Ask Yourself For Peace (And You’ll Find It At Your Feet) | A Week Without Complaining

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.

0:15Ryan Holiday: Ask yourself for peace and you'll find it at your feet. All you want is some quiet. All you want is some peace. All you want is some calm. More than want it, you need it. You need it for your sanity, for your survival. So you fantasize, as we all do, as Mark Surrealist did in 4.3 in meditations. Fantasize about getting away from it all, about travel, about the beach, about the country, about the mountains. And look, you may well find some quiet and space and calm there, but you should know that you can find it much closer to home too. It's one of my favorite songs, goes.

0:58The loneliness and me

1:05I asked myself for peace

1:12And found it at my feet

1:15Ryan Holiday: The ocean, the resort, the couple of weeks away from work, that's not where you'll find the peace you seek because it is already within you. Nowhere you can go, Marcus really says in that passage in Meditations. is more peaceful, more free of interruptions than your own soul. You have the power to calm yourself down. You have the power to give yourself clarity. You have the power to let go of what is making you miserable, to stop chasing what is making you so frantic and insecure. As the summer comes to a close, as vacation ends, as school begins again, as work ramps up in earnest, it's worth remembering this.

1:52Ryan Holiday: Instead of looking outward, instead of thinking you need to get away, to go somewhere else to find yourself or find peace, look inward. Find it within yourself. It's there whenever you need it. That's the idea in Stillness is the Key, by the way, which is, what is it, almost eight years old now. That's incredible. I can grab Stillness is the Key. I'll sign your copy. I'll link to it in today's show notes.

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4:59Ryan Holiday: Take control of your health with superpower. And for a limited time, our listeners will get$20 off to unlock their new health intelligence. Head over to superpower.com and use code STOIC for$20 off your$199 superpower membership. Tell them the Daily Stoic sent you to support the show. A week without complaining. Epictetus spoke often to his students about the need to give up blaming and complaining. In fact, he saw it as one of the primary measuring sticks of progress in the art of living. How much of life is wasted? Pointed fingers. Has complaining ever solved a single problem? Marcus Aurelius would say, blame yourself or no one.

5:43Ryan Holiday: This week, try constructive feedback over complaining and responsibility over blame. And if something goes wrong, spend some time reflecting on what the true causes were. don't waste a minute with complaints in your journal or out loud this is from this week's entry in the daily stoic journal 366 days of writing on reflection in the art of living by me ryan holiday and my co-author steven hanselman you can get this anywhere books are sold although we also have signed copies in the daily stoic store and of course at my bookstore the painted porch here in basher texas but we have three quotes from epictetus today about complaints He says, You must stop blaming God and not blame any person.

6:25Ryan Holiday: You must completely control your desire and shift your avoidance to what lies within your reasoned choice. You must no longer feel anger, resentment, envy, or regret. That's the Discourses 3.22. For nothing outside my reasoned choice, he says, can hinder or harm it. My reasoned choice alone can do this to itself. If we would lean this way whenever we fail and would blame only ourselves and remember that nothing but opinion is the cause of a troubled mind and uneasiness, then by God, I swear we would be making progress. That's Discourses 3.19. And then he also says in Coridian 1.3, but if you deem as your own only what is yours, and what belongs to others is truly not yours, then no one will ever be able to coerce or stop you, and you will find no one to blame or accuse, you will do nothing against your will, and you will have no enemy, and no one will harm you because no harm can affect you.

7:21Ryan Holiday: It's funny, just as I was sitting here, I was thinking to myself, man, it's so hot. It's hot in my office. I have to turn off the AC when I record. But one of my favorite quotes from Marcus Reelus about complaining, which I actually also have in sort of fictionalized in The Boy Who Would Be King, he says, don't be heard complaining at court, not even to yourself. Right? There are so many parts of Marcus Reelus' job that we get the sense that he didn't really like. He's kind of an introverted person. He's a good person. He wants to do what's right. He's not an ambitious person in the sense he doesn't want to dominate or win everything.

7:56Ryan Holiday: And so it must have been so frustrating to be around these obnoxious, annoying, dishonest people, these professional politicians, basically. But he catches himself. He's like, it's not even enough not to complain publicly. And of course, everyone would have indulged his complaints, he's emperor. But he says, don't even complain in your own mind. And that is some higher level shit right there, isn't it? To not only be able to stop yourself from complaining, I think it was Will Bowen, he had the no complaint challenge. Every time you say a complaint, you have to move the bracelet from one wrist to the other.

8:35Ryan Holiday: And the idea is, can you leave it on one wrist for 30 days? Can you get it in one spot for 30 days? No complaints. But imagine how most of us would fail if even thinking about a complaint, not even verbalizing it, disqualified us. But that's the challenge of the Stoics. And I think Epictetus, though, is more honest when he talks about just progress. The less blame, the less complaining, the more responsibility you're taking, the more constructive you are. That's what matters. Are you making a little bit of progress every day? Are you moving forward? Are you complaining less? Right? I think that's a fair way to think about it.

9:14Ryan Holiday: So I thought the complaint, but I didn't say it. That's progress. But maybe next time I can just go, the temperature is what the temperature is. If I want to do this thing, that's what I have to put up with. So that's what it is. Thinking about it doesn't help me. It doesn't make me any cooler, right? It just makes me frustrated. And that's why we try not to complain. So don't be heard complaining today, not even to yourself. That's the standard we're ascribing to. But could we just make some progress? We just blame only ourselves or ideally no one. That's progress. Let's do it. Let's work for it.

9:50Ryan Holiday: Let's make ourselves a little bit stronger as a result.