The Daily Stoic

Epicurus’s dictum was that “One sage is no wiser than another.” Clearly, Seneca agreed with this idea because he loved quoting Epicurus, even though he belonged to a rival school. His famous line was that he’d quote even a bad author if the line was good.This is a good example that does not go far enough. We should actively pursue and engage with anyone who can be a source of wisdom to us, regardless of the school of thought from which that wisdom arose. That does not mean you have to become best friends, or abandon your philosophical first principles, just that you should listen. And not just listen, but hear. Because if there is wisdom out there to be had, we’d be wise to avail ourselves of it—and ignorant (or worse, stupid) not to.So don’t let your studies stop with Stoicism. Make sure you read widely. Pick up Epicurus and Confucius. Look at the best teachings of the Christians and the Buddhists, and the Islamists and the polytheists. There is good stuff in all these schools.The ancients were voracious con

Perhaps you remember the 90s hit by the band The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, “The Impression That I Get.” You know, the ‘neeeeevvvvvvveeeerrrrrr had to knock on wood’ song? If you haven’t listened to it in a while, you should, because it holds up surprisingly well.Anyway, there are a couple of lines at the beginning of the third verse that go like this:I'm not a coward, I've just never been testedI'd like to think that if I was I would passIt’s as if Dicky Barrett, the Bosstones’ lead singer and songwriter, was writing straight from the lessons of the Stoics, because it aligns perfectly with one of Seneca’s most beautiful observations. "I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune,” he writes of everyone who has lived a soft or sheltered life. “You have passed through life without an opponent—no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you."Not even you.That’s the question the song is about. That’s the angst it is trying to express. Yes, it’s great t

Ok, so it’s worth saying bluntly to any of the nice people out there who might believe in it: The Law of Attraction is complete horseshit. If you need proof, here’s a funny example: In 2015, the author of The Secret had to reduce the price of her home in Santa Barbara some $4.7M—more than 20%—after it had languished on the market without selling. Of course, if she had been following the advice in her book she would have just thought good thoughts about it selling for list price (or better, written herself a check for the amount in advance) and the universe would have taken care of the rest.We all know that’s not how things work. There’s no science that says your thoughts can will reality into behaving how you like or that thinking negative thoughts will invite negative outcomes—in fact, literally all of science contradicts this. Anyone that tells people differently is conning them. BUT…That is not to say that our thoughts aren’t extremely powerful and that they don’t shape our lives. As Marcus Aurelius wrote:

Let us stipulate first that Serena Williams is an extremely talented tennis player and an honest and ethical person. Let us also stipulate that she has been unfairly treated by chair and line umpires, not just when she was an up-and-comer, but also, and inexplicably, now that she is one of the greatest players in the game. And yet, even stipulating all this—as well as recognition of the fact that the passion which drives athletes is a potent force that amateurs and spectators can never fully appreciate—her controversial behavior at the U.S. Open earlier provides an interesting lesson to chew on. There’s no need to repeat what’s been extensively reported elsewhere, so we can just summarize: Serena Williams was having a tough match in the U.S. Open finals with Naomi Osaka. She disputed a coaching call with the chair umpire (believing that she was not being illegally coached from the stands and that a warning should have been issued first if she had been). Upset over this call, which implied she was a cheater, S

Zigong once asked Confucius: “Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life?” His reply: “Is not RECIPROCITY such a word?”Thus we have, by yet another source, another formulation of the Golden Rule. Matthew 7:12, for instance, has its version: “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the Law and the Prophets.” And Luke 6:31: “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”The Stoics would obviously agree with this concept, though they would take it a little bit further. In fact, what we see in Marcus Aurelius over and over again is the idea that we must treat other people better than they treat us. Because they didn’t mean to do wrong, because they aren’t as informed as we are, because they have their own problems. And that we treat people well not because we ourselves would like to be treated well, but because to do anything less is a betrayal of our own values and standards. The Golden Rule is simple a

