Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women, help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com. This is how you know it's working.
You read the books, you listen to the teachers, you turn the ideas over in your mind. This Stoicism thing, you've been following it for a while, but how do you know? How do you know it's working? There will be signs.
You can count on that. One of them, Epictetus tells us, is that you should be getting in fewer arguments. Another from Seneca is that you are a better friend to yourself. Marcus Aurelius in Meditations talks about being able to sit in the perfect stillness, that not being pulled and torn in a million directions.
This might not all sound like wisdom, but it is. The point of wisdom, the point of philosophy, was to get to a smooth flow of life, the Stoics believed, to be able to live in accordance with nature. That means prizing the right things. That means seeing the big picture.
That means abstaining from the wrong things. It means tuning out. It doesn't matter. It means wisdom.
And the only thing we know about wisdom is that you have to work for it. Seneca said, no man is wise by chance. No, much toil remains. He said, for all of us, wisdom then is not just work.
It is the work of our lives. And that's the title of the new book. Wisdom takes work. Learn, apply, repeat is the fourth and final book in the Stoic for two years.
If you want to jump on it, dailystoic.com slash wisdom. It would mean a lot to me if you could. If you've gotten anything out of this podcast over the years, I hope you can give it a look. Dailystoic.com slash wisdom.
I can't wait to hear what you think. Enjoy.