This Doesn’t Change But You Do | The Daily Routine That Built Marcus Aurelius

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1:03Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

1:30This doesn't change, but you do. Speaking of changes, my voice might sound a little different, guys. That's because I just recorded an audiobook and I've never once recorded an audiobook and not gotten immediately sick after. I think it's an immune system thing just from overexertion. But anyway, sorry I sound like this. My voice hasn't changed permanently and it will get back to what it usually is very soon. That actually ties in today's message. So let's just get into it. In 2012, we were a few years out of the financial crisis. The world was still recovering from the aftershocks of the Great Recession.

2:04Occupy Wall Street had recently taken over a park in Manhattan. Gaultier had the best-selling single in the country with Somebody That I Used to Know. Taylor Swift had her first number one on the Billboard Hot 100. And HBO's Girls had just premiered. Obama was seeking re-election in a contentious race. I remember that time very vividly because I just started to work on a book idea that would become The Obstacle is the Way. In one sense, it was a totally different world and I was living a very different life. I wasn't married, I didn't have kids, and I was the editor-at-large at the New York Observer.

2:39By the time the book had come out in 2014, a conflict in Ukraine was beginning, there was a war in the Middle East, and a scary outbreak, Ebola, was dominating the news. There was instability and uncertainty and danger and division. What you could say is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. This is one of the most constant themes in meditations, the way that events flow past us like a river, the way the same things keep happening over and over again. That's what history was, Marcus Relius was saying, whether it was the age of Vespasian, his own, or sometime even more distant.

3:15It was, he said, people doing the exact same things, marrying, raising children, getting sick, dying, waging war, throwing parties, doing business, farming, flattering, boasting, distrusting, plotting, hoping others would die, complaining about their own lives, falling in love, putting away money, seeking high office and power. It's been this surreal experience of the audiobook I was recording was the new audiobook for The Obstacle is the Way, the 10th anniversary edition. It's incredibly strange to reread words that you wrote over a decade ago. So much has changed in the course of that time and so little as well.

3:55I got married, I had kids, I opened a bookstore, I lived through a pandemic. Everything seemed so different and yet everything also seems the same. Rereading a book that you wrote in your early 20s is weird. The words are the same, but the person who wrote them is not. The words are the same, but the context around them is not. And now the book itself is being changed, updated, improved to fit the moment in future moments. When I wrote the book 10 years ago, I was focused on the obstacles I could see and had experienced. I was applying those stoic lessons mainly to the challenges of navigating the early stages of my career.

4:35But today I'm drawing on those same principles to navigate the complexities of fatherhood, running multiple businesses, the perils of having donkeys as pets. Despite all the ways that my life in the world has changed, as I go back through those pages, though, the core principles hold up. Just how I apply them is different. And that's the idea that Marcus Aurelius was talking about, that Heraclitus, who coined that idea that we never step in the same river twice. Timeless wisdom doesn't change, but what you get out of it evolves as you do. And I've added some new stories and insights that I've picked up over the years, but the core Stoic wisdom remains unchanged.

5:15Those ideas are as relevant today as they were when the Stoics first put them down. So it wasn't so much a major overhaul, but a refining, an improving, a making of subtle adjustments, much like life itself. A tweak here, a new perspective there, a deletion here, an edition there. Over the past decade, all the reading I've done and experiences I've had have deepened my understanding of those principles. And that's what this new edition reflects. It's not a brand new book, but it's not a reprint either. It's an evolution, a continuation of that great stoic conversation that's been going on for thousands of years, updated with everything I've learned, the passage of time in my own life.

5:58If you read or listened to the first version of that book, well, thank you. And the 10th anniversary edition has some new awesome stuff. I couldn't have done this 10 years ago, and hopefully I can do a much better version if I'm lucky enough to still be here a couple of decades from now. But if you've been following the podcast for a while, you haven't read The Obstacles Away, well, this might be a good place to start. And if you want to own a piece of the legacy, we have a few more of these signed and numbered first editions. But if you buy a couple copies, you can get one of the pages that I read while I was doing the audiobook, you can see my notes.

