The Daily Stoic - You Must Seek Out Hard Truths | Marcus Aurelius’ Advice For Life (5 Incredible Stories)

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

As leaders, we cannot allow people to tell us what we want to hear. We have to cultivate honesty, both in ourselves and in those around us.💡 We designed The Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Leaders to mirror the kind of education that produced historically great leaders like Marcus Aurelius. Check it out at store.dailystoic.com📖 How to Read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations (A Daily Stoic Guide) is designed to help you get the most wisdom and very best tools Stoicism has to offer and apply them to your life. Get How to Read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations (A Daily Stoic Guide), The Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge: Ancient Wisdom For Modern Leaders & all other Daily Stoic courses for FREE when you join Daily Stoic Life | dailystoic.com/life🎙️ 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. The Shaw Festival presents Anything Goes, a dazzling production of Cole Porter's timeless musical set on the SS American. Follow the antics of a nightclub singer as she navigates love triangles and hilarious hijinks on the high seas. Anything goes on this ocean liner. Featuring spectacular tap dancing and hits like You're the Top, don't miss Anything Goes at the Shaw.

For tickets go to shawfest.com. 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 DailyStelage.com. You must seek out hard truths. Most of the time it would have been subtle, but it always would have been there.

People admired Marcus Aurelius, or they wanted something from him, or they feared him. So they would have agreed with him, filtered what they told him, flattered him. There's a famous scene in Hamlet where Polonius is confirming everything that Hamlet says as a kind of sycophant. Here, I'll play a clip of it for you.

Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of of a camel by the mass and he is like a camel indeed We thinks it is like a weasel. It is backed like a weasel or like a whale Very like a whale this would have been an everyday occurrence for Marcus It was for his predecessor Hadrian. In fact, that's one of the reasons that Hadrian took to Marcus. Marcus was a kid that told the king the truth, not unlike the fable about the emperor's new clothes. Perhaps this is why Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations totally new himself.

He didn't want people fawning over his work. Instead, he wanted a private space to hold himself accountable. Indeed, when Marcus writes in meditations about striving not to be imperialized or died purple, he was talking about not being fooled by the subtle lies and sycophancy that his position engendered. When he talked about being done a service

by those who pointed out his mistakes, he was trying to create an environment that facilitated truth and not a bubble of confirmation. As leaders, we cannot allow people to tell us what we want to hear. We have to cultivate honesty, both in ourselves and in those around us. The best leaders don't surround themselves with flatterers. They surround themselves with people who challenge them, who keep them accountable, who help them see reality as it is.

And this is one of the hardest disciplines of leadership, but it is also one of the most essential. And actually but it is also one of the most essential. And actually it's a big part of the Daily Stoke Leadership Challenge. How do you build this sort of board of directors, this environment where as a leader, you're getting access to good information to truth. You're not being misled, you're not being Caesarified, right?

We talk a lot about this. And we interviewed a bunch of great experts who've all struggled with this. Someone who's now the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States is in there, the CEO of a professional basketball franchise. Entrepreneurs, leaders, leadership experts, elected leaders, they're all in there.

It's this huge deep dive into what makes a great leader and what the Stoics have to teach us about that. I'll link to that in today's show notes. And just remember, if you sign up for Daily Stoic Life, you get the leadership challenge, basically the cost of the leadership challenge right there, plus all our other challenges. We've got a bunch of other awesome ones coming up.

So join us over at dailystoiclife.com. ["Days of the Star-Spangled Banner"] At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, I have to go to work. As a human being, what do I have to complain of if I'm going to do what I was born for? The things I was brought into this world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle brought into this world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm? But it's nicer here. So you were born to feel nice instead of doing things and experiencing them? Do you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order as best

they can. And you're not willing to do your job as a human being. Why aren't you running to do what your nature demands? But we have to sleep sometime. Agreed, but nature set a limit on that, as it did on eating and drinking. And you're over the limit. You've had more than enough of that, but not of working. There you're still below your quota.

You don't love yourself enough, or you'd love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it. They even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving? The dancer for the dance. When they're really possessed by what they do, they'd rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts.

Is helping others less valuable to you not worth your effort? He buried too many children. He saw plagues and flood and war. He was betrayed by those closest to him. He was surrounded by the corrupt and the inept and the endlessly ambitious. While critics are wrong to call Marcus Aurelius depressing or negative, he was unquestionably in pain, tired and frustrated.

