This Is Why You Should Stick Around | Ask Daily Stoic

There are moments where things are so bad it can seem like they’ll never get better. Perhaps we’re young and being bullied. Or we’re in the midst of some massive rush of negative publicity–maybe we’re being canceled, or as the Stoics often were, exiled. Or the political situation seems to deteriorate each day. Or we’re just so sick or in pain that we can’t get out of bed. If you or someone you know is in a mental health crisis and you live in the United States, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988. You can also contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741. For resources outside the United States please click here.📕 Ryan Holiday's new book "Discipline Is Destiny" is available for pre-order now! We’ve put together a bunch of cool preorder bonuses—among them is a signed and numbered page from the original manuscript of the book. You can learn more about those and how to receive them over at Dailystoic.com/preorder. ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:03Speaker 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. But on Fridays, we not only read this daily meditation, but I try to answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy, whatever it is they happen to do. Sometimes these are from talks. Sometimes these are people who come up to talk to me on the street. Sometimes these are written in or emailed from listeners. But I hope in answering their questions, I can answer your questions, give a little more guidance on this philosophy we're all trying to follow.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  This is why you should stick around.

• 1:02Speaker 00

  There are moments when things are so bad that it seems like they'll never get better. Perhaps we're young and being bullied, or we're in the midst of some massive rush of negative publicity. Maybe we're being canceled, or, as the Stoics often, we're exiled. Or the political situation seems to deteriorate each day, or we're just so sick or in pain that we can't get out of bed. This is a problem as timeless as it is modern. The comedian Gary Coleman, who has long battled clinical depression and seriously considered suicide on multiple occasions, once referenced Ambrose Bierce's classic short story, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." As it happens, Ambrose Bierce was a lifelong Stoic whose father was actually named Marcus Aurelius Bierce.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  "Sometimes it feels like that," Coleman explains of the life he's led since those dark moments, "like that I'm living all this while falling from the gallows. I'm pinching myself all the time because I think they're showing me what I missed out on by killing myself at the worst of it." What do you think Cato would have actually thought of the years that came after his tragic suicide if he could have flashed forward and seen them? Yes, the Republic fell, but Caesar did too, not long after, at the hands of Cato's daughter and his son-in-law. What if Cato had been there to guide them? Could history have gone differently? What if he could have met his grandchildren? What if he retreated into writing and met all the people whose lives he changed? The list goes on and on.

• 2:31Speaker 00

  Marcus Aurelius said, "It could be helpful to imagine our own impending death." But then, like the character in Beer's famous story, we should get a reprieve. Can we take what is left and live it properly? Could we sober up? Could we get serious? Could we get help? That's the question. But you have to stick around to give an answer. And look, if you or someone you know is in a mental health crisis and you live in the United States, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. That's 1-800-273-8255, 800-273-8255. You can also just text the line by texting HOME to 741741. We'll link to all this, or just go to findahelpline.com. Stick around.

• 3:16Speaker 00

  Seriously, we want you here.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Hi. So I guess my question's more on the implantation of like stoicism in your daily lives and stuff like that.

• 3:29Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  And how to like hold yourself accountable in a sense.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Like virtues and whatnot. So like, say like in a normal workplace or something like that, you find yourself getting angry with like a customer or something like that. Say your response at the beginning isn't what you would consider very stoic, but afterwards you kind of have the realization of what you should have done, and you feel remorseful for the way, and you wish that you could have done it the opposite way. You know, like a more stoic way. Is that still on the white, right track?

• 4:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  Of course. So, so I think first off, this conversation you're having with yourself, like you did an action and then you're reviewing the action. That is what the philosophy is, right? This is what meditations is. This is what Seneca's letters happen to be. Seneca even writes a letter about how he, every day he puts the day up for review and says, you know, where did I fall short? Where could I have done better? Where did I lose my temper? Where did I make progress? So I think a big part of Stoicism is, is having that sort of ongoing observational dialogue with oneself. Now, obviously, nothing you can do can change the fact that you were rude to this person

• 4:49Speaker 00

  or shut them down in some way, or close yourself off to them in some way. Of course, you can apologize and perhaps moving forward, part of that is apologizing. So, you know, you're, you're articulating out loud what you're trying to do differently. But I think the primary thing here is, is catching yourself, trying to evaluate how that unfolded. And so the next go around, you're doing it a little bit differently. And cognitive behavioral therapy is a little bit like this. It's sort of, okay, what are the patterns that I get into? What are the signs that this pattern is beginning? And then how can I interrupt that pattern and replace it with a different pattern that I find to be more productive, healthy, kind, et cetera?