6:31I was tweaking it up until publication. I got to check to make sure with my publisher, those changes have just gone in. So I've been working on it ever since, and I'll probably keep working on it for the rest of my life. You can head over to dailystoic.com slash obstacle, or I'll link to it in today's show notes. Thanks everyone for your support. And I hope you like the audiobook and I hope my voice doesn't stay like this.

7:002 ,000 years ago, Marcus Aurelius is the most powerful man on earth. He controls an empire of tens of millions of square miles, controls the lives of tens of millions of people. He controls the most powerful army on earth. He has the power of life and death over other people. He could have done whatever he wanted. He could have retreated to pleasure and indolence. He could have easily descended into insanity from stress and overwork. Yet he manages, as one biographer would say, to prove himself worthy of all the responsibility and power placed upon him. He manages, I think just as impressively, to manage it.

7:40He isn't corrupted by it. He doesn't break under the stress by it. He acquits himself well. So what's his secret? What does the life of this guy look like? How does Marcus Aurelius manage his day? Well, because of Marcus Aurelius' meditations, the private thoughts of this totally unique singular man, we have some idea. And that's what I want to talk about today, the daily routine of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher king. Like all people, it starts with the morning for Marcus Aurelius. We know that Marcus Aurelius wakes up early. We know this because he talks in meditations about struggling with this, right?

8:18He's a morning person, but not by nature. He's a morning person by habit. At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, he says, tell yourself I have to go to work as a human being. Is this what I was created for, to huddle under the blankets and stay warm? It's nice here. And he says, but are you made to feel nice? No. Marcus Aurelius attacks the dawn. He gets up. He gets after it, as I think most productive, successful people do. You start the day with a conscious choice, a choice to do the thing that isn't easy, but starts the day off right. And we can imagine he is doing some of his meditative work, his study of philosophy, his writing, his journaling there in the morning before he was besieged by inquiries, people who wanted favors, before the bad news had been delivered, before he had to get up and travel, before the battle begun.

9:09He was carving out a little time for stillness and reflection. What he's not doing is the equivalent of what so many of us do in the morning, which is we go straight to this thing. Before our feet hit the floor, we're sucked into the phone. We're sucked into the to-do list. We're not cultivating that stoic state of ataraxia, of freedom from disturbance. We're not being reflective. We're not being intentional. We're just putting out fires from the minute we wake up. And it's very clear that Marcus Aurelius is using this little bit of time in the morning to be in a meditative, philosophical, intentional state.

9:46This is how he opens book two of meditations. Again, he's talking about the morning here. He says, when you wake up in the morning, tell yourself the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. He's not saying, hey, the day sucks. He's trying to think, who are the kind of people that I'm going to meet today? What are they going to be like? And then he's saying, look, how can I be patient? How can I be understanding? How can I deal with this? How can I anticipate this? This is one of the stoic ideas. Seneca says that the unexpected blow lands heaviest.

10:15If you expect everyone to be wonderful and awesome, if you expect to get nothing but green lights all day, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Marcus is instead trying to anticipate due to this idea of premeditashimulorum. And then you know what he says in this passage? He says, look, why are they like this? And what is my job in relation to them? He's saying, don't lose your temper with them. Don't write them off. Try to find the good in them, right? So Marcus is trying to anticipate how the day is going to go and set himself up for success. But because Marcus really does have a difficult job, because there is immense amounts of responsibility on them, he has to get to work.

10:46That's what he's doing in that passage. He's saying, get up, get after it. What were you put here to do? He tells himself throughout meditations, concentrate on your tasks like a Roman. He points out the example of Antoninus, his predecessor and beloved stepfather, about how Antoninus planned out his day, how he even planned out his bathroom break so he wasn't wasting time. He tried to show up and when he was at work to be at work. He didn't complain about this. This is another thing Marcus Aurelius talks about. He says, never be overheard complaining at court, not even to yourself. What do I have to do today?

