Turn The Colors On | These 14 Small Mindset Shifts Will Change Your Life

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2:46Turn the colors on. Like any normal person, part of Marcus Aurelius did not want to wake up, especially early. No, he wanted to huddle under the blankets and stay warm, he said. It was nicer there, easier there. But another part of him knew that he wasn't created to feel nice, to have it easy. I have to go to work as a human being, he said, hauling his feet up and onto the floor. This is the internal back and forth that so many of us have every morning. Not Arnold Schwarzenegger, though. As he said on a recent episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. The rule is don't think. And so because I feel like a lot of people, when they get up, their mind starts wondering.

3:26It's a natural thing. We all do that. Overthinking. But if you make it the rule where you say, okay, there's certain things that I would do before I start thinking. And that is, I'm going to work out for an hour. Yeah. So now if the mind tells you, man, you know, today's okay. I mean, what the hell is Sunday? No one will know. I mean, let's just go and have some pancakes instead. It's just to kind of reorganize you a little bit. You say, wait a minute. What did I just do? I thought. And I promised myself I'm not going to thank. And you will feel good. And that's the key thing people should always know.

4:05when you physically, if you feel good physically and you can do wonderful things physically, then you feel mentally much better about yourself. The day starts in black and white, Arnold continued. You're tired. You're not thinking clearly. You're groggy. Your to-do list gives you anxiety. The Stoics talked similarly about the connection between the mind and the body. We treat the body rigorously, Seneca said, so that it will not be disobedient to the mind. We move the body to turn on or up the colors of the mind. When you wake up, don't think, just get moving, get active, get the body going, turn the colors on.

5:03So to me, that's a transformational, life-changing, mind-blowing way to think about life. It's to connect more deeply with them, to remind himself what was truly important. And one of the fascinating things about Marcus Aurelius' meditations is how often he returns to this very theme.

5:21For the most part, we can't change the world, but we can change ourselves. And specifically, the Stoics would say, we can change how we think about the world. And that's really what Stoicism is. It's a philosophy, but really it's a set of thinking exercises. perspective shifts that allow you to see things differently and thus allows things to go differently. I'm Ryan Holiday. I've written about Stoic philosophy now for almost 15 years. I've talked about it everywhere from the NBA to the NFL, special forces, sitting senators. That's what we're going to talk about today. Some of the best Stoic mind shifts from Mark Aurelius's medications to Seneca's letters to the life of Cato to the example of Zeno.

5:59These are going to be important exercises from the Stoics. The Stoics tried to apply that if you apply, can allow you to change yourself and the world.

6:11Poverty isn't just having too little. This is one of the insights from Seneca. He's saying that it's not just having too little, although having too little is a problem and we wouldn't want to make light of that form of poverty. But he says poverty is also not having enough. And Seneca would have met extremely wealthy and rich people. Mark Ceruleus would have met extremely wealthy and rich people. I myself have met many, many rich people, but they don't feel rich. Not just because they have extravagant tastes, they're insatiable, but also because they're comparing themselves to people who have more.

6:42So it doesn't matter if you have a billion dollars. If you wake up and go, but I'm only 30th on the Forbes list, and these people have more, or not even financially, these people get more attention than me. These people are more respected than me. These people have more fun than me. This comparison makes us poor because we don't have a lot compared to what we wanted. We don't have a lot compared to what we used to have. We have a little compared to what we could have, or we have a little compared to what other people have. And so when you realize that there are impoverished, rich people, it should change your perspective.

7:16It should free you to realize that having more and more and more is not likely to solve your problems. It's not likely to feel good if you don't feel those things now. when, by the way, you have enough.

7:31Mark's really said in meditation says, the things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Since your life is dyed by the color of your thought. That's such a perfect way to put it. He's saying like, if all you look for is the bad in people, all you're going to see is the bad in people. If all you see is darkness and awfulness and evil, that's what your world is going to look like. And it's funny, right, that Mark says this reputation. Book two of meditations, he's saying like, you know, the people today you're going to meet are unknowing and obnoxious and jealous and all this, right?

8:00And it seems like Marx is doing exactly what he's saying not to do. But then he goes, look, these people just don't know any better. Their souls are cut off from truth, he said. He says you're made to work with them. Nothing can implicate you in uglier. So the Stoics are saying that what we think about, what we look for in this world determines what we're going to be able to see. And that is the discipline of perception. That's the power that we have. Our mind dies what our life will look like. It's the lenses through which we look at the world. If we look for beauty in the mundane, as Marcus does repeatedly throughout meditation, we'll see that.

8:32If we look for the evidence of goodness in people, if we see our obligation to help and to work with them, we'll see that. If you decide to see agency and power in yourself and in every situation you're in, you'll find it, even in the darkest, hardest circumstances.

