Who Possesses You? | 12 Must-Read Stoic Books To Get You Started

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1:49Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show descriptions to make those ads go away. Welcome 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.

2:26Who possesses you? People do awful, frustrating, triggering things. They do it now. They've done it for a long time. They find ways to insult us, demean us, humiliate us, degrade us. Marcus Aurelius would say they do this because they don't know good from evil. That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt and it isn't incredibly painful. Back in the 1940s, a young Bill Russell watched his father, Charles, be repeatedly snubbed by a white employee at a gas station, watching as the man deliberately serviced cars that had arrived after theirs. Finally, Charles had enough and was about to drive off when the employee pulled a gun on the Russells.

3:02Boy, the man said menacingly, don't you ever do what you just started to do. Done with being kicked around, Charles grabbed a tire iron from his trunk and stepped towards the man who was used to bullying without consequences. In an instant, the man realized he'd messed with the wrong person and ran off. Russell and his brother celebrated wildly from inside the car. Their father had struck back. Their father couldn't be messed with. He had scared away a white man in Louisiana. Yet when their father returned to the car, he ordered them to stop cheering. He was no hero. He had made a huge mistake.

3:35I didn't have hold of myself, their father explained later. I know deep down that I'd have hit that man with that iron if he hadn't run off. I'd have ended his life and ruined mine, plus my kids and my wife's, just because some fool was using me as a boy in front of my family. I'd let him take full possession of me, a grown man. I don't even like to think about it. While many of the Stoics were powerful, plenty of them would have understood the indignity and the frustration. Epictetus was a literal slave. Musonius Rufus, his teacher, was exiled four times. Seneca was not only subservient to Nero, but to Claudius, who foisted trumped-up charges upon him and ordered his exile.

4:12Think of Stockdale seven and a half years as a POW at the mercy of those guards. They too would have tired of being kicked around. They would have been subjected to all sorts of injustices. They had their freedom taken from them. Yet they also understood that the greatest empire was command of themselves. They understood that getting angry, being consumed by their very understandable desire for revenge, was to hand over possession of whatever self remained. They understood the consequences of flying off the handle or acting impulsively affected, not just themselves, but their families and fellow humans.

4:47And so it goes for you too. We must retain possession of ourselves. We must get a hold of ourselves, no matter what they do to us, no matter how unfair and frustrating life and bullies can be. One of my favorite chapters in discipline is destiny. Basically, the whole second part is all about this kind of emotional discipline that we have to have command of the greatest empire, George Washington talking about being in the calm light of mild philosophy. I just think it's so important. And when we look at people who underwent extreme tests of this, like Bill Russell's father, it should make us be able to ignore much less severe slights, much more minor injustices, to be more patient, to be in command of ourselves, to not let anyone get full possession of us.

5:34I think it's really important. and it's why I built this whole chunk of the book around it. Anyways, take command of yourself today.

5:47My job is to read books. That's one of the perks of being a writer is that you can't write without reading. Stokes would say also, though, you can't be wise, you can't have a good life if you don't read from the greatest works ever written. Seneca says that only those who make time for philosophy are truly alive. I've just said they annex all the wisdom of the past into their own life. That's why I like reading. I like learning from the experiences of others. And I've been reading every day for as long as I've been able to read. And that's what's made me successful. It's also made me happy. It's made me a better human being.

6:24That culminated in a couple years ago, I opened my own bookstore. I'm Ryan Holiday. I've written about stoic philosophy now for almost 15 years. talked about it everywhere from the NBA to the NFL, Special Forces, sitting senators. In today's episode, I want to talk to you about some of my favorite books, books that have changed my life, books that I think you absolutely need to read and that will make you healthier, wealthier, wiser, and many, many other things. Let's get into it. This is a book that you can tell when I read it for the first time, I was struck by a few things. This is written by one of the most famous Romans of all time.

7:01He's near the end of his life. He was the advisor to the emperor. He probably knows that he's a marked man that the emperor is soon going to kill him. He's been studying philosophy his whole life and he has this friend who's in a prominent position of power as a governor of a Roman province. He wants to write some advice to that guy. They have this exchange back and forth where they're writing these letters to each other about life, about the world, things we struggle with, where to find peace, how to avoid the traps that other people fall into. I'm talking about Seneca. This is not actually what Seneca looked like.

