The Daily Stoic - 50 (Short) Rules For Life From The Stoics

Episode Date: September 5, 2021

Ryan Holiday defines 50 rules for life from the Stoics, gathered from their immense body of work across two thousand years. These rules functioned, then, as now, as guides to what the ancients called “the good life.” Hopefully some of them will illuminate your own path.Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWL3kHOYkWQRead the article: https://ryanholiday.net/50-short-rules-for-life-from-the-stoics/DECKED truck bed tool boxes and cargo van storage systems revolutionize organization with a heavy-duty in-vehicle storage system featuring slide out toolboxes. DECKED makes organizing, accessing, protecting, and securing everything you need so much easier. Get your DECKED Drawer System at Decked.com/STOIC and get free shipping.The Jordan Harbinger Show is one of the most interesting podcasts on the web, with guests like Kobe Bryant, Mark Manson, Eric Schmidt, and more. Listen to one of Ryan's episodes right now (1, 2), and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show today.LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. It’s the largest marketplace for job seekers in the world, and it has great search features so that you can find candidates with any hard or soft skills that you need. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit linkedin.com/STOIC to post a job for free. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow 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.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week

ahead may bring. Hi I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another weekend episode of The Daily Stoke podcast. I think a critical question that we're trying to dress here at Daily Stoke is like, what is the job of a philosopher? What does it mean to be a philosopher? An epictetus says that when the standards have been set, the work of philosophy is just this to examine and uphold those standards. He says, the work of a truly good person

is using those standards when they know them. It's pretty straightforward. As General Mattis says, no, your flat ass rules, stick to them. But of course, the Stoics weren't always so direct. You know, one of the Stoics, Chrysipus, supposedly wrote like 500 lines a day, the vast majority of which are lost. And there's no real place that the Stokes

write down their commandments. So what I wanted to do, what I do in today's episode is riff on, this is also a popular article I did, which is riff on kind of like 40 or 50 rules for life according to the Stokes. Really short ones, you can apply, you can stick to, and that will make you better. This one is awesome. I think you're really going to like this. It was really popular when you did

it on YouTube. So here are 50 short rules for life from the Stokes. And just a reminder, my new book courage is calling Fortune Favours the Bold is available for pre-order now. It would mean so much to me if you would support it. If you've gotten anything out of this podcast, anything out of the videos, anything out of my other books, anything out of the Daily Stoke email, this would be the time to help support me. Just go to DailyStoke.com slash pre-order. There's a bunch of awesome bonuses you can pick up, but here is my rules for life from the Stoics.

I've written now 12 books about Stoic philosophy. I've been lucky enough to talk about it to everyone from the NBA, to the NFL, special forces sitting US senators about how you operate in the world, how you get the best from yourself. Person who has to decide everything in new everyday that has to make choices in every situation that persons exhausted and lost and will eventually burn out.

That's why we have rules, a code of conduct. Talk about rules for life. What do you live by? What are your standards? And really that's what stoicism has been for thousands of years. And so in today's video, I wanna give you 50 stoic rules for life that if you follow

will make you better whatever you do, wherever you are, in whatever situations you face. This comes to us from epic teedas. He says it's the chief task of life which is focus on what you control. Is it up to me? Is it not up to me? If it is up to you, it gets 100%. If it's not up to me, it gets 0%. We focus on what we control because that's where our energy, effort, and emotions actually make a difference. The next one is related to the first one, which is we control how we respond to things. As EpicTidus says, we don't control what happens, but we control how we respond to things. As EpicTidus says, we don't control what happens, but we control how we respond to what happens. So by ignoring all the things that are not up to us, by refraining from regret or complaint

or blame and focusing on, this happened, what am I going to do about it? This is how we move forward, and this is what all great leaders, artists, human beings do. They focus on what they control and what the control is, how they respond to what happens in life. The next is a question from Mark's Realist. He says, ask yourself in every moment is this essential? Because the truth is most of what we do, most of what we spend time on, most of the things that other people do and spend time on are not essential. And he says, when you eliminate what's inessential,

you get the double benefit of doing the essential things better. Do I need to do it? Yes or no? And if I do need to do it, then because it is essential, I'm gonna give it everything I have. I have. Are you meditating on your mortality? I carry a coin in my pocket that says,

