so to me that's a transformational life-changing mindblowing way to think about life it's to connect more deeply with them to remind himself what was truly important and one of the fascinating things about markus's meditations is how often he returns to this very [Music] theme for the most part we can't change the world but we can change ourselves and specifically the stoics would say can change how we think about the world and that's really what stoicism is it's a philosophy really it's a set of thinking exercises perspective shifts that allow you to see things differently and
thus allows things to go differently I'm Ryan holiday I've written about sto philosophy now for almost 15 years I've talked about it everywhere from the NBA to the NFL Special Forces sitting Senators that's what we're going to talk about today some of the best stoic mind shifts from Marcus's meditations to senica's letters to the life of ko to the example of Zeno these are going to be important exercises from the stoics the stoics tried to apply that if you apply can allow you to change yourself and the world poverty isn't just having too little this
is one of the insights from senica he's saying that it's not just having too little although having too little is a problem and we wouldn't want to make light of that form of poverty but he says poverty is also not having enough and senica would have met extremely wealthy and rich people Markus would have met extremely wealthy and rich people I myself have met many many rich people but they don't feel rich not just cuz they have extravagant tastes they're insatiable but also because they're comparing themselves to people who have more so it doesn't matter
if you have a billion dollars if you wake up and go but I'm only 30th on the Forbes list and these people have more or not even financially these people get more attention than me these people are more respected than me these people have more fun than me this comparison makes us poor because we don't have a lot compared to what we wanted we don't have a lot compared compared to what we used to have we have a little compared to what we could have or we have a little compared to what other people have
and so when you realize that there are impoverished rich people it should change your perspective it should free you to realize that having more and more and more is not likely to solve your problems it's not likely to feel good if you don't feel those things now when by the way you have [Music] enough Marcus really in meditation says the things you think about determine the quality of your mind since your life is died by the color of your thought that's such a perfect way to put it he's saying like if all you look for
is the bad in people all you're going to see is the bad in people if all you see is darkness and awfulness and evil that's what your world is going to look like and it's funny right that Marx has his reputation book two of meditations he's saying like you know the people today you're going to meet are annoying and obnoxious and jealous and all this right and that it seems like Marcus is doing exactly what he's saying not to do but then he goes goes look these people just don't know any better their souls are
cut off from truth he said he says you're made to work with them nothing can implicate you in ugliness so the stoics are saying that what we think about what we look for in this world determines what we're going to be able to see and that is the discipline of perception that's the power that we have our mind dies what our life will look like it's the the lenses through which we look at the world if we look for beauty in the mundane as Marcus does repeatedly throughout meditation we'll see that if we look for
the evidence of goodness in people if we see Our obligation to to help and to work with them we'll see that if you decide to see agency and Power in yourself in in every situation you're in you'll find it even in the darkest hardest [Music] circumstances anxiety isn't this thing that you eliminate that you avoid it's something that's inside you in meditations markis writes today I escaped my anxiety and he corrects himself he actually wait no I didn't I discarded it because it was within me and when you shift you go yeah the airport is
not making me anxious this other person is not frustrating me or stressing me out because they can't do it that to me they are outside me I am doing it to myself it's my expectations that are the problem it's my inability to accept things that is the problem it's not your parents that are frustrating you they're just doing what they do just like the airport is doing what it does and so understanding that we're the source of the frustration it's a little frustrating yeah but it's also very free because it means we can stop it
it means that we can choose to discard it as Mark cus said and that's actually one thing that I realized during the pandemic right I was traveling less I was doing less and yet I still had this anxiety and of course there was some anxiety cuz what was happening in the outside world was a bit crazy but it was realizing that I was the Common Thread amidst all of these so-called causes of anxiety it was me I was probably 19 or 20 years old and I was talking to Robert Green one greatest authors of all
time 48 Laws of Power and I was thinking about becoming a writer and I had some time left on my contract at the company I was working and he said look what is this next year going to be for you he said is this going to be a live time or dead time and what he meant by that was was I going to going to burn out this year of the contract was I just going to sit there or was I going to spend every minute of that year becoming better reading better reaching out to
