The Daily Stoic

When we look at the lives of a great man like Marcus Aurelius or a great woman like the Catholic activist Dorothy Day, it’s easy to be intimidated. They seemed to always know what to do and seemed to always do it regardless of the stakes. It’s easy to be discouraged when you hold their examples up as inspiration—it seems impossible to live up to their standards (and easy to forget, of course, that they didn’t always live up to their own standards).The same is true for Stoicism as a whole. The philosophy is so aspirational, so idealistic that, given the flaws we each carry, the idea of even coming close to approaching the life of a sage feels ridiculous. But what if that was the wrong way to think about it?What if instead of trying to be some unassailable force of moral good in the world, each of us just tried to be a little bit better whenever we saw an opportunity? What kind of cumulative difference would that end up making?An example: Anyone who has bought one of the coins in our Daily Stoic Store over the last couple years might remember that they came wrapped in a thin plastic sleeve. A few months ago it occurred to us that this was producing a lot of unnecessary plastic in the world for not a lot of benefit—so we asked the mint to stop shipping them that way. Was this some transformational improvement to the world? Was it some shockingly selfless sacrifice? Of course not. But it was an improvement in our operations that reduced our ecological impact a tiny bit. We got better where we could.Everyone has opportunities to do this. Opportunities to put their phone down and really listen to someone who needs to be heard. Opportunities to contribute some spare change to a worthy cause. Opportunities to let their employees go home early from work. Opportunities to pass on an unnecessary cross country flight or to pick up some trash or to hold the door open for someone.These are little actions. They won’t make you a sage or a saint. But they will make a littleimprovement to the world and to yourself. And if we all did them—and if we all did them more often—they would add up to real transformation.P.S. For more ways to keep Stoic principles in mind as you navigate your day, check out the Daily Stoic Store. It features our popular Summum Bonum medallion, Amor Fati pendant, Marcus Aurelius print, and more!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The point of memento mori is not to make you sad. It’s not to make you anxious about how few days you may have left. On the contrary, it’s supposed to free you. It’s supposed to inspire you. It’s supposed to give you that empowered, grateful, selfless, bonus-round attitude best captured by Martin Luther King Jr., who said these words on April 3rd, 1968, just hours before he would suddenly and fatally meet an assassin's bullet in Memphis outside his room at the Lorraine Motel:“Well, I don’t know what will happen now; we’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life — longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land.”Obviously a strong faith in a higher power was part of what allowed King to feel so secure in his purpose and confident about an afterlife. But that’s not the only way to get there. A person who is simply grateful for every day they have experienced, who is measured and disciplined in their actions—never cutting corners or wasting time—and who has done their best with what they’ve been given, has been to their own kind of mountaintop. Dr. King’s selfless, tireless servant leadership was also what allowed him to be confident and content, deservedly so, even if there was no reward in heaven for it. “When a man has said, ‘I have lived!’,” Seneca wrote, then “every morning he arises is a bonus.” The same goes for the one who has striven to make the world a better place, who has worked to win the Civil War raging within themselves (the war, as Dr. King said, between good and evil), and the person who has helped their fellow human beings. It is an unmistakable tragedy that Martin Luther King was taken from us early (he’d be 90 years old this year, as would Anne Frank coincidentally). But it would have been even more of tragedy had he not lived every minute of the four decades he was given. Just as it would be a tragedy if you were to waste any more of your years. Get working. Make your way to the mountaintop while you still have the time and the energy. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In his wonderful new book How To Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist, historian, and Stoic Donald Robertson charts the fascinating development of Marcus as a person over the course of his life. He artfully weaves in his insight as a working psychotherapist into how we can draw from both the life and writings of Marcus to improve our own lives.In our interview with Robertson, he talked about some of the two-thousand-year-old Stoic concepts that inspired many psychological strategies practiced in the modern world. The central psychological strategy the Stoics employed, Robertson said, was what is now called cognitive distancing—summed up by what Epictetus famously said, “It’s not things that upset us but rather our opinions about things.”In practice, therapists ask clients to imagine that they’re wearing colored spectacles,If you believe the world is actually rose-tinted or dark and gloomy because of the lenses before your eyes that’s like fusing your beliefs with reality. Realizing that the world isn’t really that color – it’s just the glasses ‒ is like cognitive distancing. It’s the difference between telling yourself “Life sucks!” and “I’m just assuming that ‘life sucks.’”The Stoics knew this over two thousand years ago, though...It took therapists decades to really wrap their heads around this idea....Marcus likes to refer to cognitive distancing as the “separation” of our judgements from external events. The goal of Stoicism is to suspend certain value judgments responsible for unhealthy passions in this way.Give this a try today. When you inevitably get frustrated with someone or something today, remember that you have the power to change the lens in which you are looking through. Anytime someone hurts our feelings or something makes us upset, we are complicit in the offense. We choose our reaction. We choose what glasses we see things through. We don’t have to let it frustrate or upset us. It’s just the glasses.P.S. Check out our full interview with Donald Robertson and check out his new book How To Think Like a Roman Emperor—it's a wonderful introduction to one of history’s greatest figures and a clear guide for those facing adversity, seeking tranquility and pursuing excellence.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

One of the benefits of being an artist is that everything that happens to you—no matter how traumatic or frustrating—has at least one hidden benefit: It can be used in your art. A painful parting can become a powerful breakup anthem. Melancholy mixes in with your oil paints and transforms an ordinary image into something deeply moving. A mistake creates an insight that leads to an innovation, to a new angle on an old idea, to a brilliant passage in a book. The writer Jorge Luis Borges spoke to that last benefit well:A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.Everything is material. We can use it all. And again, not just artists. Issues we had with our parents become lessons that we teach our children. An injury that lays us up in bed becomes a reason to reflect on where our life is going. A problem at work inspires us to invent a new product and strike out on our own. These obstacles become opportunities. The line from Marcus Aurelius about this was that a blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it. That’s how we want to be. We want to be the artist that turns pain and frustration and even humiliation into beauty. We want to be the entrepreneur that turns a sticking point into a money maker. We want to be the person who takes their own experiences and turns them into wisdom that can be learned from and passed on to others. Use it all. Find purpose in all of it. Find opportunity in everything. Be the painter of your own picture, the sculptor of your own life.That’s your task for today and always. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

By now you may have read the viral story about the unexpected friendship between Charles Barkley and the late Lin Wang, a cat litter scientist from Iowa. It’s a pretty moving example of the power of connection, how one of the greatest basketball players of all time met and befriended a stranger in a hotel bar, and how despite their two very different lives, they became sources of great comfort and companionship to each other (and support too—as Wang attended the funeral of Barkley’s mother and Barkley later gave the eulogy at Wang’s funeral). The Stoics don’t talk enough about friendship, and that’s a shame, because friendship makes life worth living. Marcus speaks a lot about being kind to your fellow man—including all the jerks out there—but we don’t hear much about the pleasures of spending time in the company of people we love. He talks about avoiding false friendship but says less about the benefits of true friendship. From Seneca, we have many letters he wrote to a friend and we can see clearly how therapeutic and deep their relationship was. He writes occasionally on friendship in those letters and in essays, saying at one point that, “no one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility; you must live for your neighbour, if you would live for yourself.”It was Cicero, though, who wrote most eloquently on friendship, producing in 44 BC a fictional dialog between Gaius Laelius and his sons-in-law, where Laelius speaks movingly of his multi-decade friendship with the late Scipio Africanus (recently re-published by Princeton University Press as How To Be A Friend). Cicero, a lifelong student of the Stoics, knew the power of friendship, and we are lucky that his many letters to Atticus survive to us. Both are worth reading. Although Stoicism is a philosophy that stresses independence and strength, moral rectitude and inner-life, it’s essential that we don’t mistake this as a justification for isolation or loneliness. We are not islands, we are social animals. We need community, we need friends. We get something out of giving, and we are made better for caring and being cared for. That’s what this idea of sympatheia is really about—the warm, snug feeling of knowing you’re a part of a larger whole. Indeed, that’s been one of the most rewarding parts of creating Daily Stoic Life (which you can join here)—we’ve gotten to see Stoics meet and befriend people they didn’t even know lived near them. We’ve also gotten to see people reach out when they were in need or had problems and found support and acceptance. Friendship makes life worth living. It is key to a good life. Neglect it at your peril. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Life is pretty great, usually. Until you start thinking about what’s on the other side. That’s when things get less certain; when the fear of death kicks in. Nobody wants to die, after all. That much is understandable. But life is what it is, and with life comes death. To acknowledge death, however, is not to fear it. The latter is much worse, because in fearing death we tend to avoid things that involve a risk of dying, which are often the things most worth living for. We are hesitant to step into a conflict to aid someone in need (I wouldn’t want to get hurt!). We are reluctant to go places that are dangerous yet beautiful. We even avoid gambling with our careers in favor of staying in dead end jobs (I wouldn’t want to fail and then starve to death!). We skew towards safety, not toward satisfaction.Theodore Roosevelt’s observation was that “only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.” He would have agreed with the Stoics that courage deserved a place at the top of the list of virtues. To Roosevelt, life was an adventure and death was simply a part of the ride. “Never yet,” he said “was worthy adventure worthily carried through by the man who put his personal safety first.” It is impossible to be a good Stoic without courage. It is impossible to seize opportunity or the present moment if you are ruled by fear. It is impossible to live a good life if you are ruled by a fear of death. Obviously no one is telling you to be reckless today or to deliberately seek out potential harm. But it’s important to remember that if you always put your personal safety first, you leave so much living on the table. To say nothing of the good you can do for the world and for other people if you are willing to be brave and to stand up when the situation calls for it. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy in the United States and an unsung hero in the history of the world, was once asked by a Congressman if he was prepared for the upcoming hearing in which Hyman needed to speak about a number of complex, important issues. "Yes," Rickover replied, "I shaved and put on a clean shirt." Rickover didn’t need to prepare because he was prepared. He wasn’t some figurehead who had to be briefed before answering questions. He knew his science and his department inside out. Because he lived and breathed his work—famously interviewing something like 14,000 college grads himself for various positions over the years. He also personally tested every nuclear submarine during its initial sea trial after construction. His joke about preparing by getting dressed calls to mind an analogy by Marcus Aurelius, who said that a true philosopher is a fighter not a fencer. A fencer has to put on armor and pick up a weapon. A fighter just has to close their fist. That should be our model too. We shouldn’t be cramming the night before a test, or frantically looking for advice once a crisis has arrived. We need to be prepared. We need to be so on top of our work—and the knowledge required—that everything we need is right there, already in our hands and in our heads. If you’re rushing, you’re already too late. If you’re looking for your weapons, you’re already beaten. You gotta know your stuff inside and out. You have to live it and breathe it. You gotta be ready. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