Memento Mori, you can leave life right now. Marks really says, life is short, don't waste time, don't focus on things that don't matter. Going through our life with a clear sense of our mortality is essential. Now you time more than money and possessions, right? You can earn more money, you can get more land, you can get more opportunities what you can get more opportunities, what you

can't get is this moment back. Seneca says the time that passes belongs to death. So don't think of death as something in the future. Think of death as something that's happening right now and everything you do. Even watching this video, you are choosing to purchase with your life. You have to remember you're a product of your habits. EpicTida says, if you want to be beautiful, make beautiful choices.

If you want to be excellent, make excellent choices, make them habitually. Day in and day out, they add up. It's easy to get upset by things, which is why the Stoics say that we have the power to have no opinion. You can just think nothing about something. If you didn't know it existed, you wouldn't have an opinion. Now that you know it exists, great. But you don't have to say it's positive, it's negative, you don't have to say it's anything.

It just is. Seeing things objectively with drawing judgments from them is really important. As Epictetus says, it's not things that upset us, it's our opinion about things we control our opinions. Well begun is half done as they say. So own the morning. If you want to have a good day, have a good morning. If you want to have a good life, have a good day. So it all comes back to how you start the day, own the morning. It's a great passage of Marcus really, where's really, it's arguing with himself about getting up at a bed in the morning and he says, look, were you meant to huddle into the covers and stay warm? He says, no, get to work, do what you got to do, do what you were put here on this earth

to do, and do it early. Seneca's rule was put the day up for review. Ask yourself, what could I have done better? Where did I fall short? Who do I want to be? Was I being that person? So every day the law is put your day up for review, evaluate yourself, interrogate yourself. That's how you get better. Seneca says we suffer more in imagination than reality and that gives us the next law, which is don't suffer imagined troubles.

The stuff that you're worried about, it'll happen or it won't. Worrying doesn't affect it, right? So Seneca says don't feel more than you have to do with that when it comes. For now focus on what's in front of you, focus on what you need to do. Don't add to your suffering by anticipating it by suffering in advance. That's only adding humanively up to more suffering. You got to see the good in people. That's an important line. Yes, the steroids were pragmatists. Yes, they were realistic. They were even a bit

pessimistic, but Marcus Aurelius famously tried to get the most out of people. He tried to see the good in them. He knew, yes, there's a certain amount of bad people out there, but he always tried to see the good in them. He knew, yes, there's a certain amount of bad people out there but he always tried to find something good in everyone he was dealing with. If you don't do this, you're gonna be miserable and unhappy. I'm not happy. Marcus really didn't want to be emperor.

So it's interesting that in meditations he gives this rule to himself. He says never be overheard complaining, not even to yourself. Complaints are for losers, complaints solve nothing, focus on what you're gonna do, be overheard complaining, not even to yourself. Complaints are for losers, complaints solve nothing, focus on what you're going to do, focus on the good in a situation, don't allow yourself to complain. Zeno gives us this rule, two ears, one mouth for a reason, always

listen more than you talk. There's always something you can do. We talked about this earlier, it's focused on the response. There's always something you can do. Some way to move forward, some little bit of progress that you can make. Zeno says well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. So start small focus on the little thing you can do in this situation. Mark really talks about envy, right? Data Roosevelt says that comparison is the thief of joy. Comparing yourself to other people is focusing on something you don't control.

It never makes you feel good. It either makes you feel egotistical or makes you feel crappy. Only focus on what you do. Don't compare yourself to other people. Hold yourself to your own standards as K did, that are higher than other people. So when you're succeeding, you focus on how much further you have to go, and when you're failing, you ask yourself, did I live up to my own standards? That's what matters. Live as if you have died and come back to life. Sennaka says that if you go to bed every night saying, my life is over, I've lived my life,

I went through it all, then when you wake up in the morning, which hopefully you will do after watching this video, it's extra. Anyone who's been to a casino knows, it's more fun when you're playing with house money. The best revenge is not to be like that, right? People are gonna be awful, people are gonna do bad things.

