Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to actual life. Thank you for listening.
Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. You're probably listening to this on a Sunday. Maybe you had a nice weekend, but you're like, oh, the week's about to start.
Maybe you're exhausted, right? This has been a long year, although every year is long in its own way. Maybe it's been a long couple of years for you. I know it has been for me.
Tired, exhausted, disappointed about where things are and how they're going, and you wonder why should I keep going? Well, I've got two recommendations for you. One, Austin Kleon's book, Keep Going, is one of the most hopeful, inspiring, and I think creative and inspiring books on this idea, and I think it gives you the artist's perspective about how you've got to take these moments and use them, which is, of course, a very Stoic idea, and it's also what we're going to talk about in today's episode. These are seven Stoic lessons on how to keep going, because the Stoics knew difficulty and disappointment and frustration, and they had kids, and they were tired, and they sat around at the end of the week as a new week approached, and sometimes thought, what is the point?
Do I have the energy? How am I going to get through this? And that's what we're going to talk about in today's episode. I will link to the article in today's show notes if you want to read it as well.
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Marcus Aurelius. The question of why and how we are supposed to live has been contemplated for centuries. So how do we persevere well? How do we persevere happily?
Thankfully, we can look to the Stoics. The Stoics not only wrote about how to persevere, they used Stoicism to persevere in the face of plagues, exiles, imprisonment, and wars. What does it mean to persevere? Ask, why is this so unbearable?
Why can't I endure it? You'll be embarrassed to answer. Marcus Aurelius. James Stockdale was held captive in North Vietnam.
He was sent to a war camp that was famous for its brutal treatment of prisoners. What got him through more than seven years of imprisonment? Stoicism. Stoicism not only helped Stockdale get through his imprisonment, but it helped him refrain from betraying himself and his country.
He was able to internally uphold his moral code. He accepted the fact that he could not control his external circumstances. Instead, he mastered his internal dialogue and feelings. That is persevering.
It's not simply getting through it. It's getting through it while still maintaining your morality and humanity. Stoicism does not breed apathy, but strength. Seven Stoic Lessons on How to Keep Going Accept your fate Do not seek for things to happen the way that you want them to.
Rather, wish that what happens happened the way it happens. Then you will be happy. Epictetus As mentioned before, hardship allows you to show your true character. So embrace hardship.
Amor fati. Love your fate. Embrace every single moment, even moments of hell. The chance of us existing is small, but here we are.
The chances of that particular sperm fertilizing that particular egg were small, but here you are. You have already beaten seemingly insurmountable odds. Your existence is rare and beautiful. So even our suffering is rare and beautiful.
Accepting your fate does not mean that you're necessarily okay with bad things happening to you. It means you're accepting that struggling is a part of existing. We can use this to persevere because this gives us the courage to act. Loving and appreciating every minute shows us that we are not helpless.
We are just experiencing what it means to exist. Don't complain. Everything that happens is either endurable or not. If it's endurable, then endure it.
Stop complaining. If it's unendurable, then stop complaining. Your destruction will mean its end as well. Just remember, you can endure anything your mind can make endurable by treating it as in your interest to do so.
In your interest or in your nature. Marcus Aurelius. Either you persevere or you don't. Regardless, complaining does not necessarily tip the odds in your favor.
Yes, feel emotions. Yes, confide in people. But do not tell yourself you will fail. Do not tell anyone else you will fail.
Don't tell anyone that this specific struggle will be the end of you. Complaining, in fact, makes it harder to endure. Marcus argues that you can endure anything by thinking it's endurable. If you allow yourself to complain, you're defeating yourself.
You may be able to get through something by complaining, but that will not leave your good nature intact. To exercise virtue in the face of adversity, we must have control over our own minds. Realize it's not the end of the world. Never say of anything, I have lost it, but I have returned it.
Is your child dead? It is returned. Is your estate taken away? Well, and is not that likewise returned?
But he who took it away is a bad man. What difference is it to you who the giver assigns to take it back? Epictetus. Way harsh, but there's still a lesson here.
Epictetus urges us not to take things personally. Things are not taken from you, but returned. After all, the entire universe existed before us and will exist after us. Likewise, we existed before our current struggle and will exist after it.
In the final episode of BoJack Horseman, BoJack says, Life's a bitch and then you die, right? Diane responds, sometimes. Sometimes life's a bitch and then you keep living. We live despite and in spite of how much life sucks.
Life won't always be suffering, but life is contingent on suffering. When we lose an opportunity, a loved one, or when life is just bad, the best thing to do is live virtuously no matter what. This difficulty will end. You will end.
We can only control our response to that. Don't just sit there and take it. Putting things off is the biggest waste of life. It snatches away each day as it comes and denies us the present by promising the future.
The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in fortune's control and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining?
The whole future lies in uncertainty. Live immediately. Seneca is reminding us that we have some control over our lives. By putting off action, we are allowing our suffering to have full control.
By working towards ending our suffering, we are regaining control. Persevering is active. We don't persevere by shutting down until it's over. We persevere by responding rationally to our hardships.
We persevere by determining the most virtuous course of action. Persevere immediately. Demand better. Don't just want better.
How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of teacher then are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy but a full-grown man.
If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary. Epictetus. When we are struggling, we may want to give up on ourselves. We may settle.
We may get used to things being okay and give up on striving for a good life. This is unacceptable. Like we said, you can either persevere or stop. Either way, we are dying at some point.
As Epictetus says, we can die ordinary if we choose to not persevere. Everything ends at some point, but there is power in the choice to persevere. A hardship can either end because we act to make it end or we die. We have some control over when our suffering ends.
We must demand that we get through this hardship. Clean your room a little. Ask for better treatment. Advocate for yourself and take care of yourself.
We cannot get used to suffering. We can accept the existence of suffering, but we still have to fight against it. Do not become complacent. Stop torturing yourself.
We suffer not from the events in our lives, but from our judgment about them. Epictetus. Perhaps our suffering is mostly self-inflicted. When difficulties arise, we sometimes take it personally.
It's important to take accountability for actions that cause suffering, but you can do that without suffering. Instead of saying, I lost my job because I'm lazy and stupid, you can say, I lost my job because I did not meet the requirements for it. The difference between those two sentences is that one is reporting a judgment and the other is reporting a fact. We suffer less when we rationally map why things happen.
Calling ourselves stupid for letting something happen does not solve the problem and makes us feel worse. Shit usually happens purely because shit happens. Taking it personally makes it harder to actively solve the problem. Recognizing that it is not 100% our fault can give us the courage to act.
Use your resources. Prudent people look beyond the incident itself and seek to form the habit of putting it to good use. On the occasion of an accidental event, don't just react in a haphazard fashion. Remember to turn inward and ask what resources you have for dealing with it.
Dig deeply. You possess strengths you might not realize you have. Find the right one. Use it.
Epictetus. We enter fight or flight mode when it gets tough. However, the good thing about being humans is that we have the ability to be rational. Don't go into survival mode.
Take a breath and remember you have the opportunity to outwardly show your virtue. Not everything needs a reaction. Moreover, not everything needs an immediate reaction. While persevering is active, you can still take time to decide what to do.
You do not need to react immediately unless it's life or death. Let it stew. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us.
It would really help the show. We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode. I'll see you next time.
Thank you.