8:51anxiety isn't this thing that you eliminate that you avoid it's something that's inside you in meditations marx realist writes today i escaped my anxiety and he corrects himself he's actually wait no i didn't i discarded it because it was within me and when you shift you go yeah the airport is not making me anxious this other person is not frustrating me or stressing me out because they can't do it that to me. They are outside me. I am doing it to myself. It's my expectations that are the problem. It's my inability to accept things that is the problem. It's not your parents that are frustrating you.

9:26They're just doing what they do, just like the airport is doing what it does. And so understanding that we're the source of the frustration, it's a little frustrating, yeah, but it's also very freeing because it means we can stop it. It means that we can choose to discard it, as Mark Srele said. That's actually one thing that I realized during the pandemic, right? I was traveling less, I was doing less, and yet I still had this anxiety. And of course, there was some anxiety because what was happening in the outside world was a bit crazy, but it was realizing that I was the common thread amidst all of these so-called causes of anxiety.

9:58It was me.

10:02I was probably 19 or 20 years old, and I was talking to Robert Greene, one of the greatest authors of all time, 40 Laws of Power. And I was thinking about becoming a writer. And I had some time left on my contract at the company I was working. And he said, look, what is this next year going to be for you? He said, is this going to be a live time or dead time? And what he meant by that was, was I going to just going to burn out this year of the contract? Was I just going to sit there? Or was I going to spend every minute of that year becoming better, reading better, reaching out to people, building relationships, trying new things, experimenting.

10:36And he was totally right. That year, after I told myself in my head that I was going to quit, but before I put in my notice, it was one of the most productive years of my life. I've had so much done. I have relationships to this day that came out of that experience. And most of all, what I took was that sort of difference between a live time and dead time and how essential it is. Look, when you're stuck in traffic, is that going to be a live time or dead time for you? You're stuck at the airport. Are you going to sit there and order a pizza? Are you going to walk around the terminal listening to a podcast?

11:06Are you going to make a phone call that you've been putting off? Are you going to sit down and write that article or that book that you've told yourself? You're going to write, what are you going to do with time when you are not as much in control? That is the critical question.

11:20One of the big stoic shifts is realizing that posthumous fame is worthless, right? Marcus Aurelius was incredibly famous in his own lifetime. They built statues of him. these statues were in people's houses. He was the head of an empire of millions and millions of people. He would have known that the deeds of other emperors and conquerors had lasted throughout history. But he also stops himself and goes, wait, they're not around to enjoy this. You know, what good is it to Alexander that Alexandria is still named after him? In fact, in meditations, Marcus Rilla says, Alexander the Great and his mule driver, they both died, both entered the earth in the same way.

11:57His point was that how many people remember just a couple emperors before him? He says, who remembers now the name of Vespasian? And he lists not just the emperor, but influential advisors, the celebrities of that time. And he says they're all forgotten. And his point is, is not just that most of us, even the famous people, even people like Marcus are inevitably forgotten, right? We might be talking about him here in this video, but most people just know him as the old guy in the movie Gladiator, if anything at all. But he says also, he says the people in the future are not magically going to be smarter or better than the people are now, right?

12:29So this idea that you're going to be vindicated by the future is also an empty and a silly hope. And again, even if you are vindicated in the future, it won't do you any good because you won't be around to enjoy it. So do what's right now because it's right, because you want to do it. Don't do it because you're trying to build this legacy for the future. Don't defer the love of your family. don't defer being present, don't defer your health, right, because you're striving to make this thing that's going to last for eternity. It won't. And even if it does, what good will that do?

13:06You take away power over events by expecting them, Seneca says. It's what catches us off guard, what we refuse to prepare for, what we refuse to think about. That's what lands heaviest. So the Stoics practice pre-Meditashim Worms so they're prepared, so they can take advantage in advance of the opportunity to plan, prepare, to be resilient, to stiffen themselves up so the blows of fate don't land unexpected and unnecessarily hard.

13:34There's a tax on everything, the Stoics would say. There's that expression about death and taxes. Well, Seneca says it's not just that there's the taxes that the government levies on you, but there's all sorts of taxes in life. delays are attacks on travel. Haters are attacks on putting things up on YouTube. There's a tax on money too, right? The more successful you are, the more you end up having to pay. But Seneca says we have to learn how to pay the taxes of life gladly. Not just because most of the taxes in life are progressive in the sense that the more good stuff you have, the more fees and problems that come alongside it, but also because it is a fact of life.

14:10And so when we see that these taxes are a fundamental part of our existence, We accept them. Sure, do we try to mitigate them as best we can? Of course. But we accept that there are taxes on life. And then the more good things we have, the more success we have, the more money we make, the more taxes we're going to have to pay.

14:30One of my favorite lessons from Epictetus, he says, it's impossible to learn that which you think you already know. Whenever I'm around people that are much better than me at something, when I'm like embarrassingly bad at something, I have no fear or shame about asking really stupid questions. If I'm remotely unsure about something, I'll ask. I don't care if I look stupid, which is actually another really important lesson from Mepictetus. He says, look, if you want to improve, you have to be content to look stupid or foolish. You have to be willing to be embarrassed or to be awkward or be uncomfortable with something, or you can't get any better.

