaker 01

  set you up for disappointment. You're feeling that right now because you forgot it's not things that upset us, it's our judgment about things. So stop thinking about what's fair or unfair, awful or awesome, and focus on what is. That's plenty to deal with. And I hope you like my interview with Tim Ferriss. You can also check it out on our YouTube channel at youtube.com/dailystoic, where we do awesome videos multiple times a week. We've got hundreds of them on there. So if you want to explore Stoicism with me on video, check it out at youtube.com/dailystoic.

• 2:29Speaker 02

  Hey, it's Ryan. Just letting you know, we have a brand-new course in the Daily Stoic Stoic. We're calling it "The Slay: Your Stress Challenge." It's 12 days of Stoic-inspired wisdom and lessons and exercises that will help you tackle your anxiety, your worries, your fears, your frustrations, your stresses. We all have them. We all deal with them. You think Marcus Aurelius wasn't stressed? He had family troubles. He had political troubles. He had job troubles. He had health troubles. He suffered from all the things that we suffer and more. And so, based on the insights from the Stoics, from Epictetus, from Seneca, from Marcus, we've put together this awesome challenge that'll help you get perspective, stop sweating

• 3:11Speaker 02

  the small stuff, manage your to-do list, stop feeling so anxious and worried and afraid. I think it's one of the best things we've done. Check it out, dailystoic.com/stress, or just go to the Daily Stoic Stoic. Or, if you subscribe to Daily Stoic Life, all the courses and challenges are free. You can check that out, dailystoiclife.com.