12 (Stoic) Rules For Life

life without design senica says is erratic basically if we if we don't have rules if we don't have practices that we're trying to abide by standards we're holding ourselves to we're just kind of winging it and this is where we get ourselves into trouble meanwhile when we have clear black and white rules when we have standards well then it makes our decisions it makes our lives it makes our days much easier so that's what I want to talk about in today's episode I want to give you 12 stoic rules for life a stoic rule for

life is that you have to own the morning one of the most relatable passages in markus's meditations is him struggling with precisely this rule he's woken up it's Before Dawn it's cold and he doesn't want to get up and he says you know but is this what you were put here to do to huddle under the blankets and stay warm no of course not we have responsibilities we have obligations we have potential we want to go realize that so A stoic gets up early they rise to meet the morning because we're lucky to have the

morning one of the flip sides of the stoic momento Mor practice is if if you went to bed thinking hey this is the end of my life it's over when you wake up in the morning you're like this is extra how awesome is this and you're excited to get up and get after it we can win the Morning by getting up early by not getting sucked into our phone by not getting sucked into what other people want from us but by being intentional by being proactive spending some time with a journal going for a walk

doing deep work focusing on the most important task right concentrate on what's before you like a Roman Mark realus tells him elsewhere in meditations so if we win the morning we've already won a good chunk of the day and remember if we win the day then well that's awesome because our life is made up of days another stoic rule for life is to focus on what's in our control Epi says this is like the most basic job of the philosopher there's some stuff that's up to us there's some stuff that's not up to us and

if you don't know the difference you're lost and we have to understand we have a finite amount of energy and so if we focus on things that are not up to us what other people say what other people do what's already happened what may happen in the distant future what we're neglecting is what's right here in front of us what is up to us not a lot is up to us but our opinions are up to us our emotions are up to us our actions are up to us what we do about what has happened

is up to us and so this idea of mastering the dichotomy of control mastering what was laid down in the Serenity Prayer Having the courage to change the things that we can the wisdom to accept the things that we cannot change is is a critical stoic rule I focus on what's up to me I leave what's not up to me to other people I leave the mistakes to other people I leave judgments to other people I leave the worry and anxiety to other people I'm going to focus on what's up to me I'm going to

do what I can do here another stoic rule for life is to be present to not suffer from imagined trouble so think about anxiety think about worry think about fears what we're doing is thinking about things that are not in our control thinking about things that haven't happened yet Senus says he who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than it's necessary he says we suffer more in our imaginations than in reality it's a bad use of our creativity to run our minds over this terrible thing that's going to happen and now when that happens

and we're going to have to do this and then this is going to happen and then this and all of a sudden we've catastrophized ourselves into an alternate reality that's never be happened before that probably will not happen and you know what we have done we've neglected the thing that is in our control so look of course the stoics are realistic they do think about the things that could happen but in so far as to come up with a plan for how they would respond to that and then they move on they come back to

being present what's in my control right now what can I do right they're proactive but they're not irrational then they don't torture themselves another important sto rule is to to just do one thing every day senica writing to his friend lucilia says look let's try to acquire one thing every day he says something that will fortify us against poverty against death or any other kinds of Misfortune like a quote a story an idea an anecdote and this is what he and his friend lucilius are doing in their letters back and forth he goes here's the

thing I promised you and he's excited to get the thing from lucilius so again the path the wisdom isn't like these amazing epiphanies this huge breakthrough it's also not something you do one time it's a daytoday thing so if you see philosophy as a thing that you do that you're acquiring one new thing one new understanding you're reading one passage one quote one page one essay if you think of it as this ongoing process that's what stoicism is as a philosophy so think about my rule is I try to find one stoic Insight every day

that's kind of what daily Stoke was built around then you're going to be making a lot of progress now related to this rule is another really important stoic rule it's actually also expressed in uh in the motto of the Boy Scouts to do one good turn every day we have to understand that stoicism is not this selfish self-absorbed philosophy it was a philosophy of virtue it a philosophy of doing the right thing and so how can you think about going through your life how can you set a rule or an intention for yourself that you

try to do one helpful thing every day you do one kind thing every day you do a generous thing every every day you do something decent and these can be big things or small things but let's understand that virtue that Justice specifically as one of the virtues is a verb and not a noun it's a thing you are doing so a sto tries to do the right thing not generally but tries to do the the right thing specifically in this situation in that situation how am I going to treat this person what's the choice that

