Do You Know The Favorite Of Your Favorite? | Ask Daily Stoic

0:05Welcome 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 dailystoic.com.

0:55Do you know the favorite of your favorite? Marcus Aurelius is far and away the most famous of the Stoics. And this was true in the ancient world, and it's true today. His statues dotted the houses of Romans across the enormous span of the empire. It was put up in temples for display and honor, just as today he is tattooed on biceps and backs. His wisdom was popular then, and today his meditations remains a bestseller, 1 ,800 years after his death. He is not just many people's favorite philosopher, he is, in many cases, the only philosopher they have even heard of. So it's rather sad, you could say a sacrilege, that more people do not know who shaped Marcus Aurelius' philosophical worldview.

1:46Just as today sometimes we lament the fact that more people don't know your favorite rapper's favorite rapper, not enough people know their favorite philosopher's favorite philosopher. That is to say, not enough people know Epictetus, the Greek slave whose philosophical teachings were what made Marcus Aurelius into that philosopher king. So who was he? Who was Epictetus, your favorite philosopher's favorite philosopher? Well, he was born a slave in 55 AD in what is now modern-day Turkey. His very name in Greek just means acquired one. From nearly the moment of his birth, his life was not his own.

2:28He was sold to a powerful member of Nero's court, and he endured brutality and cruelty. His leg was broken by punishment or sadistic amusement, we don't know, and he walked with a limp for the rest of his life. And somehow, despite this, his tenacity, his perspective, his sheer self-sufficiency would make Epictetus, not just in his life, not just to the emperors he directly influenced, but in history and for all time, one of the ultimate symbols of the ability of human beings to find true freedom in the darkest of circumstances, which is why we're spending the whole month of July trying to give Epictetus the attention he deserved, doing a deep dive into his life, his lessons, and the legacy of this incredible teacher.

3:15So if you want to know more about your favorite philosopher's favorite philosopher, if you want to do a deep dive into Epictetus the way that Marcus Aurelius did, well, we'd love to have you join us in this sort of course guide thing we're doing. and it's hard for me to describe it exactly, but we're just calling it How to Read Epictetus. And it's going to be a practical companion where you can do a deep dive into his books. You can have some discussions with our fellow Daily Stoic members, thousands of Stoics all over the world. And on July 26, we're going to do a live Q &A about it, sort of a group reading discussion, which I'm really excited about it.

3:49Plus we have discounted copies of the Penguin Classics edition of Epictetus, which you can bundle with the course. That and more at dailystoic.com. slash Epictetus course. I'd love to see you in there. You got to sign up before July 26th. I'm really excited to do this with you. We're going to have a bunch more Epictetus stuff the coming weeks, but I wanted to tell you about it. And I wanted to remind you, if you're thinking about joining Daily Stoic Life and you haven't yet, you can get this course and all the courses for free, dailystoiclife.com. I hope to see you in there. And I hope you join us as we explore the fascinating life of Epictetus.

4:29Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. Back in February, I was in Salt Lake City. I was doing this talk for this group called YPO. And I get there a little bit early. I walk in. They're doing a soundcheck, but it's a remote soundcheck. And I see up on the screen and go, who's doing the soundtrack? And they go, oh, that's just Senator John Curtis. I go, oh, hello, Senator. How are you doing? And we chatted a little bit. That was a weird bump in. I'm in the room and then he's up on a 25 foot screen. It was it was strange. But we had a nice little chat. He gave some opening remarks.

5:11And then I talked to the folks at YPO. If you don't know what YPO is, basically you have to be the CEO or president of a company. and the company has to be worth at least$25 million and have at least 50 employees. So these are big, heavy hitters in law, business, sometimes investing. Anyways, after we did a little Q &A and Heidi Fry, who's the CEO of Ace IP Solutions, moderated the Q &A. It was lovely. And anyways, today's Q &A episode is going to bring you a chunk of those questions. Enjoy.

5:56Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Basko County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just... transportation, getting me to and from my house, it unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

6:41We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course. Because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you.

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8:59Who would you say is the best example of a modern-day Stoic and why? Ooh, that's a good question. I try to, one of the things I try to do in my books is talk about people who are dead. So I don't get myself in trouble. And so they don't disappoint me. But I do think General Mattis, who I talked about, is a hero of mine. Spends 40 years in the Marines. He's secretary of defense, sort of a lifelong student of the Stoics, but also sort of known as a man of honor. He resigns on principle during the first administration. I've just always seen him as a person of character and leadership who does sort of hard and difficult things, isn't interested in attention, isn't interested in, you know, settling scores or making points, but has always sort of selflessly served his country.