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate it.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. Nora?

• 5:36Speaker 02

  I was wondering about sharing Stoicism with other people. I find I am not very clear and I find it's better just to not say anything and just be.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  I, I would agree. I would, I would say first and foremost, we teach Stoicism by example. I forget which pope it is, but there's a pope who said, you know, sort of preach all the time, use words when necessary. And I think that's a great way to think about it. So how does one sort of live the? Ideas rather than speak about them now. Obviously, my job is to speak about Stoicism and to write about it and talk about it. But obviously, on the individual level, I think about, you know, what do my actions say? But but when I think about sort of bringing people on board, I try to. I I think if you go, here's this big ancient philosophy with all these ideas and these names you can't pronounce.

• 6:39Speaker 00

  I think that's when you lose people. I like to start with quotes or core concepts that are really relevant in specific situations. So this is why we do videos. It's why we have TikTok. It's why we have Instagram. That's why we do the email. I I try to try to distill the idea down to a really simple, straightforward thing that solves a specific problem for a person. And then if interested, they may then explore that rabbit hole further.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  Let's do TrainWise.

• 7:15Speaker 03

  Hey, Ryan.

• 7:16Speaker 00

  Hi.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Hi, man. So first of all, I'm super, super grateful to be here and I'm honored.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  And I know that you're you're a humble man, but you've changed my life and I appreciate it.

• 7:30Speaker 00

  I love hearing that.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  I'm so freaking nervous by talking to you because I listen to you every single day. So there's something that you said on Audrey, I think it was Audrey Marcus, where you said someone approached you and they said they've read your book seven times. It was like 70 hours.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  I'm kind of that person. So

• 7:46Speaker 00

  All right.

• 7:47Speaker 03

  Please, please, you know, bear with me with my animation.

• 7:50Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 7:51Speaker 03

  So what you've done, I'm Greek, Greek descent, and you've kind of pulled me in to my ethnic origin. And I tried to dismiss it many years, but you pulled me back. And I found out that I do live a Stoic lifestyle, just never realized what I was doing. But there's some things that need refining. Now, for this year, I know it's COVID and all that, I'm going to try and go Greece. And I booked a philosophy tour as well

• 8:14Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  to with my children. And we're going to be going to like the first place of Plato. But what I wanted to ask you is, is there any places that you know of that were Stoic? In that like the beginning of Stoicism.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  One, but there's Rome and there's other countries as well. So I just.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  Yes. So I, uh, I have not, uh, been to Greece. Uh, I was supposed to go sort of what ended up being, uh, the pandemic. So I, I haven't, I haven't been. I've been to Rome several times. You know, I, I like to go sort of anywhere that's old and I like to just sort of take a minute to just think about all the countless generations of people who've stood where I've stood and what they were thinking about and what they were worried about. And, and then I, I sort of think as Marcus talks about in meditations, like, where are they now? What happened to them? Right? Where did that all go? So I think you can do that anywhere. I'm, I'm, but I'm, I'm quite jealous of the tour that you're going on.

• 9:16Speaker 00

  You can visit the Stoic Pokhile, which is where Stoicism started. So I, I would, I would look that up. That's the painted porch, uh, famously.

• 9:26Speaker 03

  That was in the newsletter today, wasn't it?

