Stoicism is a philosophy about choices that we choose how we see things that we choose not to be upset or afraid of things. Epictita says we get to choose what handle we grab things by. I think fundamentally virtue is this idea that we choose who we're going to be day in and day out by the decisions we make and the behaviors that we do or don't do.
I'm Ryan Holidayiday. I've written a number of books about stoic philosophy. I've been lucky enough to talk about at the NBA, in the NFL, sitting senators, special forces leaders.
And most of the time when I'm talking to them about soak philosophy, that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about these choices, these choices that we get to make. And I think you see that in meditations.
You see Mark Ser struggling, fighting as he says to be the person that philosophy tried to make him. just trying to choose to value the right things, choose to see things clearly, focus on the right things to respond in the right way in difficult situations. And in today's episode, I want to focus on that.
This idea of choices, what the Stokes can tell us about choosing well and choosing to be the person that philosophy tried to make us. The one thing all fools have in common, Senica says, is they're always getting ready to live. They they say, "Oh, I got to wait for things to go back to normal.
I got to wait for the right conditions. I got to do this first. I got to do that.
I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it in the morning. " And where does this get them?
It gets them nowhere. It gets them nothing. They never do it.
I'll do it tomorrow is the biggest lie in the world. You could be good today, Mark says in meditations, but instead you choose tomorrow. What the Stoics try to do is if something is worth doing, they want to do it now.
They want to get started now. They're disciplined enough and also humble enough to know that there's something entitled about procrastination. It assumes that you'll have the discipline and the time and the opportunity to do it later.
And we don't know that for sure. The the graveyard of loss potential, we might say, of wasted time and wasted years is people who needed to do something else first. Putting things off is the biggest waste of life.
Senica wrote says it snatches away each day as it comes and it denies us the present by promising us the future. He said the whole future lies in uncertainty. Live immediately.
I think he's he's saying do it now. Get rid of I'll get to it later from your lexicon. Do it now.
There's this line in Twilight Tharp's book that I was thinking about when I was thinking about motivation. So, she's saying that all she basically has to do in the morning is get downstairs into the cab where she talks about this in the creative habit. Basically, she's saying if she gets downstairs into the cab, the rest takes care of itself cuz then she has she gets in the studio, she gets inside and just the rhythm or the routine of it takes over, which I think anyone who has a routine, who has built a habit or a practice can sort of understand.
Senica's line was that life without design is erratic. And the point is when you build structures or systems, it just takes over for you. There's a great line about writing.
It says uh inspiration is for amateurs. Professionals just get down to work. Like you just sit down and you know that you're supposed to sit there for a certain amount of time each day.
So obviously motivation is important, but routine is something that kind of sits above and below motivation and it just takes care of it. Like I know what I'm supposed to do every day. And so I just do that.
I don't wake up and decide to be motivated that day necessarily. I don't decide to like really get after it. I just do what I do every day.
And the rhythm of that getting lost in it. The the Stokes talk about how you sort of build these habits. When you do the action over and over and over again, it takes a certain power and momentum unto itself.
And the opposite is true also. If you give into the resistance too much, if you don't have a routine, if you're winging it, then there's room for that to sort of intervene and to not do the thing. So routine is this thing that allows you not to have to get by on inspiration or motivation alone.
That's what Twilight is saying. She's this great choreographer. She's saying, "Look, if I just get in the car, it'll take me where I'm supposed to go.
" And that sort of takes over. One of the things that Epictita said was that if we wish to improve, we have to be content to be seen as clueless or out of the loop on some matters. I think that's right.
and more important than ever. Obviously, your job in a democracy is to be an informed citizen and the Stoics expected us to participate in public affairs. And yet, if you are following every story, every bit of breaking news, you're going to get eaten alive.
You're going to lose the bead. You're going to lose the thread. You're you're going to go crazy.
And so one of the really powerful things you can do in this noisy busy world where a lot of people are trying to manipulate trying to get access to the what what we call the empire between your ears is to put aside social media, to put aside breaking news, to put aside even YouTube videos and to pick up a book. Pick up an old book. There's something here about a book that's 2,000 years old or a book about an era of history that is similar to your own but without the partisan implications.
So you're able to see what's happening now through the lens of 100 years of history or 200 years of history. I would urge people to read psychology and history and biography and social science and also read fiction. The Greek plays, the Greek tragedies teach us a lot about the people on the world stage right now.
They teach us a lot about ourselves and our own flaws and foibless. You got to get out of this hellscape of noise and chatter and get to information that's designed to have a long half-life that's designed to have truth in it. You know, they say if you're not paying for it, you're the product that's being sold.
That's partly true. Like when I'm writing a book, I'm I'm trying to make something that's worth paying for and worth spending many many hours with that that's designed to hold up over a long period of time. And most of what you see on YouTube, most of what you see on social media, most of which is scrolling across your television screen right now is the opposite of that.
