The Daily Stoic

The fact of life is that we’re going to get tossed around by forces outside our control. Never forget fortunes’ habit of behaving exactly as she pleases, Seneca reminds us , never forget that adversity is inevitability. There would be war, he said, and torture and shipwrecks and exile, along with a lot less dramatic stuff: traffic jams, divorces, food poisoning, annoying neighbors, bad weather, pe...

On this episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan is joined by Dr. Michael Gervais, one of the world’s top high-performance psychologists and leading experts on the relationship between the mind and human performance.  Together they discuss FOPO (fear of other people's opinions), the reality of imposter syndrome, and Dr. Gervais' book,  The First Rule of Mastery: Stop Worrying What Other...

They were different. Some of them were downright weird. Cleanthes made quite a spectacle of himself in Athens, a philosopher who did manual labor for a living. Cato walked around bareheaded and barefooted, violating most of the social and class norms of his time. Marcus Aurelius was seen reading books at the Coliseum, indifferent to the popular past times that got everyone else excited. Agrippinus...

Marcus Aurelius knew this, but he didn’t let it get him down. In fact, he found some reassurance in it. “When we cease from activity, or follow a thought to its conclusion,” he observed, “it is a kind of death.” But this doesn’t harm us, he pointed out. In fact, we look forward to many of these cessations and conclusions. “Think about your life,” he said, “childhood, boyhood, youth, old age. Every...

As one of history’s most important biographers and essayists, Plutarch studied deeply the traits of great Greek and Roman leaders to identify just what it is that made them great. In today’s audiobook reading, Ryan shares an excerpt from  How to Be a Leader: An Ancient Guide to Wise Leadership , in which Plutarch clearly and succinctly lays out his thoughts on the subject, as well as his advi...

On this episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with English author Adam Nicolson on greek mythology, real meaning of the oceans, travel, the grand question about philosophy, that what really matters more? to understand the higher things above you, or the material actualities, along with his new book How To Be: Life Lessons from the Early Greeks Adam is an English author who has written abo...

In the muck and mire of daily life, it’s easy to get frustrated with people. It’s easy to prioritize the wrong things, to lose perspective. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment or forget the actual magnitude of your problems. Which is why the Stoics remind us to zoom out . At least twice in Meditations , Marcus Aurelius speaks of taking “Plato’s view” and by that he means getting up high and l...

The Stoics talk about a lot of things. But they don’t speak that much about happiness. Is that because they were too tough or too resigned to their bleak view of life to care about it? Did they mean to imply that there isn’t room for happiness for the Stoic? That it wasn’t possible? Not at all. They talked about other things—virtue, resilience, self-command, managing the passions—because they beli...

On this episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with author and early-stage technology investor/advisor Tim Ferriss on the essence of Stoicism, fear setting, and exaggerating the downside of things. How stoicism helped Tim manage the catastrophe of success and criticism and his podcast Tim Ferriss Show, which is the first business/interview podcast to exceed 100 million downloads. It has no...

The image of the philosopher is typically that of an academic, one preoccupied with big, theoretical ideas. You know, the kind of brilliant but absent minded professor. The one so hard at work on the mysteries of the universe…that they put on mismatching socks. The one that can’t remember where they put their car keys, the one who doesn’t have time for the pesky issues of life or human affairs bec...

Agrippinus once told another philosopher that while everyone else wanted to blend in, he was content to stand out—to ‘be the red thread’ in the sweater, the one that makes the garment beautiful. It wasn’t attention and fame he was after, nor was he rewarded for standing out in this way. In the end, Agrippinus was exiled (his father was executed for similar crimes). Cato could have made a fortune i...

Emotions are a part of being human. They’re a part of us. They’re hardwired in. So it’s a mistake to think that Stoicism is about the suppression or elimination of this —how would that be part of “living in accordance with nature?” In her wonderful book about parenting , Good Inside , Dr. Becky Kennedy reminds parents that it’s impossible to simply remove your children’s uncomfortable feelings. Yo...

