There Are Some Things Only Adversity Unlocks | Just Say No To Future Misery

The obstacles are not impediments, they are opportunities. They are not holding us back, they are fueling us. 📚 Pick up a copy of The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com📓 Pick up a signed edition of The Daily Stoic Journal: 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on The Art of Living: https://store.dailystoic.com/🎟 Ryan Holiday is going on tour! Grab tickets for London, Rotterdam, Dublin, Vancouver, and Toronto at ryanholiday.net/tour✉️ 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.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  There are some things that only adversity unlocks. We would like things to go our way. We'd like them to be easy. We wish there were fewer mistakes, fewer obstacles, fewer opponents. We complain that it happens this way, cursing our misfortune, failing to realize this is exactly the way it's supposed to be. In his fascinating new book on Canadian wildfires, John Vaillant, if you haven't read his book, The Tiger, you must, he explains that fire is the principal mechanism by which the boreal forest purges and regenerates itself, to the point that the cones of several keystone conifer species, including the black spruce,

• 1:23Speaker 00

  will not drop their seeds unless they are heated to temperatures unachievable by sunlight alone. As it happens, Seneca said the same thing was true of us. As fire proves gold, he explained, so adversity proves men. He said that he actually pitied the person who has not been knocked down and bloodied in the ring because they don't know what they're capable of, and because they haven't been tested, their true capacities remain unknown. And so it goes for us. The obstacles are not impediments, they are opportunities. They are not holding us back, they are fueling us, unlocking our potential and showing us

• 2:02Speaker 00

  moves that would not be possible otherwise. Our adversity is our advantage. Our trials set up our triumphs, if we let them, if we endure them, if we absorb them. And obviously, this is the idea behind The Obstacle's Way, right? The book that I wrote almost 10 years ago now, that sort of kicked off everything, including this podcast, right? The idea that... The impediment to action can advance action. What stands in the way can be the way that, as Marcus says, using the same metaphor of fire, that everything we throw in front of the fire is fuel for it. And if you haven't read the book, I hope you check it out and grab it anywhere books are sold. I hope you check out some of the stuff. And anyways, thanks for listening.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  Just say no to future misery. How often we make ourselves miserable in advance? Out of fear of this, out of desperate hope for that? When we focus on pining for avoiding a certain future, we make ourselves miserable here in the present. Hakato of Rhodes, a great student of the Middle Stoic scholar Panatius, taught that this misery is always tied to hopes and fears that we have of imagined future outcomes. And so from this, Seneca reminds us to say no to both, because indulging in hope or fear robs us of the ability to enjoy the present. So today, try not to think so much about the future, what you hope will happen, what you fear

• 3:38Speaker 00

  might, and just focus on right now. Be where you are with what you're doing, what you're thinking right now. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living by yours truly, Ryan Holiday. You can pick this up anywhere books are sold. I use this journal myself every single day. And you can also pick up a signed copy at store.dailystoic.com. It's ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, Seneca writes in Moral Letters. Engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its own until the very end. For such a soul will never be at rest. By longing for things to come, it will lose the ability to enjoy present things.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  Then Seneca, again, "There will be no reason to live and no limit to our miseries if we let our fears predominate." And then, going back to the original quote, Seneca in Moral Letter says, "Hiccupo says, 'Cease to hope and you will cease to fear.'" Primary cause of both these ills is that instead of adapting ourselves to the present circumstances, we send out our thoughts too far ahead. You know, it's funny, in my podcast interview with Oliver Berkman in his new book, 4,000 Hours, he quoted something that he said is a real British expression, but I had actually heard a couple of days earlier in Ted Lasso, the idea that it's the hope that kills you.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  Which, it's not that the Stoics are nihilists who, you know, don't hope, it's that they try to get to a place of indifference, where they're just like, whatever will be, will be, I'm gonna be good with it. This is also a theme that came up in my interview with Dr. Edith Egger, who wrote The Choice, which was about her experience in the Holocaust. And she talks about how there was a person who knew, she knew in the camps who thought they would get out, be freed by a certain date. And then the woman died on that day, of despair, of disappointment. And Admiral Stockdale talks about this, that it was the optimists who got crushed, right? Because they said, "Oh, in March, oh, in June, oh, by Christmas." But this was not something in their control. And so, in a way, hope is the same as fear.

• 5:51Speaker 00

  It's to hand over your happiness, your contentment, your ability to continue on, to some arbitrary thing, or event, or person, or intervention in the future, which is not up to you. The person who needs it to be a certain way, or needs it to not be that way, and that's why they're afraid, Seneca's right, that soul will never be at rest. And by longing for things, or by fearing things, we lose the ability to enjoy present things. I thought this little phrase is particularly a good one, and I think it's worth repeating again, where he says, "To be miserable in advance of misery." That's what fear is, right? But hope is just the opposite of that. It's just being delusional.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  In anticipation of an event outside your control, which often will be misery. So just try to to put fear or hope aside. Just try to be be here with this, whatever it is, wherever you are, whether that's a plane ride you have today, whether that's traffic you're stuck in, whether it's a job you have a couple more months left in, or maybe it's battling an illness or a blown out knee. Just is, don't magically hope it's going to get better. Don't fear it getting worse. Just be with it now. Focus on what you can do now. Enjoy present things as best you can. Be indifferent, as the Stoics say, which is to say,

• 7:21Speaker 00

  good with any of the possibilities, because you are good, you are capable. And that's the Stoic prescription for you this week. Say no to future misery. It's not worth it. I'll talk to you soon. If you want to come see me talk, you want to see me get over some of my own stage fright, and you want to ask questions and hang out a bit, I would love to see you. I'm doing events in London, Rotterdam, and Dublin in early November, and then after that Vancouver and Toronto. This is all basically the 12th through the 20th. So it's going to be a busy November for me. So grab tickets, ryanholiday.net/tour. Both the events in Australia sold out, so these will sell out also. So grab your tickets. I'll see you all soon.