You Don’t Get a Choice | Circumstances Have No care For Our Feelings
Certainly, Marcus Aurelius would have related to the sentiment. Floods. Plagues. Wars. A troubled son. Personal health issues. “Haven’t I given enough?” we had him say in a recent Daily Stoic video. But the thing is, life doesn’t care. It has no time for your questions. It pays no mind to your limits.“I don’t think I’m up for this,” the novelist John Gregory Dunne said to his wife as they left the hospital after rushing to check on their daughter who had just been admitted. He was down about his career. He wasn’t feeling great about his own health. He was sick about his only child. He was worried it would be a long and hard road out for all of them. Joan Didion, his steely, stoic wife, responded with something we can imagine Marcus Aurelius reminding himself of in Meditations: “You don’t get a choice.”-In today's Daily Stoic excerpt, Ryan reminds us that in life things will be frustrating, awful and painful but it never cares about us. We can waste energy on things out of control. You can grab the The Daily Stoic here.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
23 Feb 20249min
When The World Got Still | Ask DS
It was anxiety inducing and scary, but there was also a stillness in it. Because you were forced, against your will, to truly practice Stoicism. Not just in the sense that you had to persist and act despite that fear—because people and things were counting on you—but also because it was so clear what was in your control and what wasn’t. You came face to face with undeniable reality, overwhelming events and all you could do is focus on your response. You had to practice what Epictetus called ‘the art of acquiescence’—ditching all those plans, accepting all the costs, the hits to your portfolio, the lost time, the inescapable human frailty and mortality we all wish to deny.And within this, you also had to do and be good, for yourself, for your family, for your community, because your individual decisions had clear and unavoidable consequences for other people.It was a moment made for Stoicism, a moment when stillness was the key, as it is for all crises. And right now, the ebook for Stillness is the Key is on sale for $1.99! Grab it today, for you or someone else, if you haven’t already.The good news is you survived the moment, obviously, or you wouldn’t be reading this, but now the world has ‘gone back to normal,’ whatever that means. Things are busy and noisy again. Life is moving fast again. How much of that stillness, how much of that Stoicism, has drifted away as well? That’s the real question.Because Stoicism is not just for the crises, but also for the every day life. It’s for right now, too. It’s today that you need to be focused on what’s in your control, it’s today that you need to practice acceptance, practice memento mori. It’s today that you need to think about your community. It’s today that you need to find the stillness even as the world is spinning faster than ever.Good luck!Grab a Stillness Key for 50% off by using code STILLNESSISTHEKEY at check out. *A note on the audio for this episode: an issue with Chad's live mic resulted in the discrepancy in audio quality that you hear. We apologize for the inconvenience.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
22 Feb 202420min
Why Stoicism is Having a Modern Resurgence | Mick Mulroy (PT 2)
Ryan speaks with Mick Mulroy in the first of a two-part conversation about the simplicity of Stoicism but the difficulties people have in practicing the philosophy. They also discuss Marcus Aurelius’ character and the traits we seek for in modern leaders, and more. Mick Mulroy is the Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, Middle East Institute senior fellow, retired CIA Paramilitary Operations Officer and U.S Marine. After leaving the Pentagon, he co-founded the Lobo Institute, became a Special Advisor to the United Nations, an ABC News National Security Analyst, and the co-president of End Child Soldiering. Mulroy’s post-service efforts focus on educating people on global conflicts, combating extremism, and the philosophy of Stoicism.Click here to learn more about Lobo Institute, End Child Soldiering, Third Option Foundation, Aurelius Foundation, and the Plato's Academy Centre.X: @MickMulroy✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
21 Feb 20241h 3min
Remind Yourself Of This
It doesn’t always feel like it. Not when you’re regularly screwing up. Not when you keep losing your temper, not when you’re not as patient as you should be with people. Not when you keep doing selfish things. Not when you’re still dealing with scripts from your childhood. Not when you hear the things your ex says about you. Not when you compare yourself against the greatness of the people you admire—be it a mentor or some historical figure, a Cato or a Marcus Aurelius.But it’s true.You are good inside.Even if you have done bad things. Even if you have drifted off the path. Marcus Aurelius tried to remind himself that there was a spring of goodness inside of him and that no matter what he or anyone shoveled on some of it, it was still there, still fresh and new and ever-flowing.The Stoics did not believe in original sin. They did not think we were hopelessly broken. They believed that being who we were—living well, living as our nature intended us to live—was always possible. You might be low and awful right now, Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations, but in just a few days you can be worthy of being seen as a god. He was telling himself he just had to go back to the teachings, go back to his principles, go back to the spring.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
