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Ask Daily Stoic - How Do I Use Stoicism To Fend Off Negativity?
28 maart 2020 · 19 min
Ryan talks about the Edmund Morrison biography of Thomas Edison, reads a passage from The Obstacle is the Way (on sale for a few more days), and fields more questions from his readers and fans. Lees meer
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When Things Are Tough, Remember This
27 maart 2020 · 3 min
Most languages have some expression to the effect of “When it rains, it pours.” For instance, in Latin malis mala succedunt means troubles are followed by troubles. In Japanese, they say, “when crying, stung by bee.” The point of these expressions is to capture an unfortunate reality of life: that what can go wrong will… and often all at the same time. Lees meer
Obviously to the Stoics, the idea of premeditatio malorum is a kind of hedge against this. If you’re only prepared for a few, isolated and tiny things to go wrong, you’re going to be rudely surprised by how often difficulties come in pairs or triplets or entire litters. If you think life is going to be one lucky break after another, you’re going to be rudely surprised when, to quote Seneca, fortune decides to behave exactly as she pleases.
The real lesson from the Stoics on adversity comes from Epictetus, however, who believed that while we don’t control whether it’s pouring, we do control how we respond. We control whether we can find something productive to do inside, while it’s raining. We control whether we put on a jacket. We control whether we’ve been smart enough to build a roof while the sun was shining. And Epictetus would have also liked the quip from the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadwick, who reminds us that in space, “there is no problem so bad you can’t make it worse.”
So if you’ve been feeling some raindrops lately, first off, be prepared for things to really start coming down. Get ready for the bee sting on top of the stubbed toe. Get ready for your delayed flight to also have turbulence. But most importantly, don’t make it worse by overreacting, by taking it personally or doing something stupid. Whatever it is, know that perhaps the first step to making things better is just not making them worse.
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No One Escapes This Law
26 maart 2020 · 3 min
This is not another note about memento mori. Lees meer
It’s about a different immutable, inescapable law of human existence that comes to us from the Stoics through Heraclitus (one of Marcus Aurelius’ favorites): Character is fate.
After death and taxes, this is a timeless adage that the Stoics believed will determine our destiny whether we like it or not. And just a quick glimpse around the world and across history confirms it: Liars and cheats eventually destroy themselves. The corrupt overreach. The ignorant make fatal, self-inflicted mistakes. The egotistical ignore the data that challenges them and the warnings that could save them. The selfish end up isolated and alone, even if they’re surrounded by fame and fortune. The "robbers, perverts, killers and tyrants" Marcus Aurelius wrote about always end up in a hell of their own making. It’s a law as true as gravity.
Bad character might drive someone into a position of leadership—because of their ambition, their ruthlessness, their shamelessness—but eventually, inevitably, this supposed “strength” becomes an Achilles’ heel when it comes time to actually do the job. Who trusts them? Who actually wants to work with them? What kind of culture develops around them? How can they learn? How can they know where the landmines are?
If you want to know why things are the way they are right now—on Wall Street, in politics, in Silicon Valley, on college campuses, everywhere—it’s because character is fate. And for too long we have ignored the predictive—no, prophetic—power of character. When you make excuses for liars and cheats and egomaniacs because they agree with you, or they might benefit your business or help your cause in the short term, not only do you do so at your own long term peril, but you are exhibiting bad character yourself.
And that is what will come back to bite you. That is what is biting us right now, on every continent, in every corner of culture, at nearly every turn. Because character is fate. Always has bee…
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We All Have Flaws… What Matters is What We Do With Them
25 maart 2020 · 5 min
Jeannie Gaffigan is a control freak. She takes charge. She cares about the little things and getting those things right. She always has. It’s hard to argue that this part of her personality hasn’t served her well. She and her husband, the comedian Jim Gaffigan, have created an enormously successful partnership that birthed not only multiple television shows and comedy specials but five healthy, well-adjusted children. Lees meer
You can imagine, you have to be a stickler for details to pull all that off. The problem was when three years ago, a routine doctor’s appointment revealed a pear-sized tumor on Jeannie’s brain. A 10-hour surgery successfully removed the tumor, but not without a series of life-threatening complications, a few more surgeries, and a long road to recovery. Life does that to us. It takes the balance we’ve created or the systems we take comfort in and it dashes them to pieces.
In a recent interview on Marc Maron’s podcast, Jeannie explained how this obstacle required her to re-examine her life and her need for control. She really had no choice. “I am a person who naturally sweats small stuff,” she explained. “I didn't change my entire personality. I still sweat small stuff. I still get irritated by this and that. But I have a different level of awareness that it's small stuff. It doesn't have to ruin my day. I see the big picture.”
It was at this point in the conversation that Marc Maron, the host, responded about how he has managed this side of his personality as well:
“I understand that, you know, to take that pause… And the weird thing is, if you have that personality, you know you're going to do it. You're going to freak out. And it's really about trying to nip it in the bud a little bit. Like in the middle. or, it seems hard to do it before because sometimes maybe it's necessary. Maybe that's how you do it. But there's a point where you’re like, 'well I don't need this to be toxic. I don't need to ruin everyone's day. I don't need to make everybody…
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You Can Seize This Moment
24 maart 2020 · 5 min
This is an email we weren’t expecting to send, but sometimes sudden events call for sudden responses. Lees meer
Right now you, and much of the world, are locked down, doing your part to fight the spread of COVID-19. Perhaps you’ve already been trapped inside for weeks. Perhaps you just got back the test results and now you are in complete isolation. Perhaps your job has furloughed you and you’ve got a lot of time on your hands.
Things seem serious now, but the truth is, it’s only going to get more serious.
All of us are looking at the potential for some serious lost time. Dead time, as Robert Greene calls it. But do we have to be? A Stoic knows that while we don’t control what happens, we do control how we respond. So that’s the real question: How can we use this time to get better? To grow? To be of service and use? To create “alive time” where we’re actively getting better.
With that end in mind, we have been scrambling to put together what we’re calling the Daily Stoic Alive Time Challenge: Resilience, Productivity and Service in the Time of Coronavirus. It’s 14 days—the length of the suggested quarantine—of Stoicism-inspired challenges, practices and reading that will help you grow and help you help others.
If you’ve done any of our other challenges over the last two years, you know we pack them full of great content, actionable advice, and strategies to make the habits stick. This one will be all that… and incredibly timely. We’re taking our best material and the best insights from the Stoics and organizing it to help you make the most of this time we have. Why shouldn’t you emerge from this process having at least wrested from it some real advantages? Why would you kill time when you could be seizing that time? Why not use it to create better habits and a better perspective?
Since there is little time to lose, we are putting the challenge on sale right now and starting it this coming Monday (March 30th). The more of us doing it together, at the same time, the bet…
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The World Is Trying To Teach You
23 maart 2020 · 3 min
This was all pretty sudden, wasn’t it? The economy was chugging along. Life was going well. We had travel plans. We had work plans. We had things we were doing. We had a sense for what we’d do next. Lees meer
And then… bam. Now, here we are.
You know what that is? It’s a reminder. It’s a reminder that Seneca—a man who experienced exile, illness, financial setbacks, and all sorts of other adversity—wrote about more than 2,000 years ago. He told us “never to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune’s habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do.” His point was that events can change quickly, and that we have to be vigilant, particularly in good times, because vigilance is the first step towards preparation. “Whatever you have been expecting,” he said, “comes as less of a shock.”
The events of the last few weeks have been an expensive and merciless reminder of the truth of that advice. We ignored it at our peril, for too long, as humans often do. Fate is fickle. Reversals happen. Black Swans are real. Nothing is stable, change is the only constant. No one is so rich, so healthy, so strong or smart that they cannot be brought low. That is obvious to anyone looking around today. Yet we are likely, as things get better (which they inevitably will), to forget this fact if we’re not careful...and that is a waste of the pain we are experiencing right now.
