This Is How It's Meant To Be Done | It Is Well to Be Flexible

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: This is how it's meant to be done. Because so much of Stoicism comes down to us in books, it's easy to assume that it's a written philosophy. That philosophy was something the Stoics did alone, in private, hunched over a wax tablet or some unfurled scroll. Isn't that how we got meditations or Seneca's letters? Yeah, but that's not how we got the philosophy itself. Stoicism began on a porch in Athens, the Stoapokile, the painted porch, where Zeno would talk and trade ideas with whoever was around. The great playwright David Mamet had a funny way of putting it on the Daily Stoic podcast a while back.

0:55Ryan Holiday: He says what he loves about the Stoics is that they were just porch guys, just regular people hanging out, talking about how to become the best version of themselves. Cato, the man widely admired as one of the greatest Stoics, we don't even have secondhand reports of his words. But we know that he liked to do his philosophizing on foot, or Plutarch tells us that he would take meandering walks through Rome, talking with whomever he met on his rounds, and that for all his austere habits, he loved philosophical dinner parties where they talked about ideas long into the night. You know, Epictetus never wrote anything down.

1:33Ryan Holiday: His discourses comes to us from a student who tells us that whatever he used to hear him say, he wrote down, word for word, as best he could, as a record for later use of Epictetus' thoughts and frank expressions. And that's how Epictetus taught, in person, going back and forth in real time. So for most of its history, Stoicism was a spoken conversational philosophy. It's meant to be heard, meant to be talked about, meant for that back and forth. And it's a great tradition that we're a part of, one that's gone on unbroken for thousands of years. And by the way, we are continuing it here with Daily Stoic and me, Ryan Holiday.

2:14Ryan Holiday: I'm going to be hitting the road the old way here very soon. As part of the Daily Stoic Live tour, I'm making the rounds. I'm going to be in Portland here in early June, San Francisco, then Chicago, Boston, D.C., Detroit, Australia, Midwest, East Coast, all over even New Zealand. And I'd love to see you. Come ask me questions, trade ideas, hang out, talk to me, talk to other Stoics. Grab your tickets at dailystoiclive.com.

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4:17Ryan Holiday: More than 90 ,000 businesses, solo operators, growing teams all use it. It's not just a phone system. It's a smart one. AI automatically logs the calls, summarizes them, flags next steps, so nothing falls through the cracks. You can even qualify leads or respond after hours so the business stays on even when you're off. Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free, plus 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash Daily Stoic. Q-U-O dot com slash Daily Stoic. It is well to be flexible. Begins with a quote from Seneca on tranquility of mind. He can't serve in the military.

4:59Ryan Holiday: Let him seek public office. Must he live in the private sector? Let him be a spokesperson. Is he condemned to silence? Let him aid his fellow citizens by silent public witness. Is it dangerous to enter the forum? Let him display himself in private homes at public events and gatherings. Is a good associate, a faithful friend, and a moderate table mate? Has he lost the duties of a citizen? Let him exercise those of his human being. And then the story. It's one of my all-time favorites. I loved this the first time I heard it. Shortly before his death, as victory in the Civil War was finally within his grasp, Lincoln told a story to an audience of generals and admirals about a man who had approached him for a high-ranking government appointment.

5:44Ryan Holiday: First, the man asked if he might be made a foreign minister. Upon being turned down, the man asked for a more modest position. Upon being turned down again, he asked for a job as a low-level customs officer. Finally, he could not even get that. He finally just asked Lincoln for an old pair of trousers. Ah, Lincoln laughed as he concluded the story. It is well to be humbled. This story embodies the flexibility and the determination of stoicism. If we can't do this, then perhaps we can try that. And if we can't do that, then perhaps we can try some other thing. And if that thing is impossible, then there is always another.

6:21Ryan Holiday: Even if that thing is just being a good human being, we always have some opportunity to practice our philosophy to make some kind of contribution. You know, I love this story. And I think the lesson that Lincoln was trying to say is that you find your role, you're willing to accept or make whatever works. Right. And I think that's what Seneca was saying. And I suspect Seneca was also telling this story, you know, near the end of his life as the options in public life were closing to him. You know, okay, so Nero turned out to be insane. Okay, so you're forced into exile. You know, all throughout Seneca's life, in fact, he's forced to adjust, to accommodate, to make the best of a bad situation.

7:10Ryan Holiday: And for the Stoics, this was the resignation. Not like resignation, like, oh, everything sucks, what am I going to do? But like, oh, this is the role I've been assigned, I'm going to act the hell out of it. And this is something that Epictetus talks about as well. You know, he says that, you know, we're like actors in a play. We're not the author. We're not the playwright. But but but we have to to really embrace the role that we're assigned and this ability to be flexible, to not go, oh, but I only operate at this level. I'm a Harvard grad. I could not possibly accept X, Y, or Z. This makes us really fragile because life is going to humble us.

7:47Ryan Holiday: Life is going to put us in unfamiliar situations. But the person who can adjust, who can say, yeah, I'll start here. I might work my way back up. I might be such a stunning actor in this role that I get promoted or I get noticed. But I'm not going to put on any airs. I'm not going to close myself off to anything. I'm going to embrace this. Right. And this is something I think about, you know, when I obviously when I talk about this idea of the obstacle is the way it's not it's naive to think, oh, you can turn everything into a wonderful positive. That's not what it is. It's not, oh, this horrible thing happened.

8:28Ryan Holiday: But by by some magical trick, I turned it into the best thing that ever happened to me in the loss of my father. or the loss of all your money or the loss of your job or the loss of this or that. It's ridiculous and offensive to be glib to say, oh, just focus on the good. No, what we're saying is that there's some good that can be derived from this. There's something positive we can find. We can move the ball forward in some way because of this. It's not to say we would have chose it to be happy. We can settle for the old pair of trousers. That's Lincoln's joke, right? We can settle for something as opposed to taking our ball and going home, crying about it, feeling persecuted about it, throwing up our hands, giving up because of it.

9:16Ryan Holiday: And that's what Seneca ultimately does as well. You know, his great writing towards the end of his life comes as these other doors have been shut in his face. And I would argue he makes his largest contribution through this writing. And that's why we're here talking about it today. So be humble, be flexible today. Make the most of it. Talk to you soon.

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