21 Feb 20241min
You Ain’t Got Time | 10 Habits That Made Marcus Aurelius Great
People are out of their minds and always have been. You get the sense in Seneca’s writings that Rome drove him crazy. You see the same in Epictetus’ writings, perhaps more so. Both men looked at what was happening in Nero’s court and were baffled. People were currying favor with Nero’s cobbler to try to get ahead in the world. People were bankrupting themselves to impress people they didn’t even like. And things were no different by Marcus Aurelius’ time, that’s for sure.But for as long as there have been these wack jobs out there, the Stoic response has been the same: Tuning it out. It’s saying to yourself: I ain’t got time for that, ain’t got time to argue, ain’t got time to change you, ain’t got time to even try to understand. That’s what Marcus is effectively opening Meditations with! He’s saying, look people today are going to be remarkably dumb but I can’t let them implicate me in their ugliness. I can’t get bogged down in it. I can’t try to reform them. I just need to do my job. Things are not asking to be judged by you, Marcus says later in Meditations, leave them alone.Life is very short. Too short for silly arguments, too short for beating your head against the wall, too short to try to understand things that don’t matter, that are not asking to be understood by you. Leave them alone. Focus on what you have to do. Don’t get implicated in ugliness.✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
20 Feb 202412min
We Can Find The Gift In It | Reduce Wants, Increase Happiness
We wrote an email over at Daily Dad (please subscribe if you haven’t!) recently which notes Robert F. Kennedy’s troubled childhood in the troubled Kennedy household. His family mourned the loss of his older brother. They put their hopes in his brother John. They fretted about his sister. His father thought that Bobby had little potential, that he wasn’t everything a young Kennedy should be, so the boy, as one Kennedy aide observed, was “overlooked.”That was unfair. It must have been painful. Yet Kennedy’s biographer, Evan Thomas, would write that this turned out to be a gift, arguing that he “had been saved by neglect.” Because it meant Bobby didn’t have to deal with all the pressure. It let him develop at his own pace. It also allowed him to develop a conscience and an ability to empathize that most of the rest of the family lacked.When we look at the life of Marcus Aurelius (if you want a biography try Lives of the Stoics or How To Think Like a Roman Emperor), we can see a similar pattern. His early days as a boy were defined by loss. His father, Verus, died when he was just three.If you want to do more reading on these topics, we highly recommend Dying Everyday by James Romm (and we have a podcast with him on this topic). Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe is a great modern read on one of the biggest crimes of the 20th/21st centuries. And for more on the life of Seneca and Thrasea and some Stoics who did resist Nero, check out Lives of the Stoics (signed copies here).✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
19 Feb 20248min
Preparation Makes You Brave | Courage is Calling
On today’s weekend episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, Ryan reads a chapter from his book Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave. This excerpt comes from one of Ryan's favorite chapters Preparation Makes You Brave. This chapter is about practice, training, and doing the thing over and over again.Grab a signed copy of Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
18 Feb 20249min
Mick Mulroy on the Beauty of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and the Collective Need For Philosophy
Ryan speaks with Mick Mulroy in the first of a two-part conversation about the simplicity of Stoicism but the difficulties people have in practicing the philosophy. They also discuss Marcus Aurelius’ character and the traits we seek for in modern leaders, and more. Mick Mulroy is the Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, Middle East Institute senior fellow, retired CIA Paramilitary Operations Officer and U.S Marine. After leaving the Pentagon, he co-founded the Lobo Institute, became a Special Advisor to the United Nations, an ABC News National Security Analyst, and the co-president of End Child Soldiering. Mulroy’s post-service efforts focus on educating people on global conflicts, combating extremism, and the philosophy of Stoicism.Click here to learn more about Lobo Institute, End Child Soldiering, Third Option Foundation, Aurelius Foundation, and the Plato's Academy Centre.X: @MickMulroy✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
17 Feb 20241h 3min
