The Daily Stoic - The Daily Stoic Wrapped 2024 | Timeless Wisdom, Lessons, and Reminders

Episode Date: December 21, 2024

In honor of Spotify Wrapped releasing just a few days ago, we’re excited to share The Daily Stoic Wrapped 2024 — unforgettable messages and highlights from our top podcast episodes, YouTube videos, and Daily Stoic meditations. Thank you to everyone who has tuned in to The Daily Stoic Podcast throughout the year!The Daily Stoic New Year, New You Challenge is 3 weeks of ALL-NEW, actionable challenges, presented in an email per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy, to help you create a better life, and a new you in 2025. Why 3 weeks? Because it takes human beings 21 days to build new habits and skills, to create the muscle memory of making beautiful choices each and every day.Head over to dailystoic.com/challenge today to sign up.🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch Dr. Michael Gervais’ FULL interview and other 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. So for this tour I was just doing in Europe, we had I think four days in London and I was with my kids, my wife and my in-laws. So we knew we didn't want to stay in a hotel. We'd spend a fortune. We'd be cramped. So we booked an Airbnb and it was awesome. As it happens, the Airbnb we stayed in was like this super historic building. I think it was where like the first meeting of the Red Cross or the Salvation Army ever was. It was awesome. That's why I love staying in Airbnbs.

To stay in a cool place, you get a sense of what the place is actually like. You're coming home to your house, not to the lobby of a hotel every night. It just made it easier to coordinate everything and get a sense of what the city is like. When I spent last summer in LA, we used an Airbnb also. So you may have read something that I wrote while staying in an Airbnb. Airbnb has the flexibility in size and location that work for your family and you can always find awesome stuff. You click on guest favorites to narrow your search down. Travel is always stressful. It's always hard to be away from home, but if you're gonna do it, do it right. And that's why you should check out Airbnb.

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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. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. If the audio sounds different at all, that's because I'm not in the studio.

I am in a hotel room in Orlando. This is my third day trip to Florida in eight days. It's been nice because I've been working, so I've had some gigs and the timings worked out that I got to leave in the morning, do the thing, come back at night. The flights lined up perfectly in Miami and then Orlando. So I got to send my kids to school this morning and then hop over here. So that was good, but I'm a little run down. It's a little busy.

And I love to run when I travel. Orlando is not a good running city, I will say. I just had to do multiple laps around the Marriott Convention Center. But I got it done and I went and I gave a talk to a nice group of dentists. And now I got to record this podcast intro. I'm gonna go have dinner and then head to the airport.

But it's been a busy year. I don't know how it's been for you, but it's been a busy year, and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And one of the ways I know that the year is winding down is I get my Spotify rap list, you know? And it's funny, actually, I was just reading this article about this politician on the East Coast who got in trouble

because he edited his to be all Bruce Springsteen songs. And then they said, well, maybe you're not really a Bruce Springsteen fan. And he said, no, no, no, I just, I share my Spotify account with my kids. And then he showed the real one and I very much related because my kids totally ruined my Spotify graph. I listened to it on the plane ride here.

And then I had to keep deleting songs from it because I didn't want to listen to nerdcore songs that my son likes about video games. And my Spotify rep, like I was saying, got wrecked by my kids, but not totally. There was a lot of good stuff in there. I saw Megadeth this year, so I kind of got back into them. Saw Judas Priest, got back into them.

There's Iron Maiden on there, obviously. Listen to a little Jackie Green, who I've loved for years. Like everyone else, Noah Khan in the playlist a lot this year. The new Bon Iver album was really good, so I listened to that a bunch of times. It's like a little EP. I think we wrote a Daily Stoke email about that.

I don't know if it's come yet. There's a song by Sloppy Jane with Phoebe Bridgers called Claw Machine. I just wrote a Daily Stoke email about that. I don't know if it's come yet. There's a song by Sloppy Jane with Phoebe Bridgers called Claw Machine. I just wrote a Daily Stoke email about that. So that's running in a few days. You might've noticed a lot of times there'll be song titles, song lyrics, cause I'll just be listening to music.

I'll be, oh, that's a good email. I'll just take a screenshot of the lyrics on Spotify or whatever. As far as podcast goes, you know, I listened to Ezra Klein, I love him. Listen to Pete Holmes on my last flight to Florida. He had a great episode with Rob Riggle that I liked. He and I have a running gag, we text each other.

I think it's so weird now that at hotels, instead of giving those little shampoo bottles, it's like a giant community one, which I just find disgusting. So every time, because we're both on the road a lot, we send each other pictures of this, and I don't even know how that's possibly acceptable from a sanitary perspective. I listened to Marc Maron a lot. He's the GOAT, obviously, of podcasts. I like Daniel Tosh's podcast. That came out this year. I've listened to that a lot. He's really good.

I listen to a lot of Greaking Out, which is this podcast my son likes. So that's, like, the one I listen to the most. I think we listen to all 10 seasons more than once. And we have him coming up on the podcast soon. So, oh, Lizzie McAlpine. I like her. The new Nathaniel Raycliffe album is good. The new Airborne Toxic Event album is good.

Also, that guy, Mickle Jolette, he wrote a really good memoir called Hollywood Park. We carry it in the bookstore. So that's my Spotify rap for you. If you want to hear my actual Spotify rap, hold on, because we do a bonus with my books when they come out. And when the Wisdom book comes out, you'll get a good taste of my Spotify rap, because I draw from it to show you a playlist of songs

I listened to when I wrote the book. So that's forthcoming. But anyways, every year, Spotify rap comes out, it's your top songs, podcasts, whatever. We thought it'd be fun if we did a Daily Stoic version of that, what are the best moments, the most listened to moments, the most popular, the most commented, most emailed stuff

from Daily Stoic in 2024. I'm so honored that, you know, tens of millions of people listen to the Daily Stoic podcasts over the course of a year. Maybe you listen to the interview episodes, maybe you listen to the meditations or the Q&A episodes, whatever it is, I love it, it's so cool. The stoics obviously could never have imagined

something like this, but here we are, able to beam stoicism all over the world. So in today's episode, I'm gonna be bringing you some chunks, some best of chunks of the year that I think you're really going to like. Speaking of best of, if you haven't signed up for the New Year New You yet, I would love to see you in there at the Daily Stoic New Year New You Challenge

starts on January 1st. It's gonna be thousands of stoics all over the world doing 21 days of stoic-inspired challenges. You can sign up at DailyStoic.com slash challenge. But I'll bring you, starting, I wanna bring you a section from I think our most popular episode of the year, Dr. Michael Gervais, who I've known for 10 plus years. I think I've known him since the obstacles away came out.