The world is always teaching us. The question is whether we’re open to listening. The question is whether we’re ready to hear.
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Daily Stoic Sundays: You Don’t Control What Happens, You Control How You Respond
22 maart 2020 · 9 min
In today's episode, Ryan reads his piece from March 12, "Remember: You Don’t Control What Happens, You Control How You Respond." He discusses how to stay safe amidst the COVID-19 pandemic—and how to think and act Stoically during this crisis. Lees meer
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Ask Daily Stoic: Keeping Calm About Coronavirus
21 maart 2020 · 26 min
In this week's Saturday episode, Ryan discusses the coronavirus pandemic and how to deal with it like a Stoic. Lees meer
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You Should Always Find Something to Learn
20 maart 2020 · 3 min
We all have our way of doing things. We have what we were directly taught. We have the values that our culture gives us. We have the lessons we picked up by experience. It’s understandable then, when we see someone else doing things totally differently, that we might assume they’re doing it the wrong way. That’s not how that’s supposed to go, we think to ourselves. Lees meer
This, the Stoics would tell us, is a recipe for folly. “It’s impossible to begin to learn that which you think you already know,” Epictetus said. Cato the Elder, the great-grandfather of Cato the Younger, coined a maxim in his famous essay, On Agriculture, which explained best practices for farming in the Roman era. “Be careful,” he said about the management practices of your neighbors, “not to rashly refuse to learn from others.” This lesson was picked up on and rephrased by hundreds of writers since, including Ben Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanack. Only an idiot turns up their nose at how other people do things. Sure, nine times out of ten, you’re right and they’re wrong. But that one time? That’s the game changer.
It’s worth always remembering that other people have different perspectives, different experiences, and, in some cases, better schooling than you. What if they discovered a shortcut? What if they learned, painfully—through trial and error—something that could save you from suffering? A Stoic cannot allow their logic and their habits to become rigid or their mind to harden into condescension. We have to be open. We cannot be rash or dismissive.
There is always something to learn—from everyone and in any situation. Even if it is only a reminder of why you do the things you do the way you do them. But hopefully you seek out disconfirmation even more than confirmation.
Learn from others, always.
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This Is One Thing You Must Not Do
19 maart 2020 · 3 min
It’s possible, Marcus Aurelius said, to not have an opinion. You don’t have to turn this into something, he reminds himself. You don’t have to let this upset you. Lees meer
It’s not that the Stoics lived in a world where people didn’t do bad things or a world free from rudeness and cruelty. On the contrary—those things were far more prevalent in Rome than they are today. But what the Stoics worked on was not letting these things get to them, not letting it provoke them to anger.
If someone insulted Cato, he pretended not to hear it. When someone attacked Marcus Aurelius’s character, he tried to think about the character of the person saying it. When someone said something offensive to Epictetus, he told himself that if he got upset, he was as much to blame as they were. He also joked that if they really knew him, they’d be even more critical.
It wasn’t that the Stoics were apathetic or that they never tried to change the world. Clearly, they wouldn’t have been engaged in politics if all they cared about was the status quo. Why would Seneca have written those letters if he didn’t believe he could have an impact on people? It’s just that the Stoics saw only danger in getting angry. They refused to be provoked. They tamed their temper so they could do the work they believed they needed to do.
And that’s what you must do also. You don’t have to have an opinion. You don’t have to turn things into bigger things. You can control your emotions. You can do what you need to do.
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When the System Breaks Down, Leaders Stand Up
18 maart 2020 · 12 min
It began in the East. At least, that’s what the experts think. Maybe it came from animals. Maybe it was the Chinese. Maybe it was a curse from the gods. Lees meer
One thing is certain: it radiated out east, west, north, and south, crossing borders, then oceans, as it overwhelmed the world. The only thing that spread faster than the contagion was the fear and the rumors. People panicked. Doctors were baffled. Government officials dawdled and failed. Travel was delayed or rerouted or aborted altogether. Festivals, gatherings, sporting events—all cancelled. The economy plunged. Bodies piled up.
The institutions of government proved very fragile indeed.
We’re talking, of course, about the Antonine Plague of 165 CE, a global pandemic with a mortality rate of between 2-3%, which began with flu-like symptoms until it escalated and became gruesome and painfully fatal. Millions were infected. Between 10 and 18 million people eventually died.
It shouldn’t surprise us that an ancient pestilence—one that spanned the entire reign of Marcus Aurelius—feels so, well, modern. As Marcus would write in his diary at some point during this horrible plague, history has a way of repeating itself. “To bear in mind constantly that all of this has happened before,” he said in Meditations. “And will happen again—the same plot from beginning to end, the identical staging. Produce them in your mind, as you know them from experience or from history: the court of Hadrian, of Antoninus. The courts of Philip, Alexander, Croesus. All just the same. Only the people different.”
This pattern of disease is nauseatingly familiar. It’s a pattern that has repeated itself like a fractal across history. Indeed, we could be talking about the Bubonic Plague (aka the Black Death), the Spanish Flu of 1918, or the cholera pandemics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, just as easily as we are talking about the Antonine Plague and thinking about the coronavirus pandemic that is spreading across the globe. As Mar…
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Your Obstacles Are Trying To Teach You Something
17 maart 2020 · 4 min
One way to go through life is to turn away from the things that are hard. You can close your eyes and ears to what is unpleasant. You can take the easy way, forgoing difficulty whenever possible. The other way is the Stoic way—it entails not only not avoiding hardship, but actively seeking it out. Lees meer
In the novel Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar has Hadrian write to young Marcus Aurelius about his philosophy for learning and benefiting from all of life’s adversity and unpleasantness. “Whenever an object repelled me,” he says, “I made it a subject of study, ingeniously compelling myself to extract from it a motive for enjoyment. If faced with something unforeseen or near cause for despair, like an ambush or a storm at sea, after all measures for the safety of others had been taken, I strove to welcome this hazard, to rejoice in whatever it brought me of the new and unexpected, and thus without shock the ambush or the tempest was incorporated into my plans, or my thoughts. Even in the throes of my worst disaster, I have seen a moment when sheer exhaustion reduced some part of the horror of the experience, and when I made the defeat a thing of my own in being willing to accept it.”
Of course, this is fiction so Hadrian never said such a thing. But clearly somebody taught Marcus a lesson along those lines, because Meditations is filled with similar passages. Marcus writes about how a fire turns everything that is thrown into it into flame. He says that obstacles are actually fuel. “The impediment to action advances action,” he writes, “what stands in the way becomes the way.”
It’s a beautiful way to approach the world—and ultimately, the only one suited for our unpredictable and stressful times. To avoid difficulty would mean complete retreat from life. It would mean hiding in ignorance. Worse, this would make you dreadfully vulnerable to crisis if it did ever find you. Instead, we must strive—as Hadrian said—to welcome hazard. We can rejoice in the unexpected …
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We Need You To Be Bold
16 maart 2020 · 4 min
On the Roman calendar, March 15th was known as the Ides of March—once most notable as the year’s deadline for settling debts. That changed in 44 BC when Julius Caesar walked into the Theatre of Pompey for a routine meeting with the Roman Senate. Caesar was then at his apotheosis. He had made himself Dictator Perpetuo. He was about to embark on a three year expedition, which, if successful, would, as Plutarch wrote, “complete this circuit of his empire, which would then be bounded on all sides by the ocean." Lees meer
All of Rome hung on what would happen next. Would he name himself king? Would he destroy his remaining enemies? Would Rome destroy itself? Would it be content to be yoked under a tyrant?
We don’t know, because it was yesterday 2,064 years ago that Brutus, Cato’s son-in-law, and his wife, Porcia, took matters into their own hands. Soon, Caesar was dead. What remained was a bloody Civil War in which the Roman Republic was nearly restored. It didn’t quite go the way that Brutus hoped. Cato himself was not quite successful in his attempt to rally the Roman people to stand up to their traditions. But the example remains in history as a partly inspiring, partly cautionary tale: Can an individual change the course of history? Can things blow up in our faces?
