100 Things Ryan Holiday Learned From Marcus Aurelius' Meditations

you can't be satisfied just getting the gist of something you had to read and study deeply to return the same books over and over again actually Marcus quoting the philosopher heraclitus would say that we never step in the same river twice [Music] I'm Ryan Holliday I've written a number of books about stoic philosophy I've spoken to the NBA the NFL sitting senators and Special Forces leaders almost 15 years now I have been reading and re-reading one of the greatest books of all time Marcus aurelius's meditations actually this is my new leather Edition that I had

made I put so many miles on this one and my other copies that I wanted something to really stand the test of time Marcus Aurelius didn't read a book once and think that he got it he read it over and over and over again I've probably read meditations a hundred times I was reading it just yesterday and in today's video I want to give you 100 lessons that I've gotten from my hundreds of reads of meditations over the last decade and I hope their reviews to you and I hope most of all that you go

pick this book up and read it yourself one of the most compelling and jaw-dropping parts of meditations comes at really the beginning the opening of booktube book one is debts and lessons I'll talk more about that later he says today the people you will meet will be jealous and stupid and annoying and frustrating he lists all the things that people are going to be like today and part of this is just a stoic idea of being prepared right the unexpected blow lands heaviest if you think people are going to be amazing and kind and get

out of your way and you're going to only hit green lights you're going to be sorely disappointed but he says the point is not to think about how shitty and awful people are not at all you have to realize why they are like this he says it's because they don't know good from bad they don't have the same training as you but they are still like you he said you cannot allow them to implicate you in their ugliness he says we were meant to work together we are brothers and sisters and so what meditations begins

with this seemingly depressive note but if you stick with it and I think that's such an important lesson that you get from Reading Marcus over and over again if you stick with him you realize that beneath this honesty this bluntness this matter-of-factness is a huge Caring Heart a heart that will not allow itself to harden or be turned against other people in one passage in meditations Marx cerealis writes down what he calls epithets for the self he talks about being honest talks about being upright these are words he says that that he can live by

a couple different times in my life I've tried to do that but part of one of the daily Stoke challenges a few years ago I wrote down seven of them I wrote honest calm Fair father Brave generous and still these are words that I try to live by I want to make decisions take actions that will demonstrate that idea which will show that those are the watch words or the epithets that I live by that I could be described by and so I think of all the exercises and meditations that's one that we can all

practice is just come up with the epithets for the self the rules the descriptors for your character that you want to live and model day in and day out but really the true opening of meditations is the debts and lessons section almost a full 10 of the book is Marcus Aurelius writing what he learned from and what he was grateful for and the people who trained him the people who raised him the fact that 10 of the book is is gratitude to me is so important it's a statement of priorities and the role that gratitude

must play in our life nothing is so inspiring is remembering the values and virtues and seeing them embodied in the people around you he never knew meditations would be published this wasn't for the other people to see that that he was grateful to them it was actually the act of expressing the gratitude that was a gift to him and we have to have an active gratitude practice in our own lives one of my favorite stories about Marcus cereal it's not in meditations but at the depth of the antonine plague he sells off the palace Furnishings

to pay down Rome's debt which actually does connect to Something in meditations he talks about how lucky he feels that he's never had to ask anyone else for financial help and whenever anyone else came to him asking for financial help he was always in a position to say yes it was a generous a kind person yes he was privileged and wealthy and Powerful he tried to use those things for good he tried to absorb the blows or the pain or the difficulties before other people this is a print I have from one of my favorite

passages from Mark surrealist I have it on the wall selling the daily stroke Services waste no more time arguing what a good man should be be one and I think arguably Marx cerealis's greatest contributions to philosophy are not what he wrote in this book right what Marcus's greatest contributions to philosophy is how he lived that even if he had never written a philosophical work that he'd still be seen as a kind of philosopher king because he embodied the ideas he lived them he demonstrated that a king an emperor a person of power influencer wealth could

be good and decent could do the right thing could be everything that people expected of him and that's just to me the most important thing we can take from our surveillance Marcus really says that no matter what's happening in the world no matter what other people are doing with us we always have this superpower we always have the power to have no opinion we don't have to decide that it's good or bad we don't have to decide that it's urgent or not we don't have to decide anything about it all we don't have to think

anything about it at all you can just let it go you can let it pass by you don't have to figure it out you don't have to have a hot take on it just let the weather be the weather this political situation be that political situation doesn't have to be good or bad we don't have to have an opinion about everything one of my first reads of meditations I noted that Marcus says can only ruin your life if it ruins your character the idea that success wasn't whether you made money whether you got what you

wanted it's whether you protected your character right Jesus said is what good is gaining the whole world if you lose your soul and we can imagine Marcus struggling with this as the emperor of Rome it doesn't matter how many buildings he built or what lands he conquers to him it matters if he is a good person or not I remember shortly after I read meditations for the first time I had to get on a flight I was in a middle seed on this long cross-country flight and I was next to someone who's jostling for the

armrest the person in front of me reclined back that was just one of those unpleasant experiences in modern travel but I thought back to one of my favorite passages in meditations where Marcus talks about being next to a smelly person he says yeah it's awful you can say something to them if you want but if you're not going to say something then you just have to bear it no amount of gritting your teeth or silently resenting them is going to change this stewing doesn't help them or you being miserable doesn't help them where you're just

gonna carry this nastiness with you when you go and so I think Marcus would have dealt with the same kinds of inconveniences and annoyances as all of us even if his life was more sheltered than most of ours but he reminded himself that this is what life entails you either say something about it or you've got to get comfortable putting up with it one of Mark's really's most brilliant rhetorical questions is this he says is a world without Shameless people possible the answer is of course no and it says okay so you've met one of

them right this person that you meet they're one of those people you know that it's impossible for the world to exist without them you know inevitably statistically you will run into one of them that's it she says reminding yourself that this person is one of a certain number helps you not get so upset about it not be so surprised by it and most of all not despair by it most people are the opposite of that person and I think for the word Shameless we can plug in all sorts of things people who lie people who

steal people who cheat people who do all the things that we don't like a certain percentage of them are always going to exist and always have existed and better yet when we remind ourselves still that they are the minority you can find a way to categorize them accept them and then move on a couple years ago I wrote this book conspiracy Peter Teo was outed as gay by this sort of Silicon Valley gossip rag they treated him very cruelly and he spent millions of dollars and years of his life auditing and scheming to destroy it

which he successfully did and there's a lot that was really interesting in it a lot that was really Innovative in doing that I think even some things to be impressed by it as I was talking about in the book every day as I was writing it I couldn't help but think of one of my favorite lines from meditations Marcus really says the best revenge is to not be life your enemy the point is that getting even often makes you like or worse than the person who supposedly did this Grievous heinous thing to you we see

this in Marcus aurelius's life he's betrayed by one of his most trusted generals and and he tries not to be angry about it he has to deal with it yes but he he tries to actually use it as an opportunity to show the Roman people how One deals with being betrayed how One deals with civil stripe you can't let the person who wronged you turn turn you into something just like that Gregory Hayes and his translation of meditations he makes a great point and I missed it the first couple times he says that nowhere does