How do you get even? How do you prove what a good person should be like that, right? People are gonna be awful, people are gonna do bad things, how do you get even, how do you prove what a good person should be like? By being a good person, by being the opposite of those people, the best way to be the cheater, as I say, and the way that would became is to not be like one. Yes, the Stokes had high standards. Yes, they worked very hard,

but they had this rule be tolerant with others strict with yourself. Kato says, I can forgive any error but my own. It's called self-discipline. It's what you ask of yourself. What other people say or do, the mistakes they make, leave it to them. Put every single impression you have to the test, right? We have our initial reactions, the stoics say, our initial impressions, our snap judgment.

Great, maybe you're right, but you also could be wrong. So take a minute, pause between the stimulus and the response, as Victor Franco famously says, wait a second, choose who you're going to be, choose what you want to feel, choose what you want to do, don't just wanna feel, choose what you wanna do, don't just react emotionally, put every impression, every impulse to the test. You can learn something from everyone. Ralph Waldo Emerson says,

everyone I meet is better than me at something, and in that I want to learn from that, right? So focus on what you can learn from every single person even people You don't like even people you don't respect even people who suck focus on what you can learn because everyone is better Than you at something and even if they're not better than you at something you can learn From them and the cautionary tale so you can learn from everyone. We always want to be learning. That's where wisdom comes from Outcomes are not in our control want to be learning that's where wisdom comes from. How do you learn your knowledge? Outcomes are not in our control.

Process and effort is. So the stoic say, focus on effort, not outcomes. Ignore the results, focus on what's in front of you. I have to do this with my books. I want to write the best book possible. I want to try as hard as I can on the marketing. I want to do the absolute best I can. Everything after that is extra.

It's not up to me. Success is internal. Did I do what I set out to do? Everything else is irrelevant. To find what success means to you. Success should be giving your best, having impact, really trying, really pushing yourself. What other people say or do is irrelevant. Marx really says, we love ourselves, but for some reason we care about other people's

opinions more than our own. No, you have to define what success means to you, not what everyone else says is the most or what everyone else is the most impressive or what everyone else is doing, set your own standards for success. It would be much more likely to meet them. You have to find a way to love everything that happens. This is the stoic idea of a morfati. The stoics aren't resigned to what happens. It's more than that.

They embrace it. They say, this isn't something I have to do. Something I get to do. This isn't something that happened to me. It's something that happened for me. Marks really says, everything you throw on top of a fire becomes fuel for the fire. That's what the idea of a more foxy is. They embrace, they love everything that happens

because they know they can use it and they know that it's what destiny had in mind for them. [♪ Music playing in background, music with just as the way you have to lift weights to get stronger, seek out challenges, tackle hard things, push yourself. If you want to write a mighty book, Ralph Allison says choose a mighty theme. Challenge yourself, that's how you get better. Don't run away from challenges, run towards challenges. Don't follow the mob. Cresciipus says, why would I become a philosopher? If I'm just going to be like everyone else, if I'm going to follow the mob, no, I think for myself. It's the hardest thing in the world to think for yourself. As Mark Twain says, whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, pause and reflect, it's not that they're always

wrong. They just sometimes are and you want wanna make sure you're deciding this for yourself, not just because everyone else is saying or doing it. So again, the stokes, they're not contrarians, but they think independently and so must you think about everything for yourself. If the mob is excited about it, if the mob is beating up on someone, if the mob is caught up in a fad or a passion or a trend,

that's a good sign that you should step back, think for yourself, and do what's actually right, not just what everyone else is doing. Epic Titus says that every situation has two handles, and that's where this rule actually adapted from Thomas Jefferson comes from. He says, always grab the smooth handle. Epic Titus says, one of the handles will hold weight, the other won't. What handle are you going to grab in this situation? The one that empowers you or disempowers you. The one that makes you angry or gives you something to focus on and change.