Most of us tell ourselves that we’re putting up with ill-treatment or keeping our mouths shut about our beliefs because we’re working on something big. We tell ourselves that we’re slogging away in this industry or that industry not because we’re big supporters of it, but because we need to, to get where we are going. We’re accumulating money or resources or playing politics to build up our base so that one day, some day, we can finally stand up and be who we really are.Marcus Aurelius reminds himself in Meditations that he could be good today...even though his first impulse is to put it off until tomorrow. That’s what we all do. In the future, we say, then we’ll be blunt and honest and principled. The problem is that this never seems to actually happen. DHH, who we interviewed for Daily Stoic a while back, joked about all the people in Silicon Valley who justify their 100 hour work weeks for dubious startups in order to get “Fuck You Money.” But for all the wealth in San Francisco...there seems to be very fe

One suspects Marcus Aurelius was referring to a particularly frustrating person, some opponent who just would not, or could not, get the message, when he wrote:“You can hold your breath until you’re blue in the face and they’ll just go on doing it.” There’s an American expression along those same lines: “Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig enjoys it.”Both these pieces of advice are worth remembering for the inevitable moments that we find ourselves in conflict or at cross purposes with one of those nutty, obnoxious, stubborn jerks that make up a certain percentage of the population. Although it’s tempting to fight and argue with them, it rarely ends well, because you can’t beat someone with nothing to lose, and it’s impossible to reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into in the first place. It takes great skill to identify irrationality and emotional reactions in other people. It takes a lot of confidence to avoid battling with someone acting out of ego. It requi

There’s no question that depressing things happen in this world. They always have and always will. People lie, cheat, steal. Envy, avarice, selfishness—it’s all out there. And it’s hard to miss. It’s easy to despair about this. What do we do? Must it be this way? What’s the point of being good when everyone else is so bad?This is the wrong way to think about it. It’s not up to us to change this unchangeable part of the human species, but instead to think about how to adapt to it, how to integrate it into our understanding of the world and not let it make us miserable. That’s a big part of why the Stoics talk about ignoring what other people do—their lying, cheating and stealing—and focusing on what we do. On making sure that we hold ourselves to a higher standard and put our energy towards evaluating ourselves according to those standards rather than projecting it onto others. Marcus’s best advice on this is worth remembering today: instead of talking about other people’s selfishness and stupidity, our job is

Martin Luther King Jr. was fond of using the American Civil War as a metaphor, not just to explain the divisive political landscape, but the divide within each person. Just as there was a North and South in America (Anti-slavery and Pro-Slavery), there was a divide between good and bad within each of us. There was the part pulled towards higher principles and the part that was willing to compromise with baser instincts.Certainly, in his own life, King was pulled this way. He was a man of enormous principle and selflessness, but he also had a number of affairs. This was a violation not only of his marriage, but the Christian teachings he preached at the pulpit. He knew better...but found himself doing it anyway. This tension must have been incredibly painful and shameful for him. So when King said that “there is something of a civil war going on within all our lives,” he wasn’t just speaking theoretically. He knew it firsthand. The point of looking at examples like this isn’t to dismiss someone as a hypocrite—

There is a simple proposition at the heart of classical Christianity: if you are a good person and do good works on Earth, when you die you will enter the Kingdom of Heaven and know the full bounty of God’s unending love. But if you are a bad person on Earth, and you sin without repenting, when you die you’ll end up in Hell for all eternity. In many Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, that duality is baked into the singular notion of Karma: good intentions and good deeds will be repaid in the next life with great kindness; bad intent and bad deeds (or sin) will be repaid in the next life with great severity.The Stoics take a different approach. They don’t say that cheating or lying or murdering should be avoided out of fear of future punishments at the hands of God. Instead, they make a much more immediate and self-interested case. Seneca especially, who saw Caligula and Nero and other infamous Roman rulers up close, takes pains to point out these people are not winning. Nor are they getting off sco