people building Rel relationships trying new things experimenting and he was totally right that year after I told myself in my head that I was going to quit but before I put in my notice was one of the most productive years of my life I've had so much done I have relationships to this day that came out of that experience and most of all what I took was that that sort of difference between alive time and dead time and how essential it is look when you're stuck in traffic is that going to be aive time or
dead time for you you're stuck at the airport are you going to sit there and order a pizza or you going to going to walk around the terminal listening to a podcast are you going to make a phone call that you've been putting off are you going to sit down and write that article or that book that you've told yourself you're going to write what are you going to do with time when you are not as much in control that is the critical question one of the key stoic practices of premeditation murum is thinking about
what could go wrong think about what you maybe don't want to think about that's where today's sponsor comes in life force is the first clinically proven proactive care company that helps you improve how you feel how you perform and how long you live basically through regular blood work you can get a deep sense of what's going right what's going wrong what you need to work on and life force helps you identify key risk factors early on when there's still time to do something about it and their team of experts helps you improve your quality of
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the big stoic shifts is realizing that postumus Fame is worthless right Marcus aurelus was incred L famous in his own lifetime they built statues of him these statues were in people's houses he was the head of an Empire of millions and millions of people he would have known that the the Deeds of other Emperors and conquerors had had lasted throughout history but he also stops himself and goes wait they're not around to enjoy this you know what good is it to Alexander that Alexandria is still named after him in fact in meditations Mark says Alexander
the Great and his mule driver they both died both entered the Earth in the same way his point was that how many people remember just a couple Emperors before him he says who remembers now the name of VES passan and he lists not just the emperor but influential advisers the celebrities of that time and he says they're all forgotten and his point is is not just that most of us even the famous people even people like Marcus are inevitably forgotten right we might be talking about him here in this video but most people just know
him as the old guy in the movie Gladiator if anything at all but he says also he says the people in the future are not magically going to be smarter or better than the people are now right so this idea that you're going to be Vindicated by the future is also an empty and a silly hope and again even if you are Vindicated in the future it won't do you any good because you won't be around to enjoy it so do what's right now because it's right because you want to do it don't do it
because you're trying to build this Legacy for the future don't defer the love of your family don't defer being present don't defer your health right because you're stri driving to make this thing that's going to last for eternity it won't and even if it does what good will that do you take away power over events by expecting them senica says it's what Catches Us off guard what we refuse to prepare for what we refuse to think about that's what lands heaviest so the Stokes practice premeditation warm so they're prepared so they can take advantage in
advance of the opportunity to plan prepare to be resilient to stiffen themselves up so the blows of Fate don't land unexpected and unnecessarily [Music] hard there's a tax on everything the stoics would say there's that expression about death and taxes well senica says it's not just that there's the taxes that the government levies on you but there's all sorts of taxes in life delays are attacks on travel haters are attacks on putting things up on YouTube there's attacks on money too right the more successful you are the more you end up having to pay but
Senus is we have to learn how to pay the taxes of Life gladly not just cuz most of the taxes in life are progressive in the sense that the more good stuff you have the more fees and problems that come alongside it but also because it is a fact of life and so when we see that these taxes are a fundamental part of our existence we accept them sure do we try to mitigate them as best we can of course but we accept that there are taxes on life and then the more good things we
have the more success we have the more money we make the more taxes we're going to have to pay [Music] one of my favorite lessons from epic teus he says it's impossible to learn that which you think you already know whenever I'm around people that are much better than me at something when I'm like embarrassingly bad at something I have no fear or Shame about asking really stupid questions if I'm remotely unsure about something I'll ask I don't care if I look stupid which is actually another really important lesson from epic tius he says look
if you want to improve you have to be content to look stupid or foolish you have to be willing to be embarrassed or to be awkward or be uncomfortable with something or you can't get any better so I'm not afraid to ask questions I'm not afraid to look like an idiot I'd rather look like an idiot then chop off my hand or have something fall on me or screw it up so that's how I think about it I'm not afraid to ask dumb questions people suck it's just a fact and one of the fascinating things