AJ Jacobs is known for his unique style of immersion journalism. He’s lived, literally, according to the Bible. He’s went out and met every obscure relative he could find in his family tree. In his new book, Thanks A Thousand, he went on a quest to personally thank every person who had a hand in making his morning cup of coffee—the farmers, the woman who does pest control for the warehouse where the coffee is stored, the man who designed the lid, the baristas, and on and on.This last journey was the least physically trying but the most transformative. In our interview with AJ for DailyStoic.com, he explained just how wonderful this forced exercise in gratitude has been:One big change was related to the Stoic idea of the self-interested case for virtue. The idea that acting badly makes you feel badly. That whoever does wrong, wrongs himself. But when you act virtuously, you get a little burst of happiness.So during this project, I’d wake up in a grumpy mood, but I’d force myself to call or visit or email folks to thank them for their role in my coffee. Admittedly, some were baffled. They’d say, “Is this a pyramid scheme?” But the majority were really pleased to hear from me.I remember I called the woman who does pest control for the warehouse where my coffee is stored. And I said, “I know this sounds strange, but I want to thank you for keeping the bugs out of my coffee.” And she said, “That does sound strange. But thank YOU. You made my day.”And that, in turn, made my day. By forcing myself to act in a grateful way, I became less grouchy. Ideally, gratitude should be a two-way street. It should give both parties a little dopamine boost.The word Epictetus uses for gratitude—eucharistos—means “seeing” what is actually occurring in each moment. He said, “It is easy to praise providence for anything that may happen if you have two qualities: a complete view of what has actually happened in each instance, and a sense of gratitude.” Part of what made AJ’s journey so meaningful to him and to everyone else involved is that they were really seeing each other for the first time. He was really looking—and when he saw, he said thanks.It’s a good model for us to try in our lives. Take some time today to stop, take a step back, and get a complete view—like that there are over a thousand people involved in making your morning cup of coffee possible. There’s a lot we take for granted. In every moment, there are limitless opportunities to say thanks. Take them!P.S. Check out our full interview with A.J. Jacobs and check out his new book Thanks A Thousand—it's a great reminder of the amazing interconnectedness of our world and teaches us how gratitude can make our lives happier, kinder, and more impactful.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It was said that Socrates saw his difficult marriage as a sort of challenge that life threw at him—that the fact that his wife’s personality and interests were often at odds with his own was something he could be made better by for being patient with. Certainly, Marcus Aurelius was tested by his difficult son, and likely spent many sleepless nights worrying about what would become of this boy who just couldn’t quite get it together. So, too, are each of us tested by the difficult relationships that life throws our way. For some of us, that’s an absent father, for others, it’s a sister with a drug problem. We have co-workers who are drama queens, bosses who are assholes, and neighbors who are meddlesome. Each of these situations is a trial, one that challenges us and forces us to apply the lessons that we’ve learned in our reading and through our studies. Can you learn how to love someone who has trouble loving back? Can you learn how to forgive someone for their flaws? Can you develop the self-control necessary to not lose your temper when they provoke you? Can you put up appropriate boundaries? Can you say “No” when it’s appropriate and say, “Yes” when someone really needs you, even when it would be easier to focus on your own needs?Relationships test us, but they also teach us. They bring with them both obstacles and opportunities. What matters, then, is how we respond and who we become in the process. No one ever said that family or friendships would be easy—they just said the trouble would be worth it in the end. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The German poet Friedrich Schiller supposedly liked to write with a drawer filled with rotting apples tucked into his desk. The smell was overpowering, but he couldn’t write without it. Apparently, it got the words flowing.How could that possibly be the case? Maybe it was just a weird quirk or a fetish. Maybe it was a weird part of his writing routine (more on those here). Or maybe, the proximity to decay was an inspiring metaphor, a sort of aromatic memento mori.Marcus Aurelius once wrote a strange meditation along those lines:The stench of decay. Rotting meat in a bag.Look at it clearly. If you can.Life is that stench, he was saying. We are the rotten meat in a skin bag. From the second we’re born, time starts ticking towards our expiration date. A lot of people want to turn away from that. They want to pretend it’s not real. We’ve gotten very good over the millennia at coming up with ways to help us pretend and to turn away. It’s why so many people are unproductive—they think they can afford to be, because they’re in denial of their mortality and the fact that life is rot, rot, rotting away as they sit there dicking around.Maybe that’s what the awful smell of fermenting apples did for Schiller. We’ll never really know, but it’s a powerful reminder for us this morning, nonetheless.Memento mori. Tempus fugit.Grab it while it’s here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

All of us are trying to find something. Trying to find meaning, love, contentment. Because we feel like something is missing. That’s why we keep ourselves so busy, why we kill ourselves with work, why we can’t be still.This drive is what allows us to accomplish things. So it’s not all bad. The problem is that when we do accomplish things, we often don’t feel that much better. We look back at the road we just traveled, we look down at the mountain we just scaled, and we think to ourselves: this is it? We never seem to fill the void.As Marcus Aurelius wrote: “You've wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere.” Isn’t that exactly right?What we have to realize is that more is not the answer to our problems: more sex, more money, more power and renown. These will never satisfy the place inside us that never feels full. Nor will magical thinking, or plant medicines in the jungles of Peru. No, you don’t fill the void by fleeing from it or by compensating with externals. According to the Stoics, we satisfy it simply by living our life as nature demands. By being good, by being true to ourselves, by focusing, by not wasting a second wishing anything was otherwise or caring what other people think of us. We just live, as well as we can. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Gretchen Rubin is one of the most thought-provoking and influential experts on habits and happiness. She has written several New York Times best sellers, which have sold millions of copies, including The Happiness Project and Happier at Home. She also hosts the award-winning podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin. In short, Gretchen Rubin has thought a lot about what it means to live a happy life.Her new book Outer Order, Inner Calm is a playbook that helps readers discover ways to make more room for happiness in their lives. This is something the Stoics were often writing about—finding stillness and tranquility, ridding of nonessentials that clutter our lives, learning to stay calm and sane amid life’s chaos and craziness.In our interview with Gretchen, we asked how she maintains that inner calm with something so hectic and uncertain like a book launch,I think about actions, not outcomes. That way, I stay focused on the things I can control (more or less). So I don’t think about “making the book a success,” but “writing the best book I possibly can.”That’s a good rule for all of us—doing the right things, right now. Putting our best efforts into the tasks in front of us today. Taking care of the inputs and detaching from the outcomes. Not worrying about what might happen later, or the results, or the whole picture, or the opinions of others.“The tranquility that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do,” Marcus said. “Only what you do.” Today and always, find clarity and tranquility in the simplicity of focusing on doing the best you possibly can in everything you do.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Seneca tells the story of the philosopher Crates, who was walking in Athens when he saw a young man talking to no one around. “What are you doing?” Crates asked. “I am talking to myself,” the man replied. “Be careful,” Crates told him, “for you are communing with a bad man!” Whether this young man was in fact a bad kid or not, Seneca doesn’t say. One suspects Crates was joking—unless it was his practice to go around insulting complete strangers. Or it may have been that Crates was referring less to the quality of that stranger’s soul and was instead making a more general point about the dialogues we are all prone to having with ourselves—conversations that are hardly productive or healthy. The writer Anne Lamott spoke of a radio station, KFKD (K-Fucked) which plays in far too many our heads:Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one’s specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything that one touches turns to shit, that one doesn’t do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one had no talent or insight, and on and on and on. Maybe that’s what Crates was warning the young man about. Yes, part of Stoicism is getting in touch with our inner nature and listening to the truth inside of us. But another part of it is learning what to ignore—the voice of anxiety and worry, the voice of ego and hubris, the voice of fear, the voices of self-loathing and unending ambition. We have to beware of the many tones to that voice in our head, we have to beware of communing with that bad influence. It’s just as dangerous as talking to a bad person...even if that person is us. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Epictetus was born a slave. Quite literally, his name means, in Greek, acquired. Ultimately, he came to be the property of a man named Epaphroditus, who kept Epictetus chained up long enough that he became disabled by it and walked with a limp for the rest of his life.His body and his time and his labor were controlled by someone else. That’s what slavery is. But what’s remarkable is that even in this state, Epictetus retained freedom in one important sense, and it would be this that his teachings would later revolve around: People could do whatever they wanted to his body, but his mind always remained his to control. No one had the power to make him bitter, to make him lose his desire for life, to take away his power to choose to think a certain way. (You may recall the Hurricane Carter story in The Obstacle is the Way, along similar lines)Compare that to say, Seneca, who was perfectly free to live and do whatever he wished from the day he was born yet was driven by his own ambition willingly into the arms of Nero...an embrace that only death was able to sever. Or more dramatically, look at the rich and powerful Romans mocked by Seneca and Marcus and Epictetus alike who were free on paper but in truth were wrapped around the finger of a mistress or wine or a desire for fame. Or more ordinarily, the regular people who are enslaved to their anxieties, insecurities, or false impressions.It was this, AA Long writes, that is really the core of Epictetus’s understanding of Stoicism: “You can be externally free and internally a slave...conversely you could be externally obstructed or even in literal bondage but internally free from frustration and disharmony.”It’s really a remarkable insight and one we must think of always. Yes, every person is entitled to physical freedom. No one, thankfully, is legally enslaved basically anywhere in the civilized world anymore. And yet plenty of us are not truly free, not nearly as free as Epictetus was when he was still in chains.And that is a real crime against humanity.