50 Stoic Rules to Live By

0:00Ryan Holiday: Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

0:17Ryan Holiday: This comes to us from Epictetus. He says, it's the chief task of life, which is focus on what you control. Is it up to me? Is it not up to me? If it is up to you, it gets a hundred percent. If it's not up to me, it gets zero percent. We focus on what we control because that's where our energy, effort, and emotions actually make a difference.

0:38Ryan Holiday: The next one is related to the first one, which is we control how we respond to things. As Epictetus says, we don't control what happens, but we control how we respond to what happens. So by ignoring all the things that are not up to us, by refraining from regret or complaint or blame and focusing on this happened, what am I going to do about it? This is how we move forward. And this is what all great leaders, artists, human beings do. They focus on what they control. And what they control is how they respond to what happens in life.

1:13Ryan Holiday: The next is a question from Mark Sturiles. He says, ask yourself in every moment, is this essential? Because the truth is, most of what we do, most of what we spend time on, most of the things that other people do and spend time on are not essential. And he says, when you eliminate what's inessential, you get the double benefit of doing the essential things better. Do I need to do it? Yes or no. And if I do need to do it, then because it is essential, I'm going to give it everything I have.

1:42Ryan Holiday: Are you meditating on your mortality? I carry a coin in my pocket that says memento mori. You can leave life right now, Marcus really says. Life is short. don't waste time, don't focus on things that don't matter. Going through our life with a clear sense of our mortality is essential.

2:01Ryan Holiday: Value time more than money and possessions, right? You can earn more money, you can get more land, you can get more opportunities. What you can't get is this moment back. Seneca says the time that passes belongs to death. So don't think of death as something in the future. Think of death as something that's happening right now. and everything you do, you are choosing to purchase with your life.

2:24Ryan Holiday: You have to remember you're a product of your habits. Epictetus says, if you want to be beautiful, make beautiful choices. If you want to be excellent, make excellent choices. Make them habitually, day in and day out, they add up.

2:40Ryan Holiday: It's easy to get upset by things, which is why the Stoics say that we have the power to have no opinion. You can just think nothing about something. If you didn't know it existed, you wouldn't have an opinion. Now that you know it exists, great, but you don't have to say it's positive, it's negative. You don't have to say it's anything. It just is. Seeing things objectively, withdrawing judgments from them is really important. As Epictetus says, it's not things that upset us, it's our opinion about things. We control our

3:10opinions.

3:11Ryan Holiday: Well begun is half done, as they say, so own the morning. If you want to have a good day, have a good morning. If you want to have a good life, have a good day. So it all comes back to how you start the day, own the morning. There's a great passage of Marcus Aurelius where he's arguing with himself about getting up out of bed in the morning. And he says, look, were you meant to huddle under the covers and stay warm? He says, no, get to work, do what you got to do, do what you were put here on this earth to do and do it early.

3:41Ryan Holiday: Seneca's rule was put the day up for review. Ask yourself, what could I have done better? Where did I fall short? Who do I want to be? Was I being that person? So every day the law is put your day up for review, evaluate yourself, interrogate yourself. That's how you get better.

3:59Ryan Holiday: Seneca says we suffer more in imagination than reality, and that gives us the next law, which is don't suffer imagined troubles. The stuff that you're worried about, it'll happen or it won't. Worrying doesn't affect it, right? So Seneca says don't feel more than you have to. Deal with that when it comes. For now, focus on what's in front of you. Focus on what you need to do. Don't add to your suffering by anticipating it, by suffering in advance. That's only adding cumulatively up to more suffering.

4:30Ryan Holiday: You got to see the good in people. That's an important law. Yes, this The Stoics were pragmatists. Yes, they were realistic. They were even a bit pessimistic. But Marcus Aurelius famously tried to get the most out of people. He tried to see the good in them. He knew, yes, there's a certain amount of bad people out there, but he always tried to find something good in everyone he was dealing with. If you don't do this, you're going to be miserable and unhappy.