7:31Long story, but Seneca writes these letters to his friend Lucilius. And I think it's one of the most incredible books written about success, about failure, about learning. Ultimately, he defines philosophy. I think this is great. He says, how do you know you're making progress with this philosophy? I know because I've begun to be a better friend to myself. So read Seneca's letters. It's amazing. This is not only one of the greatest books ever written. It's maybe the only one of its kind. It's written by the most powerful man in the world who has no intention of publication. He'd probably be mortified that his thoughts on everything from losing his temper to his fear of death would ever be known to people.

8:12It's a person who had enormous wealth, enormous fame, and yet he's talking to himself about justice, self-discipline, wisdom, and courage. And the writing is so beautiful, so specific, and yet so universal at the same time that there's never been a book like it before, and there'll probably never be a book like it again. Talking about Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, if you haven't read it, you must.

8:39The Stoics wrote for a long time about adversity and difficulty, and we take them at their word. What's incredible about this book, it's written by a fighter pilot who shot down over Vietnam, as he is parachuting down, knowing he's going to be taken prisoner, knowing that he very well could die. This man says to himself, I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus. What he's doing then is testing the doctrines of Epictetus in a laboratory of human experience. James Stockdale spends seven plus years in what now is called the Hanoi Hilton. He's locked in solitary confinement.

9:07He's tortured as Epictetus was. And yet all the time he's focusing on what Epictetus talked about, that a podium in a prison is each a place. In any of these situations, good or bad, we have a certain freedom of choice. And what will we do with that choice? Who will we be with that choice? This book by James Bond Stockdale, Medal of Honor recipient, goes on to be an admiral. He's this heroic figure who comforts the other prisoners, who helps steal their will and make them determined and strong. It's called Courage Under Fire. It's an exploration of the Stoics in one of the most difficult circumstances you could possibly imagine.

9:36That's why it's worth this very short, very brief, very life-changing read. The author of this book says that everything can be taken from us. And in fact, everything was taken from him. Home, his livelihood, his work. The original manuscript of this book is lost. He loses his entire family in the Holocaust. He nearly loses his own life. In Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl says, everything can be taken from us, but our ability to choose our attitude in any set of circumstances, to make our own way. This is the essence of Stoicism, that we don't control what happens to us, even something as cruel and awful as the events of the 20th century.

10:10We choose how we respond to it. Suffering is inevitable. We also have the ability to find meaning in suffering, to grow from the suffering. This is one of the most beautiful and inspiring books ever written. There's a reason, so millions and millions of copies. If you haven't read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Me, you absolutely should. My aunt gave me a copy when I graduated from high school. I've read many times since, one of my absolute favorite books. You have to read it. We all know that we're mortal. We all know that nobody lives forever, and yet we're perpetually caught off guard when we lose someone.

10:42Even the most stoic amongst us get overwhelmed by grief and sadness and loss, and this is true for the stoics themselves. Seneca, again, we portray the Stoics is unfeeling and unemotional. Seneca writes three incredibly moving essays on the topic of grief. They're called his consolations. He writes one to his mother, actually has nothing to do with death when he's unjustly exiled, and then he writes two to friends who are grieving someone that they lost. And Seneca is incredibly kind and thoughtful and patient. He totally disproves this notion that the Stoics just stuff their emotions down and say, no, you should process those emotions, deal with them, try to apply some logic and reason to them.

11:26He has this beautiful passage in one of them where he's saying like, look, you're grieving your father, but your father loved you. Do you think your father would want his memory to drive you to tears and sadness? No, he would want you to be happy. He would want you to feel good. He would want his memory to bring that emotion out in you. And so this is the kind of stuff that Seneca talks about in his consolations essays, which until relatively recently couldn't be found in one place. I would have to just link people to where they could find them online. But Chicago University Press put out this new edition called Seneca, Hardship and Happiness.

12:01And it's got a bunch of Seneca's best essays. It's got his consolation to Marcia, consolation to Helvia, that's his mother, consolation to Polybius. And then it's also got his essay on the shortness of life, which of course touches on the topic of grief as well. It's got a bunch of other essays from him, including one on happiness, right? The point of stoicism is not to grit your teeth and just grind through life. No, it's to find happiness and joy despite all the things that are happening. So whenever I know someone that's going through something really tough or difficult, when they're grieving, when they've lost someone or something, this is the book that I tend to point them to.