It's going to be rendered incorrect by the next breaking story or the next development or it's all speculation to begin with. You know, during the pandemic, I read John M. Bar's the great influenza.
I read a book about the race to invent the polio vaccine and that showed me a lot about the science and the uh trajectories of viruses and pandemics. Showed me the stakes that were going to be made and then it showed me the sort of larger timeless trends. If you want to understand what's happening politically right now, read all the king's men and it can't happen here.
two novels that actually get more to the essence of what's happening than, you know, a a long piece in the New Yorker or on some Substack you subscribe to. Read uh Mike Duncan's The Storm Before the Storm, which is about the time of Ko and Caesar and Cicero, and that will help you understand what's happening politically right now. Read Jeffrey Rosen and Tom Ricks who wrote these books called first principles and the pursuit of happiness about how stoic philosophy influenced the founders and how it's integrated into the American system of government.
The point is you want to ground what's happening or understanding of what's happening right now in the larger context the deeper truth. You want to get out of what Robert Green would call tactical hell and get into what he calls strategic heaven or what we might sort of colloquially refer to as, you know, being [Music] philosophical. I think one of the reasons we have trouble with motivation is that we know deep down that this thing we're doing, it doesn't really matter.
It's not important. That's why Marcus Reus' question is so imperative. He says, "Ask yourself, is this essential?
" He says, "Because most of what we do and say and think is not essential. It it's getting us further from where we want to go. It's something that society made up for us.
It's just what everyone else is doing. It's pitily busy work. " You know, he says, "Are you really afraid of death because you won't be able to do this thing anymore?
" Right? He's saying that we waste our time with frivolous, unimportant, meaningless things. So he says, "When you ask yourself, is this essential?
" You end up eliminating the inessential. And then he says you get this double benefit of doing the essential things better. I would say the the real benefit is that if we only have a finite amount of motivation, if getting up the motivation, if maintaining motivation is this difficult task, well then we want to save it for the precious few things that really matter.
What's the main thing for you? You eliminate the things that are not the main thing. And then that marshals more resources, more energy, more motivation for the things that are the main thing.
If everything is this battle between the higher self and the lower self, if you're exhausting that resource, battling for things that don't matter, that you don't actually care about, that you could say no to, right? You're going to have to have so much more motivation than someone who is winnowed down their frame of reference, their to-do list only to the things that truly matter, that truly are essential. So the famous passage from Marcus Relius where he's talking about how the obstacle is the way.
Do you know what kind of obstacles he's talking about? He's not talking about natural disasters. He's not talking about losing your arm.
He's not talking about any of that. He's talking about people. He's talking about He's talking about jerks.
He's saying that people are our proper occupation. So they actually can't impede us. They can't get in our way.
They can't actually cause us trouble because all the things they do are opportunities for us. opportunities for us to practice virtue, courage, and discipline and justice and wisdom. We can have intentions and people can cause problems and disruptions.
They can get in the way of what we are trying to do, but they present us new opportunities to try new things. Let's try to see these frustrating, annoying, obnoxious people in our lives, not as problems or frustrations or even obnoxious at all, but actually as opportunities. Opportunities for us to be kind.
Opportunities for us to be patient. Opportunities for us to be creative. opportunities for us to teach and opportunities for us to learn.
That's what Mark Shelius means when he says the obstacle is the way. Here's how you respond to nasty things that people say about you according to the great Marcus Reus who's the emperor of Rome. So people obviously had strong opinions about him and they probably weren't always nice about it.
He tried to say who are these people, right? What did they just submit to? What does their private life look like?
What he was trying to say is like, would you respect this person's opinion about literally anything else? Are they a person of virtue and excellence? Are they just some random fool that you would dismiss if they were talking about anything but you?
Which is the crazy way that we respond to what other people say about us, right? He says in meditations, we all love ourselves more than other people. And yet, what do we do?
We care about other people's opinions more than our own. The craziest part is we care about other people's opinion about us more than we care about our own opinion about us. But who knows ourselves better, right?
Who actually knows the full picture? Not this random stranger. Not this person who saw your face on social media for 2 seconds.
So stop caring what other people do and say and think particularly about you because they don't know you. You know you. So you can dismiss that criticism.
That doesn't mean you let yourself off the hook. You hold yourself to a higher standard and that's what you care about and that's what you measure yourself against. It's easy to get swept away, to get carried away, to get worked up.
There are forces that have always been howling and blowing at people. Today it's the news and social media, but in the past it was the frenzy of the mob or public opinion floor of the coliseum. Our job, the the task of stoicism is to help us keep that even keel.