11:17What are my responsibilities? What are my jobs? Let's do them. And for Marcus, this would have been making decisions throughout the day. This would have been hearing cases. This would have been speaking to crowds. This would have been travel. This would have, in some cases, been leading troops into battle, right? But all the while, he's having to be focused. He says, get used to winnowing your thoughts. He says, if somebody asks you what you're thinking about, you should be able to answer. He's saying, don't let your mind wander. Don't get distracted. Focus on what you're doing. He's talking about what Cal Newport would call deep work.

11:52The ability to focus on the task in front of you, to actually do it, again, not to be distracted by this thing or all the other things that you could be doing, to lock onto the task in front of you, that is a key part of Marcus Aurelius's work style, his philosophical beliefs, and his daily routine. You can imagine that Marcus is sucked into meetings. He's meeting with advisors and ministers and ambassadors. He's getting briefed on strategy. One of the things he says he learns from Antoninus is when to yield the floor to experts, how to listen to other people's opinions, how to take in feedback and criticism.

12:27He says, you know, when somebody corrects me, when they tell me that I've been wrong, that I'm wrong, he's like, they're not harming me. They're doing me a favor. He says the harm is to remain in error, to not correct it. So there would have just been a lot coming at him. His job would have been stressful. It would have been exhausting. It would have weighed on him. But he tried to approach it with the right mindset, and he tried to keep it contained. This is, I think, an important part because there has to be balance, right? We work very hard. We throw ourselves at what we have to do. But if we're all about business, that's one of the things Marcus says in meditation is remind yourself not to be all about business.

13:02And we know that Marcus was not all about business. We know that he was active in physical exercise, right? We know that he enjoyed boxing and wrestling and hunting and horseback riding. We know that he would take walks, right? We see all these fascinating observations in meditations about nature, right? He's walking through the fields, like that scene in Gladiator, he's dragging the hand. There's a passage in meditations about grain bending low under its weight. He talks about, you know, the flex of foam on a boar's mouth, the brow of the lion, right? He's getting outside. He's enjoying nature.

13:36The Stoics said that the whole world is a temple of the gods. Marcus Aurelius is going out there and having this spiritual experience. A hobby he was not into that many Romans shared was the carnage of the Colosseum. We know Marcus didn't like this. He liked getting away from his imperial duties, but he hated the violence of it. He hated the pointlessness of it. And so it's funny. He was often seen doing his philosophical work or reading papers or thinking. He was there. He had to be there. But mentally, he was somewhere else because he wanted peace and relaxation. He says, look, it doesn't matter where you are.

14:12He says, people long to get away from it all, right? They want to travel. They want to just leave all their work behind. He says, but you can retreat inwards to your own soul at any moment. And that's what Marcus was doing there at the Colosseum. It didn't matter how horrifying and violent and gory and loud what was going on on the floor was. He was reading Euripides. He was reading Aeschylus. He was reading the Odyssey. He was reading Cleanthes or Zeno or Epictetus. He was studying philosophy. He was getting out of the dustiness of Rome, getting somewhere clean and better. And he probably visited the baths every day.

14:49He talks about washing off the dirt of earthly life. And I think he means this figuratively and literally. The Romans, one of the things, big part of Roman culture was the gymnasia and then the baths. So you'd work out and then the cold plunge or a hot bath. And if you visit Aquincum, which is a little Roman camp outside Budapest, where Marcus Reus probably wrote some of meditations, you can actually go in one of the hot springs that Marcus probably visited, right? So Marcus isn't all about business. He does find relaxation and pleasure. He is washing off the dirt and dustiness of life so he can get back to what he needs to do.

