The Daily Stoic - This Is A Timeless Temptation | A New Way To Pray

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

Even with natural gifts or prestigious education, wisdom isn't guaranteed. As Seneca wrote, "much toil remains," and to grow wiser, you must lavish all your waking hours and all your efforts toward this goal.📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content coming soon: dailystoic.com/premium📓 Pick up a signed edition of The Daily Stoic Journal: 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on The Art of Living: https://store.dailystoic.com/🎙️ 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.

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 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, visitdailysteoic.com. Monica tells us the story of a pretentious but lazy Roman. He wanted to be able to impress his educated friends, so instead of reading for hundreds of hours, instead of getting a tutor or a

teacher, he purchased a set of well-read slaves, one new Homer by heart, another new Hesiod. He had a slave for Sappho, another for Pindar, one for each of the ancient Greek poets that an upper-class Roman was supposed to know inside and out. And the man thought he was getting away with it, having them feed him lines at dinner parties on hand whenever he needed to look something up, until a friend suggested that he takes some wrestling lessons. But I am weak and frail, the man replied. Don't say that, his friend teased. Consider how many perfectly healthy slaves you have. Who hasn't been tempted to find a shortcut in life, to look for tricks and cheat codes? Whether it's outsourcing your reading to AI summaries, listening to podcasts on 2X speed,

or seeking out some guru who can supposedly download everything into your brain, everyone tries to find a way to bypass some amount of the incredible effort that wisdom requires. But alas, from Seneca's time to hours, wisdom can really only be earned one way, and that is to say slowly, painfully, patiently. No man is able to borrow or buy a sound mind, Seneca said. Wisdom cannot be delegated. It cannot be given to you either. There is no app that will make you wise,

no technology that can walk the path for you, no graduate school program that can make you educated. The path to Rizdom isn't just rocky, it's guarded by bridge trolls and beset by obstacles. There are dead ends. there are pits of despair. There are staggering peaks and terrifying wonders. There is so much ground to cover. You will meet unfriendly people and unpleasant ideas along the way. Are you tough enough to handle that? Are you prepared for a long journey? Or do you want everything to be

nice, neat, and easy? Even if you are naturally gifted, even if you've already graduated from the best schools, wisdom is not yours. No, Seneca says, much toil remains. And to achieve this wisdom, you must lavish all your waking hours to all your efforts. Do you wish the result to be accomplished? Wisdom takes work. There is no way around it. And that is the title of the new book, the fourth and final in the Virtue series. It is not a book of wisdom.

It is a book about the work, the methodology that wisdom requires. It's about how to get wisdom. It is about the process, the habits, the mindset you need. if you want to be able to achieve wisdom. It is not a book that will make you wise, but it will help you become wiser if you do that work. And I'm really excited about it. It's out October 21st, but if you pre-order it now,

there's a bunch of awesome pre-order bonuses, including some bonus chapters that were cut from the book, the playlist, like all the music that I listened to as I was writing it, a bunch of other awesome stuff. You can get signed numbered first editions. Also, there's a slot to have dinner with me where we can talk about some of the ideas in the book. And if you want one of the signed manuscript pages from the book that I produced as I was writing it,

there's not very many of them in the world, but we've got those for people who pre-order a couple copies. All that's available on the landing page, daily stoic.com slash wisdom. I hope to see it at the dinner. I hope you like the book. It would mean so much to me if you could pre-order it. It's the most important and helpful thing you can do to support an author. It's how publishers decide how many copies to print. whether it appears in the bestseller list or not, how many copies, bookstores order.

All that comes from the pre-order numbers. So if you could pre-order it, it would mean so much to meet dailystoke.com slash wisdom. I don't care what format, who you get it from, but this would be a huge help. So do that if you could. And I can't wait for you to hear the book. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. I was just reading this article about mankeeping. It's basically saying that.

although women have a wide network of friends, men tend to rely on their spouses or partners for the entirety of their emotional needs, which isn't healthy or smart. You need a support system. You need friends. You need mentors. I'd argue you also need a therapist, someone you can talk to about your problems, who you can work on yourself with in a safe place where you can be vulnerable, where you can be open, be honest, and you can do the work that you need to do. And that's where today's sponsor comes in. BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform. They've served over 5 million people globally, and it's super convenient.