Marcus Willis says to be like the rocks that the waves crash over eventually the sea falls still around. Our task, the purpose of stoicism is to help us slow down, to act with some restraint, to be able to reflect, to put every impression or opinion to the test, as Epicteta said, to not get swept away, to not be buffeted by forces beyond our control, to keep our bearings, to keep our values, to keep from losing our minds when everyone else around us is losing theirs. I'm going to give you a magical habit.
a habit that solves child problems and spouse problems and work problems and health problems and so many problems and it's just to get outside and go for a walk. We should take wandering outdoor walks, Senica advised, so that the mind might be nourished and refreshed by the open air and deep breathing. The Buddhists, they they talked of walking meditations.
That meditation wasn't just a thing you did while you were sitting, but walking through a beautiful forest, walking along the ocean, walking in a parking lot, it doesn't really matter, but you got to get moving. I'm not saying going for a walk will solve all your problems. I'm saying there are very few problems in life that are not improved by taking a walk.
Kirkagard wrote a letter to his depressed sister-in-law. He says, "Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. " He said, "Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and I walk away from illness.
" He says, "I have walked myself into my best thoughts. " He says, "I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. " There were schools of philosophy that all they did was take walks.
The philosophical teacher would walk, the students would walk alongside, and they would talk. The point is the Stoics got outside, they got active, they got moving. Take a walk.
It matters. It is a foundational habit that will make you better this year. There's only one rule to life.
The great novelist Kurt Vonagget said. He said, "Goddamn it, you got to be kind. " One of my favorite quotes from Senica, one of the Stokes, he says, "Every human being you meet is an opportunity for kindness.
" When we think justice, we think the legal system, we think laws, we think social justice. And all of this is incredibly important, of course, but to me, the virtue of justice is is embodied there in kindness, like how we treat other people. Do you hold a door open for someone?
Do you pay for the groceries of the person in front of you cuz they can't afford it? Right? How nice are you to a stranger?
How do you speak to the people who work for you? The kindness that we treat people with is I think in some ways a precursor to the justice that we live by or that society is set upon. Right?
The the great injustices of society are to say they are based on ink kindness would be a massive understatement. But but profoundly they're based on not seeing the other person as a person or someone worthy of being treated well. And I think that's what Kurt Vonagget was saying.
He said, "The only rule there is, god damn it, you've got to be [Music] kind. " There's a line attributed to Mark Twain. He probably never said it, but he said something like, "A person who doesn't read has no advantage over someone who does read.
" A real quote from General James Mattis, one of the students and practitioners of modern stoicism, he says, you know, if you haven't read hundreds of books about what it is that you do, he said, you're functionally illiterate. So, it's not just, hey, I read every once in a while, but have you really done a deep dive about your profession? Mattis's point about warfare was like, a lot of people have been doing this a long time, thousands of years.
And for a soldier, for an officer not to avail themselves of that knowledge, not to dive deep into that human experience is reckless and irresponsible for the people who are depending on you. So, it's not just that you read, you should read deeply, you should read a lot, you should read broadly. The point is, doesn't matter that you can read, that you're good at reading.
It matters, are you putting the muscle to it, the time into it, and reading a [Music] lot. I think Senica knew that he messed up. I think he knew that he stayed with Nero longer than he should have.
I think he knew that he debased himself, that he was hypocritical, that he should have done something earlier, but he didn't. And yet as a playwright he also understood as he said that life is like a play and what matters is that you give it a good ending. To me the stoic lesson here is yeah you screwed up.
Yeah you shouldn't have done it. Yeah you should have made a change earlier. You should have started earlier but you didn't.
What matters though is the final act. What matters is that you change. What matters is that you take the step.
What matters is that you give it a good ending. We control that. We don't control what happened.
We can't change what happened. We can't change how long we did or didn't do something. But we can change what we do and don't do now.
We can decide to give it a new ending. And Senica, as it happens, had an amazing ending. When Nero's goons came to kill him, he responded heroically.
He responded poetically. And he bequeathed to us his example that it's never too late. We can always give it a good [Music] ending.
There's a restaurant at Disneyland named after it. Maybe you've seen it tattooed on some people's bodies or you hear it every Halloween. Momento mori.
Remember, you are mortal. And it's one of the most basic stoic practices there is. It might seem morbid.
It might seem a little dark, but it is essential because it gives us urgency. It gives us perspective. It gives us clarity.
You could leave life right now. Mark writes in meditation. Let that determine what you do and say and think.
That's what momento my allows us to do. Why do people procrastinate? Why do they put things off?
Why do they keep practicing bad habits? Why do they waste time? They they do it because they think they have forever, but they don't.
Senica says it's the craziest thing in the world that we waste this precious resource. And he says it's wrong to think of death as this thing in the future. It is not a thing in the future.
It's happening right now. He says the time that passes belongs to death. We are dying every minute.
We are dying every day. The time you wasted this morning, you'll never get back. The time you spent watching this video, the time I spent making this video, it has to be spent well because we don't get it again.
Life is short. You got to live it well. And you got to live it with an awareness of the fact that you do not have forever.
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