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Let’s take a second to meditate on this observation from John Cage, the experimental musician and student of Zen philosophy:“That one sees that the human race is one person (all of its members parts of the same body, brothers—not in competition any more than hand is in competition with eye) enables him to see that originality is necessary, for there is no need for eye to do what hand so well does.”It is a particularly beautiful and necessary insight for two reasons. The first half reminds us of something the Stoics believed very deeply as well—that we were made for our fellow humans and are part of the same collective being. “What’s bad for the hive is bad for the bee,” Marcus wrote to himself. He wrote like this constantly. “The universe made rational creatures for the sake of each other, with an eye toward mutual benefit based on true value and never for harm.” “All things are mutually woven together and therefore have an affinity for each other.” “Revere the gods and look after each other.” In fact, we made our Sympatheia medallion precisely because this theme was so important to Marcus. We wanted our own physical reminder of it.But it’s the latter part of Cage’s observation that is so timely, as it disputes and refutes a lot of present day’s knee jerk resistance to community and altruism. No, caring about other people doesn’t hold you back. No, the warm fuzzy feeling is not the only benefit. See, when you start to respect your fellow humans and see that each one has intrinsic value and purpose on this planet, it helps you understand those very things about yourself. When you encourage someone else to be their best self—to be hand or eye or arm or strong legs—you are encouraging yourself to be your own best self (and to understand your own unique role).We are all one...and yet we are each also singular and special. These concepts are not at all in tension with each other, in fact, they only make sense together. A body is made up of many parts, and each part makes a contribution that matters (some parts more than others, at different times than others). We need to remember today to take care of our other members, in addition to taking care of ourselves. The body can never reach its full potential if we don’t.P.S. We think that every leader and citizen should think deeply about this idea of sympatheia. We were made for each other and to serve a common good, as Marcus put it. That’s why we made our Sympatheia challenge coin, which can serve as a practical, tangible reminder of the causes and the larger whole we are all members of. You can check it out in the Daily Stoic store.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The way to make all your problems, even the really vexing and painful ones, seem less severe? It comes from Seneca. All you have to do, he says, is:“Draw further back and laugh.”When you zoom out far enough, almost everything becomes absurd. Think about it: We are monkeys living on a space rock. We are a split second of the infinity of existence. If humanity survives long enough, people will laugh at us the way we laugh at Neanderthals. People used to have serious arguments about how many angels could fit on the head of a pin or whether the world was flat. They not only thought kings were a good idea, they thought they had divine right! What do you think they’re going to think about the arguments we have today? Or even our cutting edge science?Even WWI is funny with enough distance. One archduke was assassinated and the entire world went to war over it. For basically no reason. And then, even after millions of people died, everyone was so stupid that they immediately forgot the lessons of the war and had to fight it again a generation later!The troubles you’re having at work will be ridiculous to you three jobs from now. Think about all the things you cared about when you were a teenager and how silly they seem to you today—now consider that this exact evolution will happen to you at middle age, and again in old age if you are lucky enough to live that long. Think about something that’s really frustrating you about your neighbor or your parents. Now imagine telling a person in Syria or North Korea about it. Your neighbor doesn’t mow his front lawn or trim his bushes? Your dad forgot about your daughter’s dance recital? They would think you were joking! You’re seriously telling me that’s what’s on your mind? That’s what bothers you? You’re hilarious!Draw back and laugh. It’s freeing. It’s a relief.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“I don’t have time to read a book that long,” you might say when someone recommends one of those epic volumes from the Ron Chernows and Robert Caros and Stacy Schiffs of the world. And Alban Butler’s The Lives of the Saints? Or Plutarch? Who has time to read that dusty old collection about the lives of the ancient Greeks and Romans?The answer is that you do. Or rather, that you should make time to study the greats of history.In Book Four of Meditations, Marcus writes::“And then you might see what the life of a good man is like—someone content with what nature assigns him, and satisfied with being just and kind himself.”What’s the “if” that came before the “then” he is referring to? We can only guess. That is the entirety of his writing on this point. But not unlike a Jeopardy answer with multiple possible questions, this one fits:What is it to study history and biographies?Marcus and Seneca and Epictetus were all intimately familiar with the lives of the greats (and not-so-greats) that came before them. And in this study they had come to know, as Marcus said, what a good life looked like. They learned from the experiences and the follies of the earlier generations—they saw across the pages of many books why contentment and justice and kindness were so important (and the perils of the opposite traits).So make a commitment today—this month, this year—to start reading more biographies. It’s an important step in the path to wisdom.P.S. If you want to try any of a lot of books for free, you might like Scribd, which is essentially Netflix for books. Click here to sign up for a one month free trial of unlimited audiobooks and ebooks plus free subscription to magazines like Bloomberg Business Week, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Fortune and the New York Times. Sign up today.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Last year, the writer Chuck Palahniuk received the kind of news that all of us dread. Someone he trusted—the book agent who had represented him for years—had been slowly but steadily robbing him blind. All the millions he’d earned from the royalties of his bestselling books were gone. All the financial security he thought he’d built up was an illusion—undone by the cruel deception and greed of someone close to him. In July, Palahniuk was asked what it felt like to lose all his money. He stared down at the ground. He was quiet. Then he answered: “It’s kind of nice. Writing was initially my way of saving money, because if you’re writing, you’re not spending. So it throws me back into writing. There are larger issues in life – the embezzlement is dwarfed by my father-in-law’s death. And there’s the awareness that I’m the person who got me to this place, and I’m still that person, so I can still turn it all back around, and come up with something really strong and vibrant and interesting.”First off, kudos is due to Palaniuk, because that’s a far more enlightened view than most of us would take of such a betrayal. It could not have been natural or easy to get to that point. The other stages of grief would come before such acceptance: anger, denial, bargaining. But it’s impressive that he got there.It’s also very Stoic. Seneca spoke often of the reversals that life has in store for us—no matter how successful or secure we might believe that we are. “No man has ever been so far advanced by Fortune,” he wrote, “that she did not threaten him as greatly as she had previously indulged him.” Which is why we have to make sure that our identity and our happiness is not tied up in physical or financial things—because these things are not in our control. Seneca’s advice was that we ought to “possess nothing that can be snatched from us to the great profit of a plotting foe.”Chuck Palahniuk’s money was stolen. That kind of theft is always a possibility since money is never really “ours” to begin with. It’s just a number in our bank account. It’s something on loan to us until we spend it or until it’s rendered worthless by some government institution we don’t control. But our confidence—that sense that we’re the person who earned it in the first place, the person who has worked hard and sacrificed and created—that’s 100% ours. No one can take that from us. Fortune can take our jobs, unfairly tarnish our good name, or burn down our house. Can it change who we are? Our sense of ourselves? Only if we let it. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In his wonderful book, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, the Pulitzer Prize winning scholar Stephen Greenblatt spends a lot of time analyzing a pivotal moment early in the life of Saint Augustine, when he was at a Roman bath with his father. One of the observations Greenblatt makes is about the steamy, quiet, relaxing atmosphere of the baths, with its alternating hot and cold, the scrubbing and soaking and resting and massaging. The kind of baths that Saint Augustine visited in the 4th century, Greenblatt writes, “was everywhere the same and has continued virtually unchanged to the present.” The bath he visited when he was simply Augustine of Hippo was essentially identical to the baths Marcus Aurelius experienced, that Seneca wrote about, that Cato was famously shoved at (and forgave his accidental assailant), that you might visit on a vacation to Istanbul, or really, not all that different from the locker room at one of those private athletic clubs in most major cities. You can actually still visit some of Rome’s ancient thermal baths. Isn’t that interesting? For all the things that have changed and for all the technological advancements that happened between Cato’s time and St. Augustine’s time (about 400 years) and between St. Augustine’s time and ours (almost 1600 years), this experience fundamentally hasn’t really changed. We’re still just human beings who occasionally need to get scrubbed down or sweat out the dirt and stress of life. Over and over again, Marcus reminded himself about how similar his life was to the past and how little the future would deviate from the same patterns and cycles. That most of the “change” we see happening around us is window dressing or a distraction. He made this point to remind himself to focus on the timelessness of human nature and to humble himself in comparison to the distant past and the endless future. We can do the same, today, by stopping and thinking about that old 19th century French epigram about how the more things change, the more they stay the same. We can take care to notice how different words we still use today evolve from ancient usage, or how eerily similar certain practices or experiences remain after all this time. We can pick up a classic book and think about how generations before us held that same text in their hands and what they thought about it. It will humble us. It will give us perspective.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

