It Shows Us This | Your Actual Needs Are Small

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 shows us this. On the one hand, history is a catalog of human misdeeds, conquests, cruelty, stupidity, and horrors. It's the same thing happening, as Marcus Reilly said again and again, no escape from the rhythm of events. On the other hand, is history not also a catalog of human greatness? People who push back against conquests, cruelty, stupidity, and horror, periods of innovation and creation, innumerous examples of beauty and art. Isn't Marcus Reilly's an example of all that? History shows us how to behave, the great David McCullough writes in a short book, History Matters, which I've raved about, carry at the painted porch.

0:56Ryan Holiday: He said, history teaches, it reinforces what we believe and what we stand for and what we ought to be willing to stand for. Both the inspiring and the terrifying events of history do this. Both the good and the bad do this. The heroes and the villains do this. They show us what to do and what not to do. The question for today is who will you be? Who will you learn from? What will your study of history, which you should always be doing, show you?

1:32Ryan Holiday: Your actual needs are small. This is an entry from the Daily Stoic. Nothing can satisfy greed, but even a small measure satisfies nature. So it is that the poverty of an exile brings no misfortune, for no place of exile is so barren as to not produce ample support for a person. This is Seneca in his consolation to his mother. It can be beneficial to reflect on what you used to accept as normal. Consider your first paycheck and how big that seemed, or your first apartment with its own bedroom and bathroom and the ramen you gladly scarfed down in the kitchen. Today, as you become more successful, these conditions would hardly feel sufficient.

2:19In fact, you probably want even more than what you have right now. Yet just a few years ago, these paltry conditions were not only enough, they felt great. When we become successful, we forget how strong we used to be. We are so used to what we have, we half believe that we'd die without it. Of course, this is just the comfort talking. In the days of world wars, our grandparents and parents made do with rationed gas, butter, and electricity. They were fine, just as you have been fine when you had less. Remember today that you are okay if things suddenly go wrong. Your actual needs are quite small.

2:56There is very little that could happen that would truly threaten your survival. Think about that and adjust your worries and fears accordingly. There is a passage where I talk about this in Discipline's Destiny, which let me grab real fast. I talk in part one about avoiding the superfluous, right? And I tell the story of Cato the Elder, and he says, nothing is cheap if it is superfluous. He's talking about cultivating a place where you don't have more than you need and people can't take that from you, right? I say this in the chapter. I say, think about how content you were with less just a few years ago, how much more frugal you were by necessity, how much less you got by on?

3:40Do you look back at those younger years when you were striving and struggling as somehow lacking, as something you're bitter about? Not usually. Those were happy days. We almost missed them. Things were simpler then, cleaner. There was more clarity. Most of the luxuries that lay in the future, we did not even know about. We didn't pine for them. We were ignorant of even their possibility. And when you realize this, that the less you desire, the richer you are, the freer you are, the more powerful you are. You have something that can't be taken away from you. So the Stoics want you to realize how little you need for the happy life.

4:16To get personal for a second, I think about the job that I dropped out of college for. I've told this story before, but I remember I was offered$30 ,000. That was my salary. And I remember thinking, I may have even said it out loud, and I'm both mortified and find it hilarious. I remember thinking, what am I going to do with all this money? That was so much money to me. As it happens, like two days after I started, they knocked my salary down because the partner who'd hired me hadn't cleared it with the other partners. And I actually made more like 26 or something. But it was more than enough for me.

4:51I think about what I got paid for my first book. It's all so much extra, so much more than I was once happy to have. And that success should make you grateful. It shouldn't make you paranoid, right? If you take it for granted, you're being ungrateful, I guess is what I'm saying. And when you realize how little you need, it allows you to feel the true wealth that you have, the true excess that you have, and realize how much fat, how much space is there. You don't need to protect it so tightly. It's house money at this point. That's what the Stoics were trying to think about. I even think about Seneca.

5:31Seneca's writing this letter to his mother. He's in exile. But this is the second time this has happened to him. He realized, you know, that he couldn't cling too tightly to any of these things. And I think that gave him a kind of strength. It's what allowed him to comfort her in this difficult moment. So that's what we're talking about here. We're not saying you starve yourself. We're not saying you experience nothing. You just realize that it's extra and you don't need it all. Thanks, everyone.