LIFE CHANGING Stoic Ideas That You Can Practice Daily | Ryan Holiday EP 331

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1:17If there were three things that everyone could take away from the Stoics to improve the quality of their life right now, what would that be? One of the questions we ask ourselves when we're like afraid of something, when we're thinking about, we go, but what about me? What would I do if? And Marcus Reulis goes, you'll meet that with the same weapons you've met all your other problems. So remembering that like, hey, you've been scared before and you're still here. Often what our fear is really doing is underestimating or undercounting how good we actually are at what we do. like you're not suddenly tomorrow going to be a helpless loser you're the same person you are today and what will you do you'll figure it out just like if you quit your job you'd be like i'm quitting and i'm going to go find a new job but if you got fired that suddenly feels like disempowered whereas the other one feels very empowered so remembering what you're capable of to me is really important okay number two uh the stoics say that we should always be training so So one of the reasons I think it's important to have like a physical practice, one of the reasons it's good to seek out adversity and difficulty is so when stuff happens, you're right.

2:31Epictetus, one of the early Stoics, he's actually a slave. And he says, you want to get to a point where when stuff happens, you're able to say, like, this is what I trained for. You knew this could happen. And you did the work. Yes. Before you go into the next one, it's right when the pandemic happened, I was like, this sucks. and yet I've been training for this for the last 12, 13 years of my life. Yes. Because in 2008, well in 2007 I got injured and had surgery, and then 2008 the housing crisis, and there were no jobs for someone like me without a college degree that was ignorant from school.

3:04I was like, I better develop myself so that when this happens again, in 5, 10, 20 years, I'm ready to take on any adversity. Yeah. Maybe it's not fun and it's still challenging, but I'm prepared and ready. And I spent 13 years training for that moment. And I felt a sense of, kind of weirdly, I felt a sense of peace that gave me the energy and the clarity to take action and shift where I needed to and lead from a place of courage as opposed to, and I wasn't perfect. Yeah. But lead from a more calm, peaceful place as opposed to, ah, frantic, fearful place. Well, look, preparation makes you brave.

3:41Yes. Right? You prepared so you were ready. and then I think also because you remembered what you felt then oh man you were also in a position to lead and understand what people who were not as prepared what they're experiencing yeah what they're experiencing it sucks yeah so you can have empathy like you talked about you can connect with people in that way okay so always be training always be learning something new training yourself physically mentally emotionally and the third the third one would be this stoic exercise of memento mori, which basically means remember you will die. And I actually carry a coin in my pocket that says this.

4:17But I think when you realize like, hey, life is already short and fragile. If I'm spending my time cowering in fear or worrying, I'm acting as if I have a certain power over things that I don't. There's this famous Stoic story where like the emperor sees this stoic philosopher he hates and he's like i'm threatening you to or i'm sentencing you to death and he's like i was already sentenced to death at some point yeah he's like you have no more power over me than than i had that then life itself mother nature yeah exactly i think sometimes people can miss this like memento mori doesn't mean like don't wear a motorcycle helmet or pretend the pandemic is not real that's not what it's saying but it's saying like hey focus on the parts of safety and concern that that are in your control but if you're wasting your time being afraid i that's something i thought a lot about in the pandemic especially early on we don't know where this is going don't know what it means don't know what is ticking clock is in anyone's body right what pre-existing condition you might have or bad piece of luck you got so you take it seriously but within that what are you doing with your time what are you going to spend your time on so if If you're spending that time worrying, stressing, lashing out.

5:36Watching the news all day. Yeah. What you're actually doing is rejecting the life that you have in front of you. It's kind of like a longer eclipse. It's like there's an eclipse that's happening. We don't know what this is. But you can sit there and worry and fear for those five minutes of the eclipse or whatever. Or you can look up and enjoy it and do something with your time. Exactly. I can make the most of this and prepare and strategize and organize your time. Yeah. James Stockdale, who spends seven years in a prison camp in Vietnam, who reads the Stoics, he says, you know, he gets there and he goes, I never lost sight of the fact that I controlled the end of the story and that I could turn this into something that in retrospect I would not have traded for.

6:25So I think we have, it takes courage to say, this thing happened to me and I wouldn't have chosen it. I didn't want it. But now that it's here, I'm going to face it. I'm going to apply all my training and experience towards it. And then I'm not going to waste my life being bitter, resentful, afraid, passive about it. And I'm just going to get to work turning it into something.

7:02Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

7:58Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.