54 Time-Tested Stoic Truths For Life

the internet is flooded with advice you don't know who these people are you don't know if they know what they're talking about what proof do they have that this advice is true has staying power that it's worked out well for the person giving it to you the thing about stoicism is is that it's about as tried and tested as advice could be stoicism was ancient to many of the stoics Marcus relus the philosopher king when he is drawing on stoic philosophy to to base his life around it's already a philosophy that's hundreds of years old

thousands of people over thousands of years have tested this advice these ideas over and over and over again so these aren't hacks these aren't shortcuts these aren't ply little things these are things that have been through the crucible that have been tested in some of the hardest and most difficult situations human beings have ever been through and that's what we're going to go after in today's episode some short but essential lessons from the ancient stoics that have been put to the test that have been refined down we have the essence of the wisdom of some

of the smartest people who ever lived tried and tested through the centuries here are some of the best pieces of stoic wisdom you can apply to your actual life does this actually matter right so many of the things we're upset about that we hold on to that we focus on they don't matter not to you to anyone at all they don't they just don't matter Marcus aurelus says ask yourself at every moment is this essential say cuz most of what we do and say is not essential he says when you eliminate the inessential you get

the double benefit of doing the essential things better Steven coar loses his father and and several siblings in a plane crash as a young man and he said what he took out of this was a question from his mother she said can you look at this in the light of Eternity does this matter in the big picture right cuz so many of the things we Tri get upset about that we focus on in moments of Crisis we get real clarity about we realize they didn't matter at all people matter your loved on matter doing your

best matters everything else is irrelevant and yet that's where we focus so much of our time and [Music] energy well begun is half done as they say so own the morning if you want to have a good day have a good morning if you want to have a good life have a good day so it all comes back to how you start the day own the morning it's a great passage in Marcus relas where he's arguing with himself about getting up at a bed in the morning and he says look were you meant to huddle

under the covers and stay warm he says no get to work do what you got to do do what you were put here on this Earth to do and do it early the thing is not the problem it's your opinion about that thing the still say the event is objective it's indifferent to us it's our opinions about it that are the problem by by the way the thing is not asking for your opinion it doesn't give a [ __ ] about your opinion you have to say no a lot this goes back to Mark celus

is this essential if it's not essential what do you do this is the rule you say no you have to say no when I talk to NFL teams this is something we we talk about I say look everything you say yes to means you're saying no to something else and whatever you say no to gives you more room more time to say yes to what matters in their case being great at what they do so what are you going to say no to this year so you can say yes to the things that matter to

the people that matter in your life as well you don't get rich acquiring things acquiring money epic T says it's not about having many things it's about having few wants if you have everything you need if you have enough if you feel sufficient then you are very rich would it also be nice to pair that with having a lot of money sure but you could also have very little and feel like enough feel good get to a place where you feel like you have enough and you are rich when you pair your wants down when

you don't need anything from anyone or anything outside your control that to the stugs is true wealth is this in my control epicus says this is the key question this is the chief task of the philosopher in life which is separating the things that are up to us from the things that are not up to us and so much of the time and energy we spend in this life are on things that are not up to us that are not in our control it just started raining I don't need to have an opinion on the

fact that it's raining cuz it's not in my control but what is in my control is what I'm going to do right what's in our control is our actions our thoughts our opinions right and so the stoic learns to tune out what's not in our control and it focuses on what is in our control and so we ask ourselves about everything we experience everything we're feeling everything we're working on is this up to me or am I throwing good energy after bad am I beating myself against a wall that's never going to move you have

to remember you're a product of your habits epic Tia says if you want to be beautiful make beautiful choices if you want to be excellent make excellent choices and make them habitually day in and day out they add up you got to stop wasting time talking about this stuff arguing what a good person is like what the right thing is these complicated virtue ethics Mark St says waste no more time arguing what a good person is like just be one Senus says we're all slaves to something he points out a powerful Roman who was a

slave to his mistress he talks about a Roman politician who's a slave to his ambition to the crowd right maybe you're a slave to money or food or wine he he says even slave owners were slaves to their estat so we're all slaves to something he say we should look very suspiciously at any habit or practice or item that has power over us we cannot go without that controls what we do and say and think and where we [Music] go it's called self discipline for a reason it's not something you wield against other people in

