How Do You Fill The Void?

There’s no question that much of what we talk about in this philosophy is hard. Specifically, it’s hard on the person practicing it. Stoicism asks you to challenge yourself. It doesn’t tolerate sloppy thinking or half measures. It wants you to undergo deprivation, it asks you to look in the mirror and examine your flaws. But it’s important that we don’t mistake all this with self-flagellation and a lack of self-esteem. The early Stoic Cleanthes once overheard a philosopher speaking unkindly to himself when he thought no one was listening. Cleanthes stopped him and reminded him: “You aren’t talking to a bad man.” One of the most beautiful passages in Seneca’s letters is the one where he talks to Lucilius about how he was learning to be his own friend. He wrote that as a very old man. He was still working, even then, on being kinder to himself. The same man who was so hard on himself—practicing poverty and diving into freezing rivers—wanted to make sure that he was also loving himself like a good friend. Are you doing the same? Do you know that you’re a good person? Are you your own friend? There is a line in a great song by The Head and The Heart about this:Until you learn to love yourselfThe door is locked to someone elseIt’s true. It’s also locked to wisdom. The point of this philosophy we are writing and talking about is not self-punishment, it’s self-improvement. Nobody improves for a teacher that loathes them. No one trusts someone that is out to hurt them. Forget cutting yourself a break today. Instead, just be kind. Be your own friend. Catalog some of your strengths. Smile at all the progress you’ve made. Tell yourself, “good job.” And then promise that you’re going to keep going and keep working because you know you’re worth it. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

28 Jan 20202min

You think this hasn’t happened before? Whatever it is, whatever you’re freaking out about?A crisis at the borders. Agitators riling up the youth. Excess and immorality. Rising demagogues. Distrust in institutions. A backlash against free speech and expression.It’s scary because it seems new—like things are breaking down, right? Except it’s not remotely new. Each one of those things was happening during Marcus Aurelius’s reign. They were happening during Seneca’s time. They were happening a hundred years ago. They were happening back in America while James Stockdale was locked away as a POW in the late 1960s and early 1970s. What the Stoics want us to see is the big picture. All of this has happened before, Marcus wrote to himself. It happened before and it is happening now and it will happen again. Zoom out, he says, look at this from space, not with your ear to the ground. See how small it really is. Look back through the pages of history, the Stoics urge us. You’ll find that most of the things people were worried about never came to pass. The trends peter out. The revolution loses its force. Sanity is restored. You’ll find that the things they should have been concerned about, they totally missed. You’ll find people who were so focused on the trends and the symptoms of problems that they lost opportunities to address the root causes. And most of all, you’ll find that none of us are around long enough to waste any time on worry anyway. So relax. See the big picture. Focus on what you control. Change what you can. Make a difference where you can. Let go and keep going.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

27 Jan 20202min

In each of the Ask Daily Stoic Q&A episodes, Ryan will answer questions from fans about Stoicism. You can also find these videos on the Daily Stoic YouTube channel.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

25 Jan 20208min

It’s fitting that one of the most important things you can do as a parent requires you to think about something that’s very nearly impossible for a parent to consider. It comes to us from Marcus Aurelius by way of Epictetus. As you kiss your son good night, says Epictetus, whisper to yourself, “He may be dead in the morning.” Don’t tempt fate, you say. By talking about a natural event? Is fate tempted when we speak of grain being reaped?No one wants to think about that. You want to think only good things about your kids. Damn these philosophers and their silly, academic exercises. Except that’s not what this is. Marcus wasn’t speaking flippantly. He lost nine children. Nine! Seneca, we gather, lost one early too. It should never happen, but it does. It heartbreakingly-world-wreckingly-nobody-deserves-it does. The point of thinking about this unthinkable thing is not morbidity. It has a purpose. A parent who faces the fact that they can lose a child at any moment is a parent who dares not waste a moment. A wise parent looks at the cruel world and says, “I know what you can do to my family in the future, but for the moment you’ve spared me. I will not take that for granted.” That’s what you must do—about your children, about your wealth, about peace in your nation, about the fair weather. It can all go away in a second. There’s nothing we can do about that. We can, however, drink in the present and be grateful for every waking moment. If you’re a parent looking to apply some ancient wisdom to one of the toughest jobs on the planet, you might try signing up for our email at DailyDad.com. Each morning, like DailyStoic.com, we send out an inspiring email designed to make you better, more present and more prepared. Join us now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