12:41people ask me how i managed to read so much the answer is it's my job that's my secret advantage i spend a lot of time doing it i'm on the road right now in a hotel room and i'm spending all my time reading i realize not everyone has that luxury what's important though is you get ideas from books and that's where today's sponsor short form comes in short form has the world's best summaries of all the bestsellers and classics and non-fiction books you could possibly want to read They have seven different titles from me on Shortform, so if you've been wanting to check out something from me, maybe that's a good place to start.

13:14There's a one-page summary of every book and then a deeper dive into all its main points. They've got books on philosophy, productivity, life advice, career advice, business advice, leadership advice, and so much more. There's even a summary of the works of most of the Stoics on there, like Mark Sovelius. To get a free trial, join Shortform through my special link. That's shortform.com slash daily stoic. And the first 500 of my subscribers to use this link will get 20 % off your annual subscription or you can just click the link in the description below. Thanks to Shortform for sponsoring this video and for helping make books accessible.

13:52The problem with most philosophy books is that they focus on what the philosophers said. This is of course all very interesting and can be important but what really matters is what the philosophers did, who they were, how the ideas were applied to their life. Actually, the Stoics talk about not having much respect for the so-called pen and ink philosophers, just the writers. They were interested in the doers, how they lived up to the ideals. And some of the Stoics did a great job. Marcus Aurelius, he's not corrupted by absolute power. You look at Epictetus surviving slavery and exile and torture.

14:21And then there's Stoics like Cicero or Seneca, who wrote very beautifully about the ideas but then failed to live up to them. And that's the premise of Lives of the Stoics, the art of living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius, which I happen to know the author of. As I put together this book, what I was thinking about is really that question. How and when did their actions speak louder than their words? What can we learn from their examples, not just their ideas? This book has a weird title. It's a word you wouldn't recognize. It's a word you don't immediately know how to pronounce. And it translates in a kind of a strange context.

14:53But basically it means a defensive weapon. It means at hand. I'm talking about Epictetus' Inchiridion, the handbook, which was seen as a defensive weapon against adversity and difficulty and the blows of fate. This is something that Epictetus would, of course, know himself quite well. Epictetus is born a slave. He endures incredible adversity and difficulty. He's tortured. He walks with a limp his whole life. He serves in the corrupt, decadent court of Nero and then is eventually exiled. But from all this difficulty and adversity, Epictetus cultivates a life of resilience and strength and fortitude and honor.

15:32This is a new translation by Robin Waterfield. It's got all the stuff in here, but if you haven't read Epictetus, you're doing yourself a disservice. You're not as strong or as well-armed as you could be, so you must read this book.

15:47The guy that wrote this book knew a thing about hardships. He's exiled four times. He lives in a brutal time to be alive. He's persecuted by tyrants he saw some of the worst things that people do to each other and so when he says that we should disdain hardships this is musonius rufus known as the roman socrates when he says that we should disdain hardships he's not saying that we should avoid them should run away from them he's saying that we should look at them with a sneer or a smirk in the sense that we're better than them that we're challenged by them but we don't shy away from this challenge one of musonius Rufus's greatest students was Epictetus, who would go on to shape Marcus Aurelius.

16:29But his most famous line, it was a guy who knew about hardship and he knew about overcoming them. One of his great lines, he said, if you accomplish something good with hard work, the work passes quickly, but the good endures. And then he says, though, if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, you take the easy way out. The result doesn't last long, but the shame endures. And most of all, he said, we earn respect of others by earning the respect of ourselves, by disdaining hardships, by conquering them, by doing the hard work. And that in this little book, which has only recently been retranslated, you learn all about the teachings of one Musonius Rufus, the Roman Socrates, and how this great thinker shaped Epictetus, who in turn has been shaping people for thousands of years since.