Yes. The answer is yes to both.
That’s basically the complicated arc of Conspiracy, which tells the story of Peter Thiel's quixotic, bold, desperate, deranged, inspiring (your pick) plot to take down Gawker Media, the gossip blog that had outed him, that he felt had become too powerful.
The knock against the Stoics—one repeated by Thiel himself once or twice—is that they are too resigned, that they accept the status quo. This would have been surprising to Rome’s emperors, from Julius Caesar to Nero to Galba and Domitian, who were all convinced that the Stoics were plotting against them. It is almost ironic that Marcus Aurelius became the Stoic philosopher king, because nearly every single one of his predecesso…
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Daily Stoic Sundays: Four Strategies for Reading Better
15 maart 2020 · 9 min
Ryan talks about how you can improve your reading skill and get more from the books you love. Lees meer
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Ask Daily Stoic: Austin Kleon
14 maart 2020 · 27 min
Ryan chats with Austin Kleon, author of great books like Steal Like An Artist. Lees meer
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You Must Be a Good Example
13 maart 2020 · 3 min
Think of the pressure Marcus Aurelius must have been under. Not just of the temptations and the corruptions of power, but all the eyes that were on him. Forget the judgments of history, there was literally an “emperor cult” in Rome that worshipped the man on the throne as a god to be sacrificed to and prayed for. Lees meer
What we know is that Marcus took this pressure seriously. He strove to live up to the expectations and the dignity of his position, even if many of his predecessors had not. “Let people see someone living naturally,” he reminded himself in Meditations 10:15, “and understand what that means.” And in Meditations 10:16, that’s where he writes his famous line to stop talking about what a good person is like and just be one.
But what’s interesting is that while Marcus more or less lived up to this pressure, he claimed to be doing it for himself, not for other people. Actually the second half of the line in 10:15 talks about how he’s fine being killed for what he believes in, if people don’t understand it. He’s doing right because it’s right, not because people are watching. It’s sort of like that Chris Rock line about being a role model: Don’t not beat your wife because you’re a role model for young people, don’t do it because it’s wrong!
Remember what Marcus said about not expecting the “third thing”—that is, gratitude or acknowledgment. Be a good role model because you’re a good person, because you’ve trained yourself to like and enjoy being good. Be a good role model because that’s what this philosophy demands of you, because that’s what life is demanding of you. That it might help other people, that you are teaching your children or your audience at the same time? That’s extra.
Don’t talk about being a good role model. Be one.
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How Prepared Are You To Start Over?
12 maart 2020 · 4 min
The Austrian writer Stefan Zweig experienced both incredible good fortune and misfortune in his life. He was born into wealth; he met some of the great minds of his time, from Freud to Arthur Schnitzler; he traveled extensively and became Europe’s bestselling novelist. And in that span, he also experienced two terrible world wars and was driven from his home by Hitler’s antisemitism; first fleeing to England, then later going to the U.S, before finally starting his life over again in Brazil, where he spent the last two years of his life. Lees meer
One would think that someone who had experienced so many good times in his first fifty years, would be unprepared for difficulty in his final ten. Not so with Zweig. During his many years of delightful and luxurious travel, he liked to play an interesting game—one very similar to a practice that Seneca had.
As soon as Zweig arrived in a new city—no matter how distant—he would pretend that he’d just moved there and desperately needed a job. He would go from store to store, checking to see if they were hiring. He’d read the help wanted ads in the newspaper. He would often go all the way through the hiring process until he got an offer. Offer in hand, he would then walk out and enjoy his trip, feeling the pride and comfort of knowing he could handle starting from scratch if he had to.
Seneca’s version of this was to practice poverty once per month. He’d wear his worst clothes and eat the cheapest food. He’d sleep on the ground. The point was to get up close and personal with the thing most of us secretly and subconsciously fear: losing everything. Being poor. Having nothing.
There is immense value in these practices. For fears that we have faced are less scary than those we can only speculate about. Uncertainties we have practiced are more confidently endured when they come to pass. The less unfamiliar misfortune is, the less power it will have over us. That’s what premeditatio malorum is about. That’s why we must, as Seneca said,…
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You Should Always Find Something To Do
11 maart 2020 · 3 min
There was time to kill in Rome, just as there is today. A dinner started late. A meeting got cancelled. Travel delays meant being stuck in this place or that place for a couple days. Something would break and someone would need to go into town for supplies. The impulse then, as now, when faced with these kinds of situations, was to just wait. Or complain. Or mess around. Lees meer
We all do it, writing stuff off as dead time, as we’ve talked about before. It’s a rather presumptuous thing to do, though, if you think about it. We kill time as time is literally killing us. Who says you’ll get more moments? Can you really afford to let any be wasted?
Cato the Elder was built of that sturdy, original Roman stock. He didn’t put up with laziness or poor productivity. He didn’t tolerate it from his workers or his family or himself. As he wrote in On Agriculture, there is no excuse for just sitting around. =“In rainy weather,” Cato advised, “try to find something to do indoors. Clean up, rather than be idle. Remember that even though work stops, expenses run on nonetheless.”
We can always find something to do, even when our original intention or plan is thwarted (that’s what the obstacle is the way means). We can read. We can think. We can clean up and prepare. We can squeeze in a few minutes of work while we sit in the waiting room. We can turn a rainy day into a family day.
There is always something to do. You can’t afford for there not to be.
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You Might Never Be Famous — And That’s O.K.
10 maart 2020 · 3 min
Marcus Aurelius talked a lot about fame. He called it a worthless clacking of tongues and liked to point out things like how few people remember the emperors who preceded him, or how the generations to come will be the same annoying people he knows now. It’s easy to picture him writing these things in times where he caught himself falling for the allure of fame, of power, of how history might remember him. Lees meer
Don’t we all fall for it? It is alluring. But if we’re honest with ourselves, it isn’t the fame we really want. it’s the validation that our lives are meaningful. Praise, recognition, millions of followers on Instagram, we think, are proof that we matter. And until we get those things, we’re not always so sure we do.
Emily Esfahani Smith wrote an amazing piece in the New York Times, titled “You’ll Never Be Famous — And That’s O.K.”. Reminding us of Marcus in the way Emily too said that fame is a foolish pursuit and not where meaning lies, we reached out to her for an interview. We asked Emily for advice on finding meaning—and how Stoicism can help us get there. She shared the opinion of the 20th-century psychologist Erik Erikson, who said that a flourishing, meaningful life is one of “generativity”:
“When we’re young, we’re supposed to figure out who we are and what our purpose is. As we get older, we’re supposed to shift the focus from ourselves to others and be ‘generative.’ That is, we’re supposed to give back, especially to younger generations, by doing things like raising children, mentoring colleagues, creating things of value for our community or society at large, volunteering, etc. We each have the power to be generative. Fame and glamour are about the self—aggrandizing yourself. But generativity is about connecting and contributing to something bigger, which is the very definition of leading a meaningful life.”
It’s the Rick Warren line, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” There’s that silly thing that floats a…
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Why Anger Might Be The Worst Vice
9 maart 2020 · 3 min
There are many different vices out there. It’s long been a debate amongst priests and philosophers if some are worse than others, or if they are all created equal. Even amongst the Stoics there was some debate—were all sins the same? Was being or doing wrong a matter of degree, or was it black and white? Lees meer
It’s one of those things that vexes philosophers but is obvious to normal people. Of course some vices are worse than others. Of course there is a grey area! Welcome to life, genius.
Seneca eventually concurred. As he writes in Of Anger, anger must rank fairly high on the list of vices because it has so few redeeming qualities. “It’s a worse sin than luxury,” he says, “since that is enjoyed by personal pleasure, whereas anger takes joy in another’s pain.” Malice and envy are similar, he said, because they are about wanting other people to be unhappy, not just yourself. Anger and envy are about inflicting harm on others, not just on oneself.
