The areas of great interest to the Stoics all make an appearance here: virtue, mortality, emotions, self-awareness, fortitude, right action, problem solving, acceptance, mental clarity, pragmatism, unbiased thought, and duty. The Stoics were pioneers of the morning and nightly rituals: preparation in the morning, reflection in the evening. One meditation per day for every day of the year including an extra day for leap years!
If you feel so inclined, pair it with a notebook to record and articulate your thoughts and reactions see January 21st and 22nd and December 22nd , just as the Stoics often did. The aim of this hands-on approach to philosophy is to help you live a better life. To that end, we offer this book. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own.
What we have influence over and what we do not. A flight is delayed because of weather—no amount of yelling at an airline representative will end a storm. No amount of wishing will make you taller or shorter or born in a different country. And on top of that, time spent hurling yourself at these immovable objects is time not spent on the things we can change.
They cannot undo the choices they have made or the hurt they have caused. But they can change the future—through the power they have in the present moment. As Epictetus said, they can control the choices they make right now. The same is true for us today. If we can focus on making clear what parts of our day are within our control and what parts are not, we will not only be happier, we will have a distinct advantage over other people who fail to realize they are fighting an unwinnable battle.
Only the most beautiful and proper harvest of the truly educated—tranquility, fearlessness, and freedom. We should not trust the masses who say only the free can be educated, but rather the lovers of wisdom who say that only the educated are free. Why pick up any book? Not to seem smarter, not to pass time on the plane, not to hear what you want to hear—there are plenty of easier choices than reading.
No, you picked up this book because you are learning how to live. Because you want to be freer, fear less, and achieve a state of peace. Education—reading and meditating on the wisdom of great minds—is not to be done for its own sake. It has a purpose. Remember that imperative on the days you start to feel distracted, when watching television or having a snack seems like a better use of your time than reading or studying philosophy.
Knowledge—self- knowledge in particular—is freedom. You will realize you are dying before your time! Even harder is saying no to certain time-consuming emotions: anger, excitement, distraction, obsession, lust.
None of these impulses feels like a big deal by itself, but run amok, they become a commitment like anything else. Do you ever wonder how you can get some of your time back, how you can feel less busy? It may turn people off. It may take some hard work. This will let you live and enjoy your life—the life that you want. What clarity does trivia provide? Instead, the following little reminder sums up the three most essential parts of Stoic philosophy worth carrying with you every day, into every decision: Control your perceptions.
Direct your actions properly. Gently guide fortune and help determine the future by thinking far ahead. When your efforts are not directed at a cause or a purpose, how will you know what to do day in and day out?
How will you know what to say no to and what to say yes to? The answer is that you cannot. And so you are driven into failure—or worse, into madness by the oblivion of directionlessness. So what to make of people who seek or avoid the praise of those who have no knowledge of where or who they are?
Could you? Have you taken the time to get clarity about who you are and what you stand for? Or are you too busy chasing unimportant things, mimicking the wrong influences, and following disappointing or unfulfilling or nonexistent paths? Nothing but its own corrupt decisions. We must make sure that it does—and see everything else as pollution or a corruption.
Otherwise, courage will vanish, which should continually test itself. Soon enough, these harmless habits are running our lives. The little compulsions and drives we have not only chip away at our freedom and sovereignty, they cloud our clarity. What that addiction is for you can vary: Soda? The Internet? Biting your nails? But you must reclaim the ability to abstain because within it is your clarity and self-control.
We control our opinion, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything of our own doing. Even more, the things in our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unobstructed, while those not in our control are weak, slavish, can be hindered, and are not our own.
Is that scary? See how that works? Every single thing that is outside your control—the outside world, other people, luck, karma, whatever—still presents a corresponding area that is in your control.
This alone gives us plenty to manage, plenty of power. Best of all, an honest understanding of what is within our control provides real clarity about the world: all we have is our own mind. What about externals, then? They are only the raw material for our reasoned choice, which finds its own good or evil in working with them.
How will it find the good? Not by marveling at the material! For if judgments about the material are straight that makes our choices good, but if those judgments are twisted, our choices turn bad.
How do they accomplish this elusive goal? How does one embody eustatheia the word Arrian used to describe this teaching of Epictetus? If you want to be steady, if you want clarity, proper judgment is the best way. The Stoics are the antithesis of this idea.