So every situation has two handles. Which one are you going to grab? Grab the one that makes you better, that gives you something to do, that challenges you, ignore the other handle. Seneca says every person is an opportunity for kindness and that's the rule here. Every situation is an opportunity for kindness. Kindness is the key. It's what moves us forward. Never pass up an opportunity to be kind, to care, to be compassionate, to listen, to appreciate what someone is going through because that's the the truth everyone is going through something. Hey there listeners!

While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat

in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together they discuss their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this. Wherever you get your podcasts, you can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. You know, Seneca talks about how we waste our most valuable resource, which is time. Right? And I think as far as an entrepreneur, someone who runs a company, where do you find yourself wasting the most amount of time? It's in hiring people.

And that's why when we hire people here at Daily Steak or when I'm looking for researches or any kind of job, we always post on LinkedIn jobs. You can create a free job post in minutes on LinkedInjobs.com for your network. You can focus on candidates with the skills and experience you need and that they have. You screening questions to get your role

in front of only the most qualified people and then use the simple tools on LinkedIn jobs to quickly filter and prioritize who you'd like, who you'd like to interview and hire. LinkedIn jobs helps you find the candidates worth interviewing faster, more than 40 million jobs seekers visited LinkedIn in the last week.

So post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash stoic. That's LinkedIn.com slash stoic to post your job for free terms and conditions apply. You have to say no a lot. This goes back to Mark Cerelez. Is this essential? If it's not essential, what do you do? This is the rule you say no. You have to say no. When I talk to NFL teams, this is something we talk about. I say, look, everything you say yes to means you're saying no to something else. And whatever you say no to gives you more room, more time to say yes to what matters. In their case, being great at what they do.

So what are you going to say no to this year? So you can say yes to the things that matter, to the people that matter in your life as well. You can't be afraid to ask for help. I don't want you to think that the stokes are invulnerable that they're, they never show weakness. In fact, Marks really says, you're like a soldier storming a wall. If you have to weach up and have a conrad help you out, it's so what? I love this, so what? So don't be afraid to ask for help. I love the book, The Boi, The Fox, The Horse and the Mole by Charlie McAcie who I had on the Daily Stewart podcast. And he has a great line in that book. He says, asking for help

isn't giving up. It's actually refusing to give up. Don't be afraid to be vulnerable. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Dare greatly, as Brunei Brown says, be vulnerable. Ask for help. What is the path to wisdom? Senaika says it's finding one thing every day. One quote, one story, one conversation, one book, one insight. That's the idea idea you get better one thing at a time That's actually why we do the daily stoic email right every single day we sent out a free email inspired by stoicism To the largest community of stoics ever in the world almost 400,000 people get this email You can sign up at dailystoic.com slash email

But the point is you got to find something that delivers value for you every day You got to seek it out One thing that makes you better every day. That's the path to wisdom We're not in this alone to do harm to another person to allow harm to come to another person is to allow harm to come to yourself So Marcus really says in this rule with bad for the hive is bad for the bee. The way I think about this is whatever I do say, however I live, I go, what would the world look like if everyone did this? And if the answer is things would fall apart,

things would be bad, then it's something I try not to do. What's bad for others is bad for me. What's good for me should be good for others. We talked about being tolerant with others, strict with yourself. That means not judging. Seneca says the study of philosophy is about scrubbing off your flaws,

not other people's, right? Leave other people to their own mistakes. Don't judge them, especially people you don't know, especially people who are going through things that you don't know about. Seneca is right. Focus on yourself. Be strict with yourself. Don't judge other people. Leave them to their own struggle.

You have to study the lives of the greats. Seneca says, choose yourself a cato. Focus on someone who's going to make you better, as I say, in my book, The Lies of the Stilts. We study the lives of the people who went before us, so we can learn easily what they learned with great difficulty. So we can pick up where they left off so we don't have to learn by trial and error. Find some heroes, study them, learn from them, learn what to do, but not to do. That's the journey I'm on with Mark's really a Seneca epictetus. It's what I write about in Lives of the Stokes.