15:00And so I'm not afraid to ask questions. I'm not afraid to look like an idiot. I'd rather look like an idiot than chop off my hand or have something fall on me or screw it up. So that's how I think about it. I'm not afraid to ask dumb questions.

15:15People suck. It's just a fact. And one of the fascinating things about Mark Cerelius' meditations is how often he returns to this very theme. He opens the book with a catalog of the kind of people you're gonna meet in the day. Frustrating people, jealous people, stupid people, dishonest people, aggressive people. It's just a fact. Even his famous passage about how the obstacle is the way, the impediment to action advances action. You know what he's talking about? Talking about difficult people. He's not saying you write them off. He's not saying you cut them out. He's not saying you give up on humanity.

15:44He's saying that difficult people aren't an opportunity to be kind, to be patient, to be good, to get the most out of them. The obstacle is the way even is about this very idea. Difficult people exist and we have to put up with them and figure out a way to work with them. And we have to rise to the occasion of the people that we interact with.

16:07People don't seem to understand this one really important thing. It's that you have a superpower. You have the power, Mark Sturili says, to have no opinion. He says, remember events, things are not asking to be judged by you. You don't have to have an opinion about this, he says. You can just see it as it is. You can think nothing of it. You don't have to label it. You don't have to put it in categories. You don't have to say it's fair or unfair, positive or negative, smart or dumb, just accept it as it is. The Stoics try to see the world as objective. Try not to insert opinions or judgments on top of things because this is the path to peace.

16:43It's the path to wisdom. And of course, being agnostic in this way allows you to get to work doing what you need to do rather than wasting your time labeling, judging, and having opinions about stuff that is not up to you.

17:01Epictetus says every situation has two handles. One will bear weight, the other won't. So what are you going to grab this by? How are you going to choose to see it? How are you going to choose to try to carry it? It's the same thing, a different perspective. Life is like that. We can look at it one way or we can choose to look at it another way. We can choose to look at something as an obstacle or we can choose to look at something as an opportunity. We can see chaos If we look close, we can see order. If we look from afar, we can see disadvantage. If we look at it one way, we could see advantage.

17:32If we look the other, we can see obstacle from this perspective, opportunity from the other.

17:42Marcus talks about how things can get in the way of what we're trying to do. Our actions can be impeded, but we have this superpower. We have this ability that we can always accommodate and adapt and adjust. He says the mind adapts and converts to its own purposes, obstacle, or acting. What the hell does that mean? Well, he says the impediment to action advances action what stands in the way becomes the way. This is Stoic philosophy, this idea that the obstacle is the way. Basically, what it meant for the Stoics was that every situation, big ones, small ones, fortunate, unfortunate ones, good ones, bad ones, positive, negative.

18:13Every situation was simply an opportunity for us to step up and be excellent or practice virtue.

18:23It's strange that the Stoics have this reputation for being unfeeling, for being emotionless, because actually four of Seneca's best and most moving pieces of writing are actually known as his consolations. These letters that he's writing to friends, in one case to his mother, people who have lost someone, right? And he's consoling them in their grief. That's what it's about. And I actually read these essays whenever I've lost someone or I'm trying to comfort someone who's lost someone. They're great. Anyways, the part that hit me the most, he's writing this letter to the daughter of a friend who has died.

18:54And he's saying, look, your father loved you very much, loved you more than anything in the world. What do you think he would want from you right now? Of course, he wouldn't want you to be happy that he's dead and he'd be touched that you miss him and care about him. But would he want his memory of you, Seneca says, to make you miserable, to make you bereft with sadness and filled with pain? No, it's the exact opposite. He said, he'd want you to think about him and be happy to remember good times, to be filled with joy, right? That's what he would want. And so, of course, we're always going to feel grief when we lose someone and when we think of someone we lost.

19:28But to remember what they would want us to remember is such a wonderful little insight about grief. And it's such a good insight to the Stoics, too, because if the Stoics were unfeeling and didn't have emotion, Seneca would just say, get over it, don't feel it. But that's not what he's saying at all. Instead, he came up with this great way of thinking about it.

19:48I'm looking here at this cemetery in New Orleans. Obviously, every single person in it died. Eventually, death happened to them. But Seneca wants us to remember that death was happening to them always. All 61 or 80 or 90 or 17 of the years that they were alive, they died every second, every minute. And then eventually, that stopped happening. So to me, that's a transformational, life-changing, mind-blowing way to think about life. Not that death is something in the future that happens once, but that death is something that's happening always. And every second, every minute that passes, every year that passes now belongs to death.

20:22It's as dead as any of the people in this cemetery. You'll never get it back, which is why you should live it, embrace it, and don't waste it while you have it. Every day I send out one Stoic-inspired email to hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. If you want more Stoic wisdom in your inbox, you can sign up at dailystoic.com slash email. It's totally free. and unsubscribe at any time. We'd love to have you. DailyStoic.com slash email.

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