The author Michael Malice has a running gag: whenever a celebrity dies he posts a meme that says RIP but is a photo of a similar looking but a very different (and very alive) celebrity. It’s partly a commentary on how easily fake news spreads but it’s also an ironic dismissal of all that person has accomplished. It says: You’re dead now and we’re already forgetting your legacy. It says: You’re dead and we think it’s pretty funny. Sure, there is a trollishness to that and it’s probably definition of the expression “Too Soon” but there is also truth and Stoicism in it. Marcus Aurelius liked to remind himself that Alexander the Great and the man’s mule driver are buried in the same ground. Shakespeare was equally impious. To what base uses we may return, Horatio. Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it stopping a bunghole?The point is that death is not only inevitable but it is a great and merciless equalizer. It doesn’t matter how much money you pile up, how many territories yo

There’s not much in Stoicism that’s particularly groundbreaking: Focus on what you can control. Be a good person. Manage your emotions. A lot of the famous Stoic quotes are pretty basic too: Epictetus: “It’s not things that upset us, it’s our judgement about things.” Marcus Aurelius: “You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” Seneca: “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality” The elementary school-level simplicity isn’t a bug. It’s a feature: There’s a great line in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle: "Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn't explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan." A lot of complicated stuff isn’t actually complicated...it’s made to seem that way so no one will notice that it’s actually bullshit. A lot of philosophy is badly written...because if it wasn’t, people would actually understand what the “philosopher” was saying and laugh them out of a job. What the Stoic writings are a

Peter Barton’s beautiful memoir, Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived, takes readers along a man’s search for meaning when he’s forced to confront mortality. Struggling for a reason to persist amid a terminal diagnosis, his wife, Laura, orders Peter to "Find a point!" "So where was I supposed to find something to feel good about, some realm where I could still feel strong and hopeful? The answer now seems obvious, but for me it was the hardest place to accept: that realm was my mind. My frame of mind was something I could still control. Doing so would be a sort of victory I was not accustomed to valuing—a total inward, private victory—but a legitimate accomplishment nevertheless. I resolved to control my own discomforts, to rise above them if I possibly could. In doing so, I came to understand the deep truth that, while my pain may be unavoidable, suffering is largely optional…Pain can make you thoroughly miserable, or pain can just be pain. The trick, I've realized, is to confine it to

Why does Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations speak to us so? The answer, ironically, is that because the author had zero intention of doing so—in fact, he probably would have been mortified to know how well the book has been received...because it meant the exposure of his private thoughts and fears and strugglesAs Ernest Renan observed, Marcus was writing for an audience of one. “Never,” Renan said, “has one written more simply for himself, for the sole end of emptying his heart, with no other witness than God.” That’s what journaling is about. Getting the thoughts out of our head, the anguish out of our hearts, and onto the page. It’s a way of clarifying and alleviating, excising and exercising. For centuries—nay, millennia—people have been pouring themselves into private journals. Some did it at night. Some did it in the morning. Some did it in sporadic bursts or on rare occasion. But in literally countless cases, journaling has been a source of relief and self-guidance. Which is why you should strongly consider

Imagine this. You’ve worked for years on this novel—one that is indisputably the best thing you’ve ever done. You manage to get a publisher to buy it. You start to get rave reviews. You sell out your first printing. Then suddenly, all the momentum evaporates. You talk to the clerk at a bookstore and he tells you the publisher has just stopped resupplying them. Within months, what should have been a beloved bestseller, slips into obscurity. Why? Well, according to your editor it’s because they’ve been sued by Hitler over the rights to Mein Kampf...and a US Federal Court sided with the Nazis. And that is basically the end of your career as an author—at least it was for John Fante. You can read the full story, which Ryan wrote in an original piece for Medium, but one would expect this would make a person pretty bitter and angry right?Not Fante.“I think the one thing that a writer must avoid is bitterness,” John Fante told the writer Ben Pleasants in an interview in 1979. “I think it’s the one fault that can dest