4:54Ryan Holiday: Marcus Aurelius didn't want to be emperor. So it's interesting that in meditation, he gives this rule to himself. He says, never be overheard complaining, not even to yourself. complaints are for losers complaints solve nothing focus on what you're going to do focus on the good in a situation don't allow yourself to complain

5:15Ryan Holiday: xeno gives us this rule two ears one mouth for a reason always listen more than you talk

5:24Ryan Holiday: there's always something you can do we've talked about this earlier it's focus on the response there's always something you can do, some way to move forward, some little bit of progress that you can make. Zeno says, well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. So start small focus on the little thing you can do in this situation.

5:46Ryan Holiday: Marcus Reuless talks about envy, right? Deidre Roosevelt says that comparison is the thief of joy. Comparing yourself to other people is focusing on something you don't control. It never makes you feel good. It either makes you feel egotistical or makes you feel crappy. Only focus on what you do. Don't compare yourself to other people. Hold yourself to your own standards, as Cato did, that are higher than other people. So when you're succeeding, you focus on how much further you have to go. And when you're failing, you ask yourself, did I live up to my own standards? That's what matters.

6:19Ryan Holiday: Live as if you have died and come back to life. Seneca says that if you go to bed every night saying my life is over, I've lived my life, I went through it all, then when you wake up in the morning, it's extra. Anyone who's been to a casino knows it's more fun when you're playing with house money.

6:36Ryan Holiday: Mark Stavilla says the best revenge is not to be like that, right? People are going to be awful. People are going to do bad things. How do you get even? How do you prove what a good person should be like? By being a good person, by being the opposite of those people, the best way to beat a cheater, as I say in The Boy Who Would Be King, is to not be like one.

6:58Ryan Holiday: Yes, the Stoics had high standards. Yes, they worked very hard, but they had this rule, be tolerant with others, strict with yourself. Cato says, I can forgive any error but my own. It's called self-discipline. It's what you ask of yourself, what other people say or do, the mistakes they make, leave it to them.

7:19Ryan Holiday: Put every single impression you have to the test, right? We have our initial reactions, the Stoics say, our initial impressions, our snap judgment. Great. Maybe you're right, but you also could be wrong. So take a minute, pause between the stimulus and the response. As Viktor Frankl famously says, wait a second, choose who you're going to be. Choose what you want to feel. Choose what you want to do. Don't just react emotionally. Put every impression, every impulse to the test. You can learn something from everyone. Ralph Waldo Emerson says, everyone I meet is better than me at something, and in that, I want to learn from them, right?

8:00Ryan Holiday: So focus on what you can learn from every single person, even people you don't like, even people you don't respect, even people who suck. Focus on what you can learn because everyone is better than you at something. And even if they're not better than you at something, you can learn from them in the cautionary tale. So you can learn from everyone. We always want to be learning. That's where wisdom comes from.

8:23Ryan Holiday: Outcomes are not in our control. Process and effort is. So the Stoics say, focus on effort, not outcomes. Ignore the results. Focus on what's in front of you. I have to do this with my books. I want to write the best book possible. I want to try as hard as I can on the marketing. I want to do the absolute best I can. Everything after that is extra. It's not up to me. Success is internal. Did I do what I set out to do? Everything else is irrelevant.

8:52Ryan Holiday: Define what success means to you. Success should be giving your best, having impact, really trying, really pushing yourself. What other people say or do is irrelevant.

9:07Ryan Holiday: Mark our own. No, you have to define what success means to you, not what everyone else says is the most, or what everyone else says is the most impressive, or what everyone else is doing. Set your own standards for success, you'll be much more likely to meet them.

9:24Ryan Holiday: You have to find a way to love everything that happens. This is the stoic idea of amor fati. The stoics aren't resigned to what happens. It's more than that. They embrace it. They say, this isn't something I have to do. It's something I get to do. This isn't something that happened to me. It's something that happened for me. Marcus really says, everything you throw on top of a fire becomes fuel for the fire. That's what the idea of amor fati is. They embrace, they love everything that happens because they know they can use it and they know that it's what destiny had in mind for them.

9:56Ryan Holiday: Seek out challenges. Do one thing every day that scares you, as the cliche goes. We become better for what we struggle with, just as the way you have to lift weights to get stronger. Seek out challenges. Tackle hard things. Push yourself. If you want to write a mighty book, Ralph Ellison says, choose a mighty theme. Challenge yourself. That's how you get better. Don't run away from challenges. Run towards challenges.

