The Daily Stoic30 Aug 2018

This Is The Only Thing That Matters in Life

In 1940, while he was struggling as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Walker Percy wrote to his uncle and adopted father, William Alexander Percy, to give him the bad news about his grades.William Alexander, who introduced his young ward to the writings of Marcus Aurelius and had himself gone to Harvard, did not care for one second about the grades. As he wrote back to Walker, “My whole theory about life is that glory and accomplishment are of far less importance than the creation of character and the individual good life.”How lucky we might have been to get such a lesson from our own parents at that impressionable age! To hear, emphatically, that marks on a report card are not a reflection of who we are and that their recognition is such a hollow thing. Because it’s clear that most of us internalized the exact opposite: We think that fame and fortune are the marks of a good person. We connect them, like cause and effect. If/then statements in the logic of human existence. We chase these things, because like grades, they are quantifiable and easy to game.But character? The trait the Stoics believed was like fate, the determining factor in life? Well, that we mostly ignore. We assume it will take care of itself.It won’t. If we directed half the time we spend trying to advance our careers or ace a test, toward our individual moral improvement, the world would be transformed. And so would our individual lives--good lives.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(3167)

Not Everyone Is Lucky Enough To Do This | 9 Core Stoic Beliefs

We have power of movement—literally and figuratively—that not everyone has, that we ourselves might not get forever, either. The new 10th Anniversary Edition of The Daily Stoic is out NOW! 👉 Grab you...

9 Okt 25min

Go Back And Pick It Up Again | Is This the Life You Worked For?

Everyone has a book that changed their life. But how long has it been since you first read the book that hit you so hard?The new 10th Anniversary Edition of The Daily Stoic is out NOW! 👉 Grab your co...

8 Okt 10min

BONUS | A Selfish Reason To Be Good

“The person who does wrong, does wrong to themselves. The unjust person is unjust to themselves—making themselves evil.”—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.4The new 10th Anniversary Edition of The Daily ...

7 Okt 2min

How to Get the Most Out of Reading (A Stoic Guide)

To be a great reader, it's not enough that you read. It's how you read. In this episode, Ryan shares time-tested reading habits of the ancient Stoics (Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and more) tha...

7 Okt 12min

You Gave Them This For Free?

“Let no one rob me of a single day,” Seneca said, “who is not going to make me an adequate return for such a loss."🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE | Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you! Grab tickets here |...

7 Okt 1min

What a Decade of Stoicism Teaches You About Life

Ten years ago, Ryan’s longtime literary agent and coauthor Steve Hanselman suggested a book that Ryan wasn’t sure he wanted to write. To mark the anniversary of The Daily Stoic, Ryan and Steve revisit...

6 Okt 52min

So Much Has Changed. So Little Has Changed.

It’s been 522 weeks. Some 3,652 days. Over 87,000 hours. More than 5,241,600 minutes.The new 10th Anniversary Edition of The Daily Stoic is out TODAY! 👉 Grab your copy here: https://store.dailystoic....

6 Okt 4min

When Everything Falls Apart, This Remains | Practice Silence

As bad as things seem today, it should console and inspire you that Stoicism is still here. 🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE | Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you! Grab tickets here | https://www.dailystoic...

5 Okt 6min