One of Seneca’s most powerful strategies comes from his time as a Senator. Speaking again of a thought from Epicurus, with which he only partly agrees, Seneca explains that he is so readily able to draw from the teachings of a rival school for his writing because of a trick he learned in the Roman senate. Whenever a fellow senator introduced a motion with which he was not in full agreement, he would ask the Senator to break the motion up into two parts, thus allowing other Senators to vote for the part they approved of and ignore or vote against the other part. It was this strategy that Seneca applied to Epicurus and, indeed, that all good politicians use to do their job—it’s called finding common ground. It’s focusing on where there is agreement rather than on where there is conflict. We could all use a little bit more of this in our lives. Philosophically, it’s fascinating how much Christianity and Buddhism and Hinduism and Stoicism all have in common. We could spend a whole lifetime studying and learning from where these schools overlap...but that’s harder to do than holing up inside the school we were raised in and then locking the gates and slapping a label on anyone left on the outside. They are the other. We do this instinctively with our politics. Democrat or Republican. Liberal or Conservative. Globalist or Nationalist. We continually define ourselves in opposition to the other. And yet, with the exception of a small minority at the fringes of both ends of the spectrum, pretty much everyone agrees on the very big ideas about what makes a good life or what a good country looks like. Every parent wants the best for their child, just as every nation wants the best for its people. These are basic truths so deeply ingrained that we’ve begun to take them for granted and instead we have chosen to focus our attention only on what makes us different.Life would be better if we could rely on Seneca’s wisdom more often. We need to look for common ground and use it. We need to see the good in other people and in other ideas and ignore the rest, whenever possible. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has a great line about how in marriage, it helps to be a little deaf. So too in the world of ideas and in living next to your fellow humans, does it pay to be able to turn a deaf ear or a blind eye every once in awhile. Most things are not in perpetual conflict with each other. And even when they are, there is still plenty of common ground. Let’s commit to focusing a bit more on that, on breaking things up into their constituent parts—like Seneca with so many pieces of a complicated motion—and accepting those parts wherever we can. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There is a beautiful passage on the last page of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s, The Little House in the Big Woods. She writes of an evening in the cabin with her family, her father playing the fiddle, her mom knitting in a rocking chair. “She thought to herself, ‘This is now.’ She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.”It’s a passage that has resonated with millions of people over the last 86 years, including the writer Gretchen Rubin who ends her book Happier At Home with a meditation on how it has inspired her for most of her life. But what does it mean? It means the same thing that the Stoics have always talked about. That you have to live in the very now, even when it is ordinary and quiet, because the now is very special. It is the only thing that is true. What has passed is past, and our memories of it gradually degrade and betray us. What has yet to pass is future, and as we should know by now is never guaranteed. Now is all that is real."Give yourself a gift," Marcus Aurelius wrote, "the present moment."Yet too many of us reject that gift. We continue to think of long ago. We dream of or fear a distant future. We are distracted or preoccupied and miss what is happening around us. It’s the quiet evenings at home with family that we should be present for. It’s the ordinary present that we should cherish. Because it’s all we have.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Although today we consider “passion” to be a good thing—as in find your passion—to the Stoics, the passions were something to be wary of. Desire, rivalry, excitement, infatuation, anger. These were powerful forces that, if left unchecked, were likely to hurt the person who had turned themselves over to them (and likely to hurt innocent bystanders too). The warning against manufacturing or feeding these emotional drives is a good one and ought to be heeded. But what is a person to do when they find themselves unexpectedly angry or hurt or excited? Should they just stuff this emotion down? Should they pretend it doesn’t exist? The Stoics talk a lot less about this. One suspects they might agree with the solution proposed by the beloved children’s television host, Mr. Rogers:“But do you know what I do when I’m angry? I like to swim, and so I swim extra hard when I’m angry...There are many things that you can do when you’re angry that don’t hurt you or anybody else.” What he’s talking about is the need for an outlet for dangerous passions—so we can get them out of our system as soon as possible, with as little harm as possible. One suspects that’s why Marcus Aurelius was such an avid journaler—he was pouring those passions out onto the page. His temper, his fears, his frustrations. All of it came out in a practice he knew well. But one can just as easily do this on the basketball court or the swimming pool. Or into a microphone or on the keys of a piano.A politician fueled by anger is going to get themselves in trouble. A politician who lifts weights when they are angry is going to make better policy decisions. A hurt spouse who gets up and takes a walk and then comes back to the argument later is going to be more rational, kinder, and less likely to say something they regret. Passions are inevitable and unavoidable. Life creates them. Life incites them. Still, we can’t give ourselves over to them, simply because they are natural, or we will hurt ourselves and other people in the process. Nor can we try to stuff them down and white knuckle it. Like a long-quiet faultline or a sleeping volcano, on the surface there may be serenity, where beautiful things can grow and life can be lived, but under the surface the tension and the pressure has been building all along, and eventually, inevitably, it is going to find a way to vent. Stuffing down your emotions and passions only makes it more likely that they’ll explode in spectacular, life-altering, earth-scorching fashion.We have to find helpful, harmless outlets for our emotions if we want to be able to manage them and avoid seismic, cataclysmic disruptions to our lives. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 2017, Good Morning Britain anchor Susanna Reid presented her co-anchor (actually she calls him her TV husband), Piers Morgan, a gift. It was a copy of the book Ego is the Enemy. She thought he could use the book because Piers was “irritating, annoying, divisive, over-opinionated,” and “ready to start a fight in an empty room.” She meant it both as a compliment and as good natured (and true) feedback because anyone who has ever watched Piers Morgan on TV knows he has a big ego. Piers replied that he had no disagreement with her assessment but that he did resent the idea that ego was anything but a virtue. “Ego is your friend,” he said. “If you don’t believe in yourself folks, nobody else will.”Is he right? Is Ego a virtue? It almost feels petty, by way of an answer, to point out all the times Piers’s ego has gotten him in trouble. One notable time is, when interviewing an activist protesting Donald Trump’s forced separation of immigrants, he repeatedly tried to speak over her, and asked why she would protest against this when Obama had also deported immigrants. Instead of allowing her to explain he, egotistically, assumed he had her all figured out (indeed he called Obama her “hero”). It set the activist up for the perfect comeback: “I’m a communist, you idiot.” Believing you’re right is not the same as having your facts straight. As many of us embarrassingly learn. The mistake Piers (and a lot of people make) is that they conflate confidence and ego. Confidence is something you earn, by putting in the work, doing the research, by taking risks, and being effective when it counts. Remember Seneca’s line about how a person who has never gone through adversity is to be pitied, because they have no idea what they are capable of? What he was basically saying is that on the other side of difficulty is a gift—confidence. Simply believing that you’re capable of things you’ve never actually done or experienced, simply believing that you’re special and important without any evidence? Folks, that’s not your friend. That’s delusion!So let’s put this misconception to bed. Ego is the enemy. Confidence is the key. Evidence is better than belief, facts better than dreams. When you figure that out, you’ll be better at whatever you do in life, and probably piss fewer people off! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Maybe you’ve had a hard time of it recently. That business project is three months over projections. Your book isn’t really selling. The comments in your performance review were brutal. Life can be like that. It kicks us around. The stuff we expected to be simple turns out to be tough. The people we thought were friends let us down. A couple storms or unexpected weather patterns just add a whole bunch of difficulty on top of whatever we’ve been doing. How could that possibly be seen as a good thing? You have to squint a bit to see it, but there is one way: if you see what’s been happening as practice, as training. Seneca wrote that only the prize fighter who has been bloodied and bruised—in training and in previous matches—can go into the ring confident of his chances of winning. The one who has never been touched before, never had a hard fight? That’s a fighter who is scared. And if they aren’t, they should be. Because they have no actual idea how they’re going to hold up. His point was that the boxer who has “seen his own blood, who has felt his teeth rattle beneath his opponent’s fist...who has been downed in body but not in spirit…”—they know what they can take. They know what the darkness before the proverbial dawn feels like. Only they have a true and accurate sense of rhythms of a fight and what winning is going to require them to do. That sense comes from getting knocked around. That sense is only possible because of the hard times—the hard knocks—they’ve experienced before. So yeah, things might not be great right now. Obviously it’d be nice if they were better. But if they were, you’d also be weaker for it. Less informed. Less in touch with yourself and the fight you’re in. So squint and see that. Because it’s an important perspective.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Spring is here! While most of us unthinkingly set our clocks forward (or have devices that do it for us), how many of us take any steps to spring our lives forward? March is when we start to think of spring cleaning, but how many of us get our whole houses in order? Not just our physical spaces, but our minds, our routines, our assumptions?Think of how you spent the last week. Were those seven days as efficient or productive as they could be? Or did you waste time? Were things more complicated than necessary? Did you fall back on bad habits? Were you, like so many people, still stuck in the doldrums of winter?The 10-Day Spring Forward Challenge is set up to push you to examine those parts of your life, to examine your choices, to examine your relationships and move you closer to living your best life.It was Marcus Aurelius who said “This is what you deserve. You could be good today. But instead you choose tomorrow.”It’s up to you whether you’re going to let those . New Year’s resolutions dissolve into missed opportunities , whether you’re going to keep doing things the way you’ve always done them. OR, you could give yourself 10 days of improvement and a runway for true, sustainable change. Challenge yourself to spring forward to be the person you know you can be.[Buy Now]The 10-Day Spring Forward Challenge is a set of ten all-new actionable challenges — presented at a pace of one per day — built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Ten challenges designed to help you bring a sense of clarity and purpose to your life.Each day you will be presented with a challenge that will help you:Simplify your lifeGain control over your timeFace your fearsExpand your point of viewsAbandon harmful habitsDo more with your daysThese won’t be pie-in-the-sky, theoretical discussions but clear, immediate exercises and methods you can start right now. We’ll tell you exactly what to do, how to do it, and why it works — and we’ll give you strategies for maintaining this way of living for not just the next year, but for your whole life.What is gaining back a few hours per day worth? What would you give for the key to unshackle you from the habits holding you back? How great would it feel to belong to a dedicated community — part of a tribe — of people just like you, struggling, growing, and making that satisfying progress towards the kind of person they know they can be? Toward the person who knows, lives, loves and appreciates the good life.