Marcus identify as a stoic and he says actually if you asked Marcus he probably wouldn't have identified with any school at all even though meditations is of course filled with all sorts of stoic observations and principles he says that Marcus would have identified as a philosopher Paul Graham and one of his famous essays says keep your identity small don't identify as a singular thing or with a singular ideology you want to be a free agent this is why Seneca quote so much from epicurus he read widely he understood widely the point is not to be

a stoic philosopher the point is to be a philosopher a lover of wisdom there's a beautiful line in Joseph brodsky's essay about the equestrian statue of Mark surelis in Rome it dates back to Marcus's time but the base of which was redesigned by Michelangelo Brodsky says something like if Marcus Aurelius is antiquity it is we who are the ruins I don't know what that means exactly there's something beautiful and haunting about it maybe it's this idea that when you read meditations you can't help but be struck by classical Beauty and perfection in some ways the

highest expression of human greatness and then you look at us you look at the way we talk to each other you look at the things we say you look at how we live and act and think and you go yeah we're the old worn out beaten down falling apart things the ancient world feels fresh and modern and new and perfect in so many ways and I just love that idea if Marcus aurelius's Antiquity it is we who are the ruins it's actually in book six that I found the meditation that I would build my own

first book of stone philosophy around the impediment to action advances action what stands in the way becomes the way he says look stuff can get in the way you can be impeded he says but nothing can impede your intentions or your dispositions he says the mind can convert to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting that's the power of stoicism that we always have the opportunity opportunity to practice a virtue we don't choose where we are we don't choose what's happening but if you accept the obstacle and work with what you're given Mark's realist

says in meditations an alternative will present itself another piece of what you're trying to assemble action by action acceptance can seem like this weakness that it's stopping you from moving forward in fact acceptance means this door is closed now I can go try this other door you first have to accept that the obstacle exists that it is real that it has constraints or impediments or difficulties to then decide what you're going to do about it you're going to go around are you going to go over you're going to use the weight of it against itself

it's an opportunity to do this other thing you couldn't have done under ordinary circumstances acceptance is not passive resignation it's the first step in taking an active approach and Marcus returns to this theme over and over and over again in meditations in one passage he says a strong stomach digests what it eats a fire turns what you throw on top of it into flame and brightness and heat his point is we can use our obstacles as fuel the things that happen to us in life are opportunities this is the essence of stoicism this is our

chance whatever it is it might not be the virtue we wanted to practice might not be the virtue we're most comfortable practicing but it's nevertheless an opportunity to be great I'm remember I was once talking to the great Robert Greene and I asked him what one of his favorite passages for Marcus Williams's meditations was he said it was the one where Marcus Aurelius is talking about he's looking at this big feast and he says oh that's a dead bird said oh that's dead pig oh this wine is rotted grapes I said Robert why did you

like that and he said that's what I try to do in my writing I try to to deconstruct things to take away the preconceived notions that's actually what Marcus says he says it's about stripping the things of the legend that encrusts them about seeing them as they actually are I think that's not only what a philosopher has to do but I think that's what a great writer like Robert Greene does I call this contemptuous Expressions you know these things kind of loom over us we go oh Harvard is so important look at the fancy people

that go there look how hard it is look how expensive it is but also you could look at the idiots who've graduated from Harvard the the monsters that have come out of there right you could be like oh the president's the most prestigious important job in the world but look at some of the people who've been present look how incompetent they were you're supposed to see things for what they are strip them of the legend that encrust them see them as they are the same goes for like some fancy car or you know some important

position it's not what people think it is you have to strip it bare you have to see it for what it is and Marcus Aurelius was doing this even with his own purple cloak the thing that signified he was the emperor he said this is just a regular cloak dyed with shellfish blood you've seen it as it actually was which is such a critical practice the famous victim from Lord octum is that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely what's remarkable about Marcus Aurelius is that he's perhaps the only exception to this rule that we

know he's given absolute power what is the first thing he does with it he gives half of it away to his stepbrother he isn't corrupted by it it's a remarkable Testament to the power of this philosophy the idea of what stoicism can make a person and and that's not an accident in meditations Marcus who really warns himself against being caesarified of being dyed purple of being changed by the power and fame and money that the position has given him and we all have to be worried about being caesarified or died purple we have to be

worried about being changed by by the the number of followers that we have by the promotion that we just got by the famous name that we inherited you're not special the rules do apply to you you're not better than anyone else power doesn't have to corrupt what it can do is reveal who you actually are in one point in meditations Marcus really tells himself to take Plato's view to zoom out to see things from above and he does that he talks about how enormous armies fighting over a border a whole country could be not that

dissimilar from a far enough view to ants fighting over a piece of food on the ground it's beautiful and quite impressive that he could come to this point of view because in Marcus's time the highest he could have gotten off the ground was like a couple story building or maybe the top of a mountain he didn't have the access of a to an airplane like all of us do you know he would have never seen the Blue Marble photo which showed Earth from space but when you get to Plato's view you're just reminded how inconsequential

most of the things we get upset about are and then you are also reminded of how interconnected and interdependent and together we all are Marcus says this too that the borders don't matter that vast oceans no matter we're all in the same thing together that we are tied together more than we'd like to think that we are Pierre Hado one of the great Scholars Marcus really talks about the oceanic feeling Marcus really talks about the view from above he talks about men's City how all of experience keeps before us Marcus is trying to meditate on

the vastness and the connectedness of everything in the world he talks about looking at the stars and watching yourself alongside them I think he's seeking out these kind of humbling experiences and you could think about why that would be so important to someone who was literally the center of the universe he wanted to remind himself that that wasn't strictly true one of the things Marcus really does say in meditations about the people who would have always been flattering him and telling him is amazing or people who would have been criticizing him or attacking him he

says think about what they just submitted to a few minutes ago think about what they do in private think about who they actually are and when you know who they actually are how weak they are or how corrupted they are Petty they are suddenly their approval their opinion about you won't matter very much markets are really as clearly hated all the flatterers and sycophants but the thing he hated most was the people who would say things in passing I'm gonna be honest with you let me be straight with you let me tell you what I

really think he said to say those things was actually a confession a self-indictment you're admitting that that's not the norm that's not what you normally do people should know you're going to be honest he said an honest person should be like the smelly goat in the room you should know they're there the second they walk in and nobody had to think that about markets in fact from an early age Marcus Aurelius was named verismus or the truest one and we think that's because he was so unflinchingly truthful with Hadrian his adopted grandfather in effect the

most powerful man in Rome Marcus just told him what he thought he didn't hold back and neither canoe it's clear that one of Marcus realist's passions is the theater he loves the theater and we know this because he quotes So widely from play Place some of those plays didn't even survive they only surviving remnants of them are his quotes and meditations but if you would talk about going to the theater watching a tragedy and what this can teach us about life he even talks about looking at your own life as a kind of play he

says if watching something in the theater would make you interested or make you laugh make you think it can't make you angry in life when it happens to you you have to cultivate this same kind of philosophical approach today people might think oh philosophy is this intellectual Pursuit it can't possibly jive with theater or watching television following Sports of course it can Marcus Aurelius was drawn from the popular art forms of his time in drawing philosophical lessons from them that he used to be better at his life which is the purpose of all art speaking

