Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Making Sense of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius - Episode 84

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

Let’s Make Sense of Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. Written nearly 2,000 years ago, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius remains one of the most profound and practical guides for self-mastery, emotional resilience, and personal growth. Originally penned as private journal entries, this timeless work invites us into the inner thoughts of a Roman Emperor who faced war, betrayal, illness, and loss—yet continuously returned to clarity, humility, and duty. At the heart of Meditations lies the Stoic philosophy, a school of thought born in ancient Greece and adopted by the Romans. Stoicism teaches that while we can’t control external events, we can control our reactions. In today’s chaotic world of uncertainty, distraction, and overstimulation, Marcus’s calm and centered voice feels more relevant than ever. Whether you’re integrating deep spiritual insights, navigating post-breakthrough emotional storms, or simply looking to become more grounded, Stoicism offers a toolkit for aligning with your highest self, even in the face of suffering. Welcome to the Makes Sense with Dr. JC Doornick Podcast: This podcast covers topics that expand human consciousness and performance. On the Makes Sense Podcast, we acknowledge that it's who you are that determines how well what you do works and that perception is a subjective and acquired taste. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at begin to change. Welcome to the uprising of the sleepwalking masses. Welcome to the Makes Sense with Dr. JC Doornick Podcast. ►Follow the Dr. JC Doornick and the Makes Sense Academy: Instagram: / drjcdoornick   Facebook:  / makessensepodcast   YouTube:  / drjcdoornick   Join us as we unpack and make sense of the challenges associated with living in a comparative reality in this fast-moving egocentric world.  MAKES SENSE PODCAST SUBSCRIBE/RATE/REVIEW & SHARE our new podcast. FOLLOW the NEW Podcast - You will find a "Follow" button top right. This will enable the podcast software to alert you when a new episode launches each week.  Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/makes-sense-with-dr-jc-doornick/id1730954168 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1WHfKWDDReMtrGFz4kkZs9?si=003780ca147c4aec Podcast Affiliates: Kwik Learning: Many people ask me where i get all these topics for almost 15 years? I have learned to read at almost 4 times faster with 10X retention from Kwik Learning. Learn how to learn and earn with Jim Kwik. Get his program at a special discount here:  https://jimkwik.com/dragon  OUR SPONSORS:  Welcome to the Makes Sense with Dr. JC Doornick Podcast: This podcast covers topics that expand human consciousness and performance. On the Makes Sense Podcast, we acknowledge that it's who you are that determines how well what you do works and that perception is a subjective and acquired taste. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at begin to change. Welcome to the uprising of the sleepwalking masses. Welcome to the Makes Sense with Dr. JC Doornick Podcast. - Makes Sense Academy: A private mastermind and psychological safe full of the Mindset, and Action steps that will help you begin to thrive. The Makes Sense Academy. https://www.skool.com/makes-sense-academy/about  - The Sati Experience: A retreat designed for the married couple that truly loves one another yet wants to take their love to that higher magical level where. Come relax, reestablish and renew your love at the Sati Experience. https://www.satiexperience.com    Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Great morning humans, great morning world. This is your boy, Dr. J.C. Dornick, and welcome to another edition of the Makes Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast. In the spirit of this discussion that we're about to get into, because I'm going to review what is like the Bible of Stoicism, and that's Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. One of the principles is this idea of allowing yourself to get uncomfortable. So I asked my daughter, I just gave her some clippers, and I said, hey, cut my hair, because my hair was looking a little bit messy.

And she says, how? What do you want me to do? She's never cut hair before. And I said, whatever you want. She said, let's take it all off. And I was like, okay. And I just gave her that. And she stopped before we took it all off.

As you can see, but I have a little bit of almost like a buzz cut. I've never had it like this before. And I've got to tell you something. I like it. Let's make sense of meditations by Marcus Aurelius. And I'm also going to be sharing the top 10 out of 488 insights in this book. my top 10 lessons to master your mind, emotions, and inner peace. A lot of people ask the question, what's the best version of this book? Because this is a book that obviously we made from all of his

journal entries. And I'll share a little bit more about that. The best version of meditations is undoubtedly the original. It's unfiltered. So there's no ambiguity in this. The only problem with that is, unfortunately, it's written in Greek. So I didn't read that one. But there's a There is the version done by Gregory Hayes in 2002. That's probably the most popular one. To pick up this book, I'll always put the links in the description. So why meditations still matters today? This is really interesting.