meditations Marcus celus says remember tolerant with others strict with yourself they're your standards they're your goals they're your beliefs you can hold yourself to them but not other [Music] people another way to spell perfectionism Churchill said was paralysis they are the same thing you think it's that you have high standards but it's actually an excuse not to have to do things outcomes are not in our Control process and effort is so the stoic say focus on effort not outcomes ignore the results focus on what's in front of you I have to do this with my

books I want to write the best book possible I want to try as hard as I can on the marketing I want to do the absolute best I can everything after that is extra it's not up to me success is internal did I do what I set out to do everything else is [Music] irrelevant you're not being harmed you're not being screwed over you're not being challenged you're being epic to said paired with a strong sparring partner life is helping you life is making you better life is teaching you life is making you stronger you

want to wrestle with this you pick hard sparring partners pick people who you get better for wrestling with are you meditating on your mortality I carry a coin in my pocket that says momento Mori you can leave life right now Mark says life is short don't waste time don't focus on things that don't matter going through our life with a clear sense of our mortality is essential what am I missing by choosing to worry or be afraid one of my favorite books is the gift of fear by Gavin debecker and he says when you worry

ask yourself what am I choosing not to see right now right we only have so much in the way of cognitive resources or time or emotional uh energy how are you going to spend it and then Often by being anxious by being worried by taking things personally by being afraid we're taking our eye off the ball and so I want you to see those emotions not just as unpleasant but actively destructive because they are stuff's going to happen in life that makes us emotional but we have to realize that we're only compounding that by acting

on those emotions you have two choices senica says you can laugh or cry Democritus one of the philosophers he cried he despaired at how awful and evil the world was pointed out herac Cletus he laughed at it right we think of the stoics as humorless but they weren't instead of despairing instead of being angry instead of being depressed instead of any of those negative emotions they decided to laugh at the absurdity of Life they decided to laugh at the pain that life can inflict on us cuz it's the one part of it we control we

control our response to it so we might as well Find humor in it instead of pain and suffering and [Music] anger senica says we suffer more in imagination than reality and that gives us the next law which is don't suffer imagined troubles the stuff that you're worried about it'll happen or it won't worrying doesn't affect it right so senica says don't feel more than you have to deal with that when it comes for now focus on what's in front of you focus on what you need to do don't add to your suffering by anticipating it

by suffering in advance that's only adding cumulatively up to more [Music] suffering are you doing your job this is a key question um when Shawn Payton was uh suspended from the NFL for for a year he put up a a big picture of himself in the Saints facility and three words said do your job this is a thing I think it comes from Bill bich but the idea is that everyone has a job in every moment sometimes that's a little job sometimes it's a big job but everyone has to know their job in an organization

in life you got to ask yourself are you doing it I think in the end we end up focusing on everyone else's job that our own because it's easier than doing our own and that's why I like this question so much are you doing your job and if you aren't why not if you are good keep doing it always takes longer than you think even when you take that into account the obstacles away came out in 2014 so it's 10 years uh to today but it took six maybe 7 years for it to hit a

best s list right it takes longer than you think you you you think you deserve it now you think it'll happen now it takes so much longer than you think it's going to take that's just life you have to find a way to love everything that happens this is the stoic idea of a moratti the stoics aren't resigned to what happens it's more than that they embrace it they say this isn't something I have to do it's something I get to do this isn't something that happened to me it's something that happened for me Marcus

real says everything you throw on top of a fire becomes fuel for the fire that's what the idea of a moratti is they Embrace they love everything that happens cuz they know they can use it and they know that it's what Destiny had in mind for them will this be alive time or dead time that's something Robert Green asked me when I was thinking about becoming a writer I had like a year to kill before I could go do it and he said what's this year going to be for you is it going to be

alive time or dead time for you are going to use every second or you going to sit around and be passive and wait that came flooding back to me in the pandemic when we went into lockdown is this going to be a lifetime or dead time what am I going to have to show for this whether it's 2 weeks or 2 months or 2 years what am I going to have to show for this period a livetime treat every moment like a livetime cuz while you have it you're alive but after it's gone it's dead

right now is now can you use this time what can you use it for if you always choose a lifetime then you're always getting better then you're always moving forward you're not wasting time senica says it's not that life is short it's that we waste a lot of it we kill time as time is killing us and the truth is you always have the ability to make the most of this moment so often we choose not to cuz we we we don't ask ourselves this question the People You Meet are going to suck this is

the harsh truth that Mark freus opens meditations with says they're going to be jealous and annoying and difficult and stupid they're going to be all these things we know they're going to be these things we have to go into the day with our eyes wide open that's the harsh truth part of it but the uplifting part the happy part of it is the second part he says but but they can't implicate you in ugliness and he says more importantly remember that you're made to work together that life is incom complete without those kinds of people