Point being: It’s better to be a little bit Epicurean (that is, to enjoy some pleasure) than it is to be an asshole. If you’re going to sin or give in to vice, make sure it only ruins your life. Make sure it’s something internal, not something like anger—which inevitably makes itself felt by the people around you.
To sin, to fall short, is one thing. To punish innocent people? Well, that’s even worse.
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Daily Stoic Sundays: How a Stoic Deals with Bad News
8 maart 2020 · 7 min
Ryan describes how a Stoic can deal with bad news—and not just move past it, but use it to fuel their success. Lees meer
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Ask Daily Stoic: How Does a Stoic Deal with Aggressive People?
7 maart 2020 · 19 min
Ryan talks about the new Daily Stoic offices, reads a selection from The Obstacle is the Way, and answers your questions. Lees meer
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Wisdom is the Most Important Virtue
6 maart 2020 · 3 min
Courage. Temperance. Justice. These are the critical virtues of life. But what situations call for courage? What is the right amount? What is the right thing? This is where the final and essential virtue comes in: Wisdom. The knowing. The learning. The experience required to navigate the world. Lees meer
Wisdom has always been prized by the Stoics. Zeno said that we were given two ears and one mouth for a reason: to listen more than we talk. And since we have two eyes, we are obligated to read and observe more than we talk as well.
It is key today, as it was in the ancient world, to be able to distinguish between the vast aggregations of information that lay out there at your disposal—and the actual wisdom that you need to live a good life. It’s key that we study, that we keep our minds open always. You cannot learn that which you think you already know, Epictetus said. It’s true.
Which is why we need to not only be humble students but also seek out great teachers. It’s why we should always be reading. It’s why we cannot stop training. It’s why we have to be diligent in filtering out the signal from the noise.
Our goal is not just to acquire information, but the right kind of information. It’s the lessons found in Meditations, in everything from the actual Epictetus to James Stockdale entering the world of Epictetus. It’s the key facts, standing out from the background noise, that you need to absorb.
Thousands of years of blazing insight are available to the world. It is likely that you have the power to learn anything you want at your fingertips. So today, honor the Stoic virtue of wisdom by slowing down, being deliberate, and finding the wisdom you need.
Two eyes, two ears, one mouth. Remain a student. Act accordingly—and wisely.
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Keep the four Stoic virtues in mind—courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. The fact is, they are all important, and you can’t neglect any one of them in trying to live virtuously. Study how best to embody each one as is called for, an…
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Justice: The Most Important Virtue
5 maart 2020 · 4 min
Being brave. Finding the right balance. These are core Stoic virtues, but in their seriousness, they pale in comparison to what the Stoics worshipped most highly: Doing the right thing. Lees meer
There is no Stoic virtue more important than justice, because it influences all the others. Marcus Aurelius himself said that justice is “the source of all the other virtues.” Stoics throughout history have pushed and advocated for justice, oftentimes at great personal risk and with great courage, in order to do great things and defend the people and ideas that they loved.
Cato gave his life trying to restore the Roman Republic.
And Thrasea and Agrippinus gave theirs resisting the tyranny of Nero.
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson formed a new nation—one which would seek, however imperfectly, to fight for democracy and justice—largely inspired by the philosophy of Cato and those other Stoics.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a translator of Epictetus, led a black regiment of troops in the US Civil War.
Beatrice Webb, who helped to found the London School of Economics and who first conceptualized the idea of collective bargaining, regularly re-read Marcus Aurelius.
Countless other activists and politicians have turned to Stoicism to gird them against the difficulty of fighting for ideals that mattered, to guide them towards what was right in a world of so much wrong. A Stoic must deeply believe that an individual can make a difference. Successful activism and political maneuvering require understanding and strategy, as well as realism… and hope. It requires wisdom, acceptance and also a refusal to accept the statue quo.
It was James Baldwin who most brilliantly captured this tension in Notes of a Native Son:
It began to seem that one would have to hold in mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in light of this idea it goes without saying that injust…
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Temperance is the Most Important Virtue
4 maart 2020 · 3 min
Yesterday we discussed the Four Virtues, and talked about the primacy of courage. Of course, life is not so simple as to say that courage is all the counts. While everyone would admit that courage is essential, we are also all well aware of people whose bravery turns to recklessness and becomes a fault when they begin to endanger themselves and others. Lees meer
This is where Aristotle comes in. Aristotle actually used courage as the main example in his famous metaphor of a “Golden Mean.” On one end of the spectrum, he said, there was cowardice—that’s a deficiency of courage. On the other, there was recklessness—too much courage. What was called for, what we required then, was a golden mean. The right amount.
That’s what Temperance or moderation is about: Doing nothing in excess. Doing the right thing in the right amount in the right way.
In Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian, the emperor Hadrian writes to Marcus Aurelius that “overeating is a Roman vice.” He explains that far too many of his fellow citizens “poison themselves with spice” and drown their plates in rich sauces. The result? They overwhelm their palates—and themselves. By succumbing to excess, they lose the ability to appreciate things and throw themselves off keel.
To Hadrian, simple pleasures were better. He tells Marcus that “moderation has always been my delight.” And not just when it comes to dinner. Fitness, being in good fighting form to face the challenges of each day, was critical, yet working out to the point of fanaticism was a step too far. That means refraining from both indolence and overexertion, cutting the middle course between the two poles to find that Golden Mean where one is neither over nor underprepared, but simply ready.
So today and every day, remember the Stoic admonition to find the middle ground. Do not adhere to one extreme or the other; make temperance your goal in every part of your life, and your future self will thank you for it.
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Courage is the Most Important Virtue
3 maart 2020 · 3 min
The Stoics believed that a life well lived was one which always countered adversity with virtue. And they believed in four aspects of virtue: courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. Each and every situation calls for one or more of these four Stoic virtues, and nothing in life exempts us from their power. Lees meer
Today, we begin with one of the most important: Courage.
If you’ve read Cormac McCarthy’s dark and beautiful novel All the Pretty Horses, you’ll remember the key question that Emilio Perez asks John Grady, one that cuts to the core of life and what we all must do to live a life worth living.
“The world wants to know if you have cojones. If you are brave?”
The Stoics might have phrased this a bit differently. Seneca would say that he actually pitied people who have never experienced misfortune. “You have passed through life without an opponent,” he said, “No one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.”
The world wants to know what category to put you in, which is why it will occasionally send difficult situations your way. Think of these not as inconveniences or even tragedies but as opportunities, as questions to answers. Do I have cojones? Am I brave? Am I going to face this problem or run away from it? Will I stand up or be rolled over?
Let your actions etch a response into the record—and let them remind you of why courage is the most important thing.
Check out our newest product, the Four Virtues Medallion. It's designed to exemplify the Four Stoic Virtues—and help you keep them in your heart.
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You Can Make This A Game...and Win
2 maart 2020 · 4 min
The Stoics said it over and over: the most important thing to remember about pain and suffering is that it is inevitable. It can’t be avoided, so don’t make it worse by fearing it, worrying about whether it will come, wondering how bad it will be. Seneca’s line was that we suffer more in imagination than in reality. The essential insight from Epictetus was: It’s not things that upset us, it’s our opinion about them. And Marcus Aurelius too: If you choose to feel like you’ve been harmed, you have been. Lees meer
At just eight years old, Verity Smith was told that, due to a rare genetic disorder, she would soon lose her eyesight. She didn’t have a choice. She would be blind. All that was left to her was how she would respond to this demand of fate. In our interview with Verity, we asked her to take us back to that diagnosis and how she came to terms, mentally and emotionally, with the painful realities of losing her vision. Her answer is extraordinary:
I saw going blind as a challenge, a game...I understood that the darkness was coming and that it would steal the faces of those I loved and the views of the landscapes I lived in, but in my innocence, I set to work filling my memory with images that would never fade. It was a game against the clock. My challenge was to drink in every sight, to exercise every sense and to become good at being blind before the lights went out. With my bedroom curtains drawn and a blindfold on, I would rearrange my furniture in order to practice navigating through self-imposed blackouts. Being a practical child, I figured the best way to overcome my coming blindness was to learn how to get good at being blind…I began to understand the power of my thoughts—how if the sky was grey I could color it in blue in my mind’s eye, how I could paint the beautiful horizon upon the canvas of the dullest of views. The world became multi-dimensional. As my eyes went to sleep my other senses awoke.