• 9:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So you can check that out. Um, you know, in Rome, you can see, uh, the, on the Appian Way, there's a, a, a sort of a big pile of stones i- in what they think was Seneca's, uh, Seneca's tomb. Uh, so you can visit that. Obviously you can see lots of different sites, you know, in, in Lives of the Stoics, we have like a map of like the places and there's a key that sort of describes, actually, but this is also in the, the Boy Who Would Be King, we, we picked some sort of big moments, uh, in, in Stoicism. One of the ones, the, the last cool ones that I did, uh, this was in, I think, November of 2019. Um, in Budapest, there's a, a Roman set of ruins, uh, called the Quincum.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  Which is where Marcus lived for an extended period of time towards the end of his life. And they think that he, he wrote chunks of meditations there. So that's, you can walk through this little town and you could kind of think of Marcus, you know, sitting in one of these buildings, you know, writing meditations. There's a Roman bath there that you can actually go to. It's the same spring that, you know, when Marcus talks about bathing and, and, and washing off the dust of life, you know, it might've been in this very thing that 2,000 years later, you're experiencing. So there's, there's lots of cool stuff like that. But, uh, yes, your tour sounds awesome. So I'm jealous.

• 10:58Speaker 03

  Uh, before I go, sorry.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  Trainwiz, so my name is George. The Trainwiz is my business name, but I don't know. And I, I take time ago and I'd like to like, again, reaffirm, I'm so glad that I'm alive at the same time as you.

• 11:12Speaker 00

  Ah, I appreciate that.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  Thank you so much for what you've given. I'm, I'm getting emotional.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  Ah, well, I appreciate it. Well, look, let's do one, let's do one more question. So let's do, oh Lance, cause we tried you earlier and you froze. Uh, what do you got for us Lance?

• 11:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, my question has to do with, um, justice and trying to separate out the concept of like how we think of it nowadays and court rules and things like that.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 11:38Speaker 04

  It served to you when you've done something wrong. And I can't imagine that that's what the Stoics had imagined it being.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  Definitely not. And it probably says something about where we are as a society that when we think justice, we think, is it legal or not legal? Like, will I be punished by the court for this? Right? So I told you I'm doing my next book series, I'm doing, uh, one book on each of the four virtues. So I'm. I don't, not that I want to spoil it, but I'm still working on what I think about this virtue as I begin to research for that book. So I've written the first one, starting the second one, justice will be the third one. But maybe one quick definition of justice to the Stoics was sort of treating people as they deserve to be treated. So something,

• 12:27Speaker 00

  something akin to fairness, right? Something akin to fairness, something akin to dignity, respect, honesty. But Marcus would, would say, you know, it's justice is doing the right thing. Right? So just because something is legally allowed, doesn't mean that it's just, or that, that, that the Stoics would say you should do it. I think for the Stoics, justice is sort of integrated into their sense of right and wrong. Okay. Um, well, awesome, guys. This is great. The last question, someone here is asking for the best translation of Marcus. So I would, this is my favorite. This is the Gregory

• 13:11Speaker 00

  Hayes translation for the Modern Library. I don't know if there's an ebook or an audiobook version. So I would check, I would check this out. It's, it's my absolute favorite. But as I said- There is an ebook. Uh, I ju- I just read, uh, the annotated edition from Robin Waterfield, which I thought was quite good. And then I did a two hour set of interviews with him on the podcast. So if you're looking to, to do a deep dive into meditations, or a translation of meditations, that would be a great place to start.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  You know, the Stoics in real life met at what was called the Stoic, the Stoic Pochyle, the painted porch in ancient Athens. Obviously, we can't all get together in one place, because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people, and we couldn't fit in one space. But we have made a special digital version of the Stoic. We're calling it Daily Stoic Life. It's an awesome community. You could talk about, like today's episode, you could talk about the emails, ask questions. That's one of my favorite parts is interacting with all these people. People who are using Stoicism to be better in their actual, real lives. You get more Daily Stoic Meditations over the weekend, just for the Daily Stoic Life members, quarterly Q and As with me, cloth-bound edition of our Best of Meditations, plus a whole bunch of other stuff, including discounts, and, this is the best part, all

• 14:33Speaker 00

  our Daily Stoic courses and challenges totally for free, hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our New Year, New You Challenge. We'd love to have you join us. There's a two-week trial totally for free. Check it out at DailyStoicLife.com.