He was formerly a high performance psychologist with the Seattle Seahawks, but he's worked with a bunch of different teams, bunch of amazing athletes, top CEOs, Olympic medalists, musicians. Actually, I found out a couple guests we've had, he's their psychologist. They let me know, he would never say that. There's obviously a lot of people that claim to be performance coaches, but top performers

definitely use this guy. He has an awesome podcast called Finding Mastery, and he came out to the Daily Stoic podcast, did a great little chat. So I'll bring you a chunk of that. The Stoics had this great concept they call theirs, there's there's things that are up to us. And there's things that are not up to us. Basically, there's kind of this middle category of what they call preferred indifference, not indifference ENCE, but indifference, like ENTS, right? Like, if you work really hard on a book, it's the best

thing you've ever done. And you're so proud of it. And if I asked you, do you want it to sell a million copies or zero copies, right? Well, the Stokes would say it's not fully in your control. So you should be indifferent. But you obviously have a preference, right? Yeah, right. Would you would you prefer to be born really tall or really short? You have a preference, right? Would you rather tall or really short? You have a preference, right? Would you rather be poor or rich?

You have a preference, right? Now, the Stoic would say, you should be able to work with either, right? And it neither says anything about you as a person, but preference, right? And so as long as that preference doesn't fundamentally change who you are or make you vulnerable to being unhappy. If you don't get

that thing, it's I think, okay to have a preference. Yeah, preferences are cool. Yeah. And I think if you see it as a preference, then it's great. But the problem is if you see it as a necessity, or you see it as a just reward, like that was my other thing when I was thinking about Mark's has this line in meditation where he says, he says, stop asking for the third thing. So he says, you've done something good and someone has benefited from it. He says, stop asking for the third thing.

And he says, the third thing is gratitude, recognition, appreciation, compensation, whatever. Like different situations demand different, provoke from us a desire for a different third thing. But I like the idea of like, do the thing so it lands, up to you it's in your control, and then not needing that third thing. That's a pure place to come from.

It's a little bit like the Zen insight about the two arrows, the second arrow. So the first arrow, the first arrow that shot is something that happens. Like it's something outside of you, it happens. And maybe you're crossing, you know, your nice little street here and somebody hits you. Right, so that's the first arrow.

It's an arrow you get hit with, not an arrow you're shooting. That's right, yeah. And the second arrow is the one you shoot. And it's your, it is your critical or judgmental or hostile or whatever interpretation. So the second arrow is the one you shoot. The first arrow is the one that happens to you, and the second arrow is the one you shoot.

So the second arrow is suffering. The first arrow might be pain. And then the second arrow is suffering. So be careful of the second arrow is the thought. And if you square those two insights with the Stoics, it's like you're in control how you shoot the second arrow, whether you shoot it or not. And so I think it's a pretty cool way of thinking about it.

Actually, the Stoic sort of explanation that I knew it, but it was funny. I saw it when I when I spoke to the pirates, they had this on the wall. You know, you go into the second arrow, not the second arrow, the Stoic line. You know, you go into the- The second era, not the second era. No, the stoic line. You know, you go into like locker rooms and sometimes like it's all cliches come from something at some point, right? And a lot of these unattributed quotes,

actually there is an attribution at some point. So they had it on the wall as just like a line, a commandment inside their organization. They didn't know who said it, but it actually comes from Epictetus. He says, it's not things that upset us, it's our judgment of things. So of course the first arrow does hurt,

but if you tell yourself, it's a metaphorical arrow, right? So it's the telling yourself you've been screwed over, that you've been singled out, that your life is over. You know, it's the story you tell yourself about that thing. That's what the second arrow is. That's right. And I think one of the deepest, most rewarding states, continued states that you can get into is a love affair with the unfolding present moment, a love affair with experience.

And I learned that from a mentor friend, John Kabat-Zinn, the idea that- Wherever you go, there you are. Yeah, yeah. Like he's such a rich, amazing human. But the idea is, do you have a love affair with the present moment, with experience of self? And if you could fall in love

with the unfolding, unpredictable, unknown moment, as opposed to be anxious, protection, try to control stuff Just be in love with showing up and experiencing this moment It's an amazingly powerful way to go through life. You end up being in life Yeah, rather than trying to calculate how to achieve or you know work for it from an ambitious standpoint and so and that does not mean that you're just gonna kind of be a tumbling weed or just kind of go

wherever the wind flows, because you've got some bellwethers, you've got your virtues, you've got your purpose, but do you have a love affair or are you afraid of the unknown present moment? Wait, wait, let me finish this thought, I'm rolling. Is that I think this is why I love, it became apparent about halfway through working with

the Seahawks is that it became so clear that the way they fundamentally organize their life is to go embrace the unknown and to do it publicly. That we see that. We don't know how the outcome is going to go and they bring all of themselves into it. The ones that are like, I think noble in the approach. And then one more layer to that is that that's what they do on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday. And they don't do it publicly,

but they do it in front of their peers. They get to the messy edge where they could fall into a thousand pieces and they do it in front of people that decide whether they get to play on Sunday or not. So people with real power and control and your peers, they're, by the way, trying to take your job. Some of them.