But the idea is, whose lives are you studying and what are you learning from that? Forgive, forgive, forgive. That's this rule. I heard a great expression that forgiveness is a gift that you give to yourself. Mark's really says, the best revenge is not to be like that. I would add to that is also to not hang on to whatever that was. You got to let go. You got to forgive. Yes, Mark really says that someone's cheating in the ring with you when you're boxing, you gotta act accordingly, but you can't hold on to grudges because they make you miserable. As we said before, find one thing a day,

but I would also add to this, make a little bit of progress every day, become one percent better every day, become 1% better every day that adds up. Zeno says, well being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. Markz really says, assemble your life action by action. No one can stop you from that. A little bit of progress every day adds up.

What is stoicism, but journaling? That's what meditation is, the journal of the most powerful man in the world. But it's not banal notes about what he had for breakfast and how he worked out. It's a conversation with himself about how to be better, how to do better, how to become, how to fight to be the person that philosophy wants and to be, as Marcus says. That's what we try to do in the day list of journal, 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living. But the point is sit down with a journal every morning.

It's spiritual windshield wipers as Julia Cameron famously said, spend some time in the morning with the journal, have a conversation with yourself. Do the evening journal too, Santa could talk about putting the day up for review. The point is have that conversation with yourself, put it down on the page, and Frank famously says that paper is more patient than people. This morning I was frustrated with something, I sat down with a journal instead of dumping on someone and it made me better. So the idea is journal every single day, like markets, you can do the daily stroke journal, you can, like Markets, you can do the Daily Stoke Journal,

you can do a blank journal, you can do it on your phone, it doesn't matter, but every day spend a few minutes with a journal. Prepare for life's setbacks. Pre-Meditashio Milorum, this comes to us from Senica, says ex-I-Word, Torture Shipwreck, be ready for them, because they're gonna happen.

And he says, the unforeseen blow lands heaviest. And by anticipating things, we take power away from them. So be prepared, be ready, think unpleasant thoughts. So you can be pleasantly surprised if they don't happen, rather than unpleasantly surprised when they do happen. That's what Seneca says. He said, the only unacceptable excuse is I did not think that could happen. One of the really beautiful things in meditations is all the observations Marcus makes about nature,

the flecks of foam on a boar's mouth, the way olives fall right from the tree, the way that wheat bends low under its own weight, the furrowed brow of the lion. He found beauty in the mundane, in the everyday life. He talks about the way that bread cracks open in the lion. You know, he found beauty in the mundane in the everyday life. He talks about the way that bread cracks open in the oven. Where does this come from? Why does it happen? Life can be dark, life can be frustrating, it can break your heart. So if you focus on the good in finding beauty everywhere and seeing with the poet's eye, you'll find beauty everywhere. You'll always have something that makes you smile. We talked about how it's bad for the hive,

it's bad for the bee. Another way of expressing this is this rule, which is to do wrong to someone else's, to do wrong to yourself. We're all brothers, we're all one, we're all connected. To hurt someone else is to hurt yourself, right? We do good because it's the right thing, but also because it's good for us.

Robert Green once said to me, there's two types of time in life. Alive time, dead time. It's just what are you going to choose? You're going to live this moment, you're going to kill time, you know, waste time, you're going to let that time die. A stoic always chooses a lifetime. They focus on what they control, they focus on how they respond, they know that life is short so they live every moment, they use every moment put before them, because they know that the next one

cannot be taken for granted. Associate with people who make you better, you become like your friends, we are a reflection of our surroundings. The Stoics sought out people that made them better. In fact, Seneca's conversation with Lucilius, who he writes to and letters from Stoic, is about him associating with someone who made him better, spend time with people who make you better, I saw great expression the other day. You can't change your friends, but you can change your friends.

Look, this is a time of heightened political correctness of sensitivity of trigger warnings and microaggressions. The stokes would say, like, look, we don't control what other people do, we control how we respond. And that's why EpicTitus reminds us that when we are offended, we are complicit in the response. It takes two to tango. Yes, they said it, but you decide that it's rude.

You decide that it was mean. You decide that you've been harmed. Choose not to feel harmed. By a remark, Mark just really says, and then you won't feel harmed. [♪ Music playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in understand that it's not in your control and that what goes up must come down. You possess nothing in this life. You have to understand this. All our possessions are ours in trust only. Epic Titus is robbed of a silver lamp. He says, you can only lose what you have. In the next day, he replaces it with a cheaper lamp. We don't possess

our precious possessions. We don't possess our precious possessions. We don't possess our loved ones. There are as far as long as we have them. And they go away. You don't possess anything. Realize that everything you own is in trust and act accordingly. I think about this with my farm. I heard a great expression.