Instead, they are the man in the marketplace, the senator in the Forum, the brave wife waiting for her soldier to return from battle, the sculptor busy in her studio. Still, the Stoic is equally at peace. Epictetus is reminding you that serenity and stability are results of your choices and judgment, not your environment.
If you seek to avoid all disruptions to tranquility—other people, external events, stress— you will never be successful. Your problems will follow you wherever you run and hide. But if you seek to avoid the harmful and disruptive judgments that cause those problems, then you will be stable and steady wherever you happen to be.
Remind yourself to focus on the former and not the latter. Before lunch, remind yourself that the only thing you truly possess is your ability to make choices and to use reason and judgment when doing so. This is the only thing that can never be taken from you completely.
In the afternoon, remind yourself that aside from the choices you make, your fate is not entirely up to you.
The world is spinning and we spin along with it—whichever direction, good or bad. In the evening, remind yourself again how much is outside of your control and where your choices begin and end. As you lie in bed, remember that sleep is a form of surrender and trust and how easily it comes. And prepare to start the whole cycle over again tomorrow. After all, you could be struck with a physical illness or impairment at any moment. You could be traveling in a foreign country and be thrown in jail.
But this is all good news because it drastically reduces the amount of things that you need to think about. There is clarity in simplicity.
So mind it. What thoughts now occupy my mind? Is it not fear, suspicion, desire, or something like that? Food scientists are engineering products to exploit your taste buds. Silicon Valley engineers are designing applications as addictive as gambling.
The media is manufacturing stories to provoke outrage and anger. These are just a small slice of the temptations and forces acting on us—distracting us and pulling us away from the things that truly matter.
Marcus, thankfully, was not exposed to these extreme parts of our modern culture. But he knew plenty of distracting sinkholes too: gossip, the endless call of work, as well as fear, suspicion, lust.
Every human being is pulled by these internal and external forces that are increasingly more powerful and harder to resist. Philosophy is simply asking us to pay careful attention and to strive to be more than a pawn. What is the cause of this back and forth? Clarity of vision allows us to have this belief. Instead, tranquility and peace are found in identifying our path and in sticking to it: staying the course —making adjustments here and there, naturally—but ignoring the distracting sirens who beckon us to turn toward the rocks.
The worker has stopped thinking and is mindlessly operating out of habit. The business is ripe for disruption by a competitor, and the worker will probably get fired by any thinking boss. We should apply the same ruthlessness to our own habits. In fact, we are studying philosophy precisely to break ourselves of rote behavior.
Find what you do out of rote memory or routine. Ask yourself: Is this really the best way to do it? Know why you do what you do—do it for the right reasons. My aim is to bring you to completion, unhindered, free from compulsive behavior, unrestrained, without shame, free, flourishing, and happy, looking to God in things great and small—your aim is to learn and diligently practice all these things. What is missing? The work is quite feasible, and is the only thing in our power.
Let go of the past. We must only begin. Believe me and you will see. Most teenagers choose to fool around rather than exert themselves. You have the best teachers in the world: the wisest philosophers who ever lived. And not only are you capable, the professor is asking for something very simple: just begin the work. The rest follows. More than just pretty phrases, they gave him—and now us—a powerful perspective on ordinary or seemingly unbeautiful events. Some had it easy, and others had it unimaginably hard.
This is true for us as well—we all come to philosophy from different backgrounds, and even within our own lives we experience bouts of good fortune and bad fortune.
But in all circumstances—adversity or advantage—we really have just one thing we need to do: focus on what is in our control as opposed to what is not.
Right now we might be laid low with struggles, whereas just a few years ago we might have lived high on the hog, and in just a few days we might be doing so well that success is actually a burden. One thing will stay constant: our freedom of choice—both in the big picture and small picture. Ultimately, this is clarity. Whoever we are, wherever we are—what matters is our choices. What are they? How will we evaluate them?
How will we make the most of them? Those are the questions life asks us, regardless of our station. How will you answer? See things anew as you once did—that is how to restart life! Have you been drifting away from the principles and beliefs that you hold dear?
It happens to all of us. In fact, it probably happened to Marcus—that may be why he scribbled this note to himself. But the reminder here is that no matter what happens, no matter how disappointing our behavior has been in the past, the principles themselves remain unchanged. We can return and embrace them at any moment. What happened yesterday—what happened five minutes ago—is the past. We can reignite and restart whenever we like.