I'm going to make how am I going to respond to this not what can I get away with not what's the minimum but what something good I can do here a stoic tries to go through the day doing good things senica said we have to remember that every person we meet is an opportunity for kindness think about it this way the People You Meet are an opportunity to do the right thing to do a good thing to do a kind thing another stoic rule is actually I think best phrased as a question mark shus said

we have to ask ourselves in everything we do and say and think is this essential and he says cuz the problem is most of what we do and say and think is not essential but when we eliminate the inessential we get the double benefit of doing essential things better maybe this rule is best expressed do only the essential things get rid of the extraneous right simplify ask yourself am I doing this cuz other people are doing it am I doing it cuz I've always done it or am I doing it because it's important am I

doing it because it matters am I doing it because it moves me forward am I doing it because it's a good thing to do for myself or for other people and if it's not eliminate no is such a powerful word no I'm not going to do that no I'm not interested no thank you we have to say no because when we say yes to things cuz we don't want to be rude to someone we are in fact being rude to ourselves to our family to our other obligations when we say no we are also saying

yes to the things that are essential and important Mark sh says if you want more time if you want more Tranquility you're going to have to eliminate the inessential things and only do the essential things and we can imagine if you're the emperor of Rome how important this was there was an unlimited amount of requests and impositions on his time if he was not disciplined if he did not say no he would never get the important things done a critical stoic rule is to speak with the dead now what does that mean I know that's

a little confusing when Zena was a young man he went and he visited the Oracle at Deli and the Oracle said you will become wise when you begin to have conversations with the dead now he had no idea what this meant until he ended up in a bookstore many years later having washed up and lost everything and in This Book story here's the man reading a passage from Socrates and this is when Zeno who who was living not long after Socrates had died that Zeno finally understood the prophecy that reading was a way to have

conversations with the dead that's what philosophy was this is why they called the Western Canon the great conversation so basically what I'm saying is you should be reading every day not reading the news not reading social media not reading the comments on this YouTube video but reading every day are you lingering on the works of the master thinkers as senica said are you pouring over the great texts this is where we can find that one thing a day right but you should be reading every day taking a little quiet time having a little Stillness you're

away from your screens you're away from the noise of the world and you're reading you can put yourself in the same room as Socrates or Zeno or senica or Lincoln or Shakespeare you can talk to these people you can be inspired by KO or his daughter Porsche this is a wonderful thing as senica said books allow us to Annex into our age all the ages of the past it's a way to draw on the wisdom from the people who came before us and this has to be a stoic rule of life another stoic rule is

that we are tough on ourselves but tolerant for others now you might think with one of the stoic virtues being disciplined the stoics are tough on other people but it's important to remember that they're talking about self discipline this is why Mark R says remember tolerant with others strict with yourself he's saying look I can hold myself to high standards cuz that's in my control can he hold his Troublesome stepbrother Lucius vys the co his co-emperor to the same standards no he cannot because again remember it's called self discipline remembering that other people make mistes

mes other people are not as educated as you other people have don't have the advantages that you have other people don't understand stoicism the way you do so to be tough on them to be judgmental to them to write them off is to make a mistake Mark sh says you got to remember we're all meant to work together he said we can't blame them we can't let them implicate us in their low standards or their problems we can't let them drag us down but we also can't write them off or exclude them you still have

to have boundaries again you still have to maintain your standard but you want to be tolerant and forgiving other people and look remember we are pretty tolerant with ourselves too when we mess up when we make a mistake we understand our reasons we understand that it doesn't say that much about us as a person now let's make sure we're extending that same courtesy to other people come up with an explanation that that allows you to have Hope and Faith in them come up with an explanation that allows you to understand and empathize with them come

up with an explanation that allows you to be compassionate and understanding of them another stoic rule is that we make beautiful choices epic TI says if you want to be beautiful make beautiful choices he would have been familiar with an idea from masonius Rufus his teacher his teacher says look if you do something in pursuit of pleasure the pleasure passes quickly but the shame remains he says but when you do something hard in pursuit of virtue when you do something difficult or when you exert self-discipline he says the work expires quickly but the pride remains