17:18It really should have been an incomprehensible life, totally foreign way of thinking. The most powerful man in the world, a head of an enormous army living 2 ,000 years ago, totally different time with totally different customs. What was his perspective on life? It sort of baffles us. And yet, when you read Marcus Rillus, you find that there's something very relatable. Despite all the pressures and temptations and everything that he faced, he had a really unique worldview. He thought about things in a way that was both peculiar and unique to his extraordinary circumstances and then also incredibly applicable for all of us that's why i love this book by donald robertson how to think like a roman emperor it's a biography of marx realis and meditations but really it's trying to put ourselves in the shoes of this guy a guy who's worshipped as a god in his own life you see statues of him all around he has incredible power incredible responsibility he's trying to stay sane in the midst of all that he survives through it he's great inside of it and that's the idea in this book the stoic philosophy of marx realis by donald robinson i've interviewed him before he's a great guy he's really thoughtful and you can tell really loves the subject of the book so if you're looking to read a book on stoke philosophy definitely recommend this one this is a very short book but actually makes a pretty controversial argument it says it isn't that life is short although it can feel that way it's that we waste a lot of it one of the greatest philosophers in the history of the world writes this essay it's called on the shortness of life but he argues that life doesn't have to be short life is long if you know how to use it that was Seneca's argument.

18:41And here in these pages is one of the greatest arguments for the most important thing that you have to grasp, which is that you're here for only a finite amount of time. And how you use that time, how you value that time, how you grapple with the fact that you don't know when it's going to be up, you don't know if you're given a ton of it, just a little bit of it, is one of the most important, pressing philosophical questions. Seneca knows this well because he himself, although he lives to be pretty old, is tragically and violently put to death by the Emperor Nero. Years earlier, he almost died from what we think was tuberculosis.

19:13Seneca's on the shortness of life, one of the greatest essays on the human experience ever written. If you haven't read it, you absolutely must. This guy said that basically almost all the study of ancient philosophy gets it wrong, that we're thinking about the ideas, we're thinking about the writing, we're thinking about the theory, when in fact what philosophy was, was a series of spiritual exercises, notes, discussions with the self about how to solve problems of life. This is Pierre Hedot. He wrote this great book on the meditations of Marcus Reelius called Inner Citadel. And he wrote this other book called Philosophy as a Way of Life, which is really drilling down on some of the ideas in this book.

19:48He's saying that when Marcus is writing meditations, he's not thinking of you and I at all. He's thinking of himself and the problems he's dealing with in his actual life. Marcus isn't trying to explain all the ideas or the insights of Stoic philosophy. He's trying to work on the very specific parts of Stoic philosophy that he is dealing with. People would say that Marcus Aurelius repeats himself too much in meditation, or that he's hard on himself. Well, he's hard on himself about the specific things that he's struggling with. Hedo reframes and reimagines meditations as a set of spiritual exercises, philosophy, as a way of life.

20:17Marcus Aurelius wasn't making philosophy for you. He was philosophizing to himself. I think these are two important Stoic books that everyone should read. So where should someone start with the Stoics? That's a tough question, right? Should they read this translation or that translation? should they read Seneca or Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus, right? It's hard to know where to start. I feel like I got so lucky that I just happened to get the right translation from the right Stoic, Gregory Hayes' translation of Meditations off Amazon at the right time of my life. But maybe I picked up some antiquated translation of Epictetus and my whole trip down this wonderful rabbit hole might have not worked out.

20:53So that's actually what I tried to do in this volume. This is the only time and place that all the Stoics, not just the big three, but a number of the lesser-known Stoics have been in one book at one time. For eight years ago, we published The Daily Stoic. It's one page a day with one of the best quotes from the Stoics, and then a riffing on that quota, an analysis or an explanation, a story that illustrates that idea. When I wrote it, I didn't know how it would do. You know, eight years later, it was sold millions of copies, spent weeks and weeks on the bestseller list, be translated in something like 40 languages.

21:25But that's the power of Stoicism. All I did was add in an organizational layer that's had this huge impact. And then we even have a desk calendar version too, which you can check out. Actually, what's today? I'm a little behind. I was out of the office. Today's the 17th. Do away with opinion that I am harmed and the harm is cast away. Do away with being harmed and harm disappears. Mark's risk talking about how our perceptions change what's happening to us. And if we don't feel like we've been insulted, hurt a disadvantage, well, in a sense, we haven't been. So that's the Daily Stoic, which if you're looking for something to start with the Stoics, this might be helpful to you.

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