[Buy Now]Sign up for the 10-Day Spring Forward Challenge now and see what you’re capable of doing and who you are capable of becoming.Here is what you’ll get if you sign up:10 custom challenges delivered daily (nearly 15,000 words of all new original content)10 custom video messages from bestselling author Ryan Holiday.A printable 10-day calendar with custom illustrations to track your progressGroup Slack channel to communicate and motivate other participantsWrap-up live Q&A with Ryan HolidayIn addition, for all of you who are deep divers and intellectual thread-pullers, each day’s challenge will include a compendium of further reading that will equip you with the foundational wisdom upon See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As we’ve written about before, one of the most surprising parts of Seneca’s writing is how that avowed Stoic quotes Epicurus, the founder of Epicureanism. Even Seneca knew this was strange as each time he did so in his famous Letters, he felt obliged to preface or explain why he was so familiar with the teachings of a rival school.His best answer appears in Letter II, On Discursiveness in Reading, and it works as a prompt for all of us in our own reading habits. The reason he was so familiar with Epicurus, Seneca wrote, was not because he was deserting the writings of the Stoics, but because he was reading like a spy in the enemy’s camp. That is, he was deliberately reading and immersing himself into the thinking and the strategies of those he disagreed with. To see if there was anything he could learn and, of course, to bolster his own defenses.It’s very easy, especially in today’s social media and algorithmic world, to become caught in a feedback loop of your own viewpoints. You read an article about one topic, and suddenly, all you see are more and more pieces about that same topic. You watch a video from a partisan on one side of the spectrum and now that’s all you see. The idea that there are other cogent, good-faith arguments on the other side—well that becomes more and more remote. Even falling down the rabbit hole of Stoicism can have a similar effect. There is so much to read, so much interesting stuff, that the idea of putting it aside to research Buddhism or Christianity or even reading great novels seems crazy.But it isn’t. You have to take the time to study and look at things that are different than what comes easy or comfortably. You have to be open to hearing things you disagree with too. Remember Epictetus’s line that you can’t learn what you think you already know. That’s why it’s important to read and study like a spy.Go into the enemy’s camp. Open your eyes and mind to what they’re doing. Use what you learn.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Eleanor Roosevelt had a great rule. We must do the thing we cannot do, she said. And if you look at her life, she more or less followed this rule. She conquered her shyness and became a leading public figure. She overcame sexism and preconceptions about the role of a First Lady—a job she never wanted—to turn it into a powerful pulpit for good. She forgave her husband’s betrayals and affairs, even though they absolutely crushed her. Even in childhood she overcame obstacles and proved resilient — both her parents and one brother died while she was young, and yet she persisted onward. Each time she was faced with limitations, internally or externally, she managed to transcend them. She pushed past her fears, her reservations, and the doubts of others. This was what made her great. What the Stoics wanted us to know is that we are capable of far more than we know. We can do far more than anyone else thinks. We have great strength and power within us, if only we choose to seize it. If only we ignore that “can’t/don’t/won’t/shouldn’t” voice in our heads. Whether you’re looking at the life of Marcus Aurelius—which was marked with countless betrayals and setbacks—or the tortuous ordeal of James Stockdale—which was a nearly inhuman trial—you see men (and women) doing things that no one thought they could do. Things that, at the outset, even they probably didn’t think they could do.And yet they forgave—both those who doubted them and those who assailed them. They saw the best in people. They insisted on principle. They survived. They didn’t break. And we are heirs to that tradition. We have the ability to live by Eleanor Roosevelt’s dictum. Do the thing you cannot do. Starting today. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

According to the great Jesuit Monk, Anthony De Mello, there are three intellectual feats that we struggle with on a regular basis, that are harder than just about any physical activity on the planet. Just three. They are, he said, in this order:-Returning love for hate.-Including the excluded.-Admitting you are wrong. This is not a modern affliction. De Mello, while certainly observing the world he was trying serve, was also tapping into an ancient idea with which the Stoics would have wholly agreed:- “If you must be affected by other people’s misfortunes, show them pity instead of contempt. Drop this readiness to hate.” — Epictetus- “No school has more goodness and gentleness; none has more love for human beings, nor more attention to the common good. The goal which it assigns to us is to be useful, to help others, and to take care, not only of ourselves, but of everyone in general and of each one in particular.” — Seneca"If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance." — Marcus Aurelius If you were weak and looking to get stronger physically, you’d go to the gym. You’d hire a trainer. You’d watch videos to learn new exercises. You’d work at it. That’s how muscles are built.If you were ignorant and looking to get smarter or sharper mentally, you’d read books. You’d hire a tutor. You’d play brain games and solve puzzles. You’d work at it. That’s how knowledge is accumulated and intellect is built. Today, think about how you might strengthen your soul. Search for ways to be kinder, more inclusive, and more open-minded. Build your spirit, like you would sculpt your body or fill your mind. You can be the light that you, yourself, sometimes need.There are fewer of those than any other type, which makes it way more important.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Last fall, there was a New York Times profile on what’s called the FIRE movement. FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. The proponents of this movement have adopted some important Stoic principles. They believe that life is unpredictable and that working for years at a job you hate for decades to retire at 65 is a dangerous risk (what if you don’t make it to 65?). They believe that many people are on a hedonic treadmill, working long hours to pay for things they don’t want at prices they can’t afford. By living below your means, investing wisely, by learning practical skills (like changing your own oil or biking instead of driving) and radically changing your lifestyle priorities, they’ve found that it’s possible to retire as early as age 30.That’s awesome. And should be looked at seriously by everyone who has unquestionably assumed the mantra of our consumerist, materialist society. But still, it brings up this question: if you were suddenly able to retire much younger than expected, what should you do with your time? The point of life isn’t endless toil and labor, but one still needs purpose and meaning. One should still do something with both their freedom and this gift we call existence. In the article, one of the FIRE “success” stories is laid out in detail: “Speaking by phone, Mr. Long [said]...that morning, he’d woken up on his own, ‘not when an alarm clock told me that I had a responsibility.’ He’d read the news online for 30 minutes, went on a seven-mile run, took a nap, and ‘watched the ceiling fan spin around for a little bit.’He had been watching the movies from They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? a website that ranks what it calls the 1,000 greatest films. He’d watched 600 or so. He had work to do.”It calls to mind one of the most withering lines from Marcus Aurelius, who wrote, “You’re afraid of death because you won’t be able to do this anymore?” Or Seneca, who joked that many criminals who pleaded to be spared from execution were basically dead already. Financial independence is meaningless if you spend it ticking off movies from a list. Retirement is an empty goal if it means retirement from purpose. What good is a day all your own...if you spend it staring at the rotating ceiling fan? You’re basically staring at a visual metaphor for the life you said you were trying to escape from by retiring early. Around and around and around. Going fast but going nowhere. At least at a job you’re of service to your fellow colleagues. At least there is a chance you might be contributing to the common good—if only through taxes. Success is not sitting around on your ass. Success is not checking out from reality. Success is freeing yourself from pointless obligations and petty concerns so you can really focus on what matters, so you do more and you can be better. Life is short. Live it. Don’t waste it. Don’t waste your freedom. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If you’re born into certain religious faiths, you tend to be raised with strong views on sex that come from on high. You’re not supposed to have sex before marriage or do this or that because God wouldn’t like it. (How that entitles you to regulate what other people do is less clear, but we’ll leave that to another discussion). And if God doesn’t like it, well that’s trouble. It is a rigid and restrictive worldview, to be sure, but it also offers a great degree of simplicity and clarity. Do this, don’t do that. For those who are not religious, however, it is a little less clear what to think about all things sexual. Should you do whatever you want—following every urge and impulse your body has? Should you chase pleasure? Or should you avoid it? What do you teach your children, whose innocence you want to protect, without being controlling or repressive?These are the type of questions the Stoics were always wrestling with, as they tried to find a rational path through the world. A path that was both in accordance with our nature—as they liked to say—and also not ruled by our passions. As it happens, one of the most direct comments we have on sex from Epictetus is both modern and commonsensical:“As for sex, abstain as far as possible before marriage, and if you do go in for it, do nothing that is socially unacceptable. But don’t interfere with other people on account of their sex lives or criticize them, and don’t broadcast your own abstinence.” Basically, try to be responsible and mind your own business. Not a bad way to live. There’s no reason to be a pleasure-hating moralist (that is its own passion, anyway). There’s not much to admire in the stories we hear from Greece and Rome about slaves and prostitution and pederasty either. Worse still are the hypocrites who say one thing and do another. Epictetus’s formula is almost a perfect Aristotelian Mean: Don’t abstain and don’t overdo. Leave other people to their own choices. Keep your own choices private. And don’t think you’re better than anyone else—because you’re not.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Here’s the simple recipe for improvement and for happiness. It comes from Marcus Aurelius and the fact that it came from such a busy man with so many obligations and responsibilities should not be forgotten. “If you seek tranquillity,” he said, “do less.” And then he follows the note to himself with some clarification. Not nothing, less. Do only what’s essential. “Which brings a double satisfaction,” he writes “to do less, better.” Follow this advice today and everyday. So much of what we think we must do, so much of what we end up doing is not essential. We do it out of habit. We do it out of guilt. We do it out of laziness or we do it out of greedy ambition. And then we wonder why our performance suffers. We wonder why our heart isn’t really in it. Of course it isn’t. We know deep down there’s no point. But if we could do less inessential stuff, we’d be able to better do what is essential. We’d also get a taste of that tranquillity that Marcus was talking about. A double satisfaction. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

