The Daily Stoic - Are You Willing To Be Taught? | 11 Stoic Books That Will Improve Your Life

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

Wisdom isn’t just what you seek out. In fact, much of the most important wisdom we learn in life seeks us out. The piece of unsolicited advice from someone who has been in our position. The painful consequences of a bad decision that become undeniably clear. The feedback from the audience or the customer after all those years of work.Epictetus said we can’t learn that which we think we already know. Zeno reminds us that conceit is the impediment to growth and change. If you’re not willing to be taught, you cannot learn.-And in today's Daily Stoic video excerpt, Ryan shares 11 Stoic Books That Will Improve Your Life. But what if you wanted to go deeper? What if you wanted to read commentary and biographies on the practitioners? How did the philosophy develop over the years? What do the critics have to say? How did Stoicism inspire Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy? Or maybe you want to find a fiction book that is inspired by Stoicism? Or just a simple introductory text for beginners? In this video excerpt Ryan Holiday talks about some of the essential books that you should read about Stoic philosophy.✉️ 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.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy. Are you willing to be taught? Wisdom isn't just what you seek out. In fact, much of the most important wisdom we learn in life seeks us out.

The piece of unsolicited advice from someone who's been in our position, the painful consequences of a bad decision that become undeniably clear, the feedback from the audience or the customer after all those years of work. The question, as we talked about in our recent daily still episode, is whether you're willing to be taught. Life is constantly speaking to you. The world is always trying to teach you, but do you hear it? Are you open to it?

Epic T2 said that we cannot learn that which we think we already know. Zeno reminds us that conceit is the impediment to growth and change. If you're not willing to be taught, you cannot learn. In this regard, let us take Marcus Aurelius' our model, an example, that he loved to read and study was only a part of what made him great. Marcus was willing not just to respect the unique position of being emperor in waiting to Antoninus, but also willingly showed up to class for the next two decades. It's incredible. No one had the power to force him to submit to that, to be open, to be

taught and tutored. That was something he chose. Will you choose the same? Are you willing to be taught? Let's hope so. I told this story before, but the first Airbnb I stayed in was 15 years ago. I was looking for places to live when I wanted to be a writer and we stayed at this house, I think outside Phoenix. And then when I bought my first house here in Austin, I would rent it out when South by Southwest or F-1 or all these events. My wife and I would go out of town

and we'd rent it and it helped pay for the mortgage and it supported me while I was a writer. You've probably had the same experience. You stayed in an Airbnb and thought this is doable. Maybe I could rent my place on Airbnb and it's really that simple. You can start with a spare room or you can rent your whole place when you're away. You could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it. Maybe you set up a home office during the pandemic and now you don't need it because you're back at work. Maybe you're traveling to see friends and family for the holidays. While your way, your home could be an Airbnb. Whether you could use extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun,

your home could be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. Hey Canada, ever wish that managing your money could be a whole lot easier and way less stressful? That's why Coho is created. The financial app that's going to revolutionize the way you handle your hard-earned cash and help you save even more. Coho is a company rooted in the belief that better financial solutions for all Canadians exist.

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Again, sign up for your free trial by downloading the Coho app and receive 20 bucks off when you make your first purchase of $20 or more using the code DailyStoic20. And Seneca says that only those who make time for philosophy are truly alive, they annex all the wisdom of the past into their own life. My job is to read books. That's one of the perks of being a writer is you can't write without reading. Stokes would say also though you can't be wise, you can't have a good life, if you don't read from the greatest works ever written. That's why I like reading, I like learning from the experiences of others. And I've been reading every day for as long as I've been able to read and that's what's made me successful. It's also made me happy. It's made me a better human being. I culminated in a couple

years ago. I opened my own bookstore. In today's episode, I want to talk to you about some of my favorite books, books that have changed my life, books that I think you absolutely need to read, and that will make you healthier, wealthier, wiser, and many many other things let's get into it. This is not only one of the greatest books ever in. It's maybe the only one of its kind. It's written by the most powerful man in the world who has no intention of publication. It would probably be mortified that his thoughts on everything from losing his temper to his fear of death would ever be known to people. It's a person who had enormous wealth, enormous fame, and yet he's talking to himself about justice, self-discipline, wisdom, and courage.

And the writing is so beautiful, so specific, and yet so universal at the same time, that there's never been a book like it before and they'll probably never be a book like it again. Talking about Marcus Aurelius' meditations, if you haven't read it, you must. They didn't think the guy that wrote this book was important enough to have a name. I mean that his name literally means acquired one. One of the greatest works of philosophy ever created, a work that inspires Marcus at really is the Emperor of Rome, that inspires POWs and Vietnam 2,000 years later as they go through isolation and torture and loneliness.

These are the discourses, meaning that it wasn't written down, it was recorded by a student of the one and only epic teedists. His name basically means slave. And these discourses about how we manage to be good in a world that's so bad. How we seize what we control when so much is outside of our control. How we find freedom, happiness, and peace, confidence. It's all right here in the writings of epic teedis. Marcus Relius loved it. James Stockdale loved it.