24 Jan 20202min

The Stoics were learners. It’s hard to escape that conclusion when you read their writings. Marcus Aurelius begins Meditations by cataloging the lessons he learned from the many people in his life, big and small. Seneca was constantly looking at other people, studying their lives and what they did well and not so well. When Epictetus said that you can’t learn what you think you already know, he was describing his own worldview as well as the worldview of his hero—Socrates—who went around constantly questioning and putting things up to the test.All of them would have agreed with Emerson’s observation that we can learn something from everyone we meet, because everyone is better than us at something. The trouble with that advice—which few would argue with—is how easily it can be inhibited by the self-righteousness that Stoicism can sometimes accidentally encourage. Right after Marcus Aurelius finishes thanking all those people in his life, what does he talk about? He talks about all the awful, stupid, mean, and frustrating folks he is going to see in the next 24 hours. Needless to say, such judgments close us off from opportunities to learn.In her beautiful book, Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar has Hadrian try to instill in a young Marcus the antidote to that egotism. He explains to Marcus that he has actively looked at the strengths of the maligned emperors who preceded him and tried to find a virtue he could take from them.“I looked for example even to those twelve Caesars so mistreated by Suetonius,” she had him write, “the clear-sightedness of Tiberius, without his harshness; the learning of Claudius, without his weakness; Nero’s taste for the arts, but stripped of all foolish vanity; the kindness of Titus, stopping short of his sentimentality; Vespasian’s thrift, but not his absurd miserliness. These princes had played their part in human affairs; it devolved upon me, to choose hereafter from among their acts what should be continued, consolidating the best things, correcting the worst, until the day when other men, either more or less qualified than I, but charged with equal responsibility, would undertake to review my acts likewise.”This is the attitude we must take with us, day to day, in whatever position of leadership or followership we occupy. It’s not enough to just learn from history or to be grateful to the explicit lessons we get from our teachers. We must keep our eyes open always, and actively look for opportunities to learn from everyone, including people we know are flawed or even evil. We must not let our own moral progress block us from learning from those further behind us on the road. Because, as Emerson said, everyone is better than us at something—even if it’s a little thing—and if we want to keep getting better, we should focus on that more than anything else.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

23 Jan 20203min

The Stoics believed in the power of ritual, particularly at the beginning and the end of the day. For them, routines and rituals were not productivity hacks, but ways of living. In a world where so much was out of our control, committing to a practice we did control was a way of establishing and reminding ourselves of our own power. It was about preparation. It was about creating peace. We recently talked to Amy Landino—who reads The Daily Stoic each morning—about her book Good Morning, Good Life. A title whose essence the Stoics would have likely agreed with. If you can win the morning, you can win the day. Amy told us that it doesn’t matter if you have an hour or only five minutes, if you’re home or on the road, if the kids have you up at the crack of dawn or you sleep in until your body’s clock naturally wakes you—there are three keys to a good morning:1. Movement — Do something to move your body. You can be ambitious and hit the gym right away. I prefer just a few simple stretches and massaging the muscles on my face. When you move your body a little, you wake up.Or, as Seneca said, "Hold fast, then, to this sound and wholesome rule of life...The body should be treated more rigorously, that it may not be disobedient to the mind.”2. Mindfulness — It's too easy to pick up the phone or turn the TV on when you don't have anything else to do. Instead of resorting to those things, start with a practice that helps you generate your own original thoughts or ideas. Meditation works for some people. I prefer stream-of-consciousness writing in a journal for 3 pages to get all the random annoyances and bad dreams off my brain so I can move forward more positively through the day.Or, as Marcus said, “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly.” And then once he got that out of the way, he was ready to go meet those folks with a smile on his face. 3. Mastery — This one is my favorite because if not for my mastery time, I wouldn't have been able to figure out how to start my own business while I still had a full-time job 10 years ago. Focus on something that you've been meaning to get around to or that you're passionate about. Have you been wanting to learn a foreign language? Start the day going through flashcards or using a training app. When you make time to master something, you aren't allowing yourself to stay stuck on the hamster wheel of the everyday.Or, as Epictetus said, paraphrasing Socrates, “One person likes tending to his farm, another to his horse; I like to daily monitor my self-improvement.”Move your body. Clear your mind. Do something to improve yourself. That’s it. You do those three things, you’re ready to have a good day...and a good life. It’s been true for two thousand years. Start tomorrow with the three M’s.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