There's a depth chart. Everyone's trying to get the starting job. So I have such regard for the fundamental decisions they've made and the fundamental commitment to go to the unknown, the messy edge at the unknown. That, to me, is way more important than celebrating or thinking that they're born different. If you love the thing, you're going to do it longer and better and be able to ride the ups and downs of it than the person who

you know, it turns out they've only liked it because it's been going their way a long time. That's right. I remember Shocker Smart was talking about this who we both know he was at Texas, now he's at Merket. He was saying that like, kids will quit. And they'll say, they just don't feel the same way about the game anymore. And he's like, is that really true? Or was what you thought was your feeling about the game,

the fact that you were always the best, and it always went your way? You were 6'4 as a sophomore in high school, and it was easy, and you got lots of attention. This is the poison of external recognition. And so if you deconstruct motivation on four variables, you could think about internal and external. And so the external, there's external rewards

and external drivers, okay? And then, so the way, there's external rewards and external drivers. Okay. And then, so the way we think about is two words, extrinsic and external. So, and then you go inside and you go intrinsic, external or internal. And so the intrinsic is like, do you have, do you love the unlock? Do you love the way it feels to figure something out? And then internally driven is like, so that's the reward. The internal drive is like, you don't have to wake me up. You don't have to like tap my shoulder to, you know, get ready to go to practice. Like I'm driven, but the rewards are the unlock, the love affair with figuring things out. And if I really love that, I gotta keep going to the edge.

I gotta keep getting to the frontier because that's where it happens most often. Sure. But those are harder to come by because the world outside of us is giving us lots of externals. Hey, you need to do this, you need to do that. Oh my God, you're so amazing.

This is like, are you ready for next week's game against the Crosstown rival? All of that external noise definitely clouds the internal signal. Yeah, right. But so the tricky part of that is, so if you have that intrinsic unlock that gets you motivated, you're internally motivated.

That's what allows you to keep doing it, to do it for a long time. But then do you find that can also be hard to turn off? Oh yeah. Like how to stop. Well, yeah, there's a near obsession when you really love the unlocking because it's such an electric embodied experience

when those ahas happen. Actually we can see the signature, it's gamma brainwaves take place which is similar to a flow state experience but it's the insight. And I think the philosophers were like they would spend time discerning, thinking deep, going deeper, deeper to try to get to the essence of something. I got it. So that's a gamma brainwave experience. That's an aha moment.

We call it insight. And we call it in the performance world, an unlock. Insight, unlock, aha. That stuff is so embodied and rich that there's an addiction to that. I only wanted to, I didn't care about working with pro athletes. I only wanted to work with people that were as obsessed

as I was at trying to figure out how to get better. I was just thinking there's basically been like one boxer ever who retired like at the right time. On the one hand, being extrinsically and externally motivated, it's great as long as everything goes your way, which is unlikely, but it works. It can work.

But so it's better to be that sort of intrinsically motivated thing, and it's better than being at the mercy of everything going your way. I think you need both high. I think it's, before you go to the box, I don't think that this Pollyannish approach, is that the right word, Pollyannish? Pollyannish idea that intrinsic needs to be the number one.

As long as it's high, you can have equally high external, you know, drivers and rewards. Like that's cool. Like if you are the best in the world and people like the thing that you're doing and they want to give you money, it's okay. I remember when my books first started to come out in sports, you called me and you gave me a bunch of advice

and you were like, one thing, you were like, don't ever talk to a sports team for free. And I was like, why? And you were like, they're huge, multimillion dollar, sometimes billion dollar organizations, and they all pretend like they don't have money, but they do. And you should, if you provide value,

you should be paid for it. And I like, cause there's some part of you, if you are intrinsically or internally motivated, you're like, I'm just happy to be here, just happy to do what I do. There's an unlock here. Yeah. And that's all great, but you should also, you're not doing yourself, one of the things

I've learned, you're not doing yourself any favors by not getting paid the most amount you can get paid for that thing. And I want to go back to boxers, right? And if you don't value it in that way, they're not gonna really value it. So it's a nice- Anytime I've done less than my fee or not for it, I always regret it in that it just turns out to be a disaster.

Yeah, that's right. There's something clean about, I show up, you pay me this. We develop these practices for a reason. That's right. It's nice and clean that way. And so, yeah, man, that's cool. I think about it all the time. That's awesome. Okay, good. Yeah, and I think that way. And so, yeah, man, that's cool. I think about it all the time. That's awesome.

OK, good. And I think that for all of us, the way I make decisions, there's three vectors. One is, is there an economic reward? Does it move the needle towards goodness? So is there something compelling or purposeful that is taking place? And is it going to be fun? Yeah, is it cool? So I need two of those three. And is it gonna be fun?

Yeah, is it cool? So I need two of those three and I just need to know, if I get all three, it's awesome. But I definitely need two of those three. I don't like just showing up and taking money. If it's show up, take money and it's fun, okay, that's cool. But I definitely need the third one in there as well. So if you can get all three of those together,

I'm like, this is a home run, are you kidding me? I guess what I'm saying is intrinsic, extrinsic, the point is some people have the problem, they don't have enough motivation, then other people, you just do it longer than you should, you can't stop doing it because- This is the box, you're back to the boxer here. You're back to the identifying with being a thing,

getting to do a thing as opposed to what's best for you, what's most sustainable, et cetera. When you say finding mastery, do you think it's an external thing or is it an internal thing? So there's mastery of self and mastery of craft. I'm far more interested in the internal experience. The commitment to the path to get to the truth

of whatever, what you value, right? So whatever you're attending to. And so the path of mastery is really what it's about. The approach towards trying to better understand it is what finding means in that sense. And so mastery is mastery of craft and mastery of self. I've sat and asked the question to so many people,

you included like, what do you think about mastery? Most people say, there's like two that didn't say this. I don't know, like I'm, I love it. Yeah, I don't know if I'm on the path. I think I am. You know, like this idea that it's an unfolding as opposed to there was two people like, yeah, I have mastered my craft.

You know, like most people are like, it's this thing. It's a path, it's a process, it's a becoming, it's an understanding, it's an unlocking and I'm committed to it. And I'm more interested in mastery of self through craft. Sure. Mastery of craft alone feels hollow. Well, cause there's a lot of people

who are very good at what they do, but also monsters. Yeah, that's exactly, that's well said. Yeah, so mastery of self through craft. So the craft is the tool or the utility as opposed to the reversing of mastery of craft and mastery of self. Yeah, don't you think there's kind of a point so you get really good at something,

maybe you get really successful at that thing, usually happens, but not always, so you get really good at something and maybe you get really successful at that thing, usually happens, but not always. So you get really good at something. And then you kind of have this crossroads moment where you go, is this gonna be my whole thing? Is it gonna be everything about me and I'm gonna sacrifice everything to maintain it or keep going with it?