When adversity struck, Marcus liked to remind himself, “It’s un…
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Daily Stoic Sundays: How to Have Your Best Week Yet
1 maart 2020 · 9 min
Ryan uses eight Stoic lessons to teach us how to have the best week ever. Lees meer
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Ask Daily Stoic: Guest Starring Steven Pressfield
29 februari 2020 · 32 min
This week's extra-long Saturday episode of Ask Daily Stoic features Ryan talking about, and speaking with, author Steven Pressfield, writer of classic books such as The Legend of Bagger Vance, Gates of Fire, and The War of Art. Lees meer
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You Must Wash Away This Dust
28 februari 2020 · 3 min
Life is a dirty, dusty affair. It was that way in Rome and it’s that way today. The puddle in the street splashes us. Someone else’s nasty mood sullies our demeanor. The heat makes us sweat. The news of the world makes us worried. We spill some food, we spill out some frustration. Lees meer
We wake up in the morning fresh and ready to go and by the end of the day, we are covered in dust. The dust of emotions, of work, of stress, of everything.
The Stoics knew this and they knew also that it was critical to find ways to, as Marcus Aurelius put it, wash away the dust of earthly life. There were many ways to do this, literally and figuratively. Seneca noted that Socrates liked to play music and to play games with children to relax and have fun. Cato liked to have long meals over wine where philosophy was discussed. We also know from stories that he would frequent Roman baths, as did Seneca, where the grime of the city could be scrubbed away, but where also they might have some time to think. Even that observation from Marcus Aurelius, in its fuller context, gives us an insight. Marcus was talking about washing away the dust of earthly life by taking a moment to look up at the stars at night. And where was he “talking” about this? In the journal where he often retreated to clear his mind and his soul; where he could find solace and hold himself accountable at the same time. Stoicism and journaling—as we show in The Daily Stoic Journal—are hard to separate for that reason.
The question for you, today and always, is how are you washing yourself clean and clear? Do you have a fun hobby? Do you meditate? Is it a weekly therapy session? Is it swimming laps? Maybe it’s the time after the kids go to bed when you and your spouse read and talk? Maybe it’s a morning walk or an evening prayer?
It certainly can’t be just two weeks of vacation every year. It can’t just be a shower every couple days. It has to be a practice. It has to be a process. This is a dirty, dusty world we live in.…
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You Are A God
27 februari 2020 · 3 min
The Stoic writings alternate between reminding us of our humility and our power. For humility, we have the concept of amor fati, for example—we should learn to love our fate, “good or bad” because we’re powerless to do anything about it. And with equal sincerity, Marcus Aurelius reminds himself that if something is humanly possible, he should believe he is capable of doing it. Lees meer
Humility and power. Power and humility. It’s not a contradiction. It’s a balance. On some days we need a reminder of the former, and on other days, the latter. Today, let’s do the latter. How’s this: The Stoics believed each of us was a god. As Cicero writes in his dialog, Scipio’s Dream:
“The true self of each person is the mind. Know therefore that you are a god. For a god is someone who moves, who feels, who remembers, who looks to the future, who rules over and guides and directs the body he is master of, just as that Supreme God directs the universe. And just as this eternal God controls the universe, which is partly mortal, so too your eternal spirit directs your fragile body.”
It’s a pump-me-up that should have you ready to run through walls this morning. Sure, we are powerless over so much. We can be tossed around by the oceans, we can be struck down by disease, we’re not even as strong as a small chimpanzee. But over our own mind? There we have god-like powers. There, we are supreme masters. There we can direct and control the world like those mythical beings from Mt. Olympus.
You’re a god. Know that. Now use that power wisely. Go do something that matters with it.
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Repeat These Three Words To Yourself Constantly
26 februari 2020 · 3 min
“Facts are stubborn things,” John Adams once said, “and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” How true it is. It’s an idea that goes to the very essence of what Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Epictetus spend so much time talking about. Lees meer
Reality is a stubborn thing. As much as we might want events to go or be one way, this has little bearing on the way they are. We wish we had been born tall, to a rich or royal family, we wish that special someone we fell head over heels in love with would return the feeling (or be the person we idealized them to be in our hearts) and yet, that is not how things are. We put in the work and yet, somehow, the person who was less talented won. We held our nose and voted for one candidate and, still, somehow the greater of two evils ended up winning.
What do we do? It’s so unfair. It’s so frustrating. It’s just not right. Yet, yet, yet...
In ex-Marine Karl Marlantes’ Matterhorn, a novel based on his experience fighting in the Vietnam War, the line, “There it is,” appears nearly thirty times, spoken by different characters. Your post Ivy League graduation plans were thwarted by a war? There it is. You have no experience leading a platoon of marines? There it is. You don’t get to sleep for two days because of an enemy invasion? There it is.
Life is “There it is.” Stoicism is an acknowledgement of that fact, it’s a coping mechanism and a response to this fact. That’s what Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and Seneca were all talking about in their own way: How to make the most of a world to which most of what happens is not up to us and, in fact, seems to go contrary to how we would choose if it were.
We can get angry and announce our disapproval. We can throw our hands up, curse the sky, and tell whoever will listen about how unfair this or that is. But as much as we argue, we can’t alter reality. So, we must embrace it. We must love it. All of it.…
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You Must Read… and Re-Read
25 februari 2020 · 3 min
It’s no secret that John Adams is one of history’s brilliant minds. He was widely respected as a lawyer, a politician, a president, and as a husband, a father, and a friend. But for all this, he was often overwhelmed by anguish, despair, discontent, loneliness, doubt, fear, uncertainty, and the rest. “I can as easily still the fierce tempests or stop the rapid thunderbolt,” he once lamented in his journal, “as command the motions and operations of my own mind.” Like many of us, Adams longed for stillness, for “tranquility of mind,” vowing to one day “wear out of my mind every mean and base affection.” But it was a long time coming—indeed, it nearly came too late. In 1819, the year after the death of his treasured wife of fifty-four years, the devastated Adams turned to Cicero’s essay on growing old gracefully, De Senectute. It was an essay he had read “for seventy years, to the point of nearly knowing it by heart,” but somehow, now, in the quiet stillness, he found something new in it. As he wrote:I never delighted much in contemplating commas and colons, or in spelling or measuring syllables; but now...if I attempt to look at these little objects, I find my imagination, in spite of all my exertions, roaming in the Milky Way, among the nebulae, those mighty orbs, and stupendous orbits of suns, planets, satellites, and comets, which compose the incomprehensible universe.It was as if, now, having slowed down, having experienced so much, that he was seeing things differently. In short, he noticed what he had missed before—by reading and re-reading, he found something he had missed all those previous times. When Marcus Aurelius quoted Heraclitus—about how we can never step in the same river twice—this is what he was encouraging. We cannot content ourselves with first impressions or encounters, we must constantly revisit everything. Revisit the pages of books, revisit the sights we have overlooked, revisit the ordinary beauty of the world. It might take a lifetime for u… Lees meer
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Don’t Be Zero-Sum
24 februari 2020 · 4 min
Steven Pressfield, whose historically-driven novels about ancient Greece have sold millions of copies, wrote a recent post that posits that there are two kinds of people in the world—Zero-Sum and Non-Zero-Sum. Hitler was zero-sum. He believed that the Aryan race could only survive if it took from and eliminated other races. Abraham Lincoln was non-zero-sum. Yes, he believed that slavery was a horrible evil and needed to end, but he did not believe that the North needed to crush and destroy the South. In fact, his famous Second Inaugural Address is all about how both sides shared the blame and both could be redeemed by the suffering they had endured in this horrible Civil War. Martin Luther King was non-zero-sum. So were the Spartans at Thermopylae, who sacrificed their lives just to buy a little more time for their Greek allies to prepare. Almost all villains in history and in fiction, on the other hand, are zero-sum. They believed that someone else’s loss was their gain—and that their own pain justified the infliction of pain on other people. Over and over again in the Stoic writings we see reminders intended to nudge us towards seeing the world as non-zero-sum. If you want to find some good, Marcus Aurelius writes, all you have to do is look inside yourself—it’s just there ready to bubble up. Wherever there is another person, Seneca writes, we have an opportunity for kindness. The best revenge, Marcus writes, is to not be like the people who have wronged you. What’s bad for the hive is bad for the bee. What is the concept of sympatheia but a realization that harming other people does not benefit you? That you can’t steal your way to prosperity or harm your way to happiness? And yet, so much of what we do is selfish and zero-sum. That’s why we lie. Or cheat. Or vote for politicians who promise to aggressively fight for our own interests, even if it means that other people will suffer terribly. Pressfield’s beautiful article is a call to a higher standard to all of… Lees meer
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Ask Daily Stoic: How Do You Recognize What's in Your Control?