of the role that art can have and teaching us things or popular culture can have in teaching those things you consider probably the most popular Dramatical rendering of Marcus is in the movie Gladiator he's the old guy that beginning the movie that Joaquin Phoenix's character killed now this isn't a movie explicitly based on stoicism and all the time you see on the internet quotes from the movie attributed to Marcus that are really only in the movie and not real but the movie does capture quite shockingly the evil and the awfulness of Communists and that question

has to hover over your readings of meditations how can such a wise and decent and patient and philosophical person have raised such a terrible kid it's a tricky question and I don't have a good answer we've talked about it before on daily stoic I mean almost all of Mark cerelius's children die communist is his only remaining male Heir you know maybe communist is just a psychopath and it doesn't say anything about Marcus maybe Marcus was trapped by the traditions of his time antoninus Hadrian and the preceding Emperors they didn't have a male son so there

wasn't an issue but it is a tricky question and I think the overall lesson we take from this is just talking about these things just thinking about these things it doesn't mean you're going to be good at this really difficult thing that is raising children that should humble us and all also I think even make us question some of the things that we see Marx really talk about in meditations Steve Jobs learned from his father who was a carpenter the importance of caring about the craft how something was done even the parts that no one

would see like the back of a fence or the back of a drawer that's why the inside of a Macbook computer is beautiful even though the average user will never crack it open and see again meditations being a book for the author not for the reader is so fascinating Marcus Aurelius is writing in Greek not in Latin because at that time Greek was the language of philosophy it was a harder but a more beautiful language he quotes from memory perfectly these obscure passages from philosophy he makes these observations about the way that grain bends or

the flecks of foam on a Boar's mouth he was a beautiful writer it was beautiful just for himself I mean that's one of the reasons I slaved over this Edition I just wanted it to be amazing and beautiful to reflect the the workmanship and the craftsmanship of of meditations itself and I just always think of that lesson for Marcus and from Steve Jobs that doesn't matter whether other people will see it whether it's in your journal or for publication you have to care about what it is and how it's made we never step in the

same river twice the river changes and we change right when you pick up a book for the first time then a second time and a third time maybe even the 100th time each time you get something different out of it I think so often we get a book we read it once we go I got it right but that's not how it works stoicism is this topic you're supposed to return to over and over and over again I put a lot of miles on my copies of meditations over the years covers falling off there's different

highlighters and pens and folded like almost every page at this point as I've returned to these passages so many times like now almost everything in it is marked up so one of the things I've been doing recently is rereading it on a fresh copy and I have a really special fresh copy this is my leather-bound Edition that I actually had made which you can buy at dailystoke.com meditations I'm returning to meditations now with fresh eyes you can see all the notes that I have in here all these things have been hitting me in a new

place in a new way because the book of staying it's the same translation the format's a little bit different the font size is a little bit different the moment in time is different my experiences are different the lessons are the same but the lessons that I need are different so meditations has to be a book that you return to over and over again one you can't be satisfied just getting the gist of it has to be a daily practice and ongoing practice something you return to over and over and over again this new one the

the leather bound Edition I think could last you your whole life I'm really proud of this it's it's so awesome and on the back it has I think a wonderful encapsulation of meditations concentrate on what you have to do fix your eyes on it remind yourself that your task is to be a good human being remind yourself what nature demands of people then do it without hesitation speak the truth as you see it but with kindness with humility without hypocrisy that's the journey I think meditations is trying to get us all towards one that each

time we pick up the book we get a little bit closer towards I'm really really proud of this you can check it out it's got awesome new illustrations on each of the 12 books it's got Gilt Edge Pages it's high quality leather Marcus's face on the front I think you're really going to like this and then at the back I wrote a biography of Marcus that I think everyone should read so check out the new book dailystill.com meditations or get it anywhere books are sold including my bookstore the painted porch in my office I have

all sorts of reminders of Marcus I have the print I have this bust of him this is a bust I have for Marcus Aurelius from the 1840s I have a painting of Marcus that someone did for me when Marcus says at the beginning of meditations that nothing is so inspiring as seeing the virtues embodied in the people around us I think this is also true in in how you decorate your space your house your office whatever find philosophical embodiments of these ideas things that remind you when I look at those things it's just this little

sort of subconscious reminder of who I want to be how I want to live I'm looking at the virtues being embodied around me and that keeps me on the straight and narrow in writing the daily story I got to parse exact word choice of Marcus in ways that I probably ordinarily wouldn't have one of the passages that really struck me the first time I read meditations but he says how trivial the things we want so passionately are and I don't know I guess I was struck by like the idea that we want so passionately are

I thought that was a beautiful expression it was actually in the midst of translating it and seeing it from a different perspective I realized he's saying how trivial the things we want so badly are I think there's something to be said about reading and re-reading where almost like a talmudic scholar you're debating what does this word mean or that me word mean or what about this or what about this meaning just there just is something about diving super deep sometimes The Superficial the first take you take is the one that hits you and sometimes it's

the 50th take where you finally get it or you get it on a level that you wouldn't have gotten before I remember when you're translating Mark surrealist for daily stoic there's a passage where Marcus really says stop your whining stop this miserable whining monkey life I remember editor said a monkeying around is this expression Marcus could possibly use what Marcus Aurelius have even seen or known what a monkey was and it turns out yes in fact common has probably killed one in the Coliseum he's a psychopath just the more you play and dig into the

language the more you understand and this is why reading and re-reading is so important you just never know behind every word behind every word choice it's like a whole other room to explore it would have been my third or fourth reading the Marcus realist that I caught this line that says you could leave life right now let that determine what you do and say and think this the stoic idea of memento more it's not that you will die tomorrow and you should try heroin or go to an orgy it's that you never know when life

is going to end and so you can't take it for granted you cannot take it for granted another one that I didn't get at first Marx realis is is saying to avoid imperialization he says that indelible stain and I didn't really know what he meant by imperialization and that's when I saw it in another translation I realized what he's talking about is imperialization like imperial system of Rome he means to not be caesarified to not be corrupted by his position so I think sometimes it's just where you are you don't know what a certain word

means or just the intonation that you're reading about it doesn't hit you in the right way and this is why you you have to come back to things why you can't just be satisfied with getting the gist of something you have to return to it over and over again because you get it in a new way it also is why as much as I've loved the haze translation and why we have this Edition it's why I've read the other translations it's why I like the robin waterfeld annotated version because he's bringing his perspective he's breaking

down what he sees in it and each time you do that you get something new in meditations Marcus really says we have to be more like a boxer or a wrestler than a dancer he says we have to be dug in and ready for sudden attacks you know she saw Life as a battle he saw fate as being indifferent to us but also dealing serious blows to us and if you're not ready for it if you think life is a dance if you think life is fun if you everything's going to be all right then

man Fortune has some real surprises in store for you and if you look at Marcus's life that was true one thing after another he was ready for it he was dug in he was ready for those sudden attacks and you and I have to be also at one point in meditations Mark cereal says avoid false friendship at all costs says nothing is more painful nothing is worse and he knows this from experience I tell an obstacle is the way the story of Marcus being betrayed by avidius Cassius his most trusted General one of his best