And that's kind of like saying, why does the Bible still matter today? Written nearly 2,000 years ago. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius remains one of the most profound and practical guides for self-mastery, emotional resilience, and personal growth. originally penned as private journal entries by Marcus Aurelius himself. This timeless work invites us into the inner thoughts of the Roman emperor who faced war,

betrayal, illness, and loss. Yet, his journal entries all ring true to this, continuously returned to clarity, humility, and the call of duty. So we always talk about the value of journaling. So you're going to get to see where that kind of began? One of the beginnings, he was using journaling to get back to center. because he had a lot of responsibility. So at the heart of meditations is the Stoic philosophy. And that's a school of thought born in ancient Greece and adopted by the Roman.

Stoicism teaches that while we can't control external events, we control our reactions. So we can't control stuff, but we can control our responses. So in today's chaotic world of uncertainty, distraction, and overstimulation, Marcus's calm and centered voice feels more relevant than ever. So it's interesting to read a book that is 2,000 years old or read words, you know, and insights that were 2,000 years old that have somehow become more relevant than ever. Whether you're integrating deep spiritual insights, navigating post-breakthrough emotional storms, or simply looking to become more grounded and living in the present moment, stoicism offers a toolkit for aligning with your highest self even in the face of suffering.

Make Sense. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast. This podcast covers topics that expand human consciousness and performance. On the Make Sense podcast, we acknowledge that it's who you are that determines how well what you do works, and that perception is a subjective and acquired taste. When you change the way that you look at things, the things that you look at begin to change. The Make Sense podcast is sponsored and primary. funded by the Make Sense Academy.

Our private community, where open and curious seekers of growth and expansion, apply the Make Sense principles and systems to move from simply going through life to growing through life. So check out the Make Sense Academy, risk-free, for less than you'll spend today on shit that you don't need. Welcome, my friends, to the uprising of the sleepwalking masses. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. Dornick podcast. So who was Marcus Aurelius?

Let's talk about the author who didn't know he was an author because he was just doing some journaling. Marcus Aurelius is said to have lived 121 to 180 CE. And for those of you that don't know what CE means, CE is known as the common era, the years just after the birth of Christ. He was a Roman emperor, military leader, philosopher, and one of the last of the so-called five good emperors of Rome. Despite ruling during plagues, wars, and political unrest, Marcus carried the burdens of the entire empire with uncommon grace, largely thanks to his devotion to what we now know as the Stoic philosophy. Meditations were not intended for publication.

So it's just imagine you have some sort of private journal in your bedroom and your mom picks it up and publishes it. He had no idea that this was going to happen. It wasn't meant for publication. It was Marcus's daily journal, meant for his reflections, a daily place to refocus and remind himself of how to stay virtuous in the face of adversity. Ironically, these intimate thoughts are now considered one of the greatest works of philosophy ever written. I want to say something on that as we are making sense of this book. There's something to be said about authenticity. If you just allow yourself to really, really journal without any intentions of it becoming something any more than just some sort of a manifestation of your thoughts, channeling your thoughts and putting them down on paper, I think what you'll see,

doing this for 18 years now, what you'll see is some really amazing stuff comes out that will then in the aftermath becomes something, maybe a book, that will be useful to others. So just allow the creative genius inside of you to channel and put it down on paper. That's what journaling can be. It doesn't have to have any intentions, right? Just let it flow. And remember that a lot of people say that the richest plot of land in the world would be the cemetery where people die with their songs in them. So journaling is a way of getting your song out. So let's talk about Stoicism back then and how it's relevant now. So the Stoics were actually founded by Zeno of Sittium, around 300 BCE, believed in living accordance with nature, practicing virtue, and achieving inner peace with

tranquility by focusing only on the things that we control. While ancient Stoicism influenced leaders like Seneca, Apectetus, and Marcus Aurelius himself, modern stoicism, as we see it now, has seen a resurgence among those seeking practical tools for emotional resilience, leadership, and conscious living. In fact, as far as my eyes can see, and this is a cool insight right now, and you could partake in this. As far as my eyes can see, those practical tools encompassed nearly most of the personal growth and self-development industry today. And that means that people like Tony Robbins and Mel Robbins, I don't know if they're related, Simon Cynic, you know, all these people out there, even Joe Dispenza, everybody that you love,

Jim Quick. These are kind of the new age versions of Seneca, Epectetus, and Marcus Aurelius. They might not be emperors, but they're kind of the people that are taking these original principles started by Zeno and reworking them. I mean, Ryan Holiday is definitely one of those people. So it's interesting to not just look back at these amazing minds back then, but say, we have some amazing minds now that are making it more relevant in the modern age, stoicism. And I love learning about it interpreted in our ways. It's a little bit of a complicated book to understand

because it was written at a different time. So today's stoicism is embraced by entrepreneurs, athletes, therapists, and spiritual seekers alike. And it provides us with a valuable lens through which we can navigate the complexities of modern life. Interesting to note about meditations, the journal holds roughly 488 entries. I looked into this and I said, how many insights and entries can we find in this book? It'd be interesting to look at that with the actual Bible as well. But there's about 488 entities containing about 300 to 400 unique insights in them. So for the sake of today's share, I don't think we have enough time to go over all of them. What I've done, I've picked my top 10 takeaways at this time, right?