No matter what your profession is, there are things you can say that will cost you. Speaking up against somebody’s pet project can get an officer passed over for promotion. Voicing a certain political viewpoint can cost you fans or endorsements. Challenging the status quo can bring a hail of critics and haters.And in those situations, what should we do? The answer to the Stoic is pretty simple: Speak the truth. Yes, howls may follow. Recriminations can as well. And? And what?Nassim Taleb’s rule of thumb is worth remembering always: If you see fraud and do not say ‘fraud,’ you are a fraud. But that’s worth broadening a bit:If you know the truth and decline to speak the truth, you are not living truthfully.There are some exceptions to this rule, of course. Seneca speaks of a man whose son was executed by the emperor and then forced to dine with the tyrant after. The emperor was goading the obviously pained father to acknowledge who was the source of that pain (he wanted to see the pain he had caused, he wanted to feel his dominance over him) and yet the man never broke—because he had another son. OK, that’s a good excuse. But these other petty self-protections? Nope.If you know the truth, speak it. If you believe in a truth, live it. Even if it costs you. Even if it’s a pain in the ass. Because to do otherwise is to lie. To do otherwise is to be a coward. To do otherwise is to allow darkness to put out the light.The truth matters. Prove it. Be the light.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Slavery is one of the most common metaphors in Seneca’s writing. He talks about people who are slaves to sex and slaves to work. He talks about people who are slaves to their anxiety. He even mentions-—without much self-awareness for such a generally compassionate person—about his fellow slave owners who are slaves to their slaves.So it might seem strange that there was something he said we should be a slave to. As always, this counter-intuitive observation came from one of his favorite thinkers to hate, Epicurus, who said:“If you would enjoy real freedom, you must be the slave of philosophy.”What does Seneca mean to say by quoting that line? It’s not that we should slave away reading endless amounts of books on philosophy. It’s not that we should work ourselves to the bone writing or researching or getting advanced degrees. Seneca talked quite negatively about people who did all of that.He meant that we had to obey philosophy. That is, the words from these wise Stoics weren’t things to just nod our heads to and then move on. Philosophy isn’t something that we are supposed to take the bits and pieces we like from and then generally behave how we like.The Stoic virtues of Justice, Temperance, Courage and Wisdom are not just buzzwords. They should be our masters. We have to follow them. We have to let them dictate our every move and decision. We have to accept that they own us and that when we attempt to go in another direction, we are fugitives. That’s what Seneca meant.There are many things a human being can be a slave to these days. Drugs. Social media. Personal ambition. Money. Whatever. There’s no freedom in any of that. But in obeying timeless principles, the ones with proven superiority and authority? That’s worth surrendering to.Even if that goes against every freedom-loving bone in our bodies.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How do you know you’re making progress in this philosophy? It’s a question that every person has struggled with at some point in their practice, including Seneca. When he was writing his famous letters, he meditated on this theme. What does getting better look like? How do you know any of this is working?Quoting one of his favorite philosophers, Hecato, Seneca comes up with a pretty good metric:“What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.”What a wonderful way of putting it. Not, “I am richer.” Not, “I am more famous.” Not even, “I sleep more soundly” or “I am handling a crisis well.” Sure those things are nice, and possibly even important. But to the Stoics, the point of this work was something simpler and more earnest: to be comfortable in your own skin; to be enough; to be a good friend to yourself.A person who is a friend to themselves, Seneca wrote, is an aid to all mankind. They are kind. They are calm. They have empathy—for themselves and for others. They aren’t desperate. They can quietly spend time alone. They don’t need to pull others down to lift themselves up. They can stand on shoulders of giants, as Isaac Newton famously said in 1675, instead of stepping on their necks to secure advantage.Use that as your rubric. Is the voice in your head getting nicer? Are you more still? Are you practicing good self-care? That’s what progress looks like. That’s what you deserve as a human being—and as a friend.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Epicurus’s final letter begins with a rather remarkable sentence: “On this happy day, which is the last day of my life, I write the following words to you.” While the letter briefly touches on the painful symptoms of the disease that would soon kill him, Epicurus doesn’t dwell on that. Instead, he speaks of the joy in his heart—not caused by his impending death, obviously, but by the memories he has accumulated of the friend he is writing to. Then, before concluding the letter and his life, Epicurus gives final instructions on how to care for one of his young pupils that has shown promise. What a way to go out! What strength, courage, and poise emanating from a man whose life was supposedly all about pleasure!Remember, the point of philosophy is to prepare us for exactly this moment (To philosophize is to learn how to die). That’s why we do this reading, that’s why we carry these memento mori medallions, that’s why we think about this scary subject in advance. So that when it happens—today or in a hundred years—we are able to capture just a fraction of the dignity and selflessness that Epicurus was able to marshall, even as his body quit on him. So that we can live with joy in our hearts to their final beats and call our last day a happy one, and mean it. So that we can continue to take care of the people we’ve found ourselves responsible for, even in death. That’s what it means to be a philosopher. Now go live it, all the way to the end. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A few weeks ago, we ran an email about Austin Murphy, the former Sports Illustrated writer whose thirty year career (which included interviewing presidents and champions) somehow ended in a gig delivering packages for Amazon.There is always a variety of reactions to these kinds of stories. Some people feel a wave of pity for the person on the short end of it. Others politicize it—Look how terrible these big tech companies are, this is why we need more [insert policy]. Others react by trying to poke holes in the story or to blame the subject—He says that he had to get the job in order to qualify for refinancing his house, sounds like he was living outside his means. Or, what kind of stupid journalist doesn’t see the disruption his industry was facing?!?All of these reactions are wrong in their own ways. Austin Murphy doesn’t need your internet pity. Nor should he be a pawn in your politics. And what good is blaming him for his circumstances? Does that make you feel better about yourself? No, the Stoic response is to see these events as a reminder of how fickle Fortune can be. Seneca talks about how when we see something bad happen to a neighbor, sometimes we cry and then sometimes we privately smile that they got what they deserved, but what we really should be thinking about is how easily the same thing could happen to us. You think that your job or your industry are so secure that nothing can ever disrupt them? In the early 20th century, it took less than a generation for the automobile to wipe out numerous horse-related industries. More recently, check the alarming suicide rate of big city taxi drivers.You think you’ve saved so much money that you’ll never have to work some job that’s beneath you? There are some former lottery winners and Enron stockholders that might disagree.You think life can’t knock you on your ass? It can. It will. Besides, the real lesson of Austin Murphy’s story is not what happened to him. It’s how he responded. He got a job. He worked. He found something he liked about it. And then he turned the experience into the best piece of writing he’s done in a long time. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In Meditations, Marcus speaks passionately about escaping the “indelible stain” of power, of being changed by the purple cloak that the emperor traditionally wore. It is a timeless warning for anyone in a position of authority or acclaim: Be careful lest you be changed by your newfound bounty. But let’s talk about a different indelible stain that is spoiling and ruining many people today: radicalization rather than imperialization. In the the early 2000s, after the heinous attacks of September 11th, the radicalization of young men (and women) by their exposure to extremist Islamic views, became a major topic of discussion at Senate subcommittee hearings and on cable news roundtables. It’s both sad and ironic that for all this focus, the same officials and pundits missed the rising threat of homegrown right wing radicals—young men (also women, but mostly men) who were being turned into extremists by their exposure to misleading and inflammatory materials online. Indeed, these numbers have been rising to the point that “of 263 incidents of domestic terrorism between 2010 and the end of 2017, a third — 92 — were committed by right-wing attackers,” according to the Washington Post. Stoicism is a philosophy that is about taking the longview and seeing the big picture, so the purpose of this email is not to make you anxious about the danger of terrorism at home. Thankfully, America and Europe are still very safe places. Nor is the purpose of this email designed to advocate a particular political viewpoint or solution to this problem. No, the message today is the same theme inherent in all of Stoicism: To look internally, to look at your own habits, and to see where you stand. If ordinary people living on the same block as you can be radicalized by falling down internet rabbit holes, if the toxic media (and social media) culture we’re in can nurture and feed unfathomably dark and awful views, then what do you think it’s doing to you? Do you think you yourself might be getting radicalized by your own filter bubble? Are you doing a good enough job holding up every impression and opinion to be tested? Or are you, too, in a less dangerous way, being swept up in the passions of the crowd, however fringe or alt or mainstream that crowd may be?Radicalization is the scourge of our time. Ordinary people who share enormous amounts in common are being turned against each other. People who are polite and friendly and would help a stranger change a tire on a rainy night on the side of the road are being turned into weapons in a war that helps no one but advertisers and trolls and power-hungry populists.Stoicism is a philosophy that holds up reason and virtue above all things. Marcus Aurelius was an emperor who believed in compromise and forgiveness and mercy. Epictetus was a victim of terrible injustices (first as a slave and later as a banished philosopher). Seneca too was exiled and stripped of much of what he held dear at various points in his life. Yet none of these men gave into bitterness or anger. All resisted the indelible stain of radicalization and instead worked to be kind, to compromise, and to ignore the mentality of the mob. Each of us needs to do the same...and reach out to anyone we see being pulled in the opposite direction. Or worse, down a rabbit hole ofSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our newest Daily Stoic coinSummum Bonum is an expression from Cicero, Rome’s greatest orator. In Latin, it means “the highest good.” And what is the highest good? What is it that we are supposed to be aiming for in this life?To the Stoics, the answer is virtue. If we act virtuously, they believed, everything else important could follow: Happiness, success, meaning, reputation, honor, love. The Stoics didn’t claim this path was easy, or that it would always be recognized or appreciated by those closest to us, only that it was essential. And that the alternative—taking the easy route or the shortcut even if unethical or immoral—was considered only by cowards and fools. As Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations,“Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn't matter. Cold or warm. Tired or well-rested. Despised or honored. Dying...or busy with other assignments.”To the ancients, if we let virtue lead the way, every step we take will be safe. In Greek mythology, Arete was the goddess of virtue. The model for us to follow—the embodiment of this idea of doing and living right. This idea is the inspiration for our newest Stoic-inspired medallion. The Summum Bonum medallion.