This was a man who quite understandably found himself, as we all do, tired of life. Yet despite the role that suicide had played in the history of Stoicism and the more accepted place it had in Roman history, Marcus did not choose that route. He did not blame anyone. He did not resent the hand he was dealt or the painful cards he had to play. He soldiered on. He found respite in physical activity in his work. He tried, as we talked about recently, to focus on the beauty amid the ugliness of life. He was brave enough to ask for help, as we have also talked

about. Marcus Aurelius not only kept getting out of bed each morning, but he pushed himself to do it early. He reminded himself in those very same pages of meditations, the reasons why he was here on this planet, what his nature demanded of him, what his duty was. He carried on and found relief in purpose and even joy in this. No matter who you are or what you're going through, the same thing is available to you. Inside your soul, Marcus Aurelius would remind you, there is peace that you can retreat to any time you like. It's okay that you're tired.

It's understandable and perfectly acceptable. Just use the resources available to you. Most of all, stick around. Marcus Aurelius must have wondered what he did to deserve all this. First, he lost his father at age three. Then he was pulled from his first love, philosophy, and pushed into politics. When he finally became emperor, decades of peace exploded into 19 years of border wars and civil strife. There was a plague. There were floods.

He had crippling health problems. At some point, as he buried another one of his children, as he wept over the ceaseless toll from the disease and pestilence, he must have thought, haven't I given enough? When will this end? What fresh horrors await? And yet somehow, some way, he never managed to give himself over to this despair. He kept going. He pushed away resentment and bitterness, fear or helplessness.

There are dark moments in his meditations to be sure, but mostly what you see in those pages are little sentences about how life still has meaning, about how he can find goodness in the world, how he has to keep doing his duty. A full 10% of the book is given over to things he's grateful for. So don't let anyone tell you that stoicism is a dower and pessimistic philosophy. Don't let anyone tell you that this is a philosophy

of resignation. On the contrary, it is a deeply optimistic and resilient belief system. It's not about giving up. It's about not giving up, not giving in, not letting fate or misfortune break you of loving life despite it all. Marcus never quit.

He never took any of it personally. He never stopped being good, and neither can you. In the year 170, Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of the Roman Empire, sat down to write, not to an audience or for publication, but to himself, for himself. And what he wrote is undoubtedly one of history's most effective formulas for overcoming every negative situation we may encounter in life. As Marcus wrote, our actions may be impeded, but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions, because we can accommodate and adapt.

And then he concluded with powerful words destined for maxim. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. In Marcus's words are the secrets to an art known as turning obstacles upside down, to act with a reverse clause. So there's always a way out or another route to get where you need to go. So that setbacks or problems are always expected and never permanent. Making certain that what impedes us can empower us.

Coming from this particular man, these were not idle words. In his own reign of some 19 years, he would experience nearly constant war, a horrific plague, an attempt at the throne by one of his closest allies, repeated and arduous travel across the empire, a rapidly depleting treasury,

and on and on and on. We are the rightful heirs to this tradition. It's our birthright. Whatever we face, we have a choice. Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them? We might not be emperors, but the world is still constantly testing us.

It asks, are you worthy? Can you get past the things that will inevitably fall in your way? Will you stand up and show us what you're made of? Late in his reign, sick and possibly near death, Marcus Aurelius, the Emperor of Rome, received surprising news. His old friend and his most trusted general, Ovidius Cassius, had rebelled in Syria. Having heard the Emperor was vulnerable, the ambitious general declared himself Caesar and seized the throne.

Marcus, whose health was not as bad as the rumors had suggested, could have sprung into action. The bloody history of Rome tells us what his predecessors would have done. Instead, he held back. He took his time. What a thing to have done. He waited to see if Cassius would come to his senses. When it was clear that he would not, Marcus knew that he would need to respond. Instead of demanding the sadistic revenge possible to a man with unlimited power, Marcus really said they would forgive a man who has wronged one, remain a friend to one who has transgressed friendship,

and continue faithful to one who has broken faith. Marcus acted rightly and firmly. He ordered troops to roam to calm the panicking crowds, and he set out to do what must be done, protect the empire, put down a threat. In the end, Cassius was struck down by a lone assassin in Egypt three months later. Marcus was said to weep at the news since it deprived him of the chance to grant clemency. In response, he ordered the Senate not to put a single conspirator to death. He said, don't stain my reign with blood.