and so as we think about the choices that we have to make in the course of the day are we making the hard right choices are we making the beautiful Choice the famous choice that the founding of stoicism is is known as the choice of Hercules Hercules comes to a Crossroads and he has to choose between virtue and vice the easy way and the hard way Hercules would not have become Hercules if he chosen the easier path so as you are deciding between getting up and hitting the snooze button and rolling over right Which choice

are you going to make are you choosing between the kind thing or the unkind thing are you choosing beautifully or not are you choosing between going for the run or sitting on the couch beautiful or not beautiful are you choosing on being forgiving and understanding or are you choosing between being strict and harsh and unfair we make beautiful choices and we are beautiful a great stoic rule is to listen more than you speak Zeno said look we have two ears and one mouth for a reason and we have all sorts of great quotes from the

stoics about saying you know look it's better to trip with your feet than your tongue or as you're about to talk to ask yourself hey is this better left unset the discipline and the wisdom to shut up is a very powerful one there's a story about an ancient Spartan who's sitting there at the this dinner everyone's talking everyone's talking he's just sitting there and finally someone says hey why haven't you spoken are you stupid and he says if I was stupid I wouldn't have been able to be quiet this whole time and so if we

understand that we're here to learn that we're always studying and reading and trying to absorb knowledge as opposed to vomiting it out we're going to get better one of the laws in the 48 Laws of powers always say less than necessary we Reg reget what we say much more often than we regret what we didn't say and so focusing on putting your ego aside not needing to prove how smart you are not needing to fill the awkward silence but be willing to listen be willing to hear to absorb that's how we find the one thing

a day if we are always talking and producing and yammering we're going to miss all the lessons that are out there so stoic tries to cultivate humility tries to cultivate an openness and awareness and this is an essential part of the stoic practice the most important stoic rule is to remember that everything is an opportunity to turn every obstacle into an opportunity in Mark re's famous passage he says the impediment to action Advance his action what stands in the way becomes the way he says that doesn't matter what happens to us we always have the

ability to accommodate adjust adapt it's not always that every situation is going to be a chance to make more money or to be more successful but we always have a chance to practice virtue right we we always have a chance to make beautiful choices even ugly situations in fact you could argue that the upside of ugly situations is the opportunity to make a beautiful Choice someone hurt you you didn't choose it it's not what you wanted it's a chance for you to choose forgiveness let's say you've been discriminated against you've been held back you can

make the choice to persevere to push through and also the beautiful Choice The Virtuous choice not to become ridden with grievances or resentment or anger so the stoics say that we don't control what happens right we control how we respond to what happens we control what we make of the situations that life finds us in we turn it into account we use it all as fuel he says just like what you throw on top of a fire becomes fuel for the fire so too with the obstacles and difficulties of life so a stoic isn't just

kind of resigned and passive a stoic is active everything you throw at them be makes them become greater right because they're making beautiful choices because they're doing good things for the world because they're being present right they're able to convert and adapt all the circumstances of life to their own advantage and benefit the final and most important stoic Rule and sto practice is this idea of momentto Mor the stoic say look you don't die once at the end of your life in fact you are dying every day you're dying every minute as time passes it

is dead to you and gone forever the reason we have to be present why we can't worry about what's already happened or worried about what will happen is that what's in front of us is the only thing that we have for sure you could leave life right now Mark said let that determine what you do and say and think right that's why this is a stoic rule focus on this thing in front of you as if it matters as if it's the last thing that you can do don't tell yourself it doesn't matter don't tell

yourself you get a second chance that you can do it again later don't tell yourself you'll do it tomorrow cuz you don't know that that's happening and as we wind down our lives right as we wind down our day we say to ourselves hey that was it I lived a full life today and so when we wake up in the morning if we are so lucky we're excited we rise to meet the dawn we want to get after it cuz this is a second chance this is bonus time we're playing with house money now let's

use it let's make the most of it let's make beautiful choices let's be as Mark said the person that philosophy tried to make us and that's what these rules are for they're to help you become what you're capable of being help you do what only you are capable of doing every day I send out one stoic inspired email to hundreds of thousands of people all over the world if you want more stoic wisdom in your inbox you can sign up at Daily stoic.com it's totally free can unsubscribe at any time we'd love to have you

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