[Buy Now]The front of the coin features an iconic rendition of Arete in Ephesus:The back shows Marcus’s simple reminder:“Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.”The phrase is ringed, as if by sentries protecting this essential truth, by Marcus’s reminders that virtue is the answer in all circumstances. Cold or warm. Tired or well-rested. Despised or honored. Dying or Busy. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the winter of 1824, things were not looking good for Simon Bolivar. He was at one of the lowest points of his decade-plus long revolution of South America. Many of the countries he had freed from Spanish rule were in chaos or at risk of being re-conquered. His own health had begun to fail from so many hours in the saddle on campaign. He was haggard and gaunt--skeletal, really. Would he give up? Would he die? Would all this turn out to be for naught? With this in mind, a man asked Bolivar, as it appeared that he neared rock bottom, “What will you do now?”The great liberator didn’t pause, he didn’t hesitate. All his charisma returned in an instant and he answered simply and definitively, “Triumph!”It’s one of those scenes from history that sends chills down our spine. It’s Napoleon shouting, “There will be no Alps!” It’s the Spartans retorting to the Persians who claimed the arrows of their overwhelmingly superior forces would blot out the sun, “Then we shall fight in the shade.” It’s Churchill, “We shall go on to the end...we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be...we shall never surrender.” It’s incredible bravery, fortitude, and strength. But here’s the thing: Those lines came from people just like you. Bolivar was a spoiled rich kid for most of his life. Napoleon started in the army as an artilleryman. No one, including Churchill’s parents, thought he’d amount to much. But these men did it--they put countless people on their backs and dragged their cause to victory. Just like you can do. Remember Marcus’s line: If it’s humanly possible, know that you can do it. And think about Bolivar in that moment and how Stoic it was. He was focused not on the past, not on how bad things were, but on what he would do next. Because that’s all that matters. Because that’s all he controlled. And then he got to work. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Epictetus’s most powerful line is about how it’s not things that upset us, but what we think about things that does all the damage. What he really meant is that our sense of what an obstacle or a disadvantage or a trial is—our subjective understanding—is more powerful than the objective reality. For instance, if you tell yourself that you were failed by your teachers and that’s why you’re not as smart as other people, for the rest of your life you’re going to have trouble learning and understanding things. It may be true that your teachers were less than adequate, but this story you’ve chosen to tell yourself is the true failure (and you can see how a person who tells themselves a different story about the same facts—’I attended underperforming schools but my hunger for learning allowed me to rise above it’ or ‘My street smarts make up for what I lack in education’—will do much better in life). As Epictetus said: “Sickness is an impediment to the body but not to the will unless the will wants to be impeded. Lameness is an impediment to the leg, but not to will. If you tell yourself this every time, you will find the impediment is to something else but not to yourself.” And let’s not forget, he was saying this as a person whose leg was crippled (from his time as a slave no less)! He refused to see a physical impairment as something that changed who he was as a person. He refused to tell himself that depressingly myopic narrative, that he was somehow inherently broken or deprived as a result of this injury. Instead, you can see in his teachings that, over and over again, he chose to tell himself a bigger, better story: That he had learned how powerful he really was, that no person could stop or harm him, even if they tried. That’s the narrative we want for ourselves. Yes, we have problems, but we are not the problem. We have flaws but we are not flawed. We might do something dumb but that doesn’t mean we are dumb. We decide what things mean. We decide what is actually an obstacle and what isn’t. We have the power. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Seneca wrote constantly about time. One of his most compelling observations was about how people are protective of their money, their property, their possessions, yet careless with the one thing they can’t get back. “It’s not that we have a short time to live,” he said, “but that we waste a lot of it. Can you imagine what he would say about the fact that today people average more than 5 hours a day on mobile devices? That’s 52 days a year—one-seventh of our lives—murdered! Cal Newport’s excellent new book Digital Minimalism, which just released this week, is an attempt to change that--to focus on limited time on the things that matter (deep work, family, being present, even the study of philosophy). In our interview with Cal for DailyStoic.com, he explained the two reasons why this is increasingly easier said than done. The first is that there are really smart computer scientists specifically engineering these devices and social media platforms to foster compulsive use. The second: “It fills a void. Life is hard. This hardness is especially manifested during those periods of downtime when you're alone with your thoughts. People avoid these confrontations through constant, low quality digital distraction much in the way that people of another era might have dealt with these difficulties with heavy drinking. But this is just a band-aid over a deeper wound.”How should we fill the void?“As the ancients taught us, the sustainable response is to instead dedicate your free time toward things that matter. Take on as much responsibility as you can bear, seek out quality for the sake of quality (as Aristotle recommends in The Ethics), serve your community, connect with real people in real life and sacrifice for them.All of this can seem daunting as compared to clicking "watch next" on your Netflix stream, but once engaged in these deeper pursuits, it's hard to go back to the shallow.”What if instead of reaching for our phones for even a dozen of the more than 2,600 times per day (!!) the average user engages with their mobile device, we reached for a journal and a pen? Or a book? Or what if we reached for nothing at all and just stared at the ceiling lost in thought? There are few problems you couldn’t solve if those 5 hours per day were spent thinking instead of scrolling. Put some distance between you and your devices today. Fill the void with things that add value to your life. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Seneca was a very rich man. He accumulated that fortune largely due to his service to Nero’s corrupt and broken regime, and then he put that money to work in Rome’s British colonies. In fact, he made so many enormous loans to colonists in Britain, that when the debt was called in around 60 AD, it set off a rebellion in which tens of thousands of people ultimately died. A few short years later, Seneca would learn just how painful it can be on the other side of an unpayable debt. Realizing, alarmingly late, just how deranged Nero was, Seneca tried to walk away from politics. Nero wouldn’t let him. Seneca tried to turn over to Nero everything Nero had ever given him. Even this was not enough--because Seneca, in working for such a man, had, in a sense, pledged him his life. In 65 AD, Nero, paranoid and cleaning house of potential enemies, called in the chit, and Seneca was forced to commit suicide. The lesson: Be wary of debt. Because it is not simply a financial matter. It can be a spiritual matter as well. For to owe can mean to be owned. It can mean that you’ve given up the little bit of control you have in the world and handed it over to a capricious or an insensitive person--or just somebody who values their money more than they value you. It was Marcus, after Seneca’s bloody cautionary tale, who exhibited a better relationship to debt. When he took over the Empire, its finances were a mess. So what did he do? He started selling off palace furnishings. In his view, it was better to live an austere life than one in debt to other people--people who would then try to influence his policy or limit his options. Today in the modern world, debt is a little easier to manage and the markets are a bit more complex. No one is saying you can’t have a mortgage on your house, only that if you have more than one of them...you probably have too much house. No one is saying that you can’t use a credit card, only that if you’re carrying a balance with a minimum payment larger than your most expensive utility bill...you probably need to examine your spending habits. No one is saying you can’t borrow to invest or grow a business, only that you need to be rational and smart about it. Avoid owing and being owned, before someone calls in a chit you cannot pay. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

No one would ever call Winston Churchill a quitter. His whole reputation is built on his instinct to fight. He was the lone objector when appeasement toward Hitler reigned as policy in the 1930s. He was the one strong enough to inspire the British people to hold out against the Nazi bombardment and a potential invasion until America entered the war. His personal motto was KBO...Keep Buggering On.You may have even heard the first part of his famous speech which he gave to the boys at the Harrow School, which he had attended as a child, “Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty.”But did you know there was a second part to it? That Churchill wasn’t saying to hold out forever in every circumstance? This is the full quote:“Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty. Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.”So there you have the famous never-quitter explaining the conditions under which you should quit or give in: when you are honor bound or when it makes no sense to continue.An example: When Churchill lost the confidence of his government in November 1915, he resigned his position and enlisted in the Royal Scots Fusiliers. His old path ceased to be even remotely viable, so he found another way to serve with honor. And while Hitler might have thought that Churchill was insane for not negotiating a peace with Germany, Churchill actually did see a way through, and knew there was a good chance his country could endure. In one case, it was good sense to give in, in the other, it wasn’t.The Stoics were all about this balance. Yes, they were big proponents of perseverance and persistence. No, they didn’t run away just because things got hard. But they weren’t masochists either. They didn’t believe in hurling themselves against a wall that would never give way.Marcus used a vivid analogy for people who continue to be the same person, despite the obvious signs it wasn’t working—he said they were like "animal fighters at the games—torn half to pieces, covered in blood and gore, and still pleading to be held over till tomorrow...to be bitten and clawed again."Today we talk about this colloquially as the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.That’s no way to live. It’s good to be tough, but hardly noble to be stupid. Sticking to something is commendable, but not if that inflexibility comes at the expense of other, viable solutions or if it becomes its own vice. Remember that today. Never, ever, ever, ever give in...except when it makes sense. Let honor be your guide, not bullheadedness nor cowardice.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Near the end of the Eisenhower Administration, the speechwriter James C. Humes was asked to help the president write a short address. After submitting a draft, Humes was called to Eisenhower’s office to discuss. As soon as he stepped into the room, he could tell that Eisenhower had a problem with what he’d written. “What’s the QED* of this speech?” Eisenhower said to him with only a little patience. Humes was confused. “QED,” he said, “what’s that?” “Quod Erat Demonstrandum,” Eisenhower barked. “Don’t you remember your geometry? What’s the bottom line? In one sentence!” Eisenhower was a brilliant man, but a simple and a straightforward one after years in the Army. He didn’t have time to beat around the bush and so he didn’t put up with rambling or equivocation. He wanted his speeches to have a point and he wanted everyone who worked for him to know the message. This is a good lesson for anyone and everyone when it comes to communication. (You may remember our earlier email: If It’s Not Simple, It’s Bullshit). Don’t dress things up more than they need to be. Don’t hedge. Don’t distract. Be blunt. Tell the truth. Speak plainly. But what if we had to apply Eisenhower’s test to Stoicism itself? What’s the QED of this philosophy we’re studying? Well, that’s good for everyone to think about today. Can you describe Stoicism in a sentence?