That could always change for the growth-minded seeker in you. Let's jump right into that. Here are the top 10 most powerful lessons from meditations, according to the dragon. And these are the ones that resonated deeply with me, and they will resonate deeply with anyone on a path of awakening and personal evolution. So this is an interesting thing before I mentioned the top 10 to acknowledge that they'll only be relevant to an open and curious person. Otherwise, if you're in a place where you're rigid and fixed,

we reviewed Think Again by Adam Grant. And we know that humans have a tendency to have a bias to any new information. So you'd have to be open and curious when you're hearing these top 10 because they're going to ruffle feathers and they're going to challenge some of the things that you have decided to believe in. So number one, you are not your emotions. Here's a quote. You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength. So here's my take on that. Marcus here reminds us that suffering often stems not from events themselves, but from our interpretation of events.

This acknowledges things like Buddhism and in the Buddhist philosophy that we can't control the first arrow of suffering. The first arrow of suffering falls under the idea of shit happens. We don't control the shit. But we can choose not to shoot the second. The second arrow of suffering is the one we pull back and shoot ourselves in the foot with, and that is interpreted in how we respond, how we perceive and respond. So we can control how we respond to it, and it came from this.

This aligns perfectly, obviously, with the interface response system that I created and that we talk about all the time in our Make Sense Academy. That is a four-step system for actively changing the way that you look at things, so that the things that you look at change. So that's about claiming control over what? your perception and your response. So number two, release from that which you can't control. So still in the area of control here. Here's his quote, if it is not right, don't do it. If it is not true, don't say it. So here's what that means. The dichotomy of control is a foundational stoic practice

and principle that invites us to surrender to what is, because that's the part you don't control, and focus on what's truly yours to change, your thoughts, your attitude, and your response to what is. So if you can discern the difference between what is and your perception and response to it, that's a very, very big power move. Again, aligned with the interface response system, which is a strategy that enables us to change the way that we look at things. Why? So that the things that we look at can begin to change. We don't control things, my friend. We control how we look at them, interpret them, and respond to them. Number three, everything is temporary. Here's what that means. It's not forever. forever. Life, emotions, relationships are all fleeting. A lot of people don't know this. Or in the heat of

the battle when we're feeling life, emotions, relationships, and all of those things. It's very hard to be reminded that they're fleeting, but they are. This can feel very unsettling at times when we're in that heat. But it's also very freeing to acknowledge, even while you're going through it, that they are fleeting. The less that we cling, the more time we may flow. Acknowledging even our thoughts this way. Amazing minds like the late Alan Watts. I speak a lot about Alan Watts, who's just an amazing mind. He used strategies like looking at our negative thoughts as the clouds that are simply passing by in the sky. Interesting to acknowledge that these thoughts that Marcus Aurelius was having in real time, he didn't know how they were going to live on with some of these amazing minds like

Alan Watts and so many others and be manifested as what most people would interpret. as personal growth. He just said everything is temporary and why would he do that? Because he was in some tough times. He was experiencing the plague and war. So he had to acknowledge through experience and that takes patience that everything is temporary. So here's one of the most famous ones. Ryan Holiday wrote a book on this one. Four is the obstacles are the way. Here's this quote. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. In the sense, that the perception, and this is the part that we control, is that something is preventing us from going forward. He's saying it is inviting us. It's an opportunity. I love to always remind people

how mysterious it is that God and the universe have inconveniently placed everything we desire on the other side of a pile of shit. That is very, very true, unless you're not going after anything or something big. So we're talking about the fact of becoming a shit navigator because the shit is the way. The Stoic principle mirrors much of the growth-intended work we engage in today. Your triggers, wounds, and discomforts, aka the suck, aren't actually in your way. They are your way. Only certain people really embrace this. You can hear it right now and say, yeah, that makes sense.

But when the suck shows up, can you see it that way? If you can, you're going to level up massively. So they're pointing towards growth and healing, repackaged in ways to make this powerful principle more relevant for his generation, leaders like David Gaggins, I know you've heard of him, teach things like Embrace the Suck. But now you know where it came from. Thank you for repackaging it, David. Mel Robbins often says that her mess became her message.