15:31And look, Marcus's imperial duties would have been overwhelming to even the strongest of people. In Marcus Aurelius's reign, there's a series of historic floods. There's a devastating plague, the Antonine Plague. There's wars, there's an invasion, there's coups. He has health issues. He has family issues. One ancient historian said Marcus doesn't have the good fortune that he deserves. This whole reign is involved in a series of trouble. The stress would have been unimaginable. The difficulty would have been overwhelming. There must have been moments where Mark Srinivas fell to his knees and he said, look, I just can't do it.

16:02But first off, he believed he had to do it. It was his responsibility. People were counting on him. And also he realized he had to have helpful coping mechanisms to deal with this stress. That's part of what his journaling practice is. That's what stoicism was helping him with. amidst all of this difficulty and stress, what he's trying to do is stay calm, stay centered, to avoid anger and destructive emotions, to not be reactive, but to be intentional. And the idea of the obstacle is the way comes from this. Like he's dealing with difficult people. He's dealing with difficult situations. He's dealing with things that are bad news, but he's trying to see it all as an opportunity to practice virtue.

16:40Famously, when Marcus is betrayed by Avidius Cassius, his most trusted general, he doesn't immediately react. He steps back. He doesn't say anything. He's just trying to think about it. He doesn't want to be emotional. He doesn't want to let his personal feelings into the mix. And then he comes back and he says, look, look, this is a chance for us to show, he says, to show the Romans and to show the future how a country can deal with civil strife. He tried to do what he talks about in meditations where he says the best revenge is to not be like that. He wanted not to overreact. He wanted not to be broken by it.

17:11He wanted to use it as an opportunity. Always. Everything was an opportunity to Marcus, big and little. The little experiences he had throughout the day, the big experiences throughout the day, was always an opportunity to respond with erite and virtue and decency. As we said, Marcus Rios isn't all about business. When he's not doing his hobbies, he's not getting out there, getting active, strong mind and a strong body, he is focusing on reading and writing, which he saw as an essential part of his job in every facet. We have the letters that he writes to his mentor and teacher, Cornelius Fronto.

17:43He's still writing these lovely letters well into his reign. He's debating philosophical things with his teacher, Rusticus. And we know that Marcus read a lot, both as a kid and as an adult, because his writings is full of these references that he's making from memory to the plays of Euripides. He's directly quoting Epictetus and Chrysippus, Zeno, and all these other thinkers, because they're right there on top of mind. He's reading and rereading. He's lingering on the works of the master thinkers, as Seneca said. What he had learned from his teacher, Rusticus, he said, is to never be satisfied just giving the gist of things.

18:17So when Marcus Aurelius reads, he's diligent about it. He's focused about it. He's taking notes. He's processing. He's looking things up. He's not this casual reader. He's not just reading for fun or reading for status. He's reading to learn and to get better. And I would imagine that this reading routine was probably part of his evening routine, right? Seneca would talk about a ritual he had that at the end of the day, he would put himself up for review. I think in the midnight dimness, as one of Mark Surrelius's biographers would say, he was putting himself up for review. That's what meditations is.

18:48Mark Surrelius's interrogation of himself, his review of himself, what he could do better, how he could do better, holding him accountable, what went right, what went wrong, where can he improve? Because look, there's not a lot of people that can do that for Mark. He doesn't have a boss. The judgment of history is far off. He's trying to remind himself what's important. He has to be the final bit of accountability. Philosophy was the final bit of accountability. He says, fight to be the person philosophy tried to make you. That's what he was doing throughout the day, but it's in the evening with the journal and the reading and the thinking and the quiet time that the lessons are being learned there.

19:22And we can imagine that not a day goes by, certainly not an evening that goes by, that Mark Sturrilis doesn't do the stoic practice of memento mori. You could leave life right now, Mark Sturrilis says, let that determine what you do and say and think. Mark Sturrilis tried to spend lots of time with his family. He writes in one of his letters to Franto how he would trade all of it to just have more time with his wife. He says, as you tuck your children in at night, say to yourself, they will not make it to the morning. This wasn't morbid. He wasn't like trying to practice his monkish detachment from the people that he loved.