and that that we're related and that we're we share an affinity and a bond for each other we can't be surprised by it we can't let it suck us down and we can't let it change us for the negative we still have to be good we still have to do our job we still have to play our part The Grudge you're holding it's meaningless Mar says look at the people who held these grudges who raged about things who held on to things he says where are they now they're dead and gone The Grudge went nowhere

and the same is going to happen to your thing whatever it is you're upset about however significant it was for you eventually it disappears along with you so how can you work on letting it go how can you move on how can you process how can you not carry it around how can you not let it consume you prepare for life's setbacks predio malum this comes to us from Sena says Exile War torture shipwreck be ready for them cuz they're going to happen and he says the unforeseen blow lands heaviest and by anticipating things we

take power away from them so be prepared be ready think unpleasant thoughts so you can be pleasantly surprised if they don't happen rather than unpleasantly surprised when they do happen that's what senica says he said the only unacceptable excuse is I did not think that could happen [Music] one of the hardest things I've had to do in my life last year my wife and I put our beloved dog of 16 years down my dog Hano I don't have anymore there's a momento Mory reminder in dogs there's also a reminder to take care of the people

and the things in your life and that's one of the reasons we switched to Sunday's dog food Sunday's is a healthy dog food that's easy to store and serve it's made from a short list of human grade ingredients it was co-founded by Dr Tori Waxman a practicing veterinarian it's 90% meat 10% vegetables and 0% synthetic nutrients and unlike a lot of the other fresh expensive dog foods out there you don't have to refrigerate Sundays which means you can take it with you on trips you don't have to worry about it going bad Sunday makes it

easy to feed your dogs high quality ingredients that you feel good about and they love eating and you can get 50% off your first order of Sundays just go to Sundays 4dogs stoic and use code daily stoic at [Music] checkout helle said if I am not for me who is then he said if I am only for me who am I this I think is related to the idea of to be or to do what's motivating you is it external accomplishments or is it making a difference in this world yes you have to fight for

yourself you have to stand up for yourself you get walked all over but if all you care about is protecting yourself if all you care about is attention who are you I think about someone like George Marshall who accomplishes so much and perhaps his greatest accomplishment is turning down the command at Normandy he didn't want his personal feelings to be taken into account again to be or to do but also who am I for and who am I yes yes he fought really hard to get where he was to to make a difference but then

he also knew that ego didn't matter in the end What mattered is the team effort there's a great expression I heard that says if you play for the name on the front of the Jersey they'll remember the name on the back it's not that you read epicus reminds us it's what you read who are you spending time with gerer says show me who who you spend time with and I will tell you who you are right senica talks about spending time with people who make you a better person my dad said to me as a

kid you become like your friends well the question is are you spending time with people who are aaging you towards where you want to go or are they averaging you away from where you want to go this is a question that can lead to some hard decisions people that you're going to spend less time with who are you seeing after work who are you reading who are you talking to the people we spend time with are either going to make us better they're going to make us worse or they're going to keep us exactly who

we are which is either a good thing or a very bad thing you can't learn that which you think you already know that's epic tetus ego is the enemy because when you're a know- it all you're right it's impossible for you to know anymore you know everything that is possible for you to [Music] know you have to study the lives of the greats Senus says choose yourself a KO focus on someone who's going to make you better as I say in my book the lives of the STS we study the lives of the people who

went before us so we can learn easily what they learned with great difficulty so we can pick up where they left off so we don't have to learn by trial and air find some Heroes study them learn from them learn what to do what not to do that's the journey I'm on with Markus realus senica epicus it's what I write about in lives of the stoes but the idea is whose lives are you studying and what are you learning from them the next is a question from Markus he says ask yourself in every moment is

this essential cuz the truth is most of what we do most of what we spend time on most of the things that other people do and spend time on are not essential and he says when you eliminate what's inessential you get the double benefit of doing the essential things better do I need to do it yes or no and if I do need to do it then because it is essential I'm going to give it everything I have [Music] what does your ideal day look like a life cica says is made up of days Annie

Dillard said how we spend our lives is of course how we spend our days right what does an ideal day look like for you how are you trying to design your life if you don't know what a good day is like what your ideal is then you're just going to be working on making more money acquiring more Fame getting more power or influence we have to ask ourself is this getting me closer or further away from the life that I want I've talked about how I know exactly what my ideal day looks like it's a