friends he declares himself Emperor essentially attempts to orchestrate a coup Marcus Aurelius knew that although we wanted to be trusting of people although we wanted to assume the best in people we had to understand that people were not perfect people could be led astray people could have evil intentions in their heart we have to be aware of this we have to be prepared for it one of my favorite lines in meditation system is to accept it without arrogance to Let It Go with indifference good things happen we get Awards we succeed we make money awesome

but that doesn't say anything about you as a person we fail we fall short we get criticized great that doesn't say anything about you as a person another translation it says receive without Pride let go without attachment sort of even Keel not being affected not getting too high or too low not identifying with any of it but identifying solely with your character Marcus really tried to do good he tried to help as many people but he also understood that doing the right thing doing good things it wasn't always going to be recognized and it wasn't

always going to be appreciated he says in meditations that you can't expect the third thing being recognized being appreciated being thanked for what happened you already got the thanks he said by doing the right thing by Feeling by knowing that it was the right thing everything else The Stokes would say is extra nice to have but it can't be why you do it and I think often of this idea of doing the third thing third thing is wanting to hit the best seller list the third thing is wanting the thank you card the third thing

is is the person come coming to you and saying I just want to let you know what that meant to me how much it helped me I want to pay you back no you do it because it was the right thing if you get the third thing if you get the extra that's great for the Stokes that shouldn't be something you want but most of all it can't be something you expect because you will be disappointed in book 12 of meditations marks really says it never ceases to amaze me we love ourselves more than other

people yet we care about their opinions more than our own I thought about this from my first book of stoke philosophy came out I had worked really hard on it I knew how many copies it sold I knew what it deserved and there it was not on the best seller list it got skunked for some inexplicable reason and I had to remind myself my judgment of the book is what counts my opinion is what matters here so often that's what we do we we like a shirt or we like a show or we like this

or we like where we live and then other people say well that's not cool or that's strange or that's weird or it's incorrect for the following reasons and we give up our own internal sense of what we like or dislike what's right or wrong to do whatever one else is doing sanity is tying your success to what you say and do this is insanity is time it's what other people say and do so to me this is one of the most powerful lessons of Marcus that even the emperor of Rome was struggling with it I

think shows how difficult it is to maintain that inner scorecard that inner compass with everyone around you is thinking or saying something differently than you it would be a mistake to see Marcus Aurelius as perfect he wasn't perfect because no one is perfect he's a human being Marcus instead was trying to get better always meditations was Marcus Aurelius writing notes to himself when Marcus release warrants against having a temper or being afraid of death or being ambitious or any of the things that he talks about he's not lecturing you he's lecturing him probably because he

just lost his temper probably because he struggled with that so you don't want to see Marcus as perfect you want to see Marcus as a fellow human being striving to be their best just as you and I are striving to be our best Bill Belichick would be the greatest football coach in history tells his players do your job for Marcus to realize what is that what is your job Marcus Williams asks himself that same question in meditation he says what is my vocations is to be a good person that's the job at the end of

the day to be a good person to do good things to make a positive difference in the world for yourself and the people around you in book 537 marks really says I was a fortunate man but at some point Fortune abandoned me we can imagine Mark is saying this after the plague after he's burying another child maybe after he hears again that perhaps his wife is cheating on him maybe his health has failed him again and he catches himself again this is what he's doing the meditations he's constantly catching himself but true Good Fortune is

what you make for yourself good fortune he says is good character good intentions and good actions and I just I love that idea so much right it wasn't what was happening to him in the outside Fortune wasn't this external thing good fortune feeling good being good this was something that was up to him that was in inside him and the choices that he made and the actions that he took I was saying before that one of the things Marcus does in meditations is he quotes from playwrights or bits of lines from the theater that particularly

struck him one of my favorites this is a lost line from the poet euripides he says and why should we be angry at the world as if the world would notice we don't know what this play is from we don't know the larger context but it's such a great stoic life getting angry being pissed off being resentful being bitter the world doesn't care it is indifferent to you and I all we can try to do is to say is maintain that goodness preserve our character focus on how we respond one thing Marcus doesn't talk a

lot about in meditations is happiness or a joy but I think that goes back to the idea that he wasn't talking about things that he didn't need help with he's not having to remind himself that jokes are funny that sex feels good in fact he's finding himself the opposite that sex might feel good in the moment but it can cause regrets complications or problems later on he's remind finding himself for the things that he needs the most help with nice fancy bed is better than a hard uncomfortable one he doesn't need a reminder of that

right so meditations is Marcus it really is talking about the things that are important but we should not take that Omission as meaning anything more than that the stoics were happy The Stokes had Joy the stoics love and we know Marcus did these things Stokes were just like us Marcus had some sense of what human flourishing or happiness was that's just not what he was talking the most about in meditations I think the passage that hit me most from meditations is book five Marcus really talks about struggling to get out of bed in the morning

he's just like you and I and he's saying ah but it's so nice here under the covers and he says but are you meant to feel nice to huddle under the covers and be warm no he said you were meant to do the work of a human being you gotta get up you gotta get after it and when I read that in college for the first time it hit me so much I taped it up my wall I've been thinking about it ever since my friend Stephen pressfield talks about the resistance the thing that gets

in between us and what we want to to do he says nobody says I'm never gonna write my Symphony he says I'm going to do it tomorrow Marx really struggles with the resistance too like all of us he says you could be good today instead you choose tomorrow we put it off actually Seneca says something similar says the one thing fools all have in common is that they're always getting ready to begin the point for Marcus was that you do it now not later you do it now the stoics believed in this idea of sympathia

that there was this whole this Collective we're in Marcus Ramirez talks about the common good dozens and dozens of times in meditation he believed that yeah he was a Roman and yes he was the head of the Roman Empire but all human beings were connected that all human beings shared in Affinity in a relationship and an obligation to each other in book 654 he says what injures The Hive injures the B what's bad for the hive is bad for the bee what's bad for the B is bad for the hype and this was a time

of such immense cruelty and selfishness and indifference to what was happening elsewhere and Marcus Lewis is saying no your job as a a human being is to care about other human beings not just the ones immediately nearest to you or related to you but ones you'll never know ones you'll never meet ones who have never even been born stoicism does not make you a sociopath if anything it makes you care more about more people we don't know a lot about the policies that Marcus enacts we know of a couple one he passes a law that

makes life easier for slaves and protections for them and then another he he demands that the Gladiators be given wooden swords to practice and fight with take a very dangerous fatal Sport and make it not so dangerous I like this idea of stoicism being at least in part about standing up for the little guy one of the things he learns from the stoics is this idea of a Society of equals of equal laws of a ruler who protects the rights of their subjects I just love the idea that in Mark's talking about that in theory

and then he is in a position to do something about it and he does not enough none of us do enough that's there's a reminder there too you know he reads Epictetus he sees the Brilliance of this slave who becomes a philosopher and yeah he makes the life easier for slaves but he never questions the institution of slavery itself but I do generally like the idea that Marcus did his best to practice what he preached in book five Mark struis talks about the proper role of philosophy in life he says it's not as your instructor

he says it's as kind of medicine an ointment he describes this sort of ancient remedy for this eye illness where they would crack an egg on you or something like that I think his General point he actually is taken from Epictetus who said you shouldn't leave my philosophy class feeling good you should feel like you just came out of the hospital he says because you weren't well when you entered the point of philosophy is to challenge you it's to make you uncomfortable it's to fix the illnesses of the soul of the mind even though there