Same thing. I like to say I was messed up and now I'm blessed up. There's no way I could be blessed up without first being messed up. In fact, how could you ever acknowledge the opposite of anything without experiencing it? You know, there is no light without dark. So it's very, very logical. If you use rationale, it makes sense. But once again, in the heat of the battle, it's tough.

Many have in fact taken this concept that we acknowledge that growth takes place out of the comfort zone to the next level by voluntarily placing themselves in discomfort. Ice plunge. It's another stoic principle, voluntary discomfort. We live in a world where many, many people voluntarily place themselves in discomfort. And now you know why? because they desire growth. So number five, live according to nature, and that's your nature. Now, this is one of the foundational principles of stoicism. So this is a big one. Marcus says, a man's worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions. So God, look at everything about

goal setting and setting value and all of those things. And then living authentically, things like that, you have to really, really get in tune with your nature. So this reminds us that nature is not just the trees and the rivers outside. It's your core essence. In the realm of plant medicine, which I speak about a lot, meditation, breathwork, and much spiritual healing, we hear people looking to get in touch with the present moment and the divine. So we see a lot of that. I speak a lot about this. This idea of learning how to celebrate the moment, being present, expressing gratitude, which is the superhighway to the present moment. These are all things that if we don't learn how to practice them because a lot of people say, eh, you know, I got a lot of stuff to do, then you'll all of a sudden

wake up and recognize that if everything you're doing has to do with something that happens in the future or the past, what's the use of that? You'll never enjoy it. If you can't enjoy it and celebrate the present moment, everything that you're trying to accomplish right now, what's the value? You won't enjoy it when it happens. So number six, practice daily death. Now, I know that sounds crazy, but this was known as Momento Mori. You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. This sounds morbid, but we know this as the mortality mentality, right? It's very, very liberating to actually accept and recognize. Remembering your mortality invites presence. So this goes back to number five. Every moment matters. Every choice

is a chance to live fully. When asked to define the secret to success in three words, the great influencer Gary Vaynerchuk said this, you're going to die. What's more powerful than that when looking at what drives success? You're going to die. None of us get out alive. It's the only guarantee, you know, death and taxes. But we spend so much time avoiding that conversation that we don't see the value in how it prompts us to live.

And remember, we had the amazing Jody Wellman on our podcast. Shout out to her and her book, You Only Die Once. And a lot of people like Jody use powerful strategies and analogies to evoke this. In her book, she's just talked to. about questioning how many Mondays you have left. If you look at the average amount of years that a human being lives right now, how many Mondays do you have left? Because if you look at that, you'll start to recognize, I better get going. So number seven, resist the pull of victimhood. This is a tough one for a lot of people. Choose not to be harmed and you won't feel harmed.

We have such a propensity to fall back into that. If I just ask the public in general how they're doing, The most common answer is going to come in the form of a complaint. So this is the tough truth, especially post-breakthrough. A lot of people have this. Marcus reminds us that there is a perception that creates our reality. There is no reality without perception. You are not a victim of your insight. You are its steward.

Do you know what steward means? He's saying that you are a steward of your insight and your perception. And what steward means is that your insight is yours to manage. If you're stewarding something, you're managing it. So your insights and your thoughts are yours to steward. This reminds us of the works of Jim Dethmer in his book, The 15 Laws of Conscious Leadership. Remember, that book was prompted and motivated by him being mentored by the Amazing

Amazing Gay Hendrix. His podcast episode is dropping soon. And in the 15 laws of conscious leadership, we learn to catch ourselves because we spend most of the day below the line, as he says, of responsibility. So we learned to catch ourselves. drifting in the state of victimhood, remembering this powerful insight and consciously choosing, only if you catch yourself, can you do this, to go back above the line and do what? Take radical responsibility for your life.

What's interesting about all of these things is they have a lot to do with responsibility. If you're not in a place, if you're not in a place where you're ready to take radical responsibility for your life, which would probably put you in a state of victimhood, none of this stuff is going to work because it all falls under this idea that nobody's coming to save you. We forget very quickly. So this is why the interface response system is so important because it puts you back into a state of consciousness where you can go back to using things like logic and rationale. Again, placing the locus of control for our responses on who?

Us. We are the steward for our responses. Number eight, don't waste time. Stop whatever you're doing for a moment and ask yourself, is this essential? That's a great question. We teach this idea of making a sorting filter and allowing everything we perceive or anything somebody offers us in life, anything we interface and interact with, pass it through a sorting filter that has questions.