10:21Ryan Holiday: Don't follow the mob. Chrysippus says, why would I become a philosopher if I'm just going to be like everyone else, if I'm going to follow the mob? No, I think for myself. It's the hardest thing in the world to think for yourself. As Mark Twain says, whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, pause and reflect. It's not that they're always wrong. They just sometimes are. And you want to make sure you're deciding this for yourself, not just because everyone else is saying or doing it. So again, the Stoics, they're not contrarians, but they think independently. And so must you think about everything for yourself.

10:53Ryan Holiday: If the mob is excited about it, if the mob is beating up on someone, if the mob is caught up in a fad or a passion or a trend that's a good sign that you should step back think for yourself and do what's actually right not just what everyone else is doing

11:11Ryan Holiday: epictetus says that every situation has two handles and that's where this rule actually adapted from thomas jefferson comes from he says always grab the smooth handle epictetus says one of the handles will hold weight the other won't what handle are you going to grab in this situation the one that empowers you or disempowers you the one that makes you angry or gives you something to focus on and change, right? So every situation has two handles. Which one are you going to grab? Grab the one that makes you better, that gives you something to do, that challenges you. Ignore the other handle.

11:44Ryan Holiday: Seneca says every person is an opportunity for kindness, and that's the rule here. Every situation is an opportunity for kindness. kindness is the key it's what moves us forward never pass up an opportunity to be kind to care to be compassionate to listen to appreciate what someone is going through because that's the truth everyone is going through something you have to say no a lot this goes back to mark surrealist is this essential if it's not essential what do you do this is the rule you say no you have to say no when i talk to nfl teams this is something we talk about i say look everything you say yes to means you're saying no to something else and whatever you say no to gives you more room more time to say yes to what matters in their case being great at what they do so what are you going to say no to this year so you can say yes to the things that matter to the people that matter in your life as well

12:42Ryan Holiday: you can't be afraid to ask for help i don't want you to think that the stoics are invulnerable that they never show weakness. In fact, Marx really says, you're like a soldier storming a wall. If you have to reach up and have a comrade help you up, so what? I love that, so what? So don't be afraid to ask for help. I love the book, The Boy, The Fox, The Horse, and The Mole by Charlie Mackesy, who I had on the Daily Stoic podcast. And he has a great line in that book. He says, asking for help isn't giving up. It's actually refusing to give up. Don't be afraid to be vulnerable. Don't be afraid to ask for help.

13:18Ryan Holiday: Dare greatly, as Brene Brown says, be vulnerable. Ask for help.

13:25Ryan Holiday: What is the path to wisdom? Seneca says it's finding one thing every day, one quote, one story, one conversation, one book, one insight. That's the idea. You get better one thing at a time. That's actually why we do the daily Stoic email, right? Every single day we send out a free email inspired by stoicism to the largest community of stoics ever in the world. Almost 400 ,000 people get this email. You can sign up at dailystoic.com slash email. But the point is, you got to find something that delivers value for you every day. You got to seek it out. One thing that makes you better every day. That's the path to wisdom.

14:04Ryan Holiday: We're not in this alone. To do harm to another person, to allow harm to come to another person is to allow harm to come to yourself. So Marcus Aurelius says in this rule, what's bad for the hive is bad for the bee. The way I think about this is whatever I do say, however I live, I go, what would the world look like if everyone did this, right? And if the answer is things would fall apart, things would be bad, then it's something I try not to do, right? What's bad for others is bad for me. What's good for me should be good for others. We talked about being tolerant with others, strict with yourself.

14:38Ryan Holiday: That means not judging. Seneca says the study of philosophy is about scrubbing off your flaws, not other people's, right? Leave other people to their own mistakes. Don't judge them, especially people you don't know, especially people who are going through things that you don't know about. Seneca is right. Focus on yourself. Be strict with yourself. Don't judge other people. Leave them to their own struggle. You have to study the lives of the greats. Seneca says choose yourself a Cato. focus on someone who's going to make you better. As I say in my book, The Lives of the Stoics, we study the lives of the people who went before us so we can learn easily what they learned with great difficulty, so we can pick up where they left off so we don't have to learn by trial and error.

