The Daily Stoic - It Asks This Of You

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

No one ever became excellent by chance, the Stoics said…so if you want to be courageous and disciplined and ethical, you gotta do the work.📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work📚 The Four Stoic Virtues: Justice, Temperance, Wisdom, Courage, are timeless keys to living your best life. Pre-order the Limited Edition Stoic Virtues Series Today! | https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/stoic-virtues🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to The Daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Welcome to The Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom.

For more, visit DailyStoic.com. It asks this of you. The benefits are clear. Resilience and toughness and clarity and productivity, freedom from disturbances, from following the crowd, from impulses and urges. Stoicism, it offers a lot. And that's why it's popular today, to be sure. And that's why it's been the, to be sure. And that's why it's been the secret weapon

of impressive people for centuries. And of course, we talk about all those things here at Daily Stoic. These are the things that make for viral videos and cool quotes. And they may be what attracted you to Stoicism in the first place. But you need to know that Stoicism is more

than just Marks Relius' morning routine. There's more to Stoicism is more than just Marcus Aurelius' morning routine. There's more to Stoicism than Seneca's cold plunges or all the practical advice he wrote to his friend, Lucilius. Because while Stoicism offers a lot, it also asks a lot of us. In fact, it demands a lot. Thrasya and Cato and Helvidius gave their lives in commitment to the ethical ideals of this philosophy. Musonius and Agrippinus and Rutilius were all exiled for their commitment. Marcus Aurelius writes more about justice than he does

about mental toughness. That's obviously the idea in right thing right now, but the whole Stoic virtue series, courage and discipline and justice and wisdom, they're all interrelated. They demand a lot from us as well as ask a lot from us. And when Right Thing Right Now came out a year ago, I wasn't sure how it was gonna do. I wasn't sure how people were gonna receive it.

But the point of the book was to demonstrate that Stoicism isn't some philosophy about how to become great at work, although it can help you that way. It's also a philosophy about being a great human being. And yes, Stoicism offers many benefits and we talk about them here. Those benefits don't come without obligations,

an obligation to other people, to truth, the decency, to selflessness in many cases. And you can't have one without the other, just that you do the right thing, Marx really says in meditations, the rest doesn't matter. But how do you know what the right thing is? As I said, all these virtues are interrelated. You know what the right thing is, because the next virtue, that's the one I've been working on the last two years, it's the virtue of wisdom. And wisdom isn't something you just have, it's something you have to earn,

it's something you have to get, right? Wisdom is the result of work. No one became wise by chance, Seneca said. And one year anniversary of right thing right now, I am really excited to tell you that you can pre-order Wisdom Takes Work with a bunch of awesome pre-order bonuses. We've got signed numbered first editions and you can even get a full set of all four books.

That's all very exciting. It's a limited collectors edition of all four books. Courage is calling, discipline is destiny. Right thing right now. And now Wisdom Takes Work. I actually was signing them today on my flight to Salt Lake City. You can grab all that at dailysteelic.com slash steelic virtues.

I'll link to that on the landing page, which you can also find at dailysteelic.com slash pre-order. I'll link to all this. Anyways, it's all very exciting. I can't wait for you to read the book. It's gonna come out this fall. I've been working on this series now for six years and I'm super proud of it. And I've been so honored to hear from all of you who've read the books and I've been working on this series now for six years and I'm super proud of it.

And I've been so honored to hear from all of you who've read the books and I've gotten so much better for writing it. And that's why I'm excited to bring wisdom takes work out into the world and this four box set, which completes the whole series. Grab all that at dailystoic.com slash pre-order. If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

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