Or now I have this kind of second challenge, which is how do I integrate this mastery and this success into a seemingly normal, healthy, well-adjusted life relationships, people, happiness. That's right. Yeah, you're hitting the nail on the head. That's why it's self through craft. Yeah.

So the craft can actually change. Yeah. So, you know, you think about Anders Eriksson's work on number of hours. It's not 10,000. It's more like 16,000 to 20,000, which is fun to be that. Did they just move the goalposts on it? Right now.

Oops. They're going to do it twice now. So this idea that you put in some real work towards something and you have the sense of being artistic with the expression of that craft, you don't need to do another 40 years or 20 years. Like, happy to pivot. That's cool. This holiday season, give your loved ones only the best from L.L. Bean. Keep them warm and dry all winter long with weather-resistant outerwear. Versatile, durable, and available in a wide range of styles, you'll find outerwear for

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You can join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. Now, actually, though, the top episode of the Daily Stoke podcast wasn't a guest interview. It was us diving into a hundred lessons from Marcus Aurelius. So I want to play you, I'm not going to play you all hundred, but here are some top lessons from one hundred lessons from Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius says that no matter what's happening in the world, no matter what other

people are doing to us, we always have this superpower. We always have the power to have no opinion. We don't have to decide that it's good or bad. We don't have to decide that it's urgent or not. We don't have to decide anything about it all. We don't have to think anything about it at all. You can just let it go. You can let it pass by. You don't have to figure it out. You don't have to have a hot take on it. Just let the weather be the weather. This political situation, be that political situation.

It doesn't have to be good or bad. We don't have to have an opinion about everything. One of my first reads of meditations, I noted that Marcus says, "'Can only ruin your life if it ruins your character.'" The idea that success wasn't whether you made money, whether you got what you wanted, it's whether it ruins your character. The idea that success wasn't whether you made money, whether you got what you wanted, it's whether you protected your character.

Jesus says, what good is gaining the whole world if you lose your soul? And we can imagine Marcus struggling with this as the emperor of Rome. It doesn't matter how many buildings he builds or what lands he conquers, to him it matters if he is a good person or not. I remember shortly after I read Meditations

the first time I had to get on a flight. I was in a middle seat on this long cross-country flight and I was next to someone who was jostling for the armrest. The person in front of me reclined back. It was just one of those unpleasant experiences in modern travel. But I thought back to one of my favorite passages in meditations where Marcus talks about

being next to a smelly person. He says, yeah, it's awful. You can say something to them if you want, but if you're not gonna say something that you just have to bear it. No amount of gritting your teeth or silently resenting them is going to change this. Stewing doesn't help them or you.

Being miserable doesn't help them or you're just gonna carry this nastiness with you when you go. And so I think Marcus would have dealt with the same kinds of inconveniences and annoyances as all of us Even if his life was more sheltered than most of ours But he reminded himself that this is what life entails and either say something about it

We've got to get comfortable putting up with it. One of Marcus really is his most brilliant rhetorical questions Is this he says is a world without shameless people possible? The answer is of course no and he says okay So you met one of them, right? This person that you meet, they're one of those people. You know that it's impossible for the world to exist without them. You know inevitably, statistically, you will run into one of them, that's it. He says, reminding yourself that this person

is one of a certain number helps you not get so upset about it, not be so surprised by it, not be so surprised by it, and most of all, not despair by it. Most people are the opposite of that person. And I think for the word shameless, we can plug in all sorts of things. People who lie, people who steal, people who cheat, people who do all the things that we don't like.

A certain percentage of them are always going to exist and always have existed. And better yet, when we remind ourselves still that they are the minority, we can find a way to categorize them, accept them, and then move on. A couple years ago, I wrote this book, Conspiracy. Peter Thiel was outed as gay by this sort of Silicon Valley gossip rag that treated him very cruelly. And he spent millions of dollars and years of his life plotting and scheming to destroy it, which he successfully did. And there's a lot that was really interesting in it, a lot that was really innovative in doing that. I think even some things to be impressed by it,

as I was talking about in the book. Every day as I was writing, I couldn't help but think of one of my favorite lines from meditations. Marcus really says, "'The best revenge is to not be like your enemy.'" The point is that getting even often makes you like or worse than the person who supposedly did

this grievous, heinous thing to you. We see this in Marcus Aurelius' life. He's betrayed by one of his most trusted generals and he tries not to be angry about it. He has to deal with it, yes, but he tries to actually use it as an opportunity to show the Roman people how one deals with being betrayed, how one deals with civil strife.

You can't let the person who wronged you turn you into something just like that. Gregory Hayes in his translation of Meditations, he makes a great point and I missed it at the first couple of times. He says that nowhere does Marcus identify as a Stoic. And he says, actually, if you asked Marcus, he probably wouldn't have identified with any school at all,

even though meditations is, of course, filled with all sorts of stoic observations and principles. He says that Marcus would have identified as a philosopher. Paul Graham in one of his famous essays says, keep your identity small. Don't identify as a singular thing or with a singular ideology. You wanna be a free agent.

This is why Seneca quotes so much from Epicurus. He read widely, he understood widely. The point is not to be a stoic philosopher. The point is to be a philosopher, a lover of wisdom. There's a beautiful line in Joseph Brodsky's essay about the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. It dates back to Marcus' time, but the base of which was redesigned by Michelangelo.

Brodsky says something like, "'If Marcus Aurelius is antiquity, it is we who are the ruins. I don't know what that means exactly. There's something beautiful and haunting about it. Maybe it's this idea that when you read meditations, you can't help but be struck by classical beauty and perfection, in some ways the highest expression of human greatness. And then you look at us, you look at the way we talk to each other, you look at the things we say,

you look at how we live and act and think, and you go, yeah, we're the old worn out, beaten down, falling apart things. The ancient world feels fresh and modern and new and perfect in so many ways. And I just love that idea. Marcus Aurelius is antiquity, it is we who are the ruins. It's actually in book six that I found the meditation

that I would build my own first book of Stoic philosophy around the impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. He says, look, stuff can get in the way. You can be impeded. He says, but nothing can impede your intentions or your dispositions. He says the mind can convert to its own purposes,

the obstacle to our acting. That's the power of Stoicism, that we always have the opportunity to practice a virtue. We don't choose where we are, we don't choose what's happening. But if you accept the obstacle and work with what you're given, Mark Cirillo says in Meditations,

an alternative will present itself. Another piece of what you're trying to assemble, action by action. Acceptance can seem like this weakness, that it's stopping you from moving forward. In fact, acceptance means this door is closed, now I can go try this other door. You first have to accept that the obstacle exists,

that it is real, that it has constraints or impediments or difficulties, to then decide what you're gonna do about it. Are you gonna go around or are you gonna go over or are you gonna use the weight of it against itself? It's an opportunity to do this other thing you couldn't have done under ordinary circumstances. Acceptance is not passive resignation. It's the first step in taking an active approach.