In fact, as he parachuted down down in Divietn-Om, he said, I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of epic teedis. You haven't read this book, you absolutely should. It's totally life-changing. This is a book that you can tell when I read it for the first time, I was struck by a few things. In fact, I think it's impossible to read this book

and not be struck by its brilliance. It's written from a very real place. This is written by one of the most famous Romans of all time. As he's near the end of his life, he was the advisor to the Emperor. He probably knows that he's a marked man that the Emperor is soon going to kill him. He's been studying philosophy his whole life, and he has this friend who's in a prominent position of powers, a governor of a Roman province. And he wants to write some advice to that guy. They have this exchange back and forth

where they're writing these letters to each other about life, about the world, about how to be better, about how to deal with all the things that make us uniquely human, the things we struggle with, what it means to die, where to find happiness, where to find peace, how to avoid the traps that other people fall into. I'm talking about Seneca. This is not actually what Seneca looked like, long story, but Seneca writes these letters,

his famous letters, to his friend Lucilius. And I think it's one of the most incredible books written about life, about success, about failure, about learning. And ultimately, he defines philosophy. I think this is great. He says, how do you know you're making progress with this philosophy? He says, I know because I've begun

to be a better friend to myself. So read Settica's letters. It's amazing. The guy that wrote this book knew a thing about hardships. He's exiled four times. He lives in a brutal time to be alive. He's persecuted by tyrants.

He saw some of the worst things that people do to each other. And so when he says that we should disdain hardships, this is Musonius Rufus, known as the Roman Socrates, when he says that we should disdain hardships, he's not saying that we should avoid them, should run away from them.

He's saying that we should look at them with a sneer or a smirk in the sense that we're better than them, that we're challenged by them, but we don't shy away from this challenge. One of Musoneus' rufus' greatest students was Epictetus, who would go on to shape Marcus Rilius. One of his great lines, he said, if you accomplish something good with hard work, the work passes quickly, but the good in derives. And then he says, though, if you do something shameful and pursuit of pleasure, you take the easy way out, right? The result doesn't last long, but the shame in derives.

And most of all, he said, be earn respective others by earning the respect of ourselves, by disdaining hardships, by conquering them, by doing the hard work. And that in this little hardships, by conquering them, by doing the hard work, and that in this little book, which has only recently been re-translated, you'll learn all about the teachings of one who sonious, rufus, the Roman Socrates, and how this great thinker shaped epictetus, who in turn has been shaping people for thousands of years since. The author of this book says that everything can be taken from us.

And in fact, everything was taken from home. His livelihood, his work, the original manuscript of this book is lost. He loses his entire family in the Holocaust. And nearly loses his own life. In man's search for meaning, Victor Frankl says, everything can be taken from us, but our ability to choose our attitude in any set of circumstances to make our own way.

This is the essence of Stoicism that we don't control what happens to us. Even something as cruel and awful as the events in the 20th century. We choose how we respond to it. Suffering is inevitable. We also have the ability to find meaning in suffering, to grow from the suffering. This is one of the most beautiful and inspiring books ever written. There's reasons so millions and millions of copies. If you haven't read Victor Frankl's Man Search for Meaning, do absolutely shit.

My aunt gave me a copy when I graduated from high school. I've read many times since. There's reasons so millions and millions of copies. If you haven't read, if your Frankl's mans are for me and you absolutely should. My aunt gave me a copy when I graduated from high school. I've read many times since one of my absolute favorite books. You have to read it. This book has a weird title. It's a word you wouldn't recognize. It's a word you don't immediately know how to pronounce. And it translates in a kind of a strange context,

but basically it means a defensive weapon. It means at hand. I'm talking about Epic Titus' Incaridian, the handbook, which was seen as a defensive weapon against adversity and difficulty in the blows of fate. This is something that Epic Titus would of course know himself quite well. Epic Titus born a slave.

He enters incredible adversity and difficulty. He's tortured. He walks with a limp his whole life. He serves in the corrupt, decadent court of Nero and then is eventually exiled. But from all this difficulty and adversity, Epictetus cultivates a life of resilience and strength, and fortitude and honor. This is a new translation by Robin Waterfield.

It's got all this stuff in here. If you haven't read Epictetus, if you're doing yourself a disservice, you're not as strong or as well-armed as you could be. You must read this book. This is a short little pamphlet-looking thing. I get that. Maybe it doesn't seem like it could be one of the greatest philosophical works ever written, but it is.

Obviously, the Stoics wrote for a long time about adversity and difficulty. We take them at their word. What's incredible about this book is that it's written by a fighter pilot who shot down over Vietnam. And he'd studied the Stoics, he studies Epicetus most of all. And as he is parachuting down, knowing it's going to be taken prisoner, knowing that he very well could die. This man says to himself, I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epicetus. What he's doing that is testing the doctrines of epictetus in the laboratory of human

experience. James Stockdale spends seven plus years in what now is called the Hanoi Hilton. He's locked in solitary confinement. He's clapped in irons as epictetus was. He grievously injures his leg, never fully regaining the use of it, as epictetus did. He's tortured as Epictetus was. And yet, all the time he's focusing on what Epictetus talked about, that there are some things that are up to us, some things that are not up to us.