Saturday where I wake up early I work out I do a little bit of writing I spend lots of time with my family I have time to think I haven't signed myself up for a bunch of pointless obligations or phone calls or meetings I spend time Outdoors I'm connected I'm present and so I have to look at each opportunity then that comes along any day and ask myself is it getting me closer or further away from the kind of life I want to lead and the kind of person that I want to [Music] be you're

not going to be successful because you haven't defined what success is you haven't really thought about where you're trying to go senica says that if you don't know what port you're sailing towards no wind is favorable if you don't take the time to really go where am I trying to go what does that look like why am I interested in that why is that important is that in my control you're not going to be able to make the individual day-to-day part byart decisions that will allow you to actually get there you won't know how to

respond properly the things the opportunities and to the obstacles that you face along the way who is this for this is a question as a Creator you always have to know who are you making this for I talked to so many entrepreneurs business people creatives who have no idea they're just making stuff they they just hope it will find an audience they go oh this is a book for smart people you have to know who you're making this for you have to know your audience you have to know the market you have to know human

beings this is why empathy is so important who are you making this for who are they where where are they what do they want you have to know who this is for so I always ask myself if they're making a video or putting out a tweet or or writing a book screw your hunches who is this for who are they you can learn something from everyone Ralph Waldo Emerson says everyone I meet is better than me at something and that I want to learn from them right so focus on what you can learn from every

single person even people you don't like even people you don't respect even people who suck focus on what you can learn cuz everyone is better than you at something and even if they're not better than you at something you can learn from them and a cautionary tale so you can learn from everyone we always want to be learning that's where wisdom comes from [Music] what is the most important thing to you what do you actually value if you don't know what's important how do you know that you're putting it first and so to me all

the other questions of Life come after you have asked and answered what the most important thing to you is in life if you told me I could sell 10 times as many many books but it' come at the expense of my marriage or my relationship with my kids I'd say screw that right because I know the most important thing to me is how those things are in balance with each other yes my work is important but it's not the most important thing you know senica talks about this idea of emia he says knowing the path

that you're on and not being distracted by the paths of the people whose crisscross yours he says especially the people who are hopelessly lost when you know what's important when you know what you value when you know where you're going it makes it easy for you to ignore what doesn't matter and focus on what does [Music] matter you're not that important Mark real he says run down the list all the people that came before me he says what what happened to all these famous names these names that used to sound so familiar you know what

they are now they're they're like what uh Taylor Swift talks about who's who who's that we all disappear we all recede into memory we are all [Music] forgotten one of the really beautiful things in meditations is all the observations Marcus makes about nature the flex of foam on a Boar's mouth the way olives fall right from the tree the the way the wheat bends low under its own weight the furrowed brow of the lion you know he found beauty in the mundane in the everyday life he talks about the way that bread cracks open in

the oven where does this come from why does it happen life can be dark life can be frustrating it can break your heart so if you focus on the good in finding Beauty everywhere and seeing with the poet's eye you'll find beauty everywhere you'll always have something that makes you smile you're never going to escape change life is change Marcus realus reminds us that being born was a change death is a change every good thing in your life came from a change so it did bad things of course but everything in life has changed you

cannot Escape it you can only accept it you can only embrace it value time more than money and possessions right you can earn more money you can get more land you can get more opportunities what you can't get is this moment back senica says the time that passes belongs to death so don't think of death as something in the future think of death as something that's happening right now and everything you do even watching this video you are choosing to purchase with your life [Music] Robert Green once said to me there's two types of time

in life alive time dead time it says what are you going to choose are you going to live this moment are you going to kill time going to waste time you're going to let that time die a stoic always chooses a livetime they focus on what they control they focus on how they respond they know that life is short so they live every moment they use every moment put before them cuz they know that the next one cannot be taken for [Music] granted what good is postumus Fame the so excited it it won't do you

any good you'll be dead and and more importantly Mark realist reminds us that the people in the future are going to magically be better or smarter they're going to be just as stupid and annoying and misinformed as they are now so stop chasing posture Mis Fame exist in the present do what you can now do what's right now associate with people who make you better you become like your friends we are a reflection of our surroundings the stoics sought out people that made them better in fact senica's conversation with lucilius what he who he writes

to in letters from A Stoke is about him associating with someone who made him better spend time with people who make you better I saw a great expression the other day you can't change your friends but you can change your friends forgive forgive forgive that's this rule I heard a great expression that forgiveness is a gift that you give to yourself markia says the best revenge is not to be like that I would ask add to that is also to not hang on to whatever that was you got to let go you got to forgive

senica says every person is an opportunity for kindness and that's the rule here every situation is an opportunity for kindness kindness is the key it's what moves us forward never pass up an opportunity to be kind to care to be compassionate to listen to appreciate what someone is going through because that's the truth everyone is going through something [Music] we talked about how what's bad for the hive is bad for the bee another way of expressing this is this rule which is to do wrong to someone else is to do wrong to yourself we're all

