You Can Live Well Anywhere

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1:04Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

1:30You could live well anywhere. Epictetus was well accustomed to a hard life, having spent years as a slave. Zeno founded Stoicism from nothing, having lost everything. Cleanthes made subsistence wages as a manual laborer. But certainly few of them tried to be poor. In fact, financial security, if not wealth, was one of the preferred indifference that Seneca spoke about. A Stoic should be able to be good regardless of their circumstances, but if one had a choice about those circumstances, it's pretty reasonable to go with more than less, right? As a matter of fact, many of the Stoics were quite wealthy.

2:08Cato came from one of Rome's great families. Seneca's father passed to him and his brothers an enormous estate, and Seneca had a mind for business, and he also made a fortune in politics. Cicero, coming to Rome's public life as a new man from new money, was a successful lawyer. Marcus Aurelius had family money, and then, you know, he became the head of the entire empire. So when they talked about living a simple life, it was about contentment and discipline amidst abundance. It was more about avoiding temptations and entitlement and softness than anything else. One may live well even in a palace, Marcus Aurelius wrote.

2:44He would have also readily agreed that one could live well at camp, which he tried to do, or in exile, which plenty of the Stoics had to do. This is why Seneca sometimes practiced poverty as a philosophical exercise. He had money and luxury now, but things could change. Did that thought scare him, or could he shrug his shoulders at it? Wherever we sit on the socioeconomic spectrum, whatever our ambitions and aspirations, we need to cultivate this indifference and this independence. If you need money and success to live well, then you're vulnerable to things not going well. And one thing we know about life is that things don't always go well, and that they can change in an instance.

3:22We talk a lot about this in The Wealthy Stoic, our course on stoicism and money, as we're trying to flip on its head this idea of what it means to be wealthy. Can it mean having a lot? Sure. But it can also mean security even when one doesn't have a lot. And so what did the stoics think about money? What can they teach us about money? What can they teach us about becoming successful? And then also managing success or failure. I think a lot. I'm really proud of this course. It's not what you think, but it will make you think. I think it's one of the best things we've done, but I'll link to it in today's show notes.

3:53And remember, if you sign up for Daily Stoic Life, you get this and all our courses included. So I think that's awesome. You can check that out at dailystoiclife.com.

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