15:23Ryan Holiday: Find some heroes, study them, learn from them, learn what to do, what not to do. That's the journey I'm on with Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus. It's what I write about in Lives of the Stokes. But the idea is whose lives are you studying and what are you learning from them?

15:40Ryan Holiday: Forgive, forgive, forgive. That's this rule. I heard a great expression that forgiveness is a gift that you give to yourself. Mark Cirilli says the best revenge is not to be like that. I would add to that is also to not hang on to whatever that was. You got to let go. You got to forgive. Yes, Mark Cirilli says that, you know, someone's cheating in the ring with you when you're boxing. You've got to act accordingly, but you can't hold on to grudges because they make you miserable.

16:09Ryan Holiday: As we said before, find one thing a day, but I would also add to this, make a little bit of progress every day. Become 1 % better every day. That adds up. Zeno says, well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. Mark Sreely says, assemble your life action by action. No one can stop you from that. a little bit of progress every day adds up.

16:34Ryan Holiday: What is Stoicism but journaling? That's what meditations is, the journal of the most powerful man in the world. But it's not banal notes about what he had for breakfast and how he worked out. It's a conversation with himself about how to be better, how to do better, how to become, how to fight to be the person that philosophy wants him to be, as Marcus says. That's what we try to do in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 days of writing and reflection on the art of living. But the point is, sit down with a journal every morning. It's spiritual windshield wipers, as Julia Cameron famously said. Spend some time in the morning with a journal.

17:10Ryan Holiday: Have a conversation with yourself. Do the evening journal too. Seneca talks about putting the day up for review. But the point is, have that conversation with yourself. Put it down on the page. And Frank famously says that paper is more patient than people. This morning I was frustrated with something. I sat down with a journal instead of dumping on someone and it made me better. So the idea is journal every single day. Like Marcus, you can do the Daily Stoic Journal, do a blank journal. You can do it on your phone. It doesn't matter. But every day, spend a few minutes with a journal.

17:45Ryan Holiday: Prepare for life's setbacks. Premeditatio Melorum, this comes to us from Seneca, says exile, war, torture, shipwreck, be ready for them because they're going to happen. And he says the unforeseen blow lands heaviest. And by anticipating things, we take power away from them. So be prepared, be ready, think unpleasant thoughts so you can be pleasantly surprised if they don't happen rather than unpleasantly surprised when they do happen. That's what Seneca says. He said the only unacceptable excuse is I did not think that could happen.

18:18Ryan Holiday: One of the really beautiful things in meditations is all the observations Marcus makes about nature, the flecks of foam on a boar's mouth, the way olives fall right from the tree, the way the wheat bends low under its own weight, the furrowed brow of the lion. You know, he found beauty in the mundane, in the everyday life. He talks about the way that bread cracks open in the oven. Where does this come from? Why does it happen? Life can be dark, life can be frustrating, it can break your heart. So if you focus on the good in finding beauty everywhere and seeing with the poet's eye, you'll find beauty everywhere.

18:51Ryan Holiday: You'll always have something that makes you smile.

18:56Ryan Holiday: We talked about how what's bad for the hive is bad for the bee. Another way of expressing this is this rule, which is to do wrong to someone else is to do wrong to yourself. We're all brothers. We're all one. We're all connected. To hurt someone else is to hurt yourself, right? We do good because it's the right thing but also because it's good for us

19:18Ryan Holiday: robert green once said to me there's two types of time in life a live time dead time says what are you going to choose you're going to live this moment you're going to kill time and waste time you're going to let that time die a stoic always chooses a live time they focus on what they control they focus on how they respond they know that life is short so they live every moment they use every moment put before them because they know that the next one cannot be taken for granted.

19:46Ryan Holiday: Associate with people who make you better. You become like your friends. We are a reflection of our surroundings. The Stoics sought out people that made them better. In fact, Seneca's conversation with Lucilius, who he writes to in letters from a Stoic, is about him associating with someone who made him better. Spend time with people who make you better. I saw a great expression the other day. You can't change your friends, but you can change your friends.

20:14Ryan Holiday: Look, this is a time of heightened political correctness, of sensitivity, of trigger warnings and microaggressions. The Stoics would say like, look, we don't control what other people do. We control how we respond. And that's why Epictetus reminds us that when we are offended, we are complicit in the response. It takes two to tango. Yes, they said it, but you decide that it's rude. You decide that it was mean. You decide that you've been harmed. Choose not to feel harmed by a remark, Marcus Aurelius says, and then you won't feel harmed.