Why not do it right now? What for tranquility? What am I? A mere body, estate-holder, or reputation? None of these things. What, then? A rational being. What then is demanded of me? Meditate on your actions.
How did I steer away from serenity? What did I do that was unfriendly, unsocial, or uncaring? What did I fail to do in all these things? In these cases, the point is not so much the activity itself as it is the ritualized reflection. The idea is to take some time to look inward and examine. Taking that time is what Stoics advocated more than almost anything else. Every day, starting today, ask yourself these same tough questions.
Let philosophy and hard work guide you to better answers, one morning at a time, over the course of a life. For this is what makes us evil—that none of us looks back upon our own lives.
We reflect upon only that which we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future descend from the past. At the end of each day he would ask himself variations of the following questions: What bad habit did I curb today? How am I better? Were my actions just? How can I improve? At the beginning or end of each day, the Stoic sits down with his journal and reviews: what he did, what he thought, what could be improved.
Writing down Stoic exercises was and is also a form of practicing them, just as repeating a prayer or hymn might be. Take time to consciously recall the events of the previous day. Be unflinching in your assessments. Notice what contributed to your happiness and what detracted from it.
When they travel abroad they must restrict their baggage, and when haste is necessary, they dismiss their entourage. And those who are in the army, how few of their possessions they get to keep. They are different from you and me. As someone who was one of the richest men in Rome, he knew firsthand that money only marginally changes life. In fact, no material possession will.
We constantly forget this—and it causes us so much confusion and pain. I learned to read carefully and not be satisfied with a rough understanding of the whole, and not to agree too quickly with those who have a lot to say about something. He thanks, one by one, the leading influences in his life. One of the people he thanks is Quintus Junius Rusticus, a teacher who developed in his student a love of deep clarity and understanding—a desire to not just stop at the surface when it comes to learning.
It was also from Rusticus that Marcus was introduced to Epictetus. They became part of his DNA as a human being.
He quoted them at length over the course of his life, finding real clarity and strength in words, even amid the immense luxury and power he would come to possess. So we can take the time to read attentively and deeply.
But by having some self-respect for your own mind and prizing it, you will please yourself and be in better harmony with your fellow human beings, and more in tune with the gods—praising everything they have set in order and allotted you. Neither Buffett nor Urschel nor Leonard ended up this way by accident. Their lifestyle is the result of prioritizing. They cultivate interests that are decidedly below their financial means, and as a result, any income would allow them freedom to pursue the things they most care about.
It just happens that they became wealthy beyond any expectation. This kind of clarity—about what they love most in the world— means they can enjoy their lives. The more things we desire and the more we have to do to earn or attain those achievements, the less we actually enjoy our lives—and the less free we are.
Always remember this power that nature gave you. A mantra can be especially helpful in the meditative process because it allows us to block out everything else while we focus. I can see the truth. That part is up to you. But have a mantra and use it to find the clarity you crave. The first has to do with desires and aversions—that a person may never miss the mark in desires nor fall into what repels them. The second has to do with impulses to act and not to act—and more broadly, with duty—that a person may act deliberately for good reasons and not carelessly.
The third has to do with freedom from deception and composure and the whole area of judgment, the assent our mind gives to its perceptions. Of these areas, the chief and most urgent is the first which has to do with the passions, for strong emotions arise only when we fail in our desires and aversions. First, we must consider what we should desire and what we should be averse to.
So that we want what is good and avoid what is bad. Next, we must examine our impulses to act—that is, our motivations. Are we doing things for the right reasons? Or do we believe that we have to do something? Finally, there is our judgment. Our ability to see things clearly and properly comes when we use our great gift from nature: reason. These are three distinct areas of training, but in practice they are inextricably intertwined. Our judgment affects what we desire, our desires affect how we act, just as our judgment determines how we act.
We must put real thought and energy into each area of our lives. To bounce our ideas off and test our presumptions. Who that person will be for you is up to you.
You can do this if you approach each task as if it is your last, giving up every distraction, emotional subversion of reason, and all drama, vanity, and complaint over your fair share. What should I wear? Do they like me? Am I eating well enough? Is my boss happy with my work? Marcus says to approach each task as if it were your last, because it very well could be. Find clarity in the simplicity of doing your job today. And if some regard you as important, distrust yourself.
