It Can Make You Great | Accepting What Is

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.

0:55It can make you great. Just so you know, the 2025 live session of Stoicism 101, Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life, is starting in just a few weeks. It's going to start on the 10th. Don't miss your chance to join us to do a deep dive into stoicism. And I'd love to have you in there. It's one of my favorite things that we do every year. We're told that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and yet it didn't with Marcus Aurelius. As emperor of Rome, he was the most powerful man in the world, and yet still he worked hard, sought peace, remained compassionate. He didn't indulge himself in pleasures.

1:34In the depths of Rome's financial crisis, he even sold off his own possessions to raise money for the country. He was especially good and decent compared to his predecessors and many other powerful leaders throughout history, and you might say even leaders in contemporary times. So what made Marcus Aurelius different? What were his secrets to success, resiliency, and productivity? And how did he master his emotions and maintain such self-control? all. How might you apply these lessons to your own life? Imagine if you had the tools to be less angry, less distracted, less impulsive, if you could be disciplined even amidst incredible success as well as difficulty.

2:15How much more time would you have? How much more could you accomplish? How much greater could you be? Would it make you a better leader, a better partner, a better friend? How would it feel if you were more content with yourself, less anxious of what others thought of you? How much more time would you have to achieve your goals and focus on the things that really matter in life? Well, that's what Stoicism is about. That's what it can do for you. Because this is a philosophy designed for the real world to solve real problems. It's an essential tool, I say, in the pursuit of self-mastery, perseverance, and wisdom, a way to live the good life.

2:49So if you want to learn how to apply Stoicism to your actual everyday life, I'd love to have you join us in Stoicism 101, Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life. It's the best practices and routines of Stoicism, all delivered in 14 days. As we've said here before, Stoicism is like the secret weapon of so many great men and women of history, and that's what we dig into in Stoicism 101. I've taught Stoicism everywhere from NFL locker rooms to Fortune 500 boardrooms in front of TED audiences and millions of people all over the world, and I'll be your personal teacher as we dive into the 101 of Stoicism.

3:27It's 14 days, two live Q &As with me. There's going to be a private discussion board, all the previously recorded office hours from the other times we've run Stoicism 101, along with a bunch of other awesome stuff. And to join us, you have to sign up by Monday, November 10th. That's when it starts. I'll link to that in today's show notes, or you can just go to dailystoic.com slash 101 to join us.

3:57I'm recording this on a Monday, and Monday is our grocery store day in our family. I usually pick my kids up from school, and we go over to Whole Foods, get all our groceries for the week. Although, here very shortly, we're going to go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey, because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at$1.49 a pound, if you have Prime, with organic birds at$2.99 a pound. and they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials, whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends.

4:34Everything they sell has high standards to help you shop with confidence. Enjoy so many ways to save on your Thanksgiving spread at Whole Foods Market. We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that. But I do control how I respond, right? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence.

5:17My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for Good Inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It over the holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr.

5:54Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events.

6:13Today's entry, Accepting What Is. Reinhold Niebuhr's serenity prayer is a mantra for many. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. It reads, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. The Stoics wanted to push past simply accepting what is. They wanted us to be grateful and happy with what is. Epictetus taught that we get a well-flowing life when we wish for what is going to happen, not for what we want to happen. And Marcus Aurelius adds that we should meet anything that comes our way with gratitude, not, I wish this was different and I'll tolerate it, but I'm glad it happened this way.

6:59it's for the best. So let us try that on for size this week. And we have two quotes from Epictetus and one from Marcus Aurelius. Don't seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will, and then your life will flow well. That's Epictetus' Inchiridion 8. And then from the Discourses 1.12, he says, To be truly educated means this, learning to wish that each thing happens exactly as it does. Marcus Aurelius' meditation, 9-6, All you need are these, certainty of judgment in the present moment, action for the common good in the present moment, and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way.

7:48One thing I wanted to point out because I was fascinated to learn this is the serenity prayer. One, it sounds like some sort of real hymn or prayer that must go back thousands of years. Honestly, it sounds like something that could come from the Stoics. And then obviously a lot of people associate it with recovery movement, which it has become a big part of. But it really dates to like the 30s and 40s. They think that he composed the prayer somewhere around the time of 1932, 1933, which for some context is in the midst of the Great Depression. But again, one of the benefits of wisdom is that it is both timely and timeless at the same time.

8:32So this idea of the prayer, Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know one from another. Also, I think the difference between that as he first writes it and then what it sort of commonly gets rendered at is also a sign of, as Twain says, the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. like just the perfect wording of it, the perfect encapsulation of the wisdom. It feels as soon as you see it, even though, you know, it's as old as some people's grandparents who are listening to this, or perhaps some people who are listening to this themselves, they may be well older than that short little prayer, but it feels as current and fresh and also as ageless and timeless.

9:19unless it's just about anything. But anyways, let's not nerd out too much on the history of the prayer. What I thought I would focus on today, because we've been talking about acceptance quite a lot here on the podcast, I tend to disagree a little bit with Epictetus. I find that Epictetus' life was so tragic and painful. His name literally means like enslaved. We know almost nothing about his family. We know nothing about his existence, except that he's born a slave. He has a cruel master who tortures him. He walks for a limp the rest of his life. And then after 30 years of slavery and eventually getting his freedom, Epictetus is exiled by a cruel emperor.

10:00So it is a hard life. But I find it striking that nowhere in Epictetus's writings does he really question whether any of it was right or fair, whether anything could be done about it. Now, You might say this is him reaching this sort of sage-like level of wisdom. And I think there's truth to that. I mean, who am I to question, obviously, such a great and brave and enduring spirit. But I guess, obviously, we live in a world now where people have more agency. And why do we have that agency? Because people were willing to fight for it and change. So, obviously, the Stoics are mostly right, that so much of what happens in this world is outside of our control.

10:42we should accept it. Resenting it, crying over it, whining about it, simply wishing it was otherwise does not do anything. Look, you were born five foot three instead of six foot three. That's just a reality. You're going to have to accept it, right? People in your family go bald. You're going to have to accept it, right? Your spouse turned out to be a jerk. They ran away with all your money, left you, broke your heart. It happened, right? That is true. But I just don't want Epictetus to be misinterpreted as some sort of rationalization or acceptance of profound injustices, including the injustices that Epictetus seemed relatively okay accepting, right?

11:23As they say, progress depends on the unreasonable man. I talk about this a little bit in the Courage book. We have to be accepting. We have to face unflinchingly the reality of our situation. But even as I read this paragraph that I have written, I would push back on it a little bit. And I do think it's important that we focus on what we're going to do about the situations that we find ourselves in. I feel like Epictetus could have done that a bit more himself. Still, obviously, a great man, better man than I. Certainly, I could not have endured what he endured. But it's just a thought today. And I want you to be OK pushing back and questioning things from the Stoics as well.

11:59They weren't perfect. They were products of their time. They were products of their own experiences. And we can challenge and debate and argue with them as long as we think we're getting them closer to what they actually mean, what the wisdom of the Stoics actually mean. And that's today's message.

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