While most of us won't be betrayed by a trusted general or faced with a civil war, all of us will face adversity. Markets will crash. Things will break. Forces will try to hold us back. Bad stuff will happen. We can turn even this to our advantage. It is an opportunity. It's always a chance for us to practice virtue, to be good, to be decent, to be kind. If our only option is to simply be a good person and practice forgiveness, well that's still a pretty good option too. Let virtue lead the way, Seneca said, and every step will be safe. Perhaps safe is the wrong word. But it will be the way. Since Plato, it had been the dream of wise men that one day there might be such a thing as a philosopher king. This star born

April 26 121 AD was named Marcus Aeneas Verus, and for all impossible expectations and responsibilities he would manage to prove himself worthy of all of it. The early days of the boy who would become Marcus Aurelius were defined by both loss and promise. His father, Verus, died when he was three. He was raised by his grandfathers, who doted on him and who clearly showed him off at court. Even at an early age, he developed a reputation for honesty. The Emperor Hadrian, sensing his potential, began to keep an eye on him. By the time Marcus was 10 or 11,

he'd already taken to philosophy, dressing the part in humble rough clothing and living with sober and restrained habits, even sleeping on the ground to toughen himself up. Marcus would write later about the character traits he tried to define himself by, which he called epithets for the self, and they were upright, modest, straightforward, sane, cooperative, disinterested. Hadrian, who never had a son and had begun to think of choosing a successor, must have sensed the commitment to those ideas in Marcus from boyhood on. He must have seen, as they hunted wild boar together,

some combination of courage and calmness, compassion and firmness. He must have seen something in his soul that Marcus likely could not even see himself because by Marcus's 17th birthday, Hadrian had begun planning something extraordinary. He was going to make Marcus Aurelius the emperor of Rome. On February 25th, 138 AD, Hadrian adopted an able and trustworthy 55-year-old administrator named Antoninus Pius on the condition that he, in turn, adopt Marcus Aurelius.

By the time Hadrian died a few months later, destiny was set. Marcus Aurelius was groomed for a position that only 15 people had ever held in Rome. He was to be made Caesar. Unlike most princes, Marcus did not yearn for power. We are told that when he learned he had been officially adopted by Hadrian, he was greatly saddened rather than overjoyed. Perhaps that's because he would have rather been a writer or a philosopher. Reservations are not the same as cowardice, however.

The most confident leaders, the best ones, are often worried that they won't do a good enough job. They go in knowing it will not be easy, but they do proceed, and Marcus, around this time, would dream a dream that he had shoulders made of ivory. To him, it was a sign he could do this. It wasn't just the headwind of power that Marcus faced in life. From his letters we know he had recurring painful health problems. He became a father at age 26, a

transformative and trying experience for any man. In Marcus's case though fate was almost unbelievably cruel. Dee and his wife Faustina would have 13 children. Only five would survive into adulthood. His reign from 161 to 180 was marked by the Antonine Plague, a global pandemic that originated in the Far East, spread mercilessly across borders and claimed the lives of at least 5 million people over 15 years, and he faced some 19 years of wars at the borders. But these external things don't deter a Stoic. Marcus believed that plagues and war could only threaten our life.

What we need to protect is our character, how we act within these wars and plagues and life's other setbacks. To abandon character, that we act within these wars and plagues and life's other setbacks. To abandon character, that's real evil. Consider the first action that Marcus Aurelius took in 161 AD when his adopted father Antoninus Pius died. Marcus Aurelius found himself in an even more complex situation. He had an adoptive brother, Lucius Verus, who had even closer ties to Hadrian's legacy. What ought he do? What would you do? Marcus Aurelius cut this Gordian knot with effortlessness

and grace. He named his adoptive brother, Lucius Verus, co-emperor. The first thing Marcus Aurelius did with absolute power was voluntarily share half of it. But this was just one of several such gestures that defined Marcus Aurelius' reign. When the Antonine Plague hit Rome and the streets were littered with bodies and danger hung in the air, no one would have faulted him for fleeing the city. In fact, that might have been a more prudent course of action. Instead, Marcus stayed, never showing fear, reassuring the people by his very presence

that he did not value his safety more than the responsibilities of his office. Later, when due to the ravages of the plagues and those endless wars, Rome's treasury was exhausted. Marcus Aurelius was once again faced with the choice of doing things the easy way or the hard way. He could have levied high taxes, he could have looted the provinces, he could have kicked the can down the road, running up bills his successors would have to deal with.