about markus's meditations is how often he returns to this very theme he opens the book with a catalog of the kind of people you're going to meet in the day frustrating people jealous people stupid people dishonest people aggressive people it's just a fact even his famous passage about how the obstacle is the way the impediment to action advances action you know what he's talking about talking about difficult people he's not saying you write them off he's not saying you cut them out he's not saying you give up on Humanity he's saying that difficult people are
an opportunity to be kind to be patient to be good to get the most out of them the obstacle is the way even is about this very idea difficult people exist and we have to put up with them and figure out a way to work with them and we have to rise to the occasion of the people that we interact [Music] with people don't seem to understand this one really important thing it's that you have a superpower you have the power mark C says to have no opinion he says remember events things are not asking
to be judged by you you don't have to have an opinion about this he says you can just see it as it is you can think nothing of it you don't have to lab it you don't have to put it in categories you don't have to say it's fair or unfair positive or negative smart or dumb just accept it as it is the stoics try to see the world as objective try not to insert opinions or judgments on top of things CU this is the path to peace it's the path to wisdom and of course
being agnostic in this way allows you to get to work doing what you need to do rather than wasting your time labeling judging and having opinions about stuff that is not up up to you epic says every situation has two handles one will bear weight the other won't so what are you going to grab this by how are you going to choose to see it how are you going to choose to try to carry it it's the same thing a different perspective life is like that we can look at it one way or we can
choose to look at it another way we can choose to look at something as an obstacle or we can choose to look at something as an opportunity we can see chaos if we look close we can see order if we look from afar we can see disadvantage if we look at it one way we could see Advantage if we look the other we can see obstacle from this perspective opportunity from the other Marcus talks about how things can get in the way of what we're trying to do our actions can be impeded but we have
this superpower we have this ability that we can always accommodate and adapt and adjust he says the Mind adapts and converts to its own purposes obstacle or acting what the hell does that mean well he says the impediment to action advances action what stands and the way becomes away this is STO philosophy this idea that the obstacle is the way basically what it meant for the stoics was that every situation big ones small ones fortunate unfortunate ones good ones bad ones positive negative every situation was simply an opportunity for us to step up and be
excellent or practice virtue it's strange that the stoics have this reputation for being un feeling for being emotionless because actually four of senica's best and most moving pieces of writing are actually known as his consolations these letters that he's writing to friends in one case to his mother people who have lost someone right and he's consoling them in their grief that's what it's about and I actually read these essays whenever I've lost someone or I'm trying to comfort someone who's lost someone they're they're great anyways the the part that hit me the most he writing
this letter to the daughter of a friend who has died and he's saying look your father loved you very much loved you more than anything in the world what do you think he would want from you right now of course he wouldn't want you to be happy that he's dead and he be touched that you miss him and care about him but would he want his memory of you senica says to make you miserable to make you bereft with sadness and filled with pain no it's the exact opposite he'd want you to think about him
and be happy to remember good times to be filled with joy right that's what he would want and so of course we're always going to feel grief when we lose someone and when we think of someone we lost but to remember what they would want us to remember it's such a wonderful little insight about grief and it's such a good insight to the stoics too because if the stoics were unfeeling and didn't have emotion senica would just say get over it don't feel it but that's not what he's saying at all instead he came up
with this great way of thinking about it I'm looking here at this Cemetery in New Orleans obviously every single person in it died eventually death happened to them but senica wants us to ruin remember that death was happening to them always all 61 or 80 or 90 or 17 of the years that they were alive they died every second every minute and then eventually that stopped happening so to me that's a transformational life-changing mindblowing way to think about life not that death is something in the future that happens once but that death is something that's
happening always and every second every minute that passes every year that passes now belongs to death it's As Dead As any of the people in this Cemetery you'll never get it back which is why you should live it embrace it and don't waste it while you have it every day I send out one stoic inspired email to hundreds of thousands of people all over the world if you want more stoic wisdom in your inbox you can sign up at Daily stoic.com it's totally free can unsubscribe at any time we'd love to have you daily stoic.com
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