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Tereza, as the Prague Spring happens and the Soviets begin a military occupation, takes the time to rescue a crow that was hurt on the side of the road. Yet when dissidents come and ask Tomas, her husband, to sign a political petition, he refuses. Which prompts a rather interesting sentence in the book“It is much more important to dig a half-buried crow out of the ground than to send petitions to a president.” A lot of people would reflexively disagree with that. Certainly the actions of most people do—even though there is the saying that “all politics are local,” we tend to think big picture before we think little picture. Seneca was the same way. Look at how he expressed his priorities in the essay, On Leisure:“The duty of a man is to be useful to his fellow men; if possible, to be useful to many of them; failing this, to be useful to a few; failing this, to be useful to his neighbors, and, failing them, to himself: for when he helps others, he advances the general inte

In late December, Richard Overton passed away at the ripe old age of 112 and 230 days. When he was born, Theodore Roosevelt was President of the United States, and the 13th Amendment, which ended slavery in America, was only a few decades old (for contrast, Richard was nearly 60 when the Civil Rights Act passed). That’s a long time to be alive. That’s a lot of history to live through.But the Stoics would say that simply existing for many years is not all that impressive. What mattered was what you did with that time. What mattered was how you lived. Seneca liked to point out how many people live to be old but have little to show for it. Richard had plenty, even if he never became rich or powerful. At the personal level, he triumphed over segregation and racism—and was never made bitter by the hatred and bigotry that far too many of his fellow Texans (and Americans) had for him for far too much of his life. He served honorably in one of history’s few just wars. He was a hard worker, and he built his own home (

The Stoics were all about routine and concentration. Epictetus said that philosophy was something that should be kept at hand every day and night. Indeed, his book Enchiridion, actually means “small thing in hand,” or handbook. Seneca, for his part, talked about deep diving into the right books—rather than chasing every new or exciting thing published. “You must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works,” he said, “if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind.One of the reasons we wrote The Daily Stoic was to help accomplish just that. We thought it was pretty remarkable that despite more than two thousand years of popularity, no one had ever put the best of the Stoics in one book—let alone one that was easy to carry, read and study. It’s been pretty incredible to see the success it’s had since its release in 2016, having now sold more than 300,000 copies in the English language, and it’s currently slated for publication in 14 languages. The book has spent mo

In the movie Gladiator, Maximus, the protege of Marcus Aurelius, says famously, “What we do in life, echoes in eternity.” It’s a powerful, inspiring line, (also tattooed on Lebron James’s arm) one the average viewer might assume that Marcus Aurelius agreed with.Funnily enough, in his actual writings, Marcus Aurelius could not have come out more strongly against this idea. He says at one point, in Meditations, that “People out for posthumous fame forget that the Generations to Come will be the same annoying people they know now. And just as mortal." But even if they weren’t, he asks:“What good would it do you?...You're out of step—neglecting the gifts of nature to hang on someone's words in the future."Indeed, not only do people deprive themselves of the wonder of the present in order to hopefully be remembered in the future, far too many people—especially leaders—do themselves and those they serve a disservice by “performing for history.” Instead of focusing on what they can do right now,

This is that weird time of year where we start to think about how we want the following year to go. We call them “resolutions” and they are the promises we make to ourselves about what we’re going to do in the next twelve months. The habits we’re going to quit, the skills we’re going to learn, the standards we’re going to hold ourselves to.On the one hand, it’s a wonderful and inspiring bit of reflection that the whole world basically comes together to do this at the same time. It’s excellent that everyone has finally decided to get in shape, to stop smoking, to try to give back more, to commit to being a better friend or relative, to read a certain number of books. But it’s strange that everyone puts it off for so long—we treat our self improvement like it’s a school project we hope might just complete itself, praying that maybe our parents or teacher will handle it for us.Well, they won’t.Epictetus asked why it is that we wait to demand the best for and of ourselves. It’s pretty crazy. But no matter, becaus