Do This to Capture the Magic for Yourself | What Can Go Wrong...Might

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.

0:14Ryan Holiday: It should be the easiest book in the world to read. It's only, depending on the translation, a couple hundred pages, which are made up of short passages, making it easy to read in small increments. It's written in a straightforward and accessible style without any complex philosophical jargon. Unlike most books, there's no pretense, no performance, no intent to impress an audience. It's filled with topics that are universal and relevant, dealing with tough times, being nice to people, waking up and getting to work even when you'd rather stay under the warm blankets. And yet, so many people struggle with and get frustrated by Marcus Aurelius' meditations.

0:54Ryan Holiday: and they have ever since it was first discovered after the emperor's death nearly 2 ,000 years ago. Just as we can imagine the first reader of meditations trying to make sense of the private thoughts of this great man, today people have questions about where to start and what to take from it. What translation should I get? Should I read it cover to cover or is it better to approach it in bite-sized pieces? Do you read it once or multiple times? Where did Marcus write it? Why did he write it? Did Marcus mean to come off so dark or dour? Is it important to know about Marcus's circumstances? Who he was writing for?

1:28Ryan Holiday: What he meant? Do you need to know the core principles of Stoicism to fully appreciate meditations? We've been working hard here at Daily Stoic for the last decade to try to make Marcus really successful and practical for people. We even published our own edition of Meditations. But we've also spent hundreds and thousands of hours, not just with his writings, but also with the best experts and translators and students of Stoicism to help make sense of what he meant and what he can do for us. Getting to the bottom of meditations is the work of a lifetime. And as Marcus would say of any great work of art, you get something new each time you go to it.

2:03Ryan Holiday: Well, that's why we've been putting together what I think is the perfect companion for reading and understanding Marcus Aurelius' meditations. It's this new daily Stoic Meditations guide. Like a book club or an annotated version of your favorite book, it's designed to be your personal roadmap through the nuances, subtleties, and complexities of Marcus Aurelius in meditations. Whether you've yet to journey through the pages or you're intimately familiar with them, this awesome course will enhance your reading experience, deepen your understanding, and show you how to apply the same Stoic principles and exercises that Marcus Aurelius used to improve his life to improve your own.

2:41Ryan Holiday: You can just go over to dailystoic.com slash meditations to check it out.

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5:07What can go wrong might. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal. 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living by yours truly. We call people who dwell on what might go wrong pessimists. Some even think that bad thoughts attract bad events. The Stoics found this all to be nonsense. In fact, they had a practice, pre-meditatio malorum, pre-meditation of evils, that specifically encouraged musing on the so-called worst-case scenario. Marcus would begin his day thinking about all the ugliness he would see on display in court, not for the purpose of working himself up, but precisely the opposite, to calm and focus himself, to be prepared to act in the proper way rather than just to react.

5:53Seneca, too, practiced meditating in advance, not only on what normally happens, but on what could happen. Epictetus went as far as to imagine losing a loved one every time he would kiss them. The Stoics believed that all we have is on loan from fortune, and that negative visualization helps increase our awareness of the unexpected. So don't shy away from this in your thoughts. And we have two quotes today from Marcus Aurelius and from Seneca. When you arise in the morning, tell yourself I will encounter busybodies, ingrates, egomaniacs, liars, the jealous, and cranks. They are all stricken with these afflictions because they don't know the difference between good and evil.

6:32Because I have understood the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, I know that the wrongdoers are still akin to me and that none can do me harm or implicate me in ugliness, nor can I be angry at my relatives and hate them, for we are made for cooperation. Before I get to the Seneca quote, I would say that the many first times I read this quote, especially when I read it young, I focused on that first part where you list just how awful and frustrating everyone will be. And I think that's sort of the rudimentary understanding is like, look, you know, don't go into the world all rosy eyed and bushy tailed or you're going to get your heart stomped on, right?

7:05You got to be aware. You got to be prepared. Marcus really says, don't go expecting Plato's Republic. But it's really the second part of that that's hit me more, right? Why is he doing that exercise? It's so when he's hit by it, when he's hit by a cheat or a liar or a person who is, you know, messing around on their spouse, or, you know, when he sees somebody do something wrong, he's not surprised by it. It doesn't make him bitter and it doesn't make him right off all of humanity as a whole. You know, he says, because I know better, I know that the wrongdoers are still akin to me. And he says, and none can do me harder, implicate me in ugliness, nor can I be angry at my relatives or hate them.

7:50That's something I've been working on. It's like I was just dealing with someone who I really care about and they're just, you know, being, you know, not safe or smart or who I know them to be. And I wanted to unload on them and I had to go, no, I care about this person. I should have prepared for this. I shouldn't have built them up in my head. They're a human being. They have flaws. They do the wrong thing sometimes. I'm not going to cast them out of my heart or out of my life for what they've done. And then this goes into the second Seneca quote. Being unexpected adds to the weight of a disaster and being a surprise has never failed to increase a person's pain.

8:23For that reason, nothing should ever be unexpected by us. Our minds should be sent out in advance all the things and we shouldn't just consider the normal course of things, but what could actually happen? For is there anything in life that fortune won't knock off its high horse if it pleases her? I have the Prima Tashio Malorum coin here on my desk and I just look at it and I go, look, look, Murphy's law is real, man. Things can go sideways fast. You know, Seneca says the only unforgivable thing for a general to say is I did not think it would happen. So of course, positive visualization is thinking of all the good things that can happen.

8:56You can succeed. You can break through. You can make it. If it's humanly possible, know you can do it, Marcus says. The same time, the law of attraction is not real. If you think about negative things, you don't attract negative things. You actually make yourself more prepared to wrestle with and deal with and conquer those difficult things. And that is why we do our premeditatio malorum. That is why we think of all the things that can happen. That's why we meditate on the people we're likely to meet so that they can't drag us down, they can't implicate us in ugliness, and they can't make us unhappy.

9:33Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. please spread the word, tell people about it and this isn't to sell anything I just wanted to say thank you

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