This Practice Will Define Your Year | 7 Stoic Mantras That Will Change Your Life

0:00I'm recording this on a Monday, and Monday is our grocery store day in our family. I usually pick my kids up from school and we go over to Whole Foods, get all our groceries for the week. Although here very shortly, we're going to go over there to get our Thanksgiving turkey because they've got a bunch of great options. Turkeys start at$1.49 a pound if you have Prime with organic birds at$2.99 a pound. And they only carry no antibiotic ever turkeys that will bring quality to your table at a great price. Whole Foods has great everyday prices on all your Thanksgiving essentials, whether you celebrate with a massive family or just a few close friends.

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1:18Welcome 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.

1:44You must practice this ritual this year. Marcus Aurelius was a busy man. He was a smart and able and talented man. So why did he need to spend so many precious hours in his tent writing by the lamplight, practicing philosophy in his journals? It wasn't for our benefit. No, he never expected meditations would see an audience. He was writing for himself, to himself, trying to get better by himself. He was journaling as a means of self-improvement as much as he was of self-expression. As Tim Ferriss has said of his own daily journaling habit, but I don't journal to be productive. I don't do it to find great ideas or to put down prose I can later publish.

2:28The pages aren't intended for anyone but me, he says. I'm trying to figure things out. I'm just caging my monkey mind on paper so that I can get on with my fucking day. In 2017, we first published the Daily Stoic Journal, our attempt to create a modern, accessible, and beautiful medium through which to practice stoicism. Epictetus said that every day we should keep our philosophical aphorisms and exercises at hand so that we could write them, read them aloud, talk to ourselves and others about them. And that was the idea behind the journal. One stoic prompt for each day to be journaled about, meditated on in the morning and the evening.

3:05And thousands and thousands and thousands of people have done that for the last 365 days. And it's been awesome to hear what they've gotten out of the process. Because a journal is a place to clarify your thoughts, to find peace and quiet, to calm the negative energy swirling around in your head, to cope with stresses and struggles. It's your loyal companion. It's your sounding board. It's your guide. But whatever form or style of journaling you practice, the point is that you keep practicing. And if you haven't been, well, now is the time to start. Whether you need help ridding yourself of bad habits like complaining or procrastination or a hot temper, or you're looking to get stronger, wiser, and braver, the pages of a journal are the perfect place to do that.

3:47You'll find your rhythm in what works best for you. But only if you start. Refine as you go. But start. That's my journal. It sounds a little different because it's got this cool leather cover on it. It's made of ethically sourced full-grain leather from a tannery in Red Wing, Minnesota. It says on the front, make time. It's got courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. And it's got Epictetus' quote on the back, the one we just talked about. Every day and night, keep thoughts like these at hand. Write them, read them aloud. Talk to yourself and others about them. I don't read the Daily Stoic every day.

4:19I feel like that'd be weird. But the journal is a prompt. It's blank space. And I fill that in each day. I'm thinking about the ideas, just as Epictetus said. But, you know, I do the journal and then the journal goes away. I liked the idea of having some continuity, a slip cover that goes on there. This one's cool. It's got a spot to hold the pen. It's got a, we designed these little pockets on there to put some note cards and some other stuff. It sits on my bedside table. It's awesome. It's designed exclusively to fit the US edition of the Daily Stoic, but we also checked it fits the UK edition.

4:46And if you want to get the journal and the cover as a package deal, you can do that at store.dailystoic.com. I'll link to it in today's show notes. This is a great year to start a journaling habit or to pick that journaling habit back up. I think you're really going to like it.

5:09Much of what survives to us from the ancients are little scraps, little bits of wisdom. But these little bits of wisdom from the emperor of Rome, from a slave, from one of Rome's power brokers, these mantras, these sayings, these epigrams, as they were often called, that survived to us from the ancients are incredibly powerful. They pack a punch. That's what I want to talk about in today's episode. Some stoic ideas, some stoic concepts that can serve as mantras for your life. These are tried and tested bits of wisdom that have survived for thousands of years for a reason. Because they're powerful, because they're important, because you want to live by them.

5:54This one's a paradoxical expression. It basically means make haste slowly. And it was a favorite of the emperor Augustus, who was first known as Octavian. And even the transition from Octavian to Augustus is something that takes time because he's an incredibly disciplined person. He was going places, but he did so slowly, methodically. So no one could ever accuse him of being a revolutionary or a disruptor. Did things calmly. He did them carefully. He did them deliberately. And he gets this from his Stoic teachers, Athenodorus and Arius Didymus. One of the things they told him, for instance, was before he ever lost his temper, he needed to count all the letters of the alphabet first.