You don't own your house. You don't own your farm. I don't own mine. The bank just lets me make payments on it. It's not mine, but I can enjoy it while I have it. Seneca says, I at least am not a hindrance to myself, meaning I don't make my problems worse by bemoaning them. Talked about complaining, not only is complaining ineffective, it makes you miserable.

It poisons the room, poisons the atmosphere. It's a cancer. Don't make your troubles worse by complaining about how bad they are, how unfair they are, how not your fault they are, how impossible they are to overcome, focus on what you control, focus on the good in them, that's plenty.

What goes up must come down. As we said, Marx really says, remember to accept it without arrogance to let it go within difference. That's the rule. Accept the good things while they're there. Accept the bad things while they're there. None of them change who you are and what you can do. You want to be good and gracious and resilient and success. You want to be good and gracious and resilience in failure. You want to be humble when you're on high.

You want to be humble when life has humbled you. Be who you are. Be the even keel. Don't let your circumstances change you. High or low. All of it is irrelevant to who you are. Don't identify with success or failure. Focus on who you are and what you control.

The four virtues of Stoicism, I carry a coin in my pocket that says this courage, temperance, justice, wisdom, there is no situation so good, so bad, so strange, so ordinary that it does not demand these four virtues from us, act always with courage, act always with moderation, act always in light of act always with moderation, act always in light of fairness and justice and honesty. And of course, you need wisdom to know how and when to do those three other things. Those are the four virtues of stoicism. Then the last three, I actually have tattooed on my body that this important to me, the obstacle

is the way. There's no problem so bad that there's not something you can't do because of it. You can't grow because of it. You can't learn because of it. That it doesn't open some opportunity that otherwise wouldn't have been there. When God shuts a door, He opens a window, right? What are you going to do because of this? What's the opportunity inside the obstacle? Ego is the enemy. Errogance always makes things worse. Ego is the enemy. Errogance always makes things worse. Ego never makes things better. The humble, the open-minded, the willing to learn.

Don't be above or beneath anything. Be who you are. Be confident, of course. But believe in yourself because there's evidence, not because you think you're better than everyone else Stillness is the key the secret to charging ahead is slowing down Seeing things clearly my best work never comes what I'm doing 50 things at the same time Mark's really talks about how we want to be the rock that the waves are crashing over and eventually fall still around

Can you tune out what's happening outside? Can you tune out the crowd? Can you hit the game winning shock? Can you focus on what you need to focus on? Can you see things clearly without the bias and the immediacy of the moment? That's why stillness is so important. That's why the Stokes talk about it over and over again and why it's such an important rule of life. I'll leave you with one last rule,

the most important rule in all of Stoicism, which is that you don't talk about your philosophy, epithetias, you embody it. I have a print on my wall right there from Arches Relias, he says, waste no more time arguing what a good man is like, just be one. All these rules are well and good as far as they go, but what matters is if you live them,

if you apply them day to day, they're simple. I know that, but they're not easy, and I know that too. It's hard to apply them, but every day, as we said, you want to make a little bit of progress, get a little bit better at living these ideas. That's the purpose of stoicism. Hey, it's Ryan. If you want to take your study of stoicism to the next level, I want to invite you to join us over at Daily Stoic Life.

We have daily conversations about the podcast episodes, about the Daily Email. We actually do a special weekend set of emails for everyone. You get all our daily stoic courses and challenges totally for free. That's hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our new year, new you challenge, which we're going to launch in January. You get a special cloth bound edition of the best of meditations that we've done. You get a bunch of cool stuff. It's an awesome community. I've loved being a part of it. I've loved getting to meet everyone who's trying to take their study of stosism to

the next level. Love to have you join us. Check us out at DailyStokeLife.com. We'd love to have you and join us on this digital stowa that we uh that we've staked out together and get better every day. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.