These Things Happen (And They’ll Happen To You) | Always Ask Yourself This Question

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.

0:15Ryan Holiday: These things happen, and they'll happen to you. It seems unimaginable, all the things that happened to Marcus Aurelius. A plague, a flood, a famine, wars, betrayal, a coup, children not surviving to adulthood health issues. Here's the thing, you don't have to imagine it. It happened. It was real. It's in the historical record. What of Seneca and Epictetus? Slavery, physical disability, exile, a deranged boss, a death sentence. These things happen to them just as they have happened to countless people throughout world history. These things could happen to you too. So could the things you've heard happening to friends or people in the news, a mugging on a street corner, a confessed affair, a cancer diagnosis, a layoff, a car accident, a house fire, a debilitating injury.

1:08Ryan Holiday: These things might catch you by surprise, but as we've said recently, it's not because you weren't warned. You were, not just in this email, but by the Stoics over and over again. What can happen anyone could happen to you. Fortune behaves as she pleases. It's your job to be ready, to be aware, to fortify yourself.

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4:35Ryan Holiday: Always ask yourself this question. Much of what we do and say during the course of a week is completely unnecessary. Meetings, material possessions, confrontations, pursuits, pointless distractions and problems. They take us away from tranquility and purpose. And a Stoic cuts through these temptations and obligations by asking a simple question, a question that should lead you in your journaling and thinking this week. It is this. Before speaking and acting or buying something, just ask, is this a necessary thing? This is from today's entry in the Daily Stoic. Journal, 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living by yours truly, Ryan Holiday.

5:20Ryan Holiday: You can get it anywhere books are sold. I do it every single morning, including this morning. And you can also buy a signed copy in the Daily Stoick store. But today's quotes, we have one long quote from Mark Sturilius and one short one from Seneca. Mark Sturilius says, It is said that if you want to have peace of mind, busy yourself with little. Wouldn't a better saying be do what you must and as required of a rational being created for public life? For this brings not only the peace of mind of doing few things, but the greater peace of doing them well. Since the vast majority of our words and actions are unnecessary, corralling them will create an abundance of leisure and tranquility.

5:59Ryan Holiday: As a result, we shouldn't forget at each moment to ask, is this one of the unnecessary things? But we must corral not only unnecessary actions, but unnecessary thoughts too, so needless acts don't tag along after them. That's our translation from The Daily Stoic in The Daily Stoic Journal. Let me give you Gregory Hayes, which I also really like. He says, if you seek tranquility, do less or more accurately, do what is essential, what the logos of a social being requires and in the requisite way, which brings a double satisfaction to do less better. Because most of what we do and say, and it's not essential.

6:38Ryan Holiday: If you can eliminate this, you'll have more time and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, is this necessary? but we need to eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow. And then our second quote from Seneca is, I was shipwrecked before I even boarded. The journey showed me this, but how much of what we have is unnecessary and how easily we can decide to rid ourselves of these things whenever it's necessary and thus never suffering to loss. That's moral letters 87.1. So you really need to stop and ask yourself this question. Is what I'm doing necessary? Why am I doing it? Is it just the way people have always done it?

7:17Ryan Holiday: I don't have to do most of the stuff. It doesn't actually move the needle. I was just doing it because that's what you thought you had to do. And to not do it seems scary. And because everyone else was doing it, it seemed reckless not to do it. Right. All the reasons we do things. But again, most of what we do and say and think is not necessary. It's not even particularly effective or well thought out. And so to question this is really important. And it's not just like, oh, you're privileged. You have a choice. That's why you're not doing it. It's actually not about privilege at all. In fact, it's the privileged people who can afford to do more unnecessary things, more pointless things, right?

7:55Ryan Holiday: It's actually at this point in my career, I had the luxury of, you know, taking a lot of time off to, let's say, do press for a book. It was actually earlier in my career that the costs of agreeing to this pointless stuff were much higher. but I wasn't aware of it. I wasn't fully understanding of the opportunity costs, how much this was taking me away from writing, how much this was taking me away from relationships, how much this was just taking me away from recovering and refreshing so I could go back to my work from a fresher point of view. And this is what I wanted to leave you with today.

8:27Ryan Holiday: Take a minute, stop, ask yourself, is what I'm doing necessary? How much of what I'm doing is unnecessary? And how can I eliminate some of that stuff so I can do the essential things better, right? I'm doing less, but I'm doing all my stuff better now.

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