Welcome 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 every day life. Each one of these passages is based on a 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. Have you tried asking for this?
You wanted the election to go a certain way. You want the economy to be good. You want the world to be safe. You want people to be good and helpful and honest.
Well, you can want these things until you're blue in the face. You can pray for them. You can try with all your might to make them the way you want them to be. Or what if you prayed and worked for something different?
The Stoic's remind us that the best thing to ask for is strength. That adaptability is the ultimate advantage. That virtue and resilience will get you further than even the most ideal conditions. And that you're never going to get those ideal conditions anyway.
Don't wish for things to be a certain way, Epictetus says, but wish for them to be as they are. Because you can handle them. Because you're going to do your job either way, which is to say to be good. Because you're going to make good of it.