And Marcus returns to this theme over and over and over again in meditations. In one passage he says, A strong stomach digests what it eats. A fire turns what you throw on top of it into flame and brightness and heat. His point is we can use our obstacles as fuel. The things that happen to us in life are opportunities. This is the essence of Stoicism.

This is our chance, whatever it is. It might not be the virtue we wanted to practice. It might not be the virtue we wanted to practice. Might not be the virtue we're most comfortable practicing, but it's nevertheless an opportunity to be great. I remember I was once talking to the great Robert Greene and I asked him what one of his favorite passages from Marcus Aurelius' meditations was. He said it was the one where Marcus Aurelius

is talking about, he's looking at this big feast, and he says, oh, that's a dead bird. He said, oh, that's dead pig. Oh, this wine is rotted grapes. I said, Robert, why did you like that? And he said, that's what I try to do in my writing. I try to deconstruct things, to take away the preconceived notions.

It's actually what Marcus says. He says, it's about stripping the things of the legend that encrusts them, about seeing them as they actually are. I think that's not only what a philosopher has to do, but I think that's what a great writer like Robert Greene does, I call this contemptuous expressions. These things kind of loom over us, we go,

oh, Harvard is so important, look at the fancy people that go there, look how hard it is, look how expensive it is, but also you can look at the idiots who've graduated from Harvard, the monsters that have come out of there, right? You could be like, oh, the president's the most prestigious important job in the world, but look at some of the people who have been president.

Look how incompetent they were. You're supposed to see things for what they are, strip them of the legend that encrust them, see them as they are. The same goes for like some fancy car, you know, some important position. It's not what people think it is. You have to strip it bare, you have to see it

for what it is, and Marcus Aurelius was doing this even with his own purple cloak, the thing that signified he was the emperor. He said, this is just a regular cloak dyed with shellfish blood. You've seen it as it actually was, which is such a critical practice. The famous dictum from Lord Actum is that power corrupts

and absolute power corrupts absolutely. What's remarkable about Marcus Aurelius is that he's perhaps the only exception to this rule that we know. He's given absolute power. What is the first thing he does with it? He gives half of it away to his stepbrother. He isn't corrupted by it.

It's a remarkable testament to the power of this philosophy, the idea of what stoicism can make a person. And that's not an accident. In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius warns himself against being Caesarified, of being dyed purple, of being changed by the power and fame and money that the position has given him. And we all have to be worried about being Caesarified

or dyed purple. We have to be worried about being Caesar a five died purple we have to be worried about being changed by by the number of followers that we have by the promotion that we just got by the famous name that we inherited you're not special rules do apply to you you're not better than anyone else power doesn't have to corrupt what it can do is reveal who you actually are. In one point of meditation, Marcus Turelius tells himself to take Plato's view,

to zoom out, to see things from above. And he does that, he talks about how enormous armies fighting over a border or a whole country could be not that dissimilar from a far enough view to ants fighting over a piece of food on the ground. It's beautiful and quite impressive that he could come to this point of view, because in Marcus's time, the highest he could have gotten on the ground. It's beautiful and quite impressive that he could come to this point of view because in Marcus's time,

the highest he could have gotten off the ground was like a couple story building or maybe the top of a mountain. He didn't have the access to an airplane like all of us do. You know, he would have never seen the blue marble photo which showed earth from space. But when you get to Plato's view, you're just reminded how inconsequential

most of the things we get upset about are. And then you are also reminded of how interconnected and interdependent and together we all are. Marcus says this too, that the borders don't matter, that vast oceans don't matter. We're all in this same thing together, that we are tied together more than we'd like to think that we are.

Pierre Hedel, one of the great scholars of Marx Relates, talks about the oceanic feeling. Marx Relates talks about the view from above, he talks about men's city, how all of the experience gives before us. Marcus is trying to meditate on the vastness and the connectedness of everything in the world. He talks about looking at the stars

and watching yourself alongside them. I think he's seeking out these kind of humbling experiences and you could think about why that would be so important to someone who was literally the center of the universe. He wanted to remind himself that that wasn't strictly true. One of the things Marcus really does say in meditations about the people who would have always been flattering him and telling him he's amazing,

or people who would have been criticizing him or attacking him, he says, think about who would have been criticizing him or attacking him. He says, think about what they just submitted to a few minutes ago. Think about what they do in private. Think about who they actually are. And when you know who they actually are, how weak they are, or how corrupted they are,

petty they are, suddenly their approval, their opinion about you won't matter very much. Marcus Aurelius clearly hated all the flatterers and sycophants, but the thing he hated most was the people who would say things in passing. I'm gonna be honest with you. Let me be straight with you. Let me tell you what I really think.

He said that say those things was actually a confession, a self indictment. You're admitting that that's not the norm. That's not what you normally do. People should know you're gonna be honest. He said, an honest person should be like the smelly goat in the room. You should know they're there the second they walk in.

And nobody had to think that about Marcus. In fact, from an early age, Marcus Aurelius was named Verismus, or the truest one. And we think that's because he was so unflinchingly truthful with Hadrian, his adopted grandfather, in effect, the most powerful man in Rome. Marcus just told him what he thought.

He didn't hold back, and neither can you. And then our most popular email for the year, or one of the most popular emails from the year, and I don't remember when this idea first popped in my head, but popped into my head that anxiety is expensive, that it's stolen stuff from me. I think it was like,

we were coming back from a thing I was really excited to do as a family and then it had gone sideways. It was just like, oh, my anxiety about this thing, it was the root of why this didn't work out. It took this from me. I took it from myself. And so let me play you that here is us meditating on what anxiety has stolen from us. Obviously, you're listening to the podcast.