22 Jan 20203min

We’ve talked a lot recently about the importance of not making yourself a slave to outside approval. Because it’s not something you control. Because your own standards should be so high that you already have plenty to worry about. Still, there is so much more to be said about this very human desire for external validation. Indeed, it is a timeless and universal problem. Marcus Aurelius, like us, wanted to be liked—by his imperial staff, by the Senate, by the citizens he met in the street, by history--but he also always tried to really think about why he wanted to be liked. He wanted to get his mind wrapped around it, so he knew what was driving him and he could neutralize its power. “You want praise from people who kick themselves every fifteen minutes,” he asks rhetorically in Meditations, “the approval of people who despise themselves?”It’s such a great point. Being liked seems important...for some it can seem like the most important thing in the world. Until you start to consider the people we seem to be so desperate to impress. Until you think about the silly things they are impressed by, and the amazing things they don’t “get.” Until you realize that they don’t even respect themselves. Then all of the sudden being liked feels almost...juvenile.To be clear, the point of freeing yourself from this external burden isn’t to make it easier for you to be a selfish jerk. On the contrary, it’s to free you up to do the right things for the right reasons. Not to pursue virtue for praise, but for its own sake with no regard for whether we take heat for it later. Many great decisions are not popular, many brilliant innovations (and creative people) are poorly understood. Should they change for the sake of people who kick themselves? Or don’t understand themselves?No. And neither should you. Do right—do your best—because it’s who you are. The rest doesn’t matter.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

21 Jan 20202min

We all have problems. We have an employee we can’t figure out how to motivate. We have a kid with behavioral issues. We have a job we want to leave, or a couch we want to get up a complicated flight of stairs. We have clients who ask for things that seem impossible and we have trouble fitting an exercise regimen into our busy lives.What do we do with all this? How do we handle it?We must repeat to ourselves a beautiful mantra from the writer and entrepreneur Marie Forleo: Everything is Figureoutable. Everything is Figureoutable. Everything is Figureoutable. Because it’s true. The Stoics knew it was. Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations is filled with constant reminders that if he just slowed down and put his mind to it, he could figure just about anything out. Take it action by action, he wrote, no one can stop you from that. “Are there brambles in the path?” he asked, then go around. If it’s humanly possible, he said, then know that it’s possible for you. Think about Epictetus exhorting us to put each impression—each fear or worry—up to the test. It’s the same thing. Slow down, really look at it, figure out what to do next. Nearly every problem has a solution. It’s just a fact. It might not be the solution you want, but there is a solution. In fact, that’s the essence of the idea that the obstacle is the way. Each problem presents you an opportunity to move forward, to improve. No one said this would be easy, or even that it would be fun, but it is a fact that there is always something you can do. The question is only whether you will do it or not. Are there some utterly unsolvable problems in life? Like death? Or pi? Yes, sure, but Marcus Aurelius has that figured out too. As he said, those problems mark the end of all your other problems, too. So don’t worry about that. In the meantime, get to solving what you can.Everything is figureoutable.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

20 Jan 20202min