20:45Ryan Holiday: Fate behaves as she pleases, Seneca says, so act accordingly. Be ready for everything that happens. Understand that it's not in your control and that what goes up must come down.

21:00Ryan Holiday: You possess nothing in this life. You have to understand this. All our possessions are ours in trust only. Epictetus is robbed of a silver lamp. He says, you can only lose what you have. And the next day he replaces it with a cheaper lamp. We don't possess our precious possessions. We don't possess our loved ones. They're ours for as long as we have them and they go away. You don't possess anything. Realize that everything you own is in trust and act accordingly. I think about this with my farm. I heard a great expression, you don't own your house, you don't own your farm, I don't own mine. The bank just lets me make payments on it.

21:35Ryan Holiday: It's not mine, but I can enjoy it while I have it.

21:41Ryan Holiday: Seneca says, I at least am not a hindrance to myself, meaning I don't make my problems worse by bemoaning them. Talked about complaining. Not only is complaining ineffective, it makes you miserable. It poisons the room, poisons the atmosphere. It's a cancer. Don't make your troubles worse by complaining about how bad they are, how unfair they are, how not your fault they are, how impossible they are to overcome. Focus on what you control. Focus on the good in them. That's plenty.

22:12Ryan Holiday: What goes up must come down. As we said, Mark Aurelius says, remember to accept it without arrogance to let it go with indifference. That's the rule. Accept the good things while they're there. Accept the bad things while they're there. None of them change who you are and what you can do. You want to be good and gracious and resilient in success. You want to be good and gracious and resilient in failure. You want to be humble when you're on high. You want to be humble when life has humbled you, right? Be who you are. Be the even keel. Don't let your circumstances changes you high or low. All of it is irrelevant to who you are.

22:52Ryan Holiday: Don't identify with success or failure. Focus on who you are and what you control. The four virtues of stoicism. I carry a coin in my pocket that says this courage, temperance, justice, wisdom. There is no situation so good, so bad, so strange, so ordinary that it does not demand these four virtues from us. Act always with courage, act always with moderation, act always in light of fairness and justice and honesty. And of course, you need wisdom to know how and when to do those three other things. Those are the four virtues of stoicism.

23:29Ryan Holiday: Then the last three, I actually have tattooed on my body that this important to me, the obstacle is the way. There's no problem so bad that there's not something you can't do because of it, that you can't grow because of it, that you can't learn because of it, that it doesn't open some opportunity that otherwise wouldn't have been there. When God shuts a door, he opens a window, right? What are you going to do because of this? What's the opportunity inside the obstacle?

23:56Ryan Holiday: Ego is the enemy. Arrogance always makes things worse. Ego never makes things better. Be humble. Be open-minded. Be willing to learn. Don't be above or beneath anything. Be who you are. Be confident, of course. But believe in yourself because there's evidence, not because you think you're better than everyone else.

24:19Ryan Holiday: Stillness is the key. The secret to charging ahead is slowing down, seeing things clearly. My best work never comes when I'm doing 50 things at the same time. Mark Sreles talks about how we want to be the rock that the waves are crashing over and eventually fall still around. Can you tune out what's happening outside? Can you tune out the crowd? Can you hit the game-winning shot? Can you focus on what you need to focus on? Can you see things clearly without the bias and the immediacy of the moment? That's why stillness is so important. That's why the Stoics talk about it over and over again and why it's such an important rule of life.

24:54Ryan Holiday: I'll leave you with one last rule, the most important rule in all of Stoicism, which is that you don't talk about your philosophy, Epictetus says, you embody it. I have a print on my wall right there from Marcus Aurelius. He says, waste no more time arguing what a good man is like. Just be one. All these rules are well and good as far as they go. But what matters is if you live them, if you apply them day to day, they're simple. I know that, but they're not easy. And I know that too. It's hard to apply them. But every day, as we said, you want to make a little bit of progress, get a little bit better at living these ideas.

25:30Ryan Holiday: That's the purpose of stoicism.

25:36You