6:36They understood that getting angry in the moment often set things back. May Kay slowly is about being deliberate, conscientious. It doesn't mean that you take forever. It means you take the amount of time that it needs to take and that by rushing and doing it quickly, you often make it take longer than it needs to. In the military, they say slow is smooth and smooth is fast. That's what this Latin expression means also. One of my heroes, the great Civil War general, he wasn't the fastest. He wasn't the most aggressive of the generals, but he got the job done. You could contrast him to someone like McClellan, who Lincoln accused of having the slows.

7:14It's not just that he took a while to get going. It's that he never actually got going and got where he was supposed to go. George Thomas wins some of the most incredible victories for the Union in the Civil War. he gets this nickname, the Rock of Chickamauga, because he, again, once he knows where he's going, once he has his aim, he's not going to be pushed off that. He's not going to be knocked off. Nothing is going to get between him and where he wants to go. So this is an expression about having a sense of urgency, but also being disciplined and responsible. It's energy plus moderation. It's measured exertion.

7:49It's eagerness, but reigned in with a sense of control. And Suetonius, the Roman historian, which is from whom we hear that this is one of Augustus's favorite expressions, he said that Octavian thought nothing less becoming in a well-trained leader than haste and rashness. Actually, a number of Octavian's other favorite expressions dance around this idea. He says, you know, better a safe commander than a bold, and that is done quickly enough, which is done well enough.

8:20here we go this basically says you have to have a strong mind and a strong body we tend to project backwards today we think of philosophers as academics theorists nerds right university professors but that's not who the stoics were certainly marcus realis is not just the emperor of rome he's a general in the army he's trained in wrestling and boxing and hunting seneca pushed himself physically. He tried to see how little he could survive on. He did an annual cold plunge. Socrates was renowned not just for his ability to endure winter temperatures and nothing but a thin cloak. He was also, again, a soldier and an athlete.

9:01He loved to take long walks. He was active out in the world because you have to be. He actually says no citizen has a right to not take care of themselves physically, to not understand what their bodies are capable of. There's a story about Theodore Roosevelt that I tell in The Obstacle is the Way and in Discipline is Destiny. He's a young boy, but he's asthmatic and he's weak, he's frail, and his father comes to him one day and he says, you know, you've got the mind, Theodore, but you don't have the body. And this young kid, he was about 12, he looks at his father and he says, okay, I will make my body.

9:37And that's when Theodore Roosevelt embarks on what he comes to call the strenuous life. You can still visit the house he grew up in and see the gym where he made his body. And his sister, who was watching, said this was the first promise that he made to himself. And most importantly, he kept it to himself. That's something Seneca talks about. He says, we treat the body rigorously so that it's not disobedient to the mind. That's what this Latin expression means. That's what this motto is. Strong mind and a strong body. We just took our kids to an outdoor performance of The Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home.

10:12And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that, but I do control how I respond, right? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a bestselling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence. My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr.

10:49Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for good inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, Empathetic Kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It over the holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr. Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15.

11:28You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events.

11:36This is one we understand on some level, but run away from. It's this idea that from struggle, we emerge stronger. Nietzsche said that what does not kill you makes you stronger. And we know that at some level. And yet, what do we spend most of our time doing? Trying to avoid struggle, trying to avoid adversity, trying to avoid difficulty. And this is because it's hard. We know, for instance, about PTSD. What we don't think enough about, what is also true and also also observed by psychologists and social scientists is this idea of post-traumatic growth. We can be and often are better for what we've gone through.

12:10Seneca would talk about how he pitied people who had never gone through adversity or difficulty because they didn't know what they were capable of. You think about the last couple years, you think of that difficulty, right? You think about how tough it was. If you had asked yourself at the beginning, did you think you were capable of getting through all this? Maybe you would have said no, but you know now that you are. One thing we emerge from struggle with is an understanding of how we're going to respond to struggle and difficulty. We have a better sense of our own capacity. It is not necessarily the case that we need to seek out adversity or difficulty, although we can in the physical arena, certainly, but it is true that we must embrace the adversity that finds us.

12:48We must embrace the challenges and the trauma and the struggle. All of it has been chosen for us in some way, and we can choose to be made better for it. It's not just that we accept these struggles that are there, this leads to another great expression. This is kind of a bonus one here, amor fati, which basically means you don't just resign yourself to it, as Nietzsche said, but you embrace it. You love it. Because what other choice do you have? So by deciding to see this as an opportunity, as your fate, as something uniquely suited to you in this moment, you have a chance to really turn it into something.

13:25The Stoics wanted to be like that fire that you it doesn't matter what you throw on top of it as Mark Surilis writes it's turning into flame and brightness and heat that's how we emerge from the struggle better it's like a crucible if you will that's how we turn what has happened to us into opportunities and fuel

13:46this one is a fascinating one to me because it's the opposite of something that's so popular today A lot of people talk about positive visualization, but they don't talk enough about negative visualization. Imagining what could happen so you can be prepared for it. Seneca talks about how the unexpected blow lands heaviest and that the thing that a leader can never say is, oh, I didn't think that would happen. You have to think about it because if the leader's not thinking about it, if you are not thinking about it, who is? And if nobody's thinking about it, who's preparing for it? Who's coming up with plan B?

