The Daily Stoic - You Don’t Have The Right | 9 Habits To QUIT (From The Stoics)

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

We must all see the pursuit of philosophy as both a mental and physical exercise. Mens sana in corpore sano—a strong mind in a strong body. 🎥 Check out the Arnold Schwarzenegger episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBQlSMOVTAg📕 Grab a signed copy of Discipline is Destiny by Ryan Holiday 🎙️ 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 Podcast. We bet you didn't know. Our new quieter trains are great for listening to that self-help podcast you lied about actually listening to. Get on board. Via Rail. Love the way. Get on board. Via Rail. Love the way. 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 Daily dailystoic.com. You don't have the right. When we think of philosophy, we think of the mind. We think of Seneca poring over his books. We think of Seneca pouring over his books. We think of Epictetus sitting and listening to the lectures of Musonius Rufus.

We see Marcus Aurelius writing his meditations. It is an academic pursuit, right? A mental journey. Yet the most famous philosopher who ever lived, Socrates was no sedentary academic. He was not a weakling. He was active and tough. He was always on the move. No was active and tough. He was always on the

move. No citizen has any right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training, he once said. To be able to be of use to his country, to his family, to his cause, a person had to have a physical practice, had to always be training not just his mind but his body, Socrates believed. Besides, Socrates said, it was a disgrace for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable. Indeed, we see the Stoics practices across the board. Marcus hunted and wrestled.

Chrysippus, an early Stoic, was a runner. Cleanthes was a boxer. Seneca, although he lived a rich and sometimes luxurious life, subsisted on such lean fare, often foraging for his food himself in the countryside, that Nero had trouble finding an opportunity to poison him. Today, a majority of young people could not qualify to join the armed forces if they wanted to.

That's how out of shape they are. Obesity and diabetes are public health crises of epic proportions. People are not active enough, not disciplined enough for their basic health needs, let alone to come close to knowing the beauty and strength of what their body is capable of. This is tragic, it is sad, and it is also very avoidable. We must all see the pursuit of philosophy as both a mental and a physical exercise. Mensana incorpora sana, a strong mind and a strong body. None of us can reach our destiny without discipline. None of us can make our full contributions to the country,

our family, our cause, if we are not taking care of ourselves, if we're not pushing ourselves to see what we are capable of. Anyways, I talked to Arnold Schwarzenegger about this in the episode of the podcast we did. I'll link to that in today's show notes. I think it's worth checking out. And then of course, Discipline is Destiny is out there also, which you can grab as an ebook, audio book

or a signed copy at store.dailystow.com. ["Dirty Dusty Place"] Rome was a dirty, dusty place. Life is a dirty, dusty thing. It always has been, and it always will be. We wake up in the morning and we're fresh and clean. And by the end of the day, we are covered in dust and dirt metaphorically and literally the dust of work, the dust of stress.

I think about how fresh and new a new year seemed just three months ago. You know, we had the best of intentions. We were turning over a new leaf. We were starting a new page. And here we are just a few months later. Old habits have come back, new bad habits have formed, stuff has already piled up, we are already behind.

And I think that's why we have spring cleaning. We've got pounds to lose, we've got vices to quit, we've got things to declutter, we have a chance to bring a new us to a new season. And that's what we're gonna talk about in today's video. The stoics speak of this idea of the inner citadel, this sort of part inside yourself that can't be touched by externals.

Good news, bad news, good fortune, misfortune. Mark Stavroulis writes that stuff cannot touch the soul. And I think that's what we see, despite all the things that we know happened to Marcus in his life, all the good fortune that he did not meet with, all the misfortune that he did not deserve, nothing touches the inner goodness inside him. That's what meditation shows.

It shows that despite the filth, the dust, the stress of life, what remains is the goodness. He keeps that pure bubbling up always. Part of the reason your life sucks is because your thoughts suck. Marx really says that our life is dyed by the color of our thoughts. So if we see only negative, if we only see the worst in people, if we only see what's impossible, if we only see how we screwed up, that's gonna color our perception of reality. Your life is dyed by the color of your thoughts.

There's a limit of the amount of time that's assigned to each of us, Mark Strelis would say. And if you don't use that time to free yourself, he said, it'll be gone forever and it will never return. His point was you can't wait until tomorrow. He says that's what we do. We could be good today, instead we choose tomorrow. We put it off.