But where is the evidence that this is actually necessary? Is the obligation enforced by the police? How much more time, energy, and pure brainpower would you have available if you drastically cut your media consumption?
How much more rested and present would you feel if you were no longer excited and outraged by every scandal, breaking story, and potential crisis many of which never come to pass anyway? We get in a rhythm. It seems like everything is going well. But we drift further and further from philosophy. Return to the regimen and practices that we know are rooted in clarity, good judgment, good principles, and good health. Stoicism is designed to be medicine for the soul.
It relieves us of the vulnerabilities of modern life. It restores us with the vigor we need to thrive in life. Check in with it today, and let it do its healing. Rather, gentleness and civility are more human, and therefore manlier. The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength. To provoke a reaction. Distracting and angering opponents is an easy way to knock them off their game.
Try to remember that when you find yourself getting mad. Strength is the ability to maintain a hold of oneself. This is because we are independent, self-sufficient people. Yet if someone says something we disagree with, something inside us tells us we have to argue with them.
If someone does something we dislike, we have to get mad about it. When something bad happens, we have to be sad, depressed, or worried. We would never let another person jerk us around the way we let our impulses do. We should be the ones in control, not our emotions, because we are independent, self- sufficient people. What does he want? A world that is always safe. A frenzied traveler—what does she want? For the weather to hold and for traffic to part so she can make her flight.
A nervous investor? That the market will turn around and an investment will pay off. All of these scenarios hold the same thing in common. Getting worked up, getting excited, nervously pacing—these intense, pained, and anxious moments show us at our most futile and servile. Today, when you find yourself getting anxious, ask yourself: Why are my insides twisted into knots?
Am I in control here or is my anxiety? And most important: Is my anxiety doing me any good? The one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice.
No question is too tough, no tone too pointed or insulting. They parry every blow with humor, poise, and patience. Even when stung or provoked, they choose not to flinch or react. The media is waiting for them to slip up or get upset, so to successfully navigate press events they have internalized the importance of keeping themselves under calm control.
But it might be helpful—whatever stresses or frustrations or overload that do come your way—to picture that image and use it as your model for dealing with them. Our reasoned choice—our prohairesis, as the Stoics called it—is a kind of invincibility that we can cultivate.
We can shrug off hostile attacks and breeze through pressure or problems. Not the ones suffering from an unfortunate disorder, but the ones whose lives and choices are in disorder. Everything is soaring highs or crushing lows; the day is either amazing or awful. There is such a filter. Put more simply: think before you act. Ask: Who is in control here? What principles are guiding me? Roosevelt gave that speech shortly after he left office, at the height of his popularity.
He would also nearly die exploring a river in the Amazon, kill thousands of animals in African safaris, and then beg Woodrow Wilson to allow him to enlist in World War I despite being 59 years old. He would do a lot of things that seem somewhat baffling in retrospect. Theodore Roosevelt was a truly great man. But he was also driven by a compulsion, a work and activity addiction that was seemingly without end.
We choose to be at war—in some cases, literally—when peace is in fact the more honorable and fitting choice. Yes, the man in the arena is admirable. As is the soldier and the politician and the businesswoman and all the other occupations. It might be true. But we also know that the paranoid often destroy themselves quicker and more spectacularly than any enemy. Seneca, with his access and insight into the most powerful elite in Rome, would have seen this dynamic play out quite vividly.
Nero, the student whose excesses Seneca tried to curb, killed not only his own mother and wife but eventually turned on Seneca, his mentor, too. The combination of power, fear, and mania can be deadly. The leader, convinced that he might be betrayed, acts first and betrays others first.
Convinced of mismanagement, he micromanages and becomes the source of the mismanagement. And on and on—the things we fear or dread, we blindly inflict on ourselves. It has happened to smarter and more powerful and more successful people.
It can happen to us too. Are you then relieved from feeling it, if you bear it in an unmanly way? Only in the bubble of extreme emotion can we justify any of that kind of behavior—and when called to account for it, we usually feel sheepish or embarrassed. The next time you find yourself in the middle of a freakout, or moaning and groaning with flulike symptoms, or crying tears of regret, just ask: Is this actually making me feel better?