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betterhelp.com slash daily stoic pod. We've been hiring for some positions at Daily Stoic lately, and when you have roles you're trying to fill, it can be difficult, right? You want to fill the roles quickly, but you also want to find the right people. So that's really a question. How do you find amazing candidates fast? Well, the answer is just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need.

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slash daily stoic. Just go to Indeed.com slash daily stoic right now to support the show and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash daily stoic. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring. Indeed is all you need. A new way to pray. We often pray for things we design. and in the process, excuse ourselves from the equation. We're hoping that the heavens will magically gift us with the outcome we want, whether it's for a promotion or a speedy recovery of a loved one. The Stokes would urge you to stop doing this.

Marcus Aurelius reminded himself not to present the gods with a list of demands for pleasures or comforts, but instead ask for help not needing those things. In a sense then, he was really asking for inner strength. He was, in a sense, asking himself. So think about all the things you want that you're praying or hoping for, and try turning them around like this. See what you come up with instead. This is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal,

366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living by yours truly, and my wonderful collaborator, Stephen Hanselman, who I also worked on the Daily Stoic with. Try praying differently, Marcus writes in Meditations and 940, see what happens. Instead of asking for a way to sleep with her, try asking for a way to stop desiring to sleep with her. Instead of asking for a way to get rid of him, try asking for a way not to crave his demise. Instead of a way not to lose my child, try asking for a way to lose my fear of it. And then Epictetus in discourses says, we cry to God Almighty, how can we escape this agony? Don't you

have hands? Or could it be that God forgot to give you a pair? Sit and pray your nose doesn't run, or rather just wipe your own nose and stop seeking a scapegoat. And then Epictetus in Discourse is 4-1. He says, but I haven't at any time been hindered in my will nor forced against it. How is that possible? I have bound up my choice to act with the will of God. God wills that I be sick, such as my will. He wills that I should choose something, so do I.

He wills that I reach for something or something be given to me. I wish for the same. What God doesn't will. I will not wish for. This idea of blowing your own nose, that's a great expression from Apatitis that I love. I think what the Stokes are talking about here is self-sufficiency. I was just reading a great little biography of Musashi, the samurai swordsman, and I wrote down a line in my commonplace book from him, he says,

Worship the gods and Buddha, but do not rely on them. He didn't want to go into a sword fight hoping that Buddha would bless him. he trained for it to make that irrelevant, right? He wanted to rely on his sword and his actions. Remember the Stokes talk about what's in our control, what's not in our control. I think what the Stokes are talking about is don't pray for things that are not in your control

that are not up to you. Don't make yourself dependent on getting lucky, on being blessed, on your dreams coming true, on everything going right. Focus on having a plan that, as the Stokes say, is indifferent to all. all that. There's another great line from Epictetus where he says, you know, a student's like, how should I do this? He says, you're asking me to show you what to do it. And he says,

wouldn't it be better to ask to be adaptable to all circumstances? And so this is really where we're trying to get, a place where there isn't anything we pray for. I take some pride. You know, every year my wife will go, what do you want for your birthday? And I go, I don't, nothing, I don't want anything. There's nothing I need. There's nothing I want. It's not because I'm a billionaire. It's that I spent more time, you know, just getting the things that I did need, the tools I need for my life or my, you know, my happiness. And then for the most part, being indifferent to all the other things, not needing to wait for my birthday or Christmas or, you know, a check to come in to be able to afford this thing. It's better to not want it in the

first place. And I think this is true for all the kinds of luck or, you know, cool experiences, or things that we think we want or need. Now, either get it for yourself if it's possible or write it off, you know? I think that's kind of the, that's what that third quote, the final quote from Appetitius he's saying is like, look, I'll just align my likes with what happens. If God wants me to have it or the gods want me to have it or the logos or whatever, Stokes obviously had complicated, somewhat contradictory views on religion, what will be, will be, what I get is what I get, I won't throw a fit, right?

that's where we're trying to get us Stoics, trying to get to this place of self-sufficiency, where we blow our own nose, where we're good, whatever happens. And I wish that for you. It's not easy, it doesn't just happen, you've got to work for it. But that's what we're doing here with these meditations. And I hope this helps, and I'll talk to you soon. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast.

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