That apodium and imprison is each a place Epictetus says, and Stockdale is fond of quoting. He says, in any of these situations good or bad, we have a certain freedom of choice. And what we do with that choice, Who will we be with that choice? This book by James Bond, Stockdale, Medal of Honor recipient, close on to be an admiral. He's this heroic figure who comforts the other prisoners, who helps steal their will

and make them determine and strong. It's one of the great books called Courage Under Fire. And really what it is is an exploration of the Stoics and one of the most difficult circumstances you could possibly imagine and that's why it's worth this very short, very brief, very life-changing read. This guy said that basically almost all the study of ancient philosophy gets it wrong. That we're thinking about, you know, the ideas we're thinking about, the writing, we're thinking about the theory, when in fact what philosophy was

was a series of spiritual exercises. Notes, discussions with the self, right? Talking to the self about how to solve the problems of life. This is Pierre Hadovi wrote this great book on the Meditations of Mark's Realist, called Inter Citadel, and he wrote this other book called Philosophy as a Way of Life, which is really drilling down on some of the ideas in this book.

This is actually one of my favorite books about Marx's Relias. He's saying that when Marx is writing meditations, he's not thinking of you and I at all, that Marx isn't trying to explain all the ideas or the insights of Stoke Philosophy. He's trying to work on the very specific parts of Stoke Philosophy that he is dealing with.

So people would say that Marx really has repeats himself too much in meditations, or that he's depressive, or that he's hard on himself. He's hard on himself about the specific things that he's struggling with. And so he had to reframe and re-imagines meditations as a set of spiritual exercises, philosophy, as a way of life. Marx really wasn't making philosophy for you. He was

philosophizing to himself. And I think these are two important still books that I want to read. It really should have been an incomprehensible light, totally foreign way of thinking of the most powerful man in the world. A head of an enormous army living two thousand years ago, totally different time with totally different customs. How did he go through the world? What was his perspective on life? It sort of baffles us. And yet, when you read Marcus Reelis,

you find that there's something very relatable, very human about all of it. Despite all the pressures and temptations and everything that he faced, he had a really unique world view. He thought about things in a way that was both peculiar and unique to his extraordinary circumstances and that also incredibly applicable for all of us.

That's why I love this book by Donald Roberts and how to think like a Roman Emperor. It's a biography of Marx-Relius and Meditations, but really it's trying to put ourselves in the shoes of this guy, a guy who's worshipped as a god in his own life. You see statues of him all around. He has incredible power, incredible responsibilities. He's trying to a god in his own life. He's statues of him all around. He has incredible power, incredible responsibility. He's trying to stay sane in the midst of all that and a pandemic

and corruption, decay, betrayal, warfare, floods. It's just one thing after another from Arcus, and he survives through it. He's great inside of it, and that's the idea in this book. The Stoeck Philosophy of Marx's Released by Donald Robinson. I've interviewed him before, he's a great guy, and he's really thoughtful, and you can tell really loves the subject of the book, so if you're looking to read a book on Stoke Philosophy, definitely recommend this one. The problem with most philosophy books, that this one I think is a little bit different then, is that they focus on what the philosophers said, what they thought. This is of course all very interesting and can be important, but what really matters is

what the philosophers did, who they were, how the ideas were applied to their life. Actually, the Stokes talk about not having much respect for the so-called pen and ink philosophers, just the writers. They were interested in the doers, how they lived up to the ideals. And some of the Stoics did a great job. They would get Marcus Reelys, he's not corrupted by absolute power. He would get Epictetus surviving

slavery and exile and torture. And then there's Stoics like Cicero or Seneca, who wrote very beautifully about the ideas, but then failed to live up to them. And that's the premise of lives of the Stoics, the art of living from Xeno to Mark's Realist, which I happen to know the author of. But as I put together this book,

what I was thinking about is really that question. How and when did their actions speak louder than their words? What can we learn from their examples and not just their ideas? I want to give you my all-time favorite quote from Seneca, and I actually, I opened my book, The Daily Stair of Witton. Of all people, only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy. Only they truly live, not satisfied merely to keep good watch over their own days.

They annex every age into their own. All the harvest of the past is added to their store, only an in great would fail to see that these great architects of venerable thoughts were born for us and have designed the way of life for us. Only those who made time for philosophy are truly alive. That's what Sena Kassan is saying. We access all of the wisdom of the past by reading, so if you're not reading, what are you doing? You're wasting your time and you're wasting your life. Every day I send out one stoic inspired email totally for free, almost a million people

all over the world. If you want to take your stoicism journey to the next level, go with love for you to subscribe. It's totally for free. You can unsubscribe at any time. There's no spam. Just go to daily stoic.com slash email. I'm going to see you there. 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. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it.

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