9:48I think we need to do a better job celebrating examples like that because one of the problems with our sort of culture is it's almost like the more shameless you are, the more you want attention, there's an infinite amount you can get. And so we often end up sort of constantly discussing and hearing the most from the people we should be focused on the least. Yes. And he has a great book called Call Sign Chaos that we sell in the bookstore because people love it. It's one of, I think, one of the great all-time military memoirs. I know you're big on parenting. Do you have a few Garderelles, words of wisdom, suggestions, raising kids to have courage to take risks but not stupid ones?

10:31Well, one of the things about risks is you sort of do have to take some stupid risks to get a sense of, you know, sort of where the lines are. I don't know. My kids are eight and five. I don't know exactly how you teach risk taking so much as you model it. You know, watching like growing up, I don't think any of my parents' friends had anything other than a day job, you know, and most of them worked for like the government. So the idea of, you know, working for yourself, putting yourself out there, being your own boss, that was like unthinkable to me. And it wasn't until, you know, I started to meet people and went away to college.

11:13I met people who were writers or professors or had these other professions. And you go, oh, this is just a job like any other thing. And so I think one of the things we can do as parents is sort of open our kids' minds to these different possibilities, ideally even outside of our own. So they get comfortable. They understand that is just a thing that people do and that it's possible. and that if you understand it and you're familiar with it, it's not so scary. So I'm trying to talk to them, for instance, like when they like a YouTuber or whatever, I go, you understand this person is an entrepreneur.

11:47Like they have, this is a business. This isn't just, they like playing video games. They do, but they manage to professionalize it and build a thing. And let's talk about how, so I'm just trying to sort of show them, you know, hey, this is how, if you're interested in something, this is how you kind of take it to that next level. How do you know when to validate an obstacle is hard and when to change your perception and push against it? Do you ever acknowledge that something is hard or is changing perception and taking action the first thought? I mean, I don't think you minimize an obstacle when you're in the middle of it.

12:22I like to go into things going, hey, this is going to be tough. This is going to challenge me. But that's what I'm looking forward to. Like when I start a book, I don't go, this is going to be fun. This is going to go great. I actually do the opposite. The Stoics talk about actually meditating. They have this exercise called premeditatio malorum, which is a sort of a premeditation on the difficulty. So they want to think about how it's going to be hard, how it's going to challenge us, where it could go wrong, not because they're going to shy away from it, but because they want to have their eyes open and that being naive or being delusional is a good way to get yourself in over your head or to be, you know, shocked by something.

13:01I'd rather be pleasantly surprised that it is less hard than I thought than unpleasantly surprised that it's harder than I thought. So I kind of try to be real honest. Like, I think people think, oh, that's pessimistic. No, I'm still intending to do it. To me, the optimism is like, it's hard and I'm doing it anyway, not, oh, it's going to go exactly the way that I want it to go. Like, even when I did sit down and when my wife and I were opening this bookstore. We thought we didn't imagine exactly a global pandemic and a supply chain logistics that we didn't imagine any of that. But like, you know, you plan to have more runway than you need.

13:37You understand you're going into something you've never done before. You do want to think about how it's going to be hard. How do we balance a life of trying to improve ourselves, be disciplined and practicing virtues with giving ourselves grace and acceptance and loving ourselves without constant self-criticism. I don't know if I necessarily see the contradiction there. Stoicism to me is a philosophy about pushing yourself and challenging yourself, sure, but it's not whipping yourself. It's not beating the crap out of yourself. There's a quote from Seneca. Seneca, most of his writing comes to us in his letters.

14:20He's writing to Lucille is, you know, you asked me, how do I know that I'm making progress in my pursuit of the philosophy? And he says, I know it because I've become a better friend to myself. And I think what he means is like a friend supports you and believes in you, but they also call you out and they hold you accountable. Friendship isn't just cheerleading. It's more than that. Good friendship anyway. And there's an honesty to it and a connection to it and a belief in it. That's what he's talking about. And so if that's what the philosophy is doing for you, it's supporting you and, but also challenging you.

15:01I think you're doing it right. If it's just making you feel inadequate or not enough, then you're doing something other than what the Stoics want you to do. Like Stoicism is about focusing on what's in your control. It's about, you know, holding yourself to these standards and then also understanding that they are ideals and that we are inevitably going to fall short of them. And what matters is what do we do after we fall short of them? Do we make excuses or do we sort of pick ourselves up and try to learn from it and then get better and grow and learn from each thing?

15:36Hey, 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 of 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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