But if you want to get the Daily Stoke email, you can sign up. But this is what we do every day, I read the Daily Stoke email. So I'll run that for you. What has it stolen from you? You left way earlier than you should have because you got nervous and stressed before your flight. You were a mess the whole trip because you were worried something might go wrong

while you were gone. You spent the whole last couple months dreading, convincing yourself that the news you were waiting for would be horrible. And how did it end up going? You missed time with your family, spending it instead sitting at your gate for no reason. waiting for would be horrible. And how did it end up going? You missed time with your family, spending it instead sitting at your gate for no reason.

You missed the vacation, the time with friends, because you were not present. You built up this whole scenario in your head, and it turned out to be nothing. Anxiety. Just think about how much it's stolen from you, how much you missed because of it. A few times that it turned out to be right,

sure, sometimes there is traffic, sometimes alertness and vigilance pay off. But for the most part, as Seneca reminds us, we suffer more in imagination than reality. And as a result, we do suffer in reality. He who suffers before it is necessary, Seneca wrote, suffers more than it's necessary. Being trapped in the tunnel of anxiety, unable to think straight, emotions speeding like a runaway train, it is a crippling experience. But fortunately, the stoics had an answer

to freeing ourselves from stress and worry almost 2,000 years ago. In meditations, Marcus Aurelius put it like this. "'Today I escaped my anxiety,' he says. "'Or no, I discarded it because it was within me in my own perceptions, not outside. What Marcus understood was that anxiety comes from inside the house. We are the creators of our anxiety, which means we can do something about it.

Can stay in the present moment and not get lost in the past or the future. We can remind ourselves that we are not our emotions, that as Epictetus said, it's not events that upset us, but our opinions about them. We can zoom out and take the bird's eye view or Plato's view as Marcus called it, reflecting from a larger perspective and recognizing how small our lives are

in the grand scheme of the universe. You could argue that Stoke philosophy is basically a set of tools designed to help us combat our anxiety and worries, to help us focus on what we control. Which is actually why I've been working hard on this thing here at Daily Stoic I got on my desk. It's a powerful little device to bring that lesson,

that perspective from the Stoics on anxiety and worry, to something you can carry everywhere you go. I don't know if you've seen like our memento mori coin, which is supposed to be a reminder of mortality. This one is much more explicit. It's got this cool hole in the middle. On the front it says the Greek phrase for, is this in my control? Is this up to me? And then on the back it has those quotes from Seneca and Marcus that I was talking about, about how we don't escape our anxiety, we discard it because it's within us. And that when we suffer before it's necessary,

we suffer more than is necessary. There's this cool hole in the center. As I've been recording it the whole time, I've been spinning it. My kids are, let's say neurodivergent, if you will. We have these like little fidgets, just little toys they can play with to sort of get out their nervous energy.

Well, that's what this is. And it's also got this cool snake on the front representing the Ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail, which is sort of what we're doing when we're feeling anxious. I wanted a reminder of how much time am I spending consumed by anxiety, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, three hours all day.

And what if I cut just a little bit of that in half? What if I prevent that spiral from happening? How much happier and healthier would I be? And that's the idea of the daily Stoke anxiety coin, fidget, whatever you want to call it. I think you'll really like this one. ["Dreams of a New World"] Our most popular video on the Daily Stoke YouTube channel, if you haven't checked that out, you can subscribe at youtube.com slash Daily Stoic.

Our most popular video of 2024 was a meditation or an exploration of Marcus Aurelius' daily routine. It was fun because we see so much content around on like, here's my morning routine, here's why I wake up at 4.30 in the morning. But a lot of these videos are like ridiculous. Like I just saw one speaking of being Orlando. I was like, here's our daily routine at Disney World. And it was like, the mom had these like printed up itineraries.

They were working out at four in the morning. But I'm like, who's watching your kids? It was great. So this is how Marcus Aurelius structured his day. I think there's a lot of awesome stuff in there. 2, 2000 years ago, Marcus Aurelius is the most powerful man on Earth. He controls an empire of tens of millions of square miles, controls the lives of tens of millions of people, controls the most powerful army on Earth. He has the power of life and death over other people. He could have done

whatever he wanted. He could have retreated to pleasure and indolence. He could have easily descended into insanity from stress and overwork. Yet he manages, as one biographer would say, to prove himself worthy of all the responsibility and power placed upon him. He manages, I think, just as impressively, to manage it. He isn't corrupted by it. He doesn't break under the stress by it. He acquits himself well. So what's his secret? What does the life of this guy look like? How does Marcus Aurelius manage his day? Well, because of Marcus Aurelius' meditations, the private thoughts of this totally unique singular man, we have some idea. And that's what I want to talk about today.

The daily routine of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher king. Like all people, it starts with the morning for Marcus Aurelius. We know that Marcus Aurelius wakes up early. We know this because he talks in meditations about struggling with this, right? He's a morning person, but not by nature. He's a morning person by habit.

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, he says, tell yourself, I have to go to work. As a human being, is this what I was created for, to huddle under the blankets and stay warm? It's nice here. And he says, but are you made to feel nice? No, Marcus Aurelius attacks the dawn. He gets up, he gets after it, as I think most productive, successful people do.

You start the day with a conscious choice, a choice to do the thing that isn't easy, but starts the day off right. And we can imagine he is doing some of his meditative work, his study of philosophy, his writing, his journaling there in the morning before he was besieged by inquiries, people who wanted favors, before the bad news had been delivered, before he had to get up and travel, before the battle begun. He was carving out a little time for stillness and reflection. What he's not doing is the equivalent of what so many of us do in the morning, which is

we go straight to this thing. Before our feet hit the floor, we're sucked into the phone, we're sucked into the to-do list, we're not cultivating that stoic state of ataraxia, of freedom from disturbance, we're not being reflective, we're not being intentional, we're just putting out fires from the minute we wake up. And it's very clear that Marcus Aurelius

is using this little bit of time in the minute we wake up. And it's very clear that Marcus Aurelius is using this little bit of time in the morning to be in a meditative, philosophical, intentional state. This is how he opens book two of meditations. Again, he's talking about the morning here. He says, when you wake up in the morning, tell yourself the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly.