are passages of meditations that are soothing and reassuring a lot of them are jarring a lot of them make you uncomfortable a lot of them really make you think or a lot of them maybe you instinctively disagree with that's the point philosophy is not supposed to be your instructor it's supposed to be a kind of medicine philosophy can feel like this impractical inaccessible thing but Marx realist writes in meditations this is no rule is so well suited to philosophy as the one you're in right now he says it stares you in the face and of

course he's talking to himself of course he's talking about being an emperor but if it stares the emperor in the face that no role is so well suited to be in philosophical as that I think it's also true for being a janitor for being a stay-at-home parent and being an astronaut whatever it is that you do stares you in the face nothing is so well suited to what you're doing as this philosophy in book 6 13 Marcus's pride is the master of of deception when you think you're occupied in the weightiest business that's when he

has you in his spell there's a quote from the philosopher Bertrand Russell who was not a fan of the Stokes but he said the first sign of an impending nervous collapse is the belief that your work is terribly terribly important it's again a very humbling idea yes Marcus release his work was important yes he wanted to do a good job at whatever he was doing but it was just a reminder of how Insidious ego is how self-important we often feel and how easily we get distracted again with the inessential things the things that validate us

that make us feel special but the end don't matter at all a few years ago a friend sent me an email came in in the afternoon or the early evening on a Friday opened it and then I was like you know what this is like a I got a lot to deal with here and I marked it as unread and I said I'll get to it on Monday and he dropped dead on a hike on Sunday this is what the stoics are talking about when they say you know Memento more even they say you couldn't

leave life right now and one of the most haunting passages of Marcus Aurelius he talks about how as you tuck your child in at night he says you should say to yourself they will not make it to the morning his point was meditating on the fact that this could be the last email that you get from this friend this could be the last time you sit down to Coffee it could be the last family vacation that you ever go on for you or for them right and that we can't take people or places for granted

I don't think Marcus is doing this exercise meditating on the loss of his child to disconnect to detach from them the opposite it's to connect more deeply with them to remind himself what was truly important which was the present moment and his other brilliant meditation on the ephemerality of life he says you're afraid of death because you won't be able to do this anymore you won't be able to wait in line at the DMV you won't be on another stupid pointless conference call so much of what we spend our life doing is a complete waste

and then we say we're afraid of death we say we feel like we don't have enough time you do have enough time you just have to stop wasting it I was talking to someone recently who had this high-flying business it was super successful out of nowhere made all sorts of money got all sorts of wonderful public attention and then it turned the business failed and suddenly they they weren't held up as this business success but as an example of a business failure and I told them one of my favorite passages from Marcus realist Marx really

says we're like a rock tossed in the air we gain Nothing by going up and lose Nothing by coming down none of this says anything about us as people he didn't gain anything by being made Emperor he wouldn't have lost by losing it none of it Marcus really says means anything about us as people even though Mark cereal says we must avoid false friendship at all costs even though he's betrayed by his trusted General avidius Cassius we know that Marcus doesn't Harden his heart he doesn't close himself off from the world he's ready as Michael

Scott says he's ready to be heard again right he constantly is putting himself back out there but he does learn from this and he's a little more guarded going forward he makes this analogy in meditations he says you know you're in the boxing ring and someone's cheating maybe they're gouging or biting or scratching he says you don't quit all together you just change your fight plan accordingly this is one one passage that Robert Greene quotes from meditations quite often you don't quit you don't storm and go home but you are aware of who you're dealing

with and you adjust accordingly the short lines and meditations are the best discard your misperceptions stop being jerked around like a puppet limit yourself to the present they're just a couple of words they say so much and they cut through so much space and time he never uses two words or one will do he doesn't beat around the bush he just comes out and says it and the advice is so clear and so obvious try to imagine the emperor of Rome this man of enormous power and wealth and Prestige trying to tell himself not to

be a person of too many words or too many Deeds pretty remarkable that he's even at that level talking about simplification he's talking about modesty talking about restraint it's a beautiful thing and a very rare thing to be sure in meditations Mark cerealis is constantly pointing out how few people remember the Emperors who came before him who remembers the name of vespasid who remembers this person from Hadrian's court or that one all these names are forgotten but he's saying this to remind himself that one day the name Marcus Aurelius will sound unfamiliar indeed for hundreds

of years it was I mean how many people even watching this video so know much more about Marcus Aurelius than than he was the old guy in the movie Gladiator right even the most famous person in the world the person they carved statues out of stone from his name was emblazoned on building so few people know of him today and that should be a humbling reminder for all of us in Gregory Hayes's introduction of meditations he says there's an American president who re-reads Marcus Aurelius every single year some research turned up he was talking then

about President Bill Clinton now obviously Bill Clinton did not get truly the message of meditations but I think the point is how much better off would we be if every leader every person in a position of power was familiar with Marcus Aurelius because he was there he had that job he had that job times a thousand and he knew what he had to strive to do he knew what you had to try to your hardest not to do he knew what you had to be to be great and I think it's important that it's not

just reading it once again it's the idea of re-reading it every year so not just hey wouldn't it be nice if every president if every world leader read and re-read meditations every year we don't control that but would you learn what would you take out of it each and every time I know that I've taken something new out of it each time I've picked up this book as I have now for almost 15 years every time you dip into Marcus you take something new out of it and that's why Bill Clinton was rereading it every

year and that's why every leader every parent every person should do the same I have some really old copies of meditations too that people have given me some of the so old the covers are falling off I'm even scared to pull the pages apart for hundreds hundreds of years old and I think one stoic exercise you can almost imagine Marcus doing it and I think about it now even when I hold my newish copies versus my oldish copies think about who the person was that held this book 100 years ago 200 years ago think about

the translation that this translation is a translation of is a translation of is a translation of and you start to get far back pretty fast and you wonder where those people are they're gone they're gone forever just as someday will be gone forever and maybe someone will get your used copy at a Library sale or a garage sale or it'll be passed down your kids their kids their kids none of us are here forever and in a lot of different places in meditations Marcus meditates on how these old familiar names are no longer so familiar

and these people who were once powerful and super well known nobody knows who they are think about all the famous people that have owned meditations they're nowhere as you and I will someday be the one prophecy that never fails as they say and Marcus knows that for all his power for all his Fame for all his Brilliance he's not an exception to that rule his memory might live on forever but he knows posture is Fame is it really worth anything she says you know focus on what you can now be present you're not exempt from

anything you're a regular person eventually you'll find yourself on your deathbed and it may well be sooner than you would like it to be in such is life one of my favorite passages in meditations Marcus Lewis talks about washing off the dust of Earthly life I think studying philosophy is a way to do that going for a walk is a way to do that the Romans would have done that in the bath house we can imagine Marcus after a day of hearing cases or or meetings he would have been dirty literally and figuratively and he

would have walked to a bath house a gymnasium and he would have cleaned himself there he would have gotten in a cold plunge or a thermal pool in fact at a Quinn come where Marcus writes a chunk of meditations you can step in one of those pools it's still running today there's something beautiful and Timeless about that and I think very practical about the reminder of washing off the dust of Earthly life literally and metaphorically it was funny I was going through my copy of meditations many years ago and I found inside a receipt it