We don't say we're never going to do it. We say we're going to do it later. But the result is the same. We never end up doing it. We don't say we're never gonna do it. We say we're gonna do it later. But the result is the same. We never end up doing. We don't end up making the changes. We don't end up becoming what we're capable of being, who we know we should be, what we know we ought to be. When a new season is upon you, it's a chance to ask yourself, how many more winters am I gonna let go by? How many more springs am I gonna waste? Am I gonna wait until summer, until fall, until another 365 days around, another rotation of the earth

before I get serious about this, before I do what I know I need to do, before I do what I know would be good for me? Stokes would say, you gotta stop thinking about it and you gotta start doing it. And there's no better time than right now. and you've got to start doing it. And there's no better time than right now. A philosopher goes to the house of a stoic named Agrippinus,

and he says, hey, I've been asked to attend this party that Nero's throwing on. We all know Nero is awful and corrupt and evil. I'm wondering whether I should go or not. I'm thinking about it, you know, should I go? And Agrippinus says, yes, you should go. And the guy says, why? You're not going.

And he says, yeah, but I didn't even think about going. His point is Agrippinus wasn't, ah, do I want to, do I not? He wouldn't even consider doing something like that, that would be so compromising or corruptive, that the sort of hell yes or hell no rule. He's saying this for effect a tad, and so is the hell yes, hell no rule. He's saying this for effect a tad and so is the hell yes, hell no thing.

But the idea is we should be really clear about what we are willing to do and what we aren't willing to do, the things we accept and the things we don't accept. We should have a clear sense of our moral compass, also our priorities. So we're not hemming and hawing. We're not having to ask for advice.

We're not even thinking about it. It's a hard pass or it's an enthusiastic guess. Actually Ramit Sethi said this to me once. He said you don't owe anyone a response. And his point was that you know just because an unsolicited email comes in doesn't mean you have to reply to that person. There was a time early in my life when I believed in inbox zero and that plan has had to get abandoned as I've gotten older and more successful because I value other things. Of course again I want to reply and and there are people

I do get back quickly to but I've had to realize that the preconceived notion I have of what being caught up is, is actually preventing me from getting caught up on what's truly important. Eisenhower has that decision matrix about what's urgent and what's important. And sometimes the things that come in, the inbound inquiries, they feel important, but actually they're just urgent.

And as you're tackling them, what you're ignoring is what's actually important, but not necessarily urgent. is what's actually important, but not necessarily urgent. You make haste slowly. This is a Latin proverb. It's actually the favorite of the Emperor Augustus, Fustina lente, make haste slowly. You know, we're driven. We want to go quickly. We want to hustle. We want to get there. But oftentimes that's the slowest way to do it. There's the expression measure twice, cut once. There's the expression in the military that slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Of course we want to rush. Of course we want to do it with all

deliberate speed. But the deliberate part is the word there. You have to be disciplined about this. You have to make haste slowly. to be disciplined about this. You have to make haste slowly. The grudge you're holding, it's meaningless. Mark Struis says, look at the people who held these grudges, who raged about things, who held on to things. He says, where are they now? They're dead and gone.

The grudge went nowhere. And the same is gonna happen to your thing. Whatever it is you're upset about, however significant it was for you, eventually it disappears along with you. So how can you work on letting it go? How can you move on? How can you process?

How can you not carry it around? How can you not let it consume you? It's easy to get swept away, to get carried away, to get worked up. There are forces that have always been howling and blowing at people. Today it's the news and social media, but in the past it was the frenzy of the mob or public opinion, the floor of the Colosseum. Our job, the task of Stoicism, is to help us keep that even keel. Mark Sturlus says, to be like the rocks that the waves crash over eventually

the sea falls still around. Chrysippus, one of the early Stoics, he said look if I wanted to follow the mob I wouldn't have become a philosopher. Our task, the purpose of Stoicism, is to help us slow down, to act with some restraint, to be able to reflect, to put every impression or opinion to the test, as Epictetus said, to not get swept away, to not be buffeted by forces beyond our control, to keep our bearings, to keep our values, to keep from losing our minds when everyone else around us is losing theirs.

At one point in meditations, Mark Cerullo says, avoid false friendship at all costs. Says nothing is more painful, nothing is worse. And he knows this from experience. I tell an obstacle is the way. The story of Marcus being betrayed by Avidius Cassius, his most trusted general, one of his best friends. He declares himself emperor.

He essentially attempts to orchestrate a coup. Marcus Aurelius knew that although we wanted to be trusting of people, although we wanted to assume the best in people, we had to understand that people were not perfect. People could be led astray. People could have evil intentions in their heart. We have to be aware of this. We have to be prepared for it. 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.

Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, would you tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey on Wondery.com slash survey. It's not the dark you have to be afraid of. It's what's hiding within it. The Shaw Festival presents Wait Until Dark. In a New York apartment, a blind woman becomes the target of ruthless criminals. As night falls, she must use all her wits to survive.

Don't miss this heart-stopping thriller, Wait Until Dark at the Shaw. For tickets, go to shawfest.com.