22 februari 2020 · 14 min
Ryan talks about speaking to service members at Aviano Air Base in Italy. Ryan reads a passage from Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit. You can also find these videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel. Lees meer
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Do What’s Right, Not What’s Easy
21 februari 2020 · 4 min
It was a somber scene as the pallbearers marched down Pine Street carrying the coffin of General William Tecumseh Sherman on this day 129 years ago. It grew more somber still as the rain started to drizzle and then rain steadily. The temperatures dropped as the procession winded through the streets. Repeatedly along the seven mile walk, the former Confederate General Joe Johnston, then old and frail, but who had faced off in battle against Sherman many times, was asked if someone could take his place so that he might go inside and warm up. Lees meer
No, Johnson said, I’m fine. An aide suggested that he at least put on a hat to keep dry. Once again, Johnson refused. It would be impolite. It would be disrespectful to the dead. “If the positions were reversed,” he said, “Sherman would not do so.” So he continued to carry the coffin, bare-headed in the rain, in honor of his former enemy, the man who had beaten and dominated him.
Marcus Aurelius wrote of how we should do the right thing, whether it’s cold or warm, whether we’re tired or well-rested, whether we’re despised or honored. Johnson faced each of these dilemmas that day. He was tired, he was cold, he could not have been been particularly popular with the thousands of Yankees who watched his labored steps. But he did what he thought was right— like his former opponent, he lived by a code and that was all that mattered. He wanted to pay his respects, even if it was inconvenient, even if it wasn’t fully understood.
And he was willing to sacrifice more than just a few minutes of comfort to make that statement. Because at that funeral Joe Johnson caught pneumonia. Within a month, he was dead.
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Who Can You Adopt?
20 februari 2020 · 3 min
One of the most remarkable traditions of ancient Rome—and one for which we have no real modern analog—was the tradition of wealthy, successful families adopting and raising young men (sometimes women) to be their heir. Scipio Aemilianus, one of the early patrons of Stoicism, for instance, was adopted into the famous Scipio family, while his elder brother Quintus was adopted by the Fabii family, an equally grand legacy. Lees meer
Seneca was not adopted (nor did he adopt anyone), but his brother Novatus was adopted by Lucius Junius Gallio, an admired rhetorician, and eventually changed his name accordingly. You might be familiar with it, in fact, because Gallio—Seneca’s brother—appears in the Bible, having fairly adjudicated a legal case against the apostle Paul. Marcus Aurelius himself underwent a similar process when Hadrian (adopted by Trajan) adopted Antoninus who in turn adopted Marcus Aurelius.
The point of today’s email is not to tell you to rush out and sign up to be a foster parent—although it would be wonderful if more people did this—but to suggest a more modern analogy. The process of choosing a promising young person, mentoring them, guiding their ascent into public life, looking out for them, helping pass along some of the advantages and wisdom you have accumulated—this is a timeless idea. It makes rational sense why fathers and mothers do this for their own children (and grandchildren) but it is truly beautiful when strangers do it for each other. When we help others get ahead not because they are our blood, but because we see something in them, or simply because we are in the privileged position of having such benefits to share.
Remember, the Stoics believed that we were all in this thing together. That we were all part of the same hive, that we were all serving the same great cause—be it the empire, the nation, the human race—and therefore we are obligated to help others. To lend a hand. To adopt. To advocate for. To cultivate.
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Why Be Angry About Something That’s Already Gone?
19 februari 2020 · 3 min
It’s another mess. It’s not your fault, but you’re dealing with it. It’s another rude person— representing a company you are paying money to—who doesn’t seem to get how this is supposed to work. It’s another example of disrespect, or bias, or plain discrimination. It’s precisely the kind of thing that pisses you off. Lees meer
So you’re angry. It shouldn’t be like this. It doesn’t need to be like this. When will it stop?
The Stoics have an answer. It might not be the one you want to hear, but it’s an answer. The answer is that this will stop soon. It always does. Everything does.
As Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations:
Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone — those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river: the ‘what’ is in constant flux, the ‘why’ has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what’s right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us — a chasm whose depths we cannot see. So it would take an idiot to feel self-importance or distress. Or any indignation, either. As if the things that irritate us lasted.
This is one of the reasons the Stoics were big advocates of “the pause” (which we talk about in our Taming Your Temper course). Yes, this thing is angering you right now. But the truth is that it will be gone soon enough. And so will you for that matter!
Life is short. Do you want to spend it being upset? Most problems resolve themselves. Most bad news is followed, eventually, by good news. Most frustrations lessen with time. Use that to your advantage. Don’t give them more substance and permanence than they deserve. Go with the flow.
Don’t be angry. It’s pointless.
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How To Be Proven Wrong
18 februari 2020 · 4 min
Imagine writing a book that sells millions of copies over the course of nearly a decade, and then, out of nowhere, another author comes along and challenges it. What would you do? Lees meer
In Malcolm Gladwell’s massive bestseller Outliers: The Story of Success, he posits that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is required to master any skill. Implicit in Gladwell’s argument is that success is the manifestation of specialization. If you want to be among the best at something, you have to focus solely on that singular skill.
David Epstein first disputed the 10,000-hour rule in his book The Sports Gene. He was then invited to the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference to debate Gladwell on this topic of specialization. Neither they or their critics would have predicted the friendship that came out of the debate. But their discussions spawned the ideas that became Epstein’s second book, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World—which doesn’t just challenge the 10,000-hour rule, it may well debunk it. How did Gladwell take it? As Epstein explained in our interview with him for DailyStoic.com:
He could have viewed our ideas as in zero-sum competition. But he didn’t. He viewed it as an opportunity to engage in more discussion—often politely antagonistic but very productive discussion—and consequently we learned from one another. [This] set in motion what became not only a really productive intellectual relationship for me, but also a model of how two people publicly associated with certain ideas can engage without forcing zero-sum competition.
Seneca deliberately read and immersed himself in the work of people he disagreed with. He frequently and unapologetically quotes Epicurus, the head of a rival philosophical school! Knowing this may be perceived as abandoning the writings of his avowed philosophical school, he often clarifies his intentions. “I am wont to cross over even into the enemy’s camp,” he explains, “not as a deserter, but as a scout.” Like Gladwell an…
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Don’t Take the Money. Don’t Take the Money.