was for borders in Riverside California stored as an exist anymore and then I realized it wasn't my name my credit card on the receipt it was my wife's and I realized that shortly after my wife and I had met I've just read meditations and she went and bought that copies that was something we shared and talked about and this copy is still there with us I'll show you a picture of it but Marcus realis himself is changed by a book recommendation his philosophy teacher rusticus gives him a copy of Epictetus and they bond over it

books can change our lives they can connect us with other people they can be with us for years decades I think there's something to be said in meditations but then also in my copy of meditation about the singular power of a book to bring people together there's immense amount of troll or influence of the translator has or how they choose to use this work or that word and that can you know world of difference but also like when you just get the crappy translation that's in the public domain or the cheapest one on Amazon like

you're selling yourself short I feel so lucky I got the haze translation early the point is books are an investment you shouldn't cheap out you shouldn't get the cheapest one you should get the one that's right that's best and there's a reason these things cost money is that they're worth money my life would have been totally different had I gotten a crappier translation a cheaper translation or if I'd said I'll just get it from the library I'll skim through and I'll give it back no reading is an investment books are an investment and you have

to invest accordingly I was once having a conversation with the great Robert Greene about the stoics and it showed me his copy of Mark cerelius's meditations and he would write in the margins little AF AF stood for Amor Fati more Fati actually comes to us from Nietzsche who was not a particularly big fan of the Stokes but Express something I think at the core of stoicism he said not just to bear what is necessary or accept it since you must love it a more factor a love of one's faith it was Robert who made this

explicit connection between stoicism and a morphati which I've popularized in Daily stoic and her videos my book Robert and I even made this coin which I carry with me everywhere it has that picture of a fire Mark surulas again remember saying that what you throw on top of a fire becomes fuel for the fire the fire loves what you're throwing in there so I just love that idea and I'm so indebted to Robert to helping me see this connection between two wildly different philosophical schools of thought but finally this one area where they converge one

passage I marked down in meditations when I first read it marks for this is go straight to the seat of intelligence writing and reading require a master so too does light mentors have been a huge guiding force in my life Robert Greene others if you don't have a mentor if you don't have a teacher if you don't have the kinds of people that Marcus is thanking and the debts and lessons section of meditations you're not going to become what you're capable of becoming you're not going going to become anything like Marcus Aurelius remarkable thing about

meditations is that it's really a book for the writer not for the reader it's not for you and I Marcus might even be mortified that we're here talking about him because he never intended to publish it the point of meditations was his own practice he was writing to himself writing notes to himself the book accomplished what it was set out to accomplish before it was read by anyone else let alone you know two thousand years later that it's still helping people and you have to have that kind of journaling practice in your life I think

how are you meditating on these things how are you talking to yourself about them what's the internal dialogue or debate or interrogation process that you have in your life helping you be what you're capable of being and who you're capable of being Marcus Aurelius had a lot to complain about he's betrayed he's misled people lie to him people try to take things from him he has a job that he doesn't even want and yet nowhere in meditations what he thinks is his private diary that no one is going to read we never once see him

complain about any of this he doesn't complain about being appreciate it doesn't complain about being abused he doesn't complain about being put upon he doesn't complain about the stress because as he says in meditations we should never be overheard complaining not even to ourselves concentrate like a Roman marks through this says concentrate on doing the thing in front of you as if it was the last thing you were doing in your life I think about that pretty often that it could be the last time you send this email it could be the last time you

have this conversation it could be the last time that I sit down to write or that I sit down to make a video so am I going to be fully present am I going to concentrate am I going to do my job am I going to meet the standards of my people of my profession my history I'm going to concentrate like a Roman I'm going to do it like this thing matters like I might not get another opportunity to do it to me that's the test that's the standard to try to meet every day that

you are lucky enough to be alive Marcus realist is clearly very strict with himself meditations is one rule admonishment almost impossible standard that he's setting for himself after another and yet we're told by his historians the Brilliance of Marcus is that his strictness was limited solely to himself tolerant with others strict with yourself conscious of the fact that it was called self-discipline for a reason you control yourself you control the standards you set for yourself but you have to be tolerant and understanding of other people in another part in meditation he chastises himself for not

being a better forgiver of faults and that's what we have to cultivate this this practice should make us better also we're forgiven intolerant of other people Marcus aurelius's hero of Heroes is antoninus his adopted stepfather as far as we know antoninus Pious doesn't write anything down he writes no works of Stewart philosophy he probably wouldn't have even identified as a stoic or as a philosopher and yet to Marcus he was the embodiment of both toastism and philosophy he was clearly naturally this way and I suspect some people naturally are I think we can deduce that

because Marcus did have to write this book Marcus wasn't naturally this way he was struggling like you and I are struggling he was trying to get there he needed the extra help and it is inevitable that we will fall short which is why in meditations Marcus really says to pick yourself back up when you fall but he also says to celebrate the fact that you're a human being what matters he says is that you come back to the rhythm of it right we're going to be Jarred by circumstances we're going to be messed up we're

going to slip on our diet on our New Year's resolution on the goal we have that's okay what matters is that you get back up what matters is that more often than not you stick to it that you always come back home to it in one passage he goes it's unfortunate that this happened then it catches himself he goes no it's fortunate that it happened to you and we think about all the things that happen to Marcus Aurelius in his life plagues more flooding he loses children he has a Troublesome son people think his wife

is cheating on him it's one thing after another but he doesn't run from any of this he doesn't hide from it he doesn't throw himself a pity party even though he felt sorry for himself in that minute he always saw it as an opportunity he rose to the occasion one ancient historian would say that Marcus doesn't meet with the good fortune that he deserved but then he says but I admired him all the more for that because he preserved himself and the Empire despite these extraordinary circumstances that's what greatness is that's what the obstacle is

the way he's really about several points in meditations Marx really summarizes what are in effect the three disciplines of stosism that you need to know always perception how we see things what part of this is in my control what isn't what is it actually how do I see it as clearly as possible then the next step is what are you going to do about what action can you take and then the third part is the will the fortitude the strength of the perseverance that you bring to bear on that problem obstacle situation perception action will

that's the essence of Steward philosophy which Marcus organizes meditations around and returns to repeatedly over and over again Marcus realist would have been cheered everywhere he went there would have been parades he's given a Roman Triumph they built statues of him they flatter him and every room is he's the most important person there that he has this remarkable way of describing all of that the Clapping is the smacking of hands he says that shearing is the clacking of tongues doing that contemptuous expression that we talk about the idea that this stuff doesn't matter let's see

it as it actually is don't just take it for granted that at a standing ovation says something special about you that obviously being all these people talking about you is important think about what it actually is think about what it actually represents break it down and see it in this skeptical almost cynical light and it loses its power over you obviously Marcus is an idealist obviously he's a perfectionist obviously he wants to be good and he wants other people to be good it is also pragmatic he's also realistic he says in meditations don't go around

expecting Plato's Republic Cicero says of Cato that he acted as if he lived in Plato's Republic instead of the dregs of Romulus obviously you want to be good despite what's happening in the outside world but you can't also expect Perfection or a Utopia because we don't live there we have to be pragmatic and realistic and practical where you're just setting yourself up to be disappointed or setting yourself up to have your heart broken which is what Marcus is preparing against at the beginning of meditations like we talked about he says the people people you are