And one of them could be, is this essential? Because if it's not essential, you begin to waste time. So this initiating the popular war against distraction. Man, if you can become indistractable, shout out to my buddy near Aiel, who wrote that book, you can do anything. One of our hardest challenges as humans is just simply. following through and that's because we get distracted. Is your energy going towards life where your life is meant to live or is it going towards avoiding discomfort? That's where distraction is. If you're bored or you don't

want to think about something or you want to get away from an ill feeling, you'll look to be distracted. And boy, we have a lot of things to distract ourselves. Choose only the things that are essential. One of the most impactful books that I've ever read and I'll give you the link to that. And it summarizes this was a book that a lot of people didn't read, but it's definitely one of my favorites by Jim Lour called The Power of Full Engagement. And in this book, he highlights not only in the importance of becoming efficient in practicing only high leverage activities, but unveils that we can become more efficient and productive in shorter spans when we do this. So if you can learn how to leverage yourself in short pockets of time, you'll have a lot of free time. So this is where things like the power hour and time blocking come from. Once again, thank you, Marcus.

That's where it came from. Number nine, serve a higher purpose. I love this one. What is not good for the beehive cannot be good for the bee. Marcus believed in service, not just to self, but to the whole. Living an extraordinary integrated life becomes easier when we move from me to we. Now this is an interesting one because we all know the value of service. Sometimes we do too much in serving others and not serving ourselves, but it is the manifestation

of the highest level of consciousness, and that is to serve others. If you look, the journey towards higher consciousness, we move from this idea of self-interest all the way up to the most self-actualized version of ourselves, where we really start to impact the world and find our way, and that would be the highest level of consciousness in serving others. Sounds pretty cool, no? Number 10, and the final insight, imagine if I did 400 of these. Return to the present moment.

We started off talking about that and we're coming back to it because it's probably the most important thing we can do. Otherwise, you won't enjoy anything if you can't live in the present moment. He says, confine yourself to the present. Get locked in a room with the present. Presence is power. It's where suffering dissolves and clarity returns. Spawning the obvious value in practices like yoga, breathwork, meditation.

the practice of gratitude becomes the portal and superhighway back to the now. That's why I start every day with the first two words. As soon as I come online and I go from eyes closed to eyes open, I begin every day by saying thank you. It's the first thing that I allow my brain to process, and that is gratitude. Also note, there seems to be a growing movement towards the practice of present living as we awaken more and more to the detriment of oscillation in life, right?

because oscillation refers to going back and forth from the past and the future, always skipping what's the only thing that's actually happening, and that is the now. Never being able to celebrate our achievements as we continue to move forward in life means that we will never live in the present moment. I would say that's probably one of the most important things to do is to embark on a journey and interact with life as it's actually happening. And it would require that you'd have to establish a little bit of an awakening. The interface response system would be a great tool for that.

It kind of puts everything on pause and allows you to actually look around at what's happening, not what you think's going to happen or what happened, not being affected by what happens. But living in the present moment would be the greatest gift you would ever give yourself. And if you actually took the time to look around at what's actually happening right now, you'd realize how miraculous life is. You forgot how amazing life is. Just amazing what's going on. There's just, there's no way you could acknowledge everything that's going on right now.

And you skip that because you're focused on what you'd like to see happen tomorrow. So my final thoughts on meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Reading meditations isn't just a philosophical exercise. It's the practice of evoking our soul. It grounds you. It humbles you. It reminds you that the greatest things in life don't come from avoiding pain and discomfort, but from facing them with intention and integrity.

and where do you face things in the now, in the present. It also reminds us that we, in fact, control both our perception and our responses, not the things, not the shit. So therefore, we actually do control our outcome once we step into that. So if you want better results, if you want to change things in your life, it starts with changing the way that you look at things. It begins even further behind by recognizing that you can. For anyone doing deep inner work, whether you're using plant medicine,

mindfulness, emotional healing, or maybe even just searching for greater levels of success, Marcus Aurelius offers a steady voice from across the ages that says, be still, be kind, be conscious, and then do the work. Why? Because the work is the way. I like that. Makes sense. So love and appreciate you all. I hope that you enjoy taking these little insights and maybe putting them into play. This day ahead of us is what I call the arena of play. And you get to decide, how this game is going to go today. Remember that if you learned something today, and I think you did, it's only when you give it away that it will stay. And remember, that's one of the highest levels of consciousness would be if you took whatever it is that you liked about this and you shared it

with another person. That would be the highest level of self-actualization and consciousness. If you're into that sort of thing. So I'll see you next time. Bye-bye now.