17 februari 2020 · 3 min
Cicero and Cato both refused to take bribes, despite how widespread the practice was for politicians at the time. Cato refused to be enriched by his office in any form, even though that was even more common. Marcus Aurelius refused inheritances that were offered to him, much the same way. Lees meer
Although they never gave us their exact reasons, it’s pretty easy to deduce. Because corruption is a betrayal of the public trust. Even if it weren’t, Marcus and Cato would likely have declined all the same. Why? Because to accept the money would have been to sacrifice their autonomy. They lived along the same principle so brilliantly expressed, thousands of years later, by the photographer Bill Cunningham: “If you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do, kid.”
Just look at Seneca. While there is no evidence he took outright bribes, he did accept a paycheck from Nero. He accepted piles and piles of gifts. He couldn’t see that Nero was slowly buying him, trapping him in a gilded cage. Seneca’s fortune grew—soon, he was the second richest man in Rome—but his control over his own life diminished. He was tied up in Nero’s misdeeds; he was at the mercy of his whims. When Seneca tried to walk away, Nero said, “Nope.” When Seneca tried to give all the money back, he learned that’s not how it works. Nero called the tune now. Nero owned him.
To a Stoic, that was a form of death (indeed, Seneca died not long after this, at Nero’s hand). Blood money comes at the cost of your soul. Bribes and corruption are not just wrong; they’re dangerous. It’s corrosive. There are always strings attached, whether the money comes in the form of a salary or an envelope of cash slid under a table. Let Seneca be an example of that. Let Cato be an inspiration.
But most of all, remember what Bill Cunningham said: If they pay you, they get to tell you what to do. Remember: “Money’s the cheapest thing. Liberty, freedom is the most expensive.”
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Ask Daily Stoic: Who Are Some Famous Figure Influenced By Stoicism?
15 februari 2020 · 20 min
Ryan talks about putting the finishing touches on his upcoming book, Lives of the Stoics.
Featuring today's entry from The Daily Stoic. You can also find these videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel. Lees meerHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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This Is a Command, Not a Mere Reminder
14 februari 2020 · 4 min
Like most solo pursuits, the artist’s life is one that ceaselessly tests one's mental fortitude. Steven Pressfield likens it to dragon slaying. The dragon being what he’s coined the “Resistance”—that voice that questions your abilities, your worth, your sanity. “Resistance never sleeps,” Pressfield says. “It never slackens and it never goes away. The dragon must be slain anew every morning.” Anyone who sets out to make a career in the arts is confronted with this reality quickly, if not immediately. Lees meer
The two-time finalist for the Pulitzer prize, Russell Banks, was in his mid-twenties—just married, an apprentice plumber, living frugally—when he took the leap into the dragon’s den of creative expression. It was then that he happened upon a plaster angel statue in the window of a used furniture store. It wasn’t the angel that caught his attention. “I was pointedly irreligious and whatever the opposite of puritanical is,” as he puts it. It was the words carefully carved on the angel: Remember Death.
Something about this particular reminder got through to me, as if I had never linked the two words together before, had never probed the meaning of either one alone or truly considered the imperative mood, and I had to own it, had to bring it home to our little apartment and hang it above my writing table, so that every time I looked up from my struggle to write my first poems and stories, I would see it, and I would remember death...On a profound level, beyond the purely personal, beyond pop-romanticism, beyond politics, beyond history, beyond even genocide and terrorism, it’s saying, Never forget. I took it as a command, not a mere reminder.
In the half-century with his memento mori, Banks has lived all over the world, he’s written some two-dozen novels, and received widespread acclaim, but “Wherever I have set up my desk and sat myself down to write, my angel has looked down and murmured, Remember Death.”
No one becomes immune to the evil inner-voice that makes us dou…
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You Must Think For Yourself
13 februari 2020 · 3 min
It’s never been easier to get information than it is today. You have access to Wikipedia, to podcasts, to social media, and a near infinite library of books. You can chat with just about anyone about anything. We live in a wonderful time where facts and opinions are abundant like truly never before in history. Lees meer
But there is danger in all this abundance as well. Because with this access has come instant connection and viral sharing, which means that for all the diverse sources of information out there, it’s also never been easier to see what other people are thinking. The algorithms of Facebook and Twitter can create a filter bubble. The public-ness of our discourse now makes it easier to enforce political correctness and consensus-thinking. It incentivizes virtue signaling and a mob mentality.
Think about how impressive it was that Marcus Aurelius didn’t need to publish his Meditations. He didn’t need to get credit for his ideas. All he cared about was truth. He was thinking for himself, literally. What made someone like Cato so powerful and inspiring was that he didn’t care what anyone else thought. He also thought for himself. In fact, he actively practiced inoculating himself against public opinion by walking barefoot and bareheaded through Rome. He wanted to get used to being laughed at, to being different. It shouldn’t surprise us then that when nearly everyone in Rome was willing to rationalize Julius Caesar’s norm-breaking behavior, only Cato could see it for what it was. Only he was willing to stand alone.
A Stoic has to be willing to do that. A Stoic has to think for themself. A Stoic doesn’t care what the mob thinks—they don’t need to “consort with the crowd,” as Seneca put it. Yes, it’s wonderful that we have access to all kinds of knowledge and tools that the Stoics didn’t have. But how we use these assets is essential. Are we just going to agree with everyone because we don’t want trouble? Are we going to seek out only what we like and what confirms …
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Can You Be Still?
12 februari 2020 · 4 min
There is probably no piece of literature that the Stoics were more familiar with than the Odyssey. Seneca quotes it. Marcus Aurelius quotes it. Pretty much everyone in the ancient world was so familiar with Homer’s verses that they could be quoted without attribution and people would know what the speaker was referencing Lees meer
It makes sense. It’s a beautiful, inspiring poem with all sorts of lessons and images. But here’s one that the Stoics never mentioned, that is easy to miss unless you read all the way to the end. In fact, in some translations it’s cut off or ignored. What does Odysseus do after nearly ten years of war and then ten more years of struggle to make it home? What does he do shortly after arriving home after having been gone so long that his wife’s hair was grey and his old dog was barely alive? After he slaughtered the invaders in his home and secured his kingdom that he was blocked from for so long?
It’s almost unbelievable: Almost immediately after coming home, he gets ready to leave again! As Emily Wilson beautifully translates Odysseus giving the insane news to his long suffering wife:
But now we have returned to our own bed,
As we both longed to do. You must look after
My property inside the house. Meanwhile,
I have to go on raids, to steal replacements
For all the sheep those swaggering suitors killed,
And get the other Greeks to give me more,
until I fill my folds.
Isn’t that the human condition in a nutshell? Isn’t that restlessness exactly what got Odysseus in trouble in the first place? The insatiability and greed that nearly took him and his men to the brink a hundred times? As Blaise Pascal put it, “all of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room.” Because we cannot be happy, because we can’t just be, we waste years of our life. We go begging for trouble. We invent problems. We flee, as Seneca once put it, from ourselves. Clearly that’s what Odysseus was doing. No one who actually likes themselves or the…
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Here’s How To Become an Informed Citizen
11 februari 2020 · 3 min
When people hear Epictetus quoted to justify not watching the news—“If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters”—they get upset. It’s understandable. For generations, especially in America, people have been conditioned to think that consuming journalism, be it in newspaper or television or online form, is the duty of every informed citizen. Lees meer
Unfortunately, only the second half of this supposition is correct. Yes, it is the duty of every citizen—especially those with voting rights—to be informed. No, the news is not the way to do that. In fact, in today’s world of clickbait and sensationalism it may be the worst. Just a few years ago, the head of CBS (who also happened to be a serial sexual harasser) noted glibly how a certain presidential candidate was clearly bad for America but “damn good for CBS.” “This is going to be a very good year for us,” he said, faux apologizing. “It's a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on... Keep going.”