In today's weekend episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks Unlocking Human Potential, and Conquering your ego with YPO West Michigan and YPO Gold Chapter in West Michigan. YPO is the global leadership community of extraordinary chief executives. ✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email:  https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Check out the  Daily Stoic Store  for Stoic in...

On this episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with author and early-stage technology investor/advisor Tim Ferriss on the essence of Stoicism, fear setting, and exaggerating the downside of things. How stoicism helped Tim manage the catastrophe of success and criticism and his podcast Tim Ferriss Show, which is the first business/interview podcast to exceed 100 million downloads. It has no...

When you consider the insane amounts of money that some people feel the need to accumulate, when you see their estates, when you see them pinch every penny, what they’ll do for a dollar, when you reckon with the costs—to family and friends—it took to earn all this, you might assume they get to take it all with them when they die. Of course, we don’t. The Roman poet Juvenal joked that while Alexand...

We talked recently about a piece of advice from the therapist and children expert Dr. Becky Kennedy (she has a great book called Good Inside and was an awesome recent guest on the Daily Stoic podcast ). She was saying that the key to raising happy children is to focus on emotional regulation first. By helping them name and manage their emotions, she explains, we are creating room for happiness. “R...

On this episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with successful hospitality entrepreneur and bestselling author Chip Conley on boutique hotels and stimulating the 5 senses, the importance of reflection, understanding what the ego is telling you but not identifying with it, the most powerful idea from the Stoics, along with his New York Times bestselling book Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Rea...

It feels like it will make a difference, that long awaited trip. That exciting new job that will keep you very busy, make you very rich. That pioneering new plant medicine. That distracting pleasure. “Thus does each man flee himself,” Seneca says, quoting Lucretius, in his criticism of those Romans who sought out every opportunity to indulge their wanderlust. We like to think we can get away from...

It’s a story as old as it gets. Marcus Aurelius felt it when Cassius attempted his coup. Maybe he felt it with his step brother Lucius Verus. Epictetus , waking up to find his house broken into , his shrine desecrated. Imagine the feeling of Rutilius Rufus , learning that he’d been found guilty of trumped up charges by his peers back in Rome (this story in in Lives of the Stoics ). Marcus Aurelius...

The business failure. The blown meeting. The marriage that fell apart. These things didn’t go the way you wanted. It’s frustrating and painful. It’s hard to see anything good about it. Surely, that’s what Hemingway felt when, as we talked about recently, his entire literary output was lost in one unfortunate incident . Don’t tell me this is ‘good,’ he wrote to Ezra Pound. “I ain’t yet reached that...

The Obstacle Is the Way has become a cult classic, beloved by men and women around the world who apply its wisdom to become more successful at whatever they do. In this episode of the podcast, Ryan reminds us to revert to the present moment by focusing on what we can control. This is how we see the opportunity within the obstacle and that results from self discipline and logic. Get The Obstacle Is...

On this episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan talks with American author, lawyer, and legal scholar  Kermit Roosevelt III  on Honoring and doing what is right, Why peoples values and sense of honor are collapsing, How many people know who Marcus Aurelius is because of Gladiator, and his book  The Nation That Never Was. Kermit is an American author, lawyer, and legal scholar. He i...

It’s just not true. The Stoics were not magically stronger, wiser, more mentally tough than you. In fact, they were exactly the same as you. They felt fear. They felt frustration. They felt annoyance. They had expectations. They had desires. And when things didn’t work out for them? They got upset. But it’s what happened next that separates them from us. The one habit that Epictetus, Marcus Aureli...

Even the people who obstruct us, who fight against progress are playing a role. Certainly every historical period has had those people, so why should our moment be any different? That’s the role the play of life picked out for them, that’s who their character happens to be. When we understand that everyone is playing a part , that we’re all involved in the same big, messy project that is the world...

In a sense, this is also the secret to happiness. No one can give us step-by-step instructions for achieving happiness—not even the Stoics. But they did teach us how to be resilient, how to think, how to manage frustration, how to do hard things, how to endure, how to laugh, how to focus on process vs outcomes, to try to be useful, to be empathetic, how to love. It’s with these tools—with the abil...