going to meet are annoying gel is frustrating mean all of that right not the things in Plato's Republic you've got to be ready you got to expect those things not only can you not expect Plato's Republic you have to deal with the place that you're in you got to make practical decisions based on what you're in he says if the cucumber is bitter grow it out he says if there's brambles in the past go around don't despair don't be mad be mad don't wish it was otherwise just get to work start where you are with

what you have and build from there almost every smart person that's ever lived has loved reading they love books they lose themselves in books and yet why does he write at the beginning of meditations that he needs to stop reading to throw away his books well it's because any virtue taken too far can be a vice right Marcus Aurelius probably loved going into his books because his books were simpler than the job that he had his philosophy texts were cleaner and clearer than the complicated moral ambiguities of life he was saying that a philosopher has

to be a doer not just a thinker in fact the Stokes that they didn't like what they called the pen and ink philosophers the people who were who were just readers they weren't doers it's good advice it wonderful to read and you should read as much as possible but you can't live in there you have to live in the real world you can imagine that as the emperor of Rome people had a lot of strong opinions about Marcus they thought he was the best in the world they thought he was the worst in the world

they thought he sucked they thought he was amazing he would have been bombarded with opinions about him he has to not think about it he has to set his own standards he has to keep his own inner score card he says at one point in meditations that the perks of his job is that you can earn a bad reputation by doing good deeds think of someone like Harry Truman who makes a bunch of momentous critical probably the correct decisions but he leaves office one of the least popular presidents in American history that's what Marcus is

talking about people have strong opinions about what you do but you have to set your own standards your own scorecard you have to do the right thing because it's the right thing not because it's going to make you popular or conversely not concerned whether it might make you unpopular objective judgment now at this very moment unselfish action now at this very moment Willing Acceptance Now at this very moment he says that's all that you need that's the formula for turning an obstacle upside down first you have to see it clearly second you have to focus

on what's possible what you can do for others here and third you have to accept the parts of it that are outside your control you have to bring kind of fortitude and a strength to it perception action will that's all that you need I was lucky enough actually to interview Gregory Hayes the translator of these two books way back in 2007 and I asked him what his favorite Passage meditations was and he said this I'll read you he said keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone those that are now and those

to come existence flows past us like a river for what is in constant flux to why has a thousand variations nothing is stable not even what's right here the Infinity of the past and future gapes before us a Chasm whose depths we cannot see I probably missed the Brilliance of that until I saw him read it but it stuck with me ever since and actually when we Illustrated this edition of meditations I tried to capture that that time flows like a river and you just think of it Russian passage think of Marcus Ariel as writing

it near the danu water is clearly this repeated metaphor and analogy in the stoics and it can teach us so much and most of all I think it can both humble and Inspire us Mark experience talks about being Jarred by circumstances messing up failing talks about the idea of of them coming back to the Rhythm and I like this idea I think Stokes talk about the logos or the way you think of the logos the kind of Rhythm of the universe being the way something you come back to so even if you screw up it's

always there the metronome is always there the rhythm of the music is always there you want to come back to it like a lot of people I have a tendency to overwork to overdo to over commit to take things too intensely Marx cerealis warns himself against us in meditations and it stuck with me always he says in your actions don't procrastinate and your conversations don't confuse and your thoughts don't wander in your soul don't be passive or aggressive in your life don't be all about business right don't be all about business if you want Tranquility

you have to do less it's about doing less it's about saying no more the question we have to ask ourselves constantly is is this essential because most of what we do and say is not essential and when you eliminate the inessential he says that's good in and of itself but secondarily you get the benefit of doing the essential things better you have to say no you have to say no multiple times Marcus used a word that I totally missed like for instance to move from one unselfish action to another with God in mind only their

delight and Stillness Stillness is a very Eastern word but it also has roots and doses of ataraxia apathy this idea for the Stokes of not being disturbed by external circumstances by internal circumstances not caring what other people say not caring what other people do get into a place of Stillness this is clearly what Marcus was studying Philosophy for and where he wanted to get Stillness though it is this this idea that Marcus returns to over and over and over again probably because he had so little Stillness in his busy chaotic Crazy Life he wants to

be like the rock that the wave crashes over and eventually the Sea Falls still around I think of that metaphor all the time the world is going to be crazy all these things are happening but require what you can have is a certain kind of strength and Stillness and inner fortitude is the ability to be calm amid the turbulence to be still even as the world is spinning around you everything lasts for a day the knower and the known this is a pretty interesting observation from a man who was the most famous man in the

world in that time a man who's still so famous you can buy coins with his face on them on Etsy they survive as historical documents worth hundreds if not thousands of dollars this is a guy whose book still pops on and off the best seller list who search engines show have an all-time spike in popularity but Marcus Aurelius would also remind himself that posthumous Fame isn't really worth anything he's not around to enjoy it what matters is was he deserving of that in his own time was he good then is he famous for the right

reasons for doing good stuff for being a good person so we can imagine when Marcus comes to the end of life and realizes he's going to die I wonder if he thought about the passage that he wrote in book 10 36 he says it doesn't matter how good a life you've LED there will still be people standing around the bed who will welcome the sad event his point was if you're doing this for validation if you're doing this to be loved if you're doing this to be remembered the rewards for doing the right thing have

to be the right thing can't be doing it to be liked can't care about what other people think you can't try to please everyone all the time and be everyone's favorite especially as a leader especially as a leader so Marcus had to constantly be aware of this and I wondered if when he actually came to the end of his life if he thought about the fact that maybe secretly some of these people were glad he would be gone soon and if he had to come to terms with those words that he'd written so ago in

book 4 meditations this is 4 37 it says on the verge of dying and you're still weighed Down Still turbulent still convinced that external things can harm you still rude to other people still not acknowledging the truth that wisdom is Justice I just love the the intensity with which he's addressing himself Marcus again isn't perfect he's still struggling with it he's still he's saying it's the end of your life and you still haven't gotten this right and he's repeating to himself who he wants to be how he should be and I think and this is

the important part he's also saying it's not too late it's never too late it's funny Marcus is I think meditating on Memento Mori to root himself in the present moment and you do notice that Marcus talks about the present moment over and over and over again in meditations he's reminding yourself that it's the only thing you have it's the only thing you can lose I think that's because he like us found it so easy to get distracted to think about the past or the future to worry about this to regret that and the consequence of

that is you're losing the only thing you have he's saying which is which is right now the fruit of this life Marcus says at one point in meditation is good character and acts of the common good elsewhere he talks about those epithets for the self those are two pretty good ones right that you should be good character always and do good things for other people always and to Marcus that's what he was striving to do all with good character Good Deeds it's hard to come up with a better summation for a good life than that

there's a pretty amazing story about Mark's really it's pretty late in life he's seen leaving his Palace in Rome he's carrying these tablets and if a friend says where are you going he says I'm off to see sexist the philosopher to learn that which I do not yet know the friend Marvel she says here's the most powerful man in the world even as an old age picking up his books and going to school I think that's in effect what Marcus is he remains a student it's his notebook it's his exercise book it's his workbook he's