If that isn’t evidence for you that you should not keep going, and should definitely stop watching so much news, there’s not much else to be said. But perhaps there’s another way to think about it: The best way to be an informed citizen is to follow the path of the Stoics, who had no such thing as real-time journalism. You should study history. You should study the law. You should study human nature. As Machiavelli, who was forced into a retreat from public affairs, once observed, “Anyone who studies present and ancient affairs will easily see how in all cities and all peoples there still exist, and have always existed, the same desires and passions." Marcus Aurelius said very much the same thing: History is the same thing happening over and over again.
If you want to be an informed citizen, if you want to actually understand—rather than know trivia about—what’s going on in the world, then pick up a biography. Pick up Thucydides. Pick up Plutarch. Pick up Robert Caro or Edward Gibbon. Read …
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It Takes What It Takes
10 februari 2020 · 3 min
Watching a master do their work is always impressive. Whether it’s an orator working a crowd or an athlete contorting their body with ease and finesse, it’s incredible to see what people are capable of. We see things and wonder how they’re possible. We hear of the feats of brilliance, of courage, of endurance, and of wisdom pulled off by Cato or by Thrasea and wonder how they managed to do it. Lees meer
The answer, in every instance, is simple. They did the work.
“First, tell yourself what you want to be, then act your part accordingly,” Epictetus said. “This, after all, is what we find to be the rule in just about every other field. Athletes decide first what they want to be, then proceed to do what is necessary."
The renowned mental conditioning expert Trevor Moawad put it even more simply: Greatness takes what it takes.
As Russell Wilson’s mental skills coach, he has seen what that process looks like from the inside. His new book (with that awesome title), It Takes What It Takes, is about the kind of work we have to do to achieve our biggest goals. We interviewed him for Daily Stoic and he explained it a bit further:
It goes back to a conversation I had with NBA star Vince Carter when I was consulting with them. He said at 38 the behaviors for him to keep playing were clearly defined. It “took what it took” and he had to decide whether to do them or not...That conversation helped me better explain the simple truths behind success to athletes. It also safely allows for people to choose an average set of behaviors, but the outcome will be pre-determined.
Remember, the Stoics—Marcus Aurelius especially—talked repeatedly about doing what his nature demanded. They also believed that character was fate. The work you put in, the traits you inculcated, that’s what kind of person you would be, the kind of results you would get.
“Behavior, which you’ve drilled into your muscle memory,” Moawad says, “will dictate what happens next.”
So how can you be like Epictetus or Marcus…
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Ask Daily Stoic: Can You Be Informed Without Cable News?
8 februari 2020 · 15 min
Ryan talks about his upcoming talk in Italy and about James Stockdale, and answers questions from fans. Featuring today's entry from The Daily Stoic. You can also find these videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel. Lees meer
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You Still Have Time. You Have So Much Time.
7 februari 2020 · 3 min
Seneca’s life is worth looking at for anyone who thinks they missed their shot, who thinks it might be “too late” for them. Because in his early twenties, just as his career as a lawyer was taking off, Seneca was struck with a terrible blow of tuberculosis. He was sent away by his doctors to Egypt, where he spent the next ten years recovering. Eventually, he returned to Rome, and though many would have suspected his window had closed, he quickly made a name for himself as a politician and a philosopher. Lees meer
Then, just as his career was taking off, he was banished to Corisca on trumped up charges by jealous enemies. There he had to spend eight years, eight years of the prime of his life, on an island far away from home. Yet, he eventually returned to Rome, rebuilt and remade himself, and soon found himself one of the most powerful men in the world, advising the Emperor.
You might be sensing where this is going, but once again, at the height of his influence, he was forced to retire from Nero’s service, as the Emperor became increasingly unstable. Still, Seneca managed to re-dedicate himself to philosophy and publish some of his most brilliant works.
What Seneca’s life proves is something much more bluntly phrased in Gary Vaynerchuk’s viral video, “You’ve Got Fucking Time.” It might feel like you are too old, that things have not turned out like you planned, that you’ve been royally screwed by bad luck. And that may be so—but the fact remains that you still have time. You can still make something of this life. You can still be grateful for whatever—and how much ever—time you have left.
What if you had just woken up from a coma? What if you had just gotten exonerated and released from death row? What if you’d found out your cancer was in remission? Would you be thinking 'I'm getting a late start' or ‘woe is me?” Or would you be thinking, 'I'm so lucky. This is the beginning of my new life'?
There is no too late, not as far as ordinary life goes; just get started. Or …
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You Must Look Beneath The Surface
6 februari 2020 · 4 min
Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus, like all Romans, seemed to have loved the theatre. Lees meer
Seneca, in particular, had a great fascination for what “actors in theatre who imitate the emotions” could teach him about dealing with people in real life. Many actors appear “most dangerous when they redden,” Seneca observed, but “they were letting all their sense of shame escape.” From that, he realized that with Sulla “when the blood mantled his cheeks” it was always “due...to the novelty of a situation.” And “Fabianus also, I remember, reddened when he appeared as a witness before the senate; and his embarrassment became him to a remarkable degree.”
Evan Puschak, creator of the wildly popular Nerdwriter YouTube channel, made a great video a couple years ago, titled “Jack Nicholson: The Art of Anger.” The video is not only an eight minute montage of Nicholson’s very entertaining freak outs, it’s a distillation of a very human emotion. Like Seneca, Puschak wanted “to get a sense of the larger shape of anger as a human phenomenon.” Here’s what he learned:
For Nicholson—and everybody else, for that matter—anger can be a form of desperation, a noise so loud that you don't have to hear your own insecurities. The larger and louder it is, the closer he is to recognizing a vulnerability in himself. That's the challenge for an actor playing this emotion. You're not just playing anger; you're playing what's under it. Most anger isn't psychotic. It's only a thin veneer for what's brewing below, and you have to be able to turn up the volume while preserving traces of this deeper motivation.
This is a really powerful insight. To see that anger is not anger but often a glimpse of what is unresolved underneath. Sulla was revealing his weakness, his inexperience, his uncertainty. Fabianus was revealing his embarrassment. In The Border, Puschak points out, Nicholson was revealing fear. “Fear at what he's gotten himself into. Fear that he won't be able to get himself out.”
Although th…
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If Everyone Is Woke, Then No One is Awake
5 februari 2020 · 4 min
It’s unquestionably a good thing that the world is waking up to the idea of social justice. For too long, marginalized groups have been precisely that—marginalized. Oppression, racism, unequal access to opportunity have been too common for too long in America and the world. People have been way too insensitive to the trauma that all sorts of people have experienced in life, and indifferent to how those traumas are exacerbated and triggered by the way we do things. Lees meer
Of course, we should be awake and aware of this. Kindness and fairness and human dignity are core Stoic virtues, so there would be no objection from Marcus Aurelius or Seneca to the idea of social justice. Certainly Epictetus, a former slave, would have fit right into our modern discussion about privilege and equality.
But it’s also true that the Stoics would have looked quite warily on the increasing radicalization of the so-called “woke” activists. Nor would they have been surprised at how quickly its self-righteousness has created alarming abuses of power (and in some cases, been guilty of the same injustices they claim to fight against.) Administrators and activists at Oberlin College in Ohio egged on a mob that wrongly accused a small-town bakery of racism and tried to run them out of business. The #MeToo movement, which has brought all sorts of terrible sexual predators to justice, also—it seems—prematurely deprived Al Franken of due process and cost themselves an ally in the Senate. There have been countless other examples, from the Covington Kids and the Yale Halloween costume controversy to using physical force to deprive people of their right to free speech and a surprising level of tolerance for anti-semitism, where jumping to conclusions and moral certainty have caused embarassing lapses in judgement.
These movements are supposed to be about truth and justice and fairness. But like any movement, when they become a mob, or become blind to nuance or empathy, they can do real harm to people. W…