He's not saying, hey, the day sucks. He's trying to think who are the kind of people that I'm going to meet today? What are they going to be like? And then he's saying, look, how can I be patient? How can I be understanding? How can I deal with this? How can I anticipate this? This is one of the stoic ideas.

Seneca says that the unexpected blow lands heaviest. If you expect everyone to be wonderful and awesome, if you expect to get nothing but green lights all day, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Marcus is instead trying to anticipate, do this idea of pre-Meditation Malorum. And then you know what he says in this passage? He says, look, why are they like this? And what is my job in relation to them? He's saying, don't lose your temper with them. Don't write them off. Try to find the good in them. Right? So Marcus is trying to anticipate how the day is going to go and set himself up for success. But because Marcus Rulis does have a difficult job, because there is immense amounts of responsibility on them,

he has to get to work. That's what he's doing in that passage. He's saying, get up, get after it. What were you put here to do? He tells himself throughout meditations, concentrate on your tasks like a Roman. He points out the example of Antoninus, his predecessor and beloved stepfather,

about how Antoninus planned out his day, how he even planned out his bathroom break so he wasn't wasting time. He tried to show up and when he was at work to be at work. He didn't complain about this. This is another thing Marcus really talks about. He says, never be overheard complaining at court, not even to yourself. What do I have to do today? What are my responsibilities? What are my jobs? Let's do them. And for Marcus, this would have been making decisions throughout the day. This would have been hearing cases. This would have been speaking to crowds. This would have been travel. This would have in some cases been leading troops into battle, right? But all the while, he's having to be focused. He says, get used to winnowing your

thoughts. He says, if somebody asks you what you're thinking about, you should be able to answer. Saying, don't let your mind wander, don't get distracted. Focus on what you're doing. He's talking about what Cal Newport would call deep work. The ability to focus on the task in front of you, to actually do it. Again, not to be distracted by this thing

or all the other things that you could be doing. To lock onto the task in front of you, that is a key part of Marcus Aurelius' work style, his philosophical beliefs, and his daily routine. You can imagine that Marcus is sucked into meetings. He's meeting with advisors and ministers and ambassadors. He's getting briefed on strategy. One of the things he says he learns from Antoninus

is when to yield the floor to experts, how to listen to other people's opinions, how to take in feedback and criticism. He says, you know, when somebody corrects me, when they tell me that I've been wrong, that I'm wrong, he's like, they're not harming me, they're doing me a favor. He says the harm is to remain in error to not correct it.

So there would have just been a lot coming at him. His job would have been stressful, it would have been exhausting So there would have just been a lot coming at him. His job would have been stressful. It would have been exhausting. It would have weighed on him, but he tried to approach it with the right mindset and he tried to keep it contained. This is, I think, an important part because there has to be balance, right? We work very hard. We throw ourselves at what we have to do, but if we're all about business, that's one of the things Marcus says in meditation is, remind yourself not to be all about business. And we know that Marcus was not all about business. We know that he was active in physical exercise. We know that he enjoyed boxing and wrestling and hunting and horseback riding. We know that he would take walks. We see all these

fascinating observations in meditations about nature. He's walking through the fields like that scene in gladiator, he's dragging the hand. There's a passage in meditations about grain bending low under its weight. He talks about the flecks of foam on a boar's mouth, the brow of the lion. He's getting outside, he's enjoying nature. The Stoics said that the whole world is a temple of the gods. Mark Subrulus is going out there and having this spiritual experience. A hobby he was not into, that many Romans shared, was the carnage of the Colosseum. We know Marcus didn't like this. He

liked getting away from his imperial duties, but he hated the violence of it. He hated the pointlessness of it. And so it's funny, he was often seen doing his philosophical work or reading papers or thinking. He was there. He had to be there. But mentally, he was somewhere else because he wanted peace and relaxation. He says, look, it doesn't matter where you are. He says, people long to get away from it all, right? They want to travel. They want to just leave all their work behind. He says, but you can retreat inwards to your own soul at any moment. And that's what Marcus was doing there at the Coliseum. It didn't matter how horrifying and violent and gory and loud

what was going on on the floor was. He was reading Euripides. He was reading Aeschylus. He was reading the Odyssey. He was reading Cleanthes or Zeno or Epictetus. He was studying philosophy. He was getting out of thees or Zeno or Epictetus. He was studying philosophy. He was getting out of the dustiness of Rome, getting somewhere clean and better.

And he probably visited the baths every day. He talks about washing off the dirt of earthly life. And I think he means this figuratively and literally. The Romans, one of the things, big part of Roman culture was the gymnasia and then the baths. So you'd work out and then the cold plunge or a hot bath. And if you visit a quincum, which is a little Roman camp outside Budapest, where Mark Suarez probably wrote some of meditations, you can actually go in one of the hot springs that Marcus probably visited.

Right? So, Marcus isn't all about business. He does find relaxation and pleasure. He is washing off the dirt and dustiness of life so he can get back to what he needs to do. And look, Marcus's imperial duties would have been overwhelming to even the strongest of people. In Marcus Aurelius' reign, there's a series of historic floods. There's a devastating plague, the Antonine Plague. There's wars, there's an invasion, there's coups. He has health issues, he has family issues. One ancient historians say, Marcus doesn't have the good fortune that he deserves.

His whole reign is involved in a series of trouble. The stress would have been unimaginable. The difficulty would have been overwhelming. There must've been moments where Marcus Aurelius fell to his knees and he said, look, I just can't do it. But first off, he believed he had to do it. It was his responsibility. People were counting on him. And also, he realized he had to have helpful coping mechanisms to deal with this stress. That's part of what his journaling

practice is. That's what stoicism was helping him with. Amidst all of this difficulty and stress, what he's trying to do is stay calm, stay centered, to avoid anger and destructive emotions, to not be reactive, but to be intentional. And the idea of the obstacle is the way it comes from this. He's dealing with difficult people, he's dealing with difficult situations, he's dealing with things that are bad news,

but he's trying to see it all as an opportunity to practice virtue. Famously when Marcus is betrayed by Avidius Cassius, his most trusted general, he doesn't immediately react. He steps back. He doesn't say anything. He's just trying to think about it. He doesn't want to be emotional.