* Could you actually offer a good definition if somebody asked you about it? Spend some time thinking about that. Even better, don’t just ponder what Stoicism is about, what are you about? What defines you? What do you stand for? What’s your bottom line? In one sentence!*Here’s our QED for Stoicism: A Stoic believes they don’t control the world around them, only how they respond--and that they must always respond with courage, temperance, wisdom, and justice.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The motto of the United States—seen imprinted on its currency and its buildings—is e pluribus unum: “Out of many, one.”It happens that this is also more or less the aim of Stoicism too, to take the many parts of a person and turn them into a unified, coherent soul. Each of us is made up of competing desires and impulses and needs, yet all of this is part of who we are. More importantly, with work and study, philosophy is designed to integrate and order all of this into its proper place within us.On a larger level, Stoicism—as a kind of civic religion in Rome—was designed to take the many and turn them into one thing, a Roman. Seneca was from Cordoba. Epictetus was fromHierapolis. Marcus was from Rome proper. These are diverse and far flung places, each had their own spin and their own style, yet they became part of a larger whole of Stoicism and the Roman empire. It was their notions of duty and responsibility and their sense of right and wrong that made this happen, that aligned interests and beliefs and lifestyles.If you step back even further you can see how we, ourselves, are melded in and absorbed into this larger tradition and process. Time and distance and technology collapse temporal and geographic and cultural boundaries so that we may become one. Part of the same whole that the ancient Stoics were a part of..This is sympatheia—on the individual and the marco level.Unfortunately, we are losing that unifying thrust these days. As the documentarian Ken Burns has joked, there is too much pluribus and not enough unum. There’s too much focus on our individual selves and our differences and not what we hold in common or what joins us together.This is a tragedy. It causes needless strife and conflict. Which is why today, as you walk the streets or the halls of your office, think about this process—the way we can become part of something larger than ourselves, what we share in common and what we can do for each other. Unity is better than division. Many is better than one only when the many become one.But it starts...with you.We think that every leader and citizen should think deeply about this idea of sympatheia. We were made for each other and to serve a common good, as Marcus put it. That’s why we made our Sympatheia challenge coin, which can serve as a practical, tangible reminder of the causes and the larger whole we are all members of. You can check it out in the Daily Stoic storeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Just a few weeks ago, the writer Austin Murphy wrote an insightful, revealing article for The Atlantic that personalized the changing nature of the economic and technological landscape in the 21st century western world. Murphy is one of the most successful sportswriters of his generation. He worked for Sports Illustrated for 33 years. He penned some 140 cover stories. He’d published 6 books. He’d interviewed 5 presidents. And yet—and this is the subject of the piece—now he finds himself delivering packages for Amazon for a living. A job is a job, of course, but the man whose job used to involve trips to France with an expense account to cover the Tour de France now had a job where he struggled to find places to use the bathroom during the day. The most interesting part of the piece is that it’s not a criticism of Amazon or a pity party for the author. In fact, it’s quite philosophical. Particularly this passage:“Lurching west in stop-and-go traffic on I-80 that morning, bound for Berkeley and a day of delivering in the rain, I had a low moment, dwelling on how far I’d come down in the world. Then I snapped out of it. I haven’t come down in the world. What’s come down in the world is the business model that sustained Time Inc. for decades. I’m pretty much the same writer, the same guy. I haven’t gone anywhere. My feet are the same.”There is a beautiful meditation from Marcus Aurelius along the same lines. "A rock thrown in the air,” he says, “it loses nothing by coming down, gained nothing by going up." This is easy to say, and easy to forget, but it’s an essential bit of perspective that both wards off ego when things are going well and protects us against depression when we experience setbacks. We have to remember that external events, possessions, status markers, achievements don’t change us. An impressive job doesn’t make us an impressive person, just as a bad review doesn’t mean we’re without talent. Having a lot of money doesn’t make us special and not having money doesn’t make us worthless. Up, down, middling along—we are not changed by our status. Only our actions and our choices reflect on who we are. Only what we are doing right now in the present moment matters—not the past, not the extrapolated future. And actually not even that—it’s how we are doing what we are doing that matters. Our feet are the same, wherever we are, regardless of the lofty heights we’ve climbed or darkened depths we’ve fallen to. Don’t forget that. Because in it is strength and freedom.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If a close friend had their home broken into, you’d comfort them and tell them that it was only stuff that had been stolen. If your child broke their favorite toy, you’d tell them that these things happen and try to get them to play with something else. If a waiter spilled on your friend, you’d calm them down by saying it was an accident. Basically, when stuff happens to other people, we’re able to see it clearly with some perspective and some detachment. But when our stuff breaks or is lost, it’s always so much different. It’s suddenly a tragedy, or worse, a deliberate misdeed that has been wrongly inflicted upon us. I lost so much. But I really loved that toy. You ruined my favorite shirt. You meant to do that. We take it personally, because it is personal--it happened to us. And then we’re miserable. That’s why the Stoics try to practice detachment. Not in the sense that they don’t love other people or that they avoid relationships or possessions, but in the sense that when something happens to one of those things, they try to see it with some perspective. Epictetus points out how when someone we know loses a loved one, we can say, “that’s just life.” But when we lose a loved one, it’s suddenly, “Poor me!” And yet it is fundamentally the same event. We’ve just decided to indulge the more severe judgment--the one that doesn’t bring back the person we grieved, and only makes us feel terrible. Epictetus’s advice when we get upset is to remember how we feel when we hear it has happened to someone else. We care, sure, but not so much that it deeply distresses us. We’re empathetic but unbroken. We’re calm, we’re collected, we understand. And then, we move on. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In Richard III, Shakespeare has a scene where Brackenbury is handed orders from Richard by two men who clearly plan to murder the King’s brother. His response echos down through the ages as an example of willful and cowardly ignorance. As he replies after reading the orders:I am in this commanded to deliverThe noble duke of Clarence to your hands.I will not reason what is meant herebyBecause I will be guiltless from the meaning.This idea that we can close our eyes to the implications of something and therefore remain unstained by it is common. Shakespeare knew this. It’s the story of Seneca tutoring Nero in the arts of persuasion and strategy and then pretending that he did not know that he was putting a loaded weapon in the hands of a madman. It was the many leaders before the Second World War who read Hitler’s works but refused to take them seriously—to tell themselves they didn’t know what he would do when he had power. It’s the bosses (and investors) at Uber and Facebook who knew their respective companies had installed a win-at-all costs mentality and then pretended to be shocked when the winning came at a very high cost. It’s the story of the boards of directors and the executives at Hollywood studios and other businesses that turned a blind eye to sexual harassers or sent vulnerable women to be alone with someone they knew had abused their power in the paOprah has a great line: When people tell you who they are, you should believe them. But we often decline to do this, less out of stupidity than out of greed and fear (and occasionally, laziness). It’s easier not to probe. It’s easier not to get involved. If we let the truth sink in, then we have to get involved, and acting against the malicious is scary. So we deliberately don’t see the truth. If we step in, we might lose an income stream (as the folks at Uber would have if they had reigned in their ‘rockstar’ execs) or make an enemy (as Seneca would have in Nero had he stood up to him) or lose our lives (as any in the German leadership may have to Hitler as he rose to power).We don’t want to be bothered. We are afraid. So we lie to ourselves. Or we look the other way. We think this makes us guiltless, but it doesn’t. It stains us more so. It haunts us too, particularly as the years pass and we look back at our own cowardice and failures. A Stoic stands up. A Stoic steps in. A Stoic doesn’t close their eyes. A Stoic calls a fraud a fraud when they see them. Even if it costs them. Even if it hurts. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Confucius was once asked by a student if there was a single word to to live by, a word that would always provide guidance and truth. He thought about it for a minute and replied with the word chu, which translates roughly into “forbearance.”This is interesting because Epictetus was once asked which words would help a person live a life of peace and goodness. The two words, he said, were ἀνέχου (bear) and ἀπέχου (forbear). (Another translation puts it at: Persist and Resist). Again, it’s remarkable how two wise men living in the ancient world some 5,000 miles apart from each other, raised in different cultures and very different circumstances, speaking very different languages, in very different philosophies, could come to express the same concept. But that’s why we must take it to heart. There is universality in their simple formula (though it’s not an easy one): We resist giving in, resist temptation, resist despair, and resist degradation. We persist in our efforts, we persist in trying to be a good example for others, we persist in our training, we persist despite the obstacles thrown at us. The definition of forbearance perfectly captures both those ideas: Patient self-control. That’s our aim. Forever and always.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Believe it or not, there’s a pretty magical way to start making better decisions. It’s a secret that will also make you feel better, look better, and live better. You’ll live longer, think more clearly, and do less that you regret. What is it?Stop drinking. Or, at least, drink less. Heraclitus’s line was that “a dry soul is wisest and best.” He’s right. Have you ever done anything you’re really proud of while drinking? Is anyone their best selves while drunk? Of course not. The best you can hope to say after a hard night of partying is that you didn’t make a fool of yourself. Now, the Stoics are mixed when it comes to drinking. Cato was said to like to relax with drinking. Seneca clearly liked a good dinner party, but at the same time he wrote critically of people who obsessed over wine or bragged about how well they could hold their liquor. Marcus and Epictetus probably drank the least of the Stoics, though they did not say too much about the subject. So while we can’t say that the Stoics were hardline teetotalers, their insistence on clear thinking, on self-control, and overall sobriety, makes it clear that they would have looked suspiciously at alcohol. As should we. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying life or a nice glass of wine, but we should look honestly at our own habits. We never want to be dependent or a slave to any substance, no matter how good it makes us feel in the moment. And we should be wary of anything that impairs our judgment and decision making. So if you want to be the better version of yourself, there’s a real straightforward change to make: Drink less. Or better, don’t drink at all. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.