These Days You Need Double What It Takes | Reignite Your Thoughts

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.

0:56These days, you need double what it takes. You think Marcus Aurelius wasn't prepared? Of course he was. Almost no one received more on-the-job training than he did. roughly two decades under Antoninus. He had fantastic teachers. He was trained in stoicism, a philosophy which not only prepared for the worst, but never expected the best. And still, still life rocked him. His reign was marked by an unending series of troubles. Misfortune after misfortune befell him. Plagues, war, the death of his children, an unfaithful wife. Surely this exhausted his reserves. Surely this taxed him beyond capacity.

1:43And yet, yet still he had to keep going, as we all do. Sometimes life feels like it's out to get us. It throws every type of adversity at us—illness, financial troubles, relationship issues, inequality and injustice. But still, we must keep going. We can train. We can prepare. We can stock up. We can rehearse in our minds what we need to do. This will not be enough. Because more will be expected of us still, more will be piled onto our plates. Enough is not enough. We'll need double, maybe more, especially these days. We'll need to reach deep down inside us to find some more. We'll need to keep going, even on empty, because it's going to take what it's going to take, and all we can do is take it, or not.

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5:59Reignite your thoughts. This is today's entry in the Daily Stoic. I'm holding the leather-bound edition today in my hands. Your principles can't be extinguished unless you snuff out the thoughts that feed them, for it is continually in your power to reignite new ones. It's possible to start living again. See things anew as you once did. This is how to restart life. That's Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 7-2. Have you had a bad couple weeks? Have you been drifting away from the principles and beliefs that you hold dear? It's perfectly fine. It happens to all of us. In fact, it probably happened to Marcus.

6:38That's why he scribbled this note to himself. Perhaps he was dealing with difficult senators or having difficulties with his troubled son. Perhaps in these scenarios, he lost his temper, became depressed, or stopped checking in with themselves. Who wouldn't? But the reminder here is that no matter what happens, no matter how disappointing our behavior has been in the past, the principles remain unchanged. We can return and embrace them at any moment. What happened yesterday, what happened five minutes ago, is in the past. We can reignite and restart whenever we like. Why not do it now? Now, I think it's pretty lovely that, although Marcus seems like this impossible ideal, this philosopher king, this magnificent, peerless human being, several times in meditations he talks about picking himself up when he fails.

7:34He talks about getting back up when you fail because he did fail. He fell short a lot, right? He must have. He writes this in meditations. He says that we shouldn't feel exasperated or defeated or despondent because your days aren't packed with wise and moral actions. He said, but try to get back up when you fail to celebrate behaving like a human, however imperfectly, and fully embrace the pursuit that you've embarked on. He's saying that not to you, but to himself, because like you, he fell short. He screwed up. I think, again, we think of self-discipline like someone who's in great shape, someone who sticks to a diet, someone who has good habits.

8:18We think of them as perfect. That's really not what they are. Actually, part of that is having the high standard, falling short, and then not writing yourself off or giving into that new thing, right? To be able to come back to the habit, to reset, to recommit when one falls short. You know, we want to say, ah, what the hell? Does it even matter? We throw in the towel. We quit because we screwed up or we fell short. But I think what Marcus is saying is like, look, you can screw up. You can fail. Or like things can knock you off your block. Like life can happen to you. You don't control that, but you always control whether you get back up, whether you come back to it or not, right?

8:59He says, we can't be extinguished. Only we can snuff it out. To me, that's what he's saying, that we always have the power to come back to it, to start anew, to restart, to recommit. So, you know, maybe you're doing the New Year New Year challenge with us right now. Maybe you've already fallen short on some of your resolutions. Maybe you relapsed. I don't know. Maybe you lost your temper this morning. I don't know. But you can come back to it, right? You can start living again. It's in your power to reignite, to come back to it, to pick yourself up when you fail to celebrate behaving like a human being, to fully embrace the pursuit that you've embarked on.

9:41Don't be exasperated, Marcus is saying. Don't be defeated. Don't be despondent. You're not perfect. No one thinks that you are. It was silly to expect that you could be. I like the advice from Oprah where she says, just because you ate one of the Oreos doesn't mean you have to finish the sleeve. Pick yourself back up. Don't snuff it out. Don't quit. Don't quit on yourself. Keep going. Don't give up. That's what today's message is. Reignite. Come back to the philosophy. Recommit to it. I know you can do it. Let's have a great year together.

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