Instead, Marcus took all the imperial ornaments to the forum and sold them for gold. As for us, he once said to the Senate about his family, we are so far from possessing anything of our own that even the house in which we live is yours. His dictum in life and in leadership was simple and straightforward. Do the right thing, the rest doesn't matter. No better expression or embodiment of Stoicism is found in his line and in his living

than waste no more time talking about what a good man is like, be one. At the core of Marcus Aurelius's power as a philosopher and as a philosopher king seems to have been a pretty simple exercise that he must have heard about in Seneca's writings and then in Epictetus's, the morning or the evening review. Every day and night keep thoughts like these at hand,

Epictetus had said. Write them, read them aloud, talk to yourself and others about them. So much of what we know about Marcus Aurelius' philosophical thinking comes from the fact that for years he did that. He was constantly jotting down reminders and aphorisms of Stoic thinking to himself.

The title meditations, which dates to 167 AD, translates as to himself. This captures the essence of the book perfectly for Marcus was truly writing for himself as anyone who has read Meditations can easily feel. It is obvious in retrospect that Marcus used the pages of his journal to calm himself, to quiet his active mind,

to get to the place of apotheia, the absence of passions. He would have loved to have spent all his time philosophizing, but it was not to be. So the few minutes he stole in his tent on campaign, or even in his seat at the Coliseum as the gladiators fought below, he savored as opportunities for reflection. There is no theme that appears more in Marcus' writing than death. Perhaps it was his own health issues that made him so acutely aware of his mortality, but there were other sources. Since he did not flee Rome as many other wealthy citizens did during the plague, Marcus woke up in a surreal smelling city, a mixture of

the putrid smell of dead bodies and the sweet aroma of incense. Think of yourself as dead, he writes, you have lived your life, now take what's left and live it properly. On another page he says you could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think. We're told that Marcus was quite sick toward the end, far away from home on the Germanic battlefields near modern day Vienna. Even with his own end, moments away, he was still teaching, trying to be a philosopher, particularly to his friends who were bereft with grief. Why do you weep for me? Marcus asked them, instead of thinking about

the pestilence and about death, which is the common lot to us all. Then with the dignity of a man who had practiced for this moment many times, he said, if you now grant me leave to go, I bid you farewell and pass on before. He would survive a day or so more. Perhaps it was in these last few moments, weak in body but still strong in will, that he jotted down the last words that appear in his meditations, a reminder to himself about staying true to his philosophy. So make your exit with grace the same grace shown to you. Finally on March 17th, 180 at age 58 he covered his head to go to sleep and

never woke up. Rome and us, her descendants, would never see such greatness again. So this is not only one of the greatest books ever written. It's maybe the only book like it ever written. Just imagine the most powerful man in the world sits down to write notes to himself, never expecting it to be published, not thinking about an audience at all. It's a book to himself, for himself. It's a book for the writer, not for the reader.

And yet for almost 2000 years, it's been a book that's changed the life and the lives of millions of readers, myself included. I'm talking about Marks Relius's Meditations. Now, if I was to describe to you a book that's only a couple hundred pages, there's no intense or complex philosophical concepts that it's about seemingly simple things like how to deal with your anxiety, how to not be corrupted by success, how to deal with annoying or obnoxious people. You'd think this would be a straightforward,

easy book to read, but it's not. So myself and the team at Daily Stoke have been hard at work on an awesome new course designed to help you do just that. Sort of a book club companion, how to read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. It's a bunch of custom self-paced modules that give you everything you need to know

about every little part of the book. There's video messages from me. There's a reason this book has endured for so long. And there's a reason it's changed the lives of so many people. If you wanna get the most out of it, if you wanna understand what's really going on between these two covers,

then head over to dailystoic.com slash meditations and sign up right now. 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

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