19:53He was trying to say, why are you rushing through this? Why are you not soaking this in? Why are you not being present for it? And this practice of memento mori is an essential part of the stoic daily routine. And we can imagine not a single day in Marcus Aurelius's life going by without it. And we can imagine part of Marcus's daily routine, you know, he just spent the whole day being celebrated, being clapped for, being told how important and powerful he was. People were saluting. Thousands of soldiers appeared before him. Kings of other nations, you know, gave him gifts. He tried to actively remind himself that he wasn't that important, that posthumous fame was worthless.

20:27He tried to stay humble with it. He says, be careful not to be Caesarified, right? Not to be stained purple. He would look out at the fancy feasts or the honors or the jewelry they put on him. And he would say, look at this. This is a dead pig. This is a rock pulled out of a mine. This is a silly metal. He's trying to not be changed or transformed or made to feel better than as a result of this very unusual, strange, surreal existence that he had. And each of us should have some version of this practice in our own life too, because success can go to your head. Because busyness can make you feel important.

21:05Being at the center of things can make you feel like you're the center of the universe, but you're not. And part of the philosophical practice is to zoom out. Mark Sturlus talks about looking at things from above. Look at this army, not how powerful it is up close, but how it resembles ants from far away. He's trying to get perspective always. I think this is a key part of Mark Sturlus' routine. And I imagine that throughout the day, but especially at night, as he's just thinking about how he just spent these last few hours. Mark Sturulus is asking this question we see in meditations. He says, whenever you are afraid of death, whenever you want to live forever, he says, ask yourself, am I afraid of death?

21:38Because I won't be able to do this anymore. We so value our time. But he was talking about how frivolously we spend it, right? We waste it on things. We act as if we have forever, but we don't. The Stoics knew that death wasn't a thing that was happening in the future. But the death was happening now. Dying every minute. Dying every day. Mark Srelius would have seen the passage of each day per Stoic philosophy as a kind of death. So at the end of the day, he's asking himself, what do I have to show for the hours that I just spent? And if this was the last day of my life, he's trying to imagine going to bed and not waking up.

22:08If I wake up in the morning, I get a second chance tomorrow. How am I going to do better? How am I going to grow? What am I going to learn? How am I not going to take that time for granted? A day in the life of Mark Srelius, on the one hand, his life, his experience should be totally unrelatable to us, unimaginable, unfathomable to us. The most powerful man in the world 2 ,000 years ago, speaking languages we don't speak anymore, living in ways we would never live anymore. And yet, as we see in meditations, as we see in his routine, he was like us. The past is a foreign country, and yet human beings are human beings are human beings.

22:40And the more things change, the more they stay the same. And from Marcus to Realize, we can see so many great habits and practices that we should apply in our own life. And circling back here after these meditations, after all this thinking, is he's got to get to bed, right? It's easy to talk about waking up early, but if you're not protecting your sleep, if you don't have discipline before bed, again, if you're scrolling this phone thing until three in the morning and then trying to get up with the dawn, you're going to have trouble. And we know Marcus Rios is a bit of an insomniac, probably the stress and the health issues kept him up, but he tried to get to bed, he tried to take care of himself, and you have to do that also.

23:17When I wrote The Daily Stoic eight years ago, I had this crazy idea that I would just keep it going. The book was 366 meditations, but I'd write one more every single day and I'd give it away for free as an email. I thought maybe a few people would sign up. Couldn't have even comprehended a future in which three quarters of a million people would get this email every single day and would for almost a decade. If you want to get the email, if you want to be part of a community that is the largest group of stoics ever assembled in human history, I'd love for you to join us. You can sign up and get the email totally for free.

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