Is this actually relieving any of the symptoms I wish were gone? In other words, it is possible to hold no opinion about a negative thing. You just need to cultivate that power instead of wielding it accidentally. Especially when having an opinion is likely to make us aggravated. Practice the ability of having absolutely no thoughts about something—act as if you had no idea it ever occurred. Let it become irrelevant or nonexistent to you. Usually, it makes things worse. We get upset, then the other person gets upset—now everyone is upset, and the problem is no closer to getting solved.
Many successful people will try to tell you that anger is a powerful fuel in their lives. The anger at being called fat or stupid has created fine physical specimens and brilliant minds.
The anger at being rejected has motivated many to carve their own path. Such stories ignore the pollution produced as a side effect and the wear and tear it put on the engine. It ignores what happens when that initial anger runs out—and how now more and more must be generated to keep the machine going until, eventually, the only source left is anger at oneself.
They are toxic fuel. A king, by attending to what is honorable, protects the good health of the body in its care, and gives it no base or sordid command.
But an uncontrolled, desire-fueled, over-indulged soul is turned from a king into that most feared and detested thing—a tyrant. Another emperor, Domitian, arbitrarily banished all philosophers from Rome Epictetus was forced to flee as a result.
Yet, not many years later, Epictetus would become a close friend of another emperor, Hadrian, who would help Marcus Aurelius to the throne, one of the truest examples of a wise philosopher king.
In fact, it looks like it comes down, in many ways, to the inner strength and self-awareness of individuals—what they value, what desires they keep in check, whether their understanding of fairness and justice can counteract the temptations of unlimited wealth and deference. The same is true for you. Both personally and professionally. Tyrant or king?
Hero or Nero? Which will you be? For what would you sell these things? Stoicism, because it helps us manage and think through our emotional reactions, can make these kinds of situations easier to bear. It can help you manage and mitigate the triggers that seem to be so constantly tripped. Is this really the environment you were made for? To be provoked by nasty emails and an endless parade of workplace problems? Our adrenal glands can handle only so much before they become exhausted. So yes, use Stoicism to manage these difficulties.
Every time you get upset, a little bit of life leaves the body. Are these really the things on which you want to spend that priceless resource? After that, bring to mind both times, first when you have enjoyed the pleasure and later when you will regret it and hate yourself. Which is why a popular trick from dieting might be helpful. At first, this sounds like a dream, but anyone who has actually done this knows the truth: each cheat day you eat yourself sick and hate yourself afterward.
Once you understand that indulging might actually be worse than resisting, the urge begins to lose its appeal.
In this way, self- control becomes the real pleasure, and the temptation becomes the regret. We all have. How could I have been so stupid? What was I thinking? Within that head of yours is all the reason and intelligence you need. Fix your attention on your intelligence. Let it do its thing. Obstacolul este calea. Sztoikus nyugalmat a mindennapokra. Das Leben der Stoiker. In der Stille liegt Dein Weg. Briefe eines erfolgreichen Kaufmanns an seinen Sohn.
Operation Shitstorm. Dein Ego ist dein Feind. Das Hindernis ist der Weg. Wydanie rozszerzone. L'obstacle est le chemin. Roll With It! The Daily Stoic pdf e-book The Daily Stoic read download Now you can read read your favorite book without any spam for free. Here are some features of our site which are loved by our users. So please feel free to report us for removal of your book, we take removal requests very seriously. These files are taken from the internet and we are just helping others.
So, if you can purchase this book please support book authors for their hard work so that they can continue writing more books. This was a great gathering of statements from Stoic scholars, for example, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus and everyday contemplations from the creators Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman. I read two reflections every day from December to July I delighted in gaining from the shrewdness of these savants who lived around 2, years prior and it stuns me that their words stand the trial of time.
Enormous takeaways from the book: Be great, acknowledge the things you can control, understand that the result of things is constrained by a person or thing greater than yourself, lastly try to do you say others should do by experienced the intelligence and lessons that you read. The creator does not profess to give the best interpretations, just available ones. There are plenty of interpretations, look until you discover one you like! Apathy is an old way of thinking.
It states that ethicalness which means restraint, fortitude, equity, and intelligence is satisfaction. To accomplish ethicalness, and consequently live joyfully, one must ace the three Stoic orders: discernments how you see and comprehend the world , activities how you act depends on what you see , and will how you feel when occasions are beyond your ability to do anything about.
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