We Are Better For This | On Being Invincible

We’d prefer to be less hemmed in, to have more freedom, to have fewer rules. But we are made better for the constraints of life. Today's entry in The Daily Stoic: On Being Invincible📔 The Obstacle Is the Way leather bound edition: https://store.dailystoic.com/📕 Get a signed, numbered first-edition of the 10th Anniversary Edition of The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday at dailystoic.com/obstacle📔 Pick up your own leather bound signed edition of The Daily Stoic! Check it out at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ 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.

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  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation, designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit DailyStoic.com.

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  We are better for this. We'd prefer everything go our way. We'd prefer we have space and time. We'd prefer to be less hemmed in, to have more freedom, to have fewer rules. Nobody wishes for obstacles. Nobody's glad for Murphy's Law, or indeed, most regulations. Yet, these things make us better, whether we understand it or not. Montaigne, the 16th-century philosopher, was inclined to poetry as a lover of literature, but he also saw poetry as a metaphor for life, as the early Stoics did. As he said, riffing on Cleanthes, the Stoic philosopher, "Just as the voice of the trumpet rings out clearer and stronger for being forced through a narrow tube,

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  so too a saying leaps forth much more vigorously when compressed into the rhythms of poetry." What Cleanthes had actually said was that, "Just as a trumpet focuses our breath into a brilliant sound, the federing rules of poetry allows our words to reach people in a deep and moving way." But both lines here, I think, are great enough to be worth quoting. And you can read about Cleanthes and Lives of the Stoics if you want to know more about him. We are made better for the constraints of life. They channel us, they direct our energy, they concentrate our forces. They force us to be creative. They bring out the poet in us. That is, if we choose to follow their rules, to respect the medium, to let the muses take

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  over and to take their direction. The obstacle is the way. And by the way, we still do have a few signed numbered first editions of The Obstacle is the Way. This is the 10th anniversary edition. These are basically collector's pieces they won't be making any more of. So if you want to grab one of those, you still can. I'll link to that in today's show notes. And then we have the leather edition of the book, which I will link to in today's show notes as well. Enjoy.

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  On Being Invincible. Today's entry in the Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. Who then is invincible? The one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice. That's Epictetus, Discourses 1.18. Have you ever watched a seasoned pro handle the media? No question is too tough, no tone too pointed or insulting. They parry every blow with humor, poise, and patience. Even when stung or provoked, they choose not to flinch or react. They're able to do this not only because of training and experience, but because they understand that reacting emotionally will only make the situation worse. The media is waiting for them to slip up or get upset.

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  So to successfully navigate press events, they've internalized the importance of keeping themselves under calm control. It's unlikely, of course, that you'll face a horde of probing reporters bombarding you with insensitive questions. But it might be helpful, whatever stresses or frustrations or overload that do come your way, to picture that image and to use it as your model for dealing with them. Our reasoned choice, as the Stoics call it, is a kind of invincibility that we can cultivate. We shrug off hostile attacks and we breeze through pressure or problems. And like our model, when we finish, we can point back into the crowd and say, next. It is a skill. I mean, one of the things you learn, I love this one, you learn this as you give talks that go, look, if you ever get asked a question that you don't know the

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  answer to, or you don't like your answer to, or you know is a trap, just pose your own question and answer that. I love that, not because it's clever and a little bit manipulative, but I love it because it's like, oh, yeah, you don't control what happened, but you control how you just choose to respond. And you can kind of create your own environment. You watch as reporters hurl questions at the press secretary, or at the president, or this politician, or that athlete. And what are they trying to do? They're trying to provoke a reaction because the reaction is good for the reporters, right? But put aside whether they're actually after the truth or not, in a lot of cases, they are. But what they want is to provoke a reaction. They want to make news. And you sort of learn

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  as a public figure, like, you can make a situation worse by giving a dumb answer. If you don't answer, if you say no comment, right? Even the ability to say no comment is an innovation. It goes to what we've talked about before with Marcus Aurelius, where he says, you always have the ability to have no opinion. You can be silent. But, you know, our impulse is always to react, react, react. And then we get ourselves into trouble. And so the person who cannot be upset by things outside their reasoned choice, who focuses on what they control, who is disciplined, who has poise, who can roll with the punches and stick with their game plan, no matter what's being thrown at them, that's a great model for life. It's an essential ingredient to being a public figure, or a leader, but

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  it's also just a recipe for a good life. So today, think about that, just that you're in control, you decide the rhythm, you decide what you respond to. Don't just react, don't swing at every pitch. You got to have some of that discipline. You got to see the intentions behind the things that are being hurled at you. And you got to know that they want you to make a mistake. That's what they're trying to do. And if you can control yourself, you can at least not make stressful or difficult situations worse. That's as good a place as any to start.

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  Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day. Check it out, dailystoic.com/email.