Brothers we're all one we're all connected to hurt someone else is to hurt yourself right we do good because it's the right thing but also because it's good for us [Music] you're paying Too Close of attention epic TAA says if you want to improve you have to be content to be seen as ignorant or foolish in some matters he he was saying that if you're on top of everything if you know the latest gossip all the breaking news what you're doing is not paying attention to the important things what you're not doing is working on

yourself you have to be willing to say I don't know about that I didn't hear about that if you're following everything you're really following [Music] nothing the thing is is not the problem it's your opinion about that thing the St say the event is objective it's indifferent to us it's our opinions about it that are the problem by the way the thing is not asking for your opinion it doesn't give a [ __ ] about your [Music] opinion comes to us from Victor Frankle who survives the Holocaust who read the amazing book man search for

meaning you know he says we ask what is the meaning of life but he says actually it is life that is asking us that question and it's our actions it's our decisions that provide provide the answer meaning is something we create from our actions from our decisions from our choices from who we choose to be these are the kinds of questions that if you ask often enough you will provide as Victor frankco says the kinds of answers that make you who you're capable of becoming is this who I want to be is this representative of

the person that I see myself as that I am trying to become or am I giving into my lower self here am I taking a shortcut here am I doing something that the person that I see myself as wouldn't do Cheryl stra says you know you're becoming who you're going to be so you might as well not be an [ __ ] when you do things you have to ask yourself is this representative of my character of my priorities of my values of what I said is important to me if the answer is no you

have to not do it how we do anything is how we do everything so you have to ask yourself this question is this who I want to be every interaction every situation big or small cuz it adds up in the way that nothing else can can you should probably shut up you should probably shut up Zeno said it's better to trip with your feet than with your tongue K said he would only speak when he was certain that what he was about to say was not better left [Music] unsaid to be or to do this

is a key question it comes to us from the great strategist John Boyd who as he mentored young men and women in the Pentagon would see that you kind of can go down two path paths in life there's a person who wants to look important that wants to achieve a high rank that wants to be in the newspapers or on TV and then there's the person who wants to quietly get things done you know I think it was Truman who said it's amazing how much you can accomplish if you don't care about who gets the

credit to be or to do is is largely about credit do you care about accomplishments or do you care about impact do you care about credit or do you care about getting things done you have to ask yourself am I trying to be an important person am I trying to accomplish important things and this question is critical to be or to do how are you measuring your life you're weak if you lose your temper stoicism was a masculine philosophy but but Marcus really has pointed out how how sort of pathetic it is that we get

overwhelmed by our emotions and we lash out at people men sometimes judge other men for crying but it's strange that we don't judge each other for losing our temper which actually does hurt people which is of less purpose when you feel that sort of Rage or anger coming on this this stok say get control of yourself get command of yourself say is this who I want to be is this what being a mature adult is and the answer is almost certainly no this is what you trained for that's the whole point of philosophy epicus is

to be able to say to whatever situation you find yourself in whatever the moment is big or small positive or negative you're supposed to be able to say this is what I trained for this is what it was all leading up up to this is the point of all of it this is what I train for and now I'm going to apply all these things that I learned that I've been reading about that I've been talking about that I've been experimenting with all the experiences that I've gained up until this point this is what it

was all for what goes up must come down as we said Mark celus says remember to accept it without arrogance to Let It Go with indifference that's the rule accept the good things while they're there except the bad things while they're there none of them change who you are and what you can do you want to be good and gracious and resilient in success you want to be good and gracious and resilient in Failure you want to be humble when you're on high you want to be humble when life has humbled you right be who

you are be the even ke don't let your circumstances change you high or low all of it is irrelevant to who you are don't identify with success or failure focus on who you are and what you control every day I send out one stoic inspired email totally for free almost a million people all over the world you want to take your stoicism Journey to the next level I would love for you to subscribe it's totally for free you can unsubscribe at any time there's no spam just go to daily stoic.com email love to see you

there [Music]