14:18Who's toughening yourself up? Who's doing the work so that you can handle this. Sometimes people think that negative visualization or thinking about bad things can manifest them into happening. Mark Savelius talks about this. He says, but do you fear that thinking about reaping wheat is going to make that get reaped? No, of course not, right? Like no one's scared of talking about other potentialities. We just have this superstition when those things involve us. And you got to put that aside. You got to think about the things that could happen. And Seneca talks about if you're going on a shipwreck, think about a shipwreck.

14:52Think about pirates. Think about weather delays, right? Think about choppy water, right? What are you going to do if that happens? How are you prepared for that to happen? How can, at the very least, you not be surprised if that does happen? Because it's a very normal thing that happens all the time. And by the way, things that have never happened before, they happen all the time, too. So you've got to be ready. For the Stoics, the idea was that nothing happens to a wise person contrary to their expectation because they're not naive. they are aware, they are informed, they have wisdom. And wisdom is a sense of the possibilities in a given exchange, interaction, event, outcome, process.

15:28You got to know what could happen and you got to be ready for that to happen.

15:35This is a tough one for people, but it's a timeless bit of wisdom. And it's this idea that who we are determines what's going to happen, the kind of outcomes we're going to get in life. It doesn't mean that horrible people don't succeed. It does mean that that success will be horrible for those people. So for the Stoics, the idea, again, let's focus on what we control. What we control is our character. We control the values we hold, the habits we practice, the principles we choose to live by. And when you see someone with bad character, when you see someone with bad values, they're not going to surprise you.

16:05They are telling you who they are. When someone tells you who they are, believe them. When someone tells you who they are with their behavior. Believe them. As we talked about, Seneca said that a leader can't say, oh, I didn't think that would happen. This is partly because a leader has to look at the character, the people they're bringing on, the people they're bringing into the organization, the people they're electing. Why on earth would you have thought it would go any different? They told you who they were. They told you what their character was. Someone with bad values, someone in the sway of ego, someone who's fundamentally insecure, someone who is dishonest, right this is not going to end well for them and it's not going to end well for you either trying to associate with them there's a story about musonius rufus that i like there was this obnoxious man who's obsessed with money he gave him some he gave him a bunch of money and people said why would you reward this and he said money is exactly what this guy deserves what musonius understood was that this wasn't going to change this guy it was only going to reveal what he already knew about him and it was probably going to bring about this guy's ruin faster than any kind of difficulty or adversity he could have bestowed on them let's look at marcus aurelius right absolute power supposed to corrupt absolutely but why doesn't that happen for marcus and it's because the character that he strove to develop in himself the character that was inculcated by his mentors and advisors and philosophy teachers he fought not to be caesarified as he said he fought to be the person that philosophy tried to make him.

17:30He wanted that expression, character, his fate, to reveal who he actually was. And what we see is that he was fundamentally a good person, not a perfect one. And there were flaws in him, and those were revealed as well. But, you know, his character led him to a pretty good fate.

17:48This one, maybe you've seen before. I mean, there's a restaurant at Disneyland named after it. Maybe you've seen it tattooed on some people's bodies, or you hear it every Halloween. Memento Mori, remember you are mortal. And it's one of the most basic stoic practices there is. It might seem morbid, it might seem a little dark, but it is essential because it gives us urgency, it gives us perspective, it gives us clarity. You could leave life right now, Mark Sreos writes in meditation, let that determine what you do and say and think. That's what Memento Mori allows us to do. Why do people procrastinate?

18:21Why do they put things off? Why do they keep practicing bad habits? Why do they waste time? And they do it because they think they have forever, but they don't. Seneca says it's the craziest thing in the world that we waste this precious resource. And he says it's wrong to think of death as this thing in the future. It is not a thing in the future. It's happening right now. This is the time that passes belongs to death. We're dying every minute. We are dying every day. The time you wasted this morning, you'll never get back. The time you spent watching this video, the time I spent making this video, it has to be spent well because we don't get it again.

18:56life is short, you got to live it well. And you got to live it with an awareness of the fact that you do not have forever. None of us do. So I want to end there. These are some of my favorite mantras, Latin and Greek concepts from the Stoics that I think are worth repeating, memorizing, and applying to your daily life. If you want to keep your Stoicism-inspired journey going, sign up for the Daily Stoic email at dailystoic.com slash email. It's one Stoic inspired email every single day. Wisdom to help you with the problems of life. Stoicism is intended and you can sign up at dailystoic.com slash email.

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