The Daily Stoic

There’s an old joke: When the Gods wish to punish us, they give us everything we’ve ever wanted. Look at most people who win the lottery. Look at most famous people. Look at most world leaders. To borrow an expression from one particularly unhappy world leader, what do they look like? They look like they’re tired of winning. Because winning isn’t actually as fun as it seemed like it would be...and...

We’ve said before that a Stoic focuses on what they control . That is the essence of Epictetus’s teachings, after all. You put your energy where you can make an impact and you ignore the rest–the rest being fear of what other people will think, fear of the potential results, your chances of success, the long hard road that may come next. To do anything else is a recipe for misery. --- And in today...

Ryan speaks with Dr. Shadi Bartsch about her new book Plato Goes to China: The Greek Classics and Chinese Nationalism , the controversial role that Greek classics are taking in China, the surprising similarities between western and eastern philosophical interpretations, and more.  Dr. Shadi Bartsch is an American academic and author and the Helen A. Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor...

It might seem like the Stoics didn’t have fun, didn’t experience pleasure. They did write, after all, quite a bit about the emptiness of chasing sex or money or fine wines. But just because they scorned excess luxury and comfort doesn’t mean their lives were empty and joyless. Quite the contrary. In his book The Expanding Circle , the philosopher Peter Singer (who was on a great episode of the Dai...

It was last night 1,862 years ago that Marcus Aurelius had a dream. A few years earlier, when Marcus received the news of Hadrian’s plans to have Antoninus Pius adopt him and place him next in line for the throne, he broke down in tears. There was no one he revered more than Antoninus. How could he possibly live up to the task of following in his footsteps? Today, you would say that Marcus was str...

The reason we don’t get what we want is because we want it too much. We reach for it with too much force. We lack the patience, we lack the poise. In Buddhism, they speak of willful will. More often than not, that is our problem. In her beautiful book Gift from the Sea , Anne Morrow Lindberg writes on the hunt for sea shells: “The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too i...

Ryan presents the second of four excerpts from Josiah Osgood’s Uncommon Wrath: How Caesar and Cato’s Deadly Rivalry Destroyed the Roman Republic . Here, in Chapter Two, we witness the parallel paths that