doing work on himself even as an old man and the fruits of that come down to us it's just so wonderful to think of Marcus even as an old man maybe some of the lions in here he learned from sex is the philosopher he thanks sexist philosopher in book one the debts and lessons chapter so the idea for Marcus was that you always stay a student we know that Marcus Williams doesn't want to be emperor in fact he breaks down and cries when he is told he's going to be Emperor because he knew how many

bad Emperors there were and I also think he probably had a little bit of imposter syndrome he wasn't someone who sought out power and so when power came his way he wondered if you could do it if he had the skills if he was strong enough smart enough firm enough ruthless enough but before Marcus becomes Emperor he has a dream we're told and in that dream he dreams that he has shoulders made of ivory that was to him letting himself know that he was strong enough to Bear the weight he reminding himself of that lesson

that he learned many years ago early on before he taken power he says remind yourself that if it's humanly possible know that you can do it also these people aren't better than you they're not given some gift that you don't have they became who they needed to be they gave themselves the shoulders of ivory that Marx really is realized deep down he had all along the stoics speak of this idea of the inner Citadel this sort of part inside yourself that can't be touched by externals good news bad news good fortune Misfortune Marx realist writes

that stuff cannot touch the soul and I think that's what we see despite all the things that we know happen to Marcus in his life all the good fortune that he did not meet with all the misfortune that he did not deserve nothing touches the inner goodness inside him that's what meditation shows it shows that despite the filth the dust uh the stress of Life what remains is the goodness he keeps that pure bubbling up always there's just no one that Marcus speaks more highly of in meditation than antoninus or more consistently antoninus takes up

a bigger Chunk in meditation than Marx's mother than Marcus's family and he comes back to it later in the book antoninus is a gift from the gods in Marcus's view he's older than Marcus they have no blood relation but they have this long apprenticeship with each other Marcus seizes this for all that it could be he studies antoninus he was the model Ernest bernon says but the perfect life for Marcus and so that's why repeatedly in meditations you see Marcus talking about what he learned from antoninus what he learns from his adopted stepfather and I

think having a hero like that is just so important and it's why Anthony's takes up such a big chunk of debts and lessons sometimes when I sign copies of the daily stoic or when people want me to sign their copies of Marx surrealist which is a weird thing I could have never imagined you know 15 years ago I write that one of my favorite quotes from Mark surrealist he says fight to be the person philosophy tried to make you or I shorten that I do my version of it I say fight to be the person

philosophy wants you to be that to me is the struggle of Marcus Aurelius he wants to be what antoninus knows he could be what Rome needs him to be what philosophy what stoicism thought he could be and that was the ideal the standard that he aspired to be like always you know meditations is filled with self-criticism with pushing himself to be better calling himself into account again Marcus realist is incredibly powerful people told him how amazing he was they worshiped him as a God and the more successful the more important the more beloved you are

the more important it is to have this practice no one could tell Marcus what he was doing wrong what he needed to do better he had to do that and look the same is true in this world that we live in where we have wonderful Freedom where we don't live under a tyrant where there is no Authority monitoring everything we do and say anything but that doesn't mean we should do whatever we want to say and think or do we have to hold ourselves accountable we have to follow that process ourselves in the middle of

meditations and there's a couple others sprinkled around you see Marcus Aurelius talk about loss specifically the loss of children and this is something he knows intimately well tragically think about what it would be like to bury a child and how much that would affect a person Marcus doesn't do this one time or two times but six times he loses all of his male heirs except for Commodus just brutal in the most tragic and painful of circumstances a medical procedure that goes wrong the plague childbirth infancy it's just one thing after another for Marcus yet not

only does he continue to get out of bed every morning he writes this book with such Grace and love purpose try like he could have been broken by this he had every reason to be broken by this no one would hold it against him if he had been yet he wasn't and to me that's both a testament to the philosophy itself but also a testament to his incredible and inspiring character the emperor of Rome would have had beautiful palaces Marcus from a rich family would have had access to Country Estates and you could afford the

finest Resorts or Retreats and he reminds himself though that people who try to get away from it all are chasing something that doesn't exist like that Buddhist idea that wherever you go there you are you can Retreat into yourself anytime you want he says you can find replenishment and rest and relaxation inside your own soul and I think that's what he's doing in meditations that's what he's doing in books that's what he's doing when he would go on walks when he would look at the world poetically he realized that he didn't have to flee to

some exotic location all the things he needed and wanted right there they weren't external things at all they were inside of him just as they are inside all of us you know Seneca talks about how the greatest Empire is self-command being in charge of yourself if you can see Marcus realist this guy who controls literally an enormous Empire struggling with that same idea realizing that yeah I can make the Army do this yeah I can purchase that yeah I can make the Senate do this but that the real power the real thing to focus on

is am I in command or control of myself there's a story about Hadrian getting mad losing his temper and stabbing a secretary in the eye with a pen he could get away with that nobody cares Marcus doesn't do anything like that there's no stories like that about Marcus Marcus realized that yeah there was only a few people were ever powerful enough to be Emperor but fewer among the Emperors was a man who was in command of himself and as Seneca said no one is fit to rule who is not first in control of themselves that's

what Marcus strove to be and in many ways that's what meditations was him trying to get a little bit better at I might have repeated myself in a few of these but then again Marcus repeats himself a lot through meditations because he's not writing a prescription about all of the philosophy he's not trying to tackle every situation or problem or or facet of stoicism he's trying to talk about what he needs which seems to be reminders of his mortality which seems to be why he shouldn't lose his temper which seems to be about controlling his

ambition seems about taking the Long View or the big seeing things big picture meditations is not complete or comprehensive it's a book about the things Marcus needs the most just as your Journal should be repeatedly coming back to the themes that you need the most help with but things you're struggling the most with that we can read Marcus aurelius's meditations the private thoughts the most powerful man in the world is just an incredible fluke of history and good luck he had no intention of publishing it he'd probably be mortified that we're reading it just even

think of how unlikely it is that a thing written on you know wax tablets or parchment 2 000 years ago manages to survive to us how many good things had to happen how many flukes of circumstances and good fortune had to happen for us to get there it survives to us primarily because the Romans were good record Keepers because someone decided not to toss this look of philosophy out they probably ignored Marcus's final wishes but also because a chain of monks all nameless all forgotten recorded wrote over and over again translated Marcus's works and eventually

enough copies of it survive that it survives to us so my final thought as we step back from these lessons of meditations the final lesson I think we can take from the existence of the book itself should be a note of gratitude we're so lucky you run the same process again a hundred times 99 of those times you're not going to get the book surviving we are so lucky it is a Black Swan of black swans wonderful fluke of circumstances that works out to our benefit and that should both humble us and make us feel

really really fortunate that we get to read and learn from this wise man in such a deeply personal and vulnerable and helpful way that's why I wanted to bring this leather Edition out which I think you're really going to like you can check out how to get it below I hope you like this video I hope you subscribe but what I really want you to subscribe to is our daily stoic email one bit of stoic wisdom totally for free to the largest community of stoics ever in existence you can sign up at dailystill.com email there's

no spam you can unsubscribe at any time I love sending it I've sent it every day for the last six years and hope to see you there at dailystoke.com email foreign