He doesn't want to let his personal feelings into the mix. And then he comes back and he says, look, look, this is a chance for us to show, he says to show the Romans and to show the future, how a country can deal with civil strife. He tried to do what he says to show the Romans and to show the future how a country can deal with civil strife. He tried to do what he talks about in meditation where he says the best revenge is to not be like that. He wanted not to overreact. He wanted not to be broken by it. He wanted to use it as an opportunity. Always. Everything was an opportunity to Marcus. Big and little. Every,

the little experiences he had throughout the day, the big experiences throughout the day, was always an opportunity to respond with herite and virtue and decency. As we said, Marcus Surreals isn't all about business. When he's not doing his hobbies, he's not getting out there getting active, strong mind and a strong body, he is focusing on reading and writing,

which he saw as an essential part of his job in every facet. We have the letters that he writes to his mentor and teacher, Cornelius Fronto, still writing these lovely letters well into his reign. He's debating philosophical things with his teacher, Rusticus. And we know that Marcus read a lot, both as a kid and as an adult, because his writings are full of these references that he's making from memory to the plays of Euripides. He's directly quoting Epictetus and Chrysippus, Zeno and all these other thinkers because

they're right there on top of mind. He's reading and rereading. He's lingering on the works of the master thinkers, as Seneca said. What he had learned from his teacher, Rusticus, he said, is to never be satisfied just giving the gist of things. So when Marcus Aurelius reads, he's diligent about it. He's focused about it. He's taking notes.

He's processing. He's looking things up. He's not this casual reader. He's not just reading for fun or reading for status. He's reading to learn and to get better. And I would imagine that this reading routine was probably part of his evening routine, right? Seneca would talk about a ritual he had that at the end of the day, he would put himself

up for review. I think in the Midnight Dimness, as one of Mark Cirillius' biographers would say, he was putting himself up for review. That's what meditations is. Mark Cirillius' interrogation of himself, his review of himself, what he could do better, how he could do better, holding him accountable, what went right, what went wrong, where can he improve? Because look, there's not a lot of people that can do that for Marx. He doesn't have a boss. The judgment of history is far off. He's trying to remind himself what's important.

He has to be the final bit of accountability. Philosophy was the final bit of accountability. He says, fight to be the person philosophy tried to make you. That's what he was doing throughout the day, but it's in the evening with the journal and the reading and the thinking and the quiet time that the lessons are being learned there. And we can imagine that not a day goes by, certainly not an evening that goes by, that Marcus Surillis doesn't do the stoic practice of memento mori.

You could leave life right now, Marx Surillis says, let that determine what you do and say and think. Marx Surillis tried to spend lots of time with his family. He writes in one of his letters to Fronto how he would trade all of it to just have more time with his wife. He says, as you tuck your children in at night, say to yourself, they will not make it to the morning. This wasn't morbid. He wasn't like trying to practice his monkish detachment

from the people that he loved. He was trying to say, why are you rushing through this? Why are you not soaking this in? Why are you not being present for it? And this practice of memento mori is an essential part of the stoic daily routine. And we can imagine not a single day in Marcus Aurelius' life going by without it.

And we can imagine part of Marcus' daily routine, he just spent the whole day being celebrated, being clapped for, being told how important and powerful he was. People were saluting, thousands of soldiers appeared before him. Kings of other nations gave you know gave him gifts He he tried to actively remind himself that he wasn't that important that posthumous fame was worthless

He tried to stay humble with him. He says be careful not to be caesarified, right? Not to be stained purple He would look out at the fancy feasts or the honors or the jewelry they put on him and he would say look at Look at this. This is a dead pig. This is a rock pulled out of a mine. This is a silly metal. He's trying to not be changed or transformed or made to feel better than as a result of this very unusual, strange, surreal existence that he had. And each of us should have some version of this practice in our own life too, because success can go to your head, because busyness can make you feel important. Being at the center of things can make you feel like you're the center of the universe, but you're not.

Right? And part of the philosophical practice is to zoom out. Mark Sturlus talks about looking at things from above. Look at this army, not how powerful it is up close, but how it resembles ants from far away. He's trying to get perspective always. I think this is a key part of Mark Sturiles' routine. And I imagine that throughout the day, but especially at night, as he's just thinking about how he just spent these last few hours, Mark Sturiles is asking this question we see in meditations. He says, whenever you are afraid of death, whenever you want to live forever, he says, ask yourself, am I afraid of death because I won't be able to do this anymore? We so value our time, but he was talking about

how frivolously we spend it, right? We waste it on things. We act as if we have forever, but we don't. The Stoics knew that death wasn't a thing that was happening in the future, but the death was happening now. Dying every minute, dying every day. Mark Cerullius would have seen the passage of each day

per Stoic philosophy as a kind of death. So at the end of the day, he's asking himself, what do I have to show for the hours that I just spent? And if this was the last day of my life, he's trying to imagine going to bed and not waking up. If I wake up in the morning, I get a second chance tomorrow, how am I gonna do better? How am I gonna grow?

What am I gonna learn? How am I not gonna take that time for granted? A day in the life of Mark Sirius, on the one hand, his life, his experience should be totally unrelatable to us, unimaginable, unfathomable to us. The most powerful man in the world 2,000 years ago, speaking languages we don't speak anymore, living in ways we would never live anymore.

And yet, as we see in meditations, as we see in his routine, he was like us. The past is a foreign country, and yet human beings are human beings, are human beings. And the more things change, the more they stay the same and from Marcus through as we can see so many great habits and practices that we should apply in our own life and circling back here after these meditations after all this thinking is he's got to get to bed. Right. It's easy to talk about waking up early, but if you're not protecting your sleep if you don't have discipline before bed again if you're scrolling this phone thing until three in the morning and then trying to get up with the dawn, you're going to have trouble. And we know Mark Skrullos is a bit of an insomniac, probably the stress and the health issues kept him up, but he tried to get to bed, he tried to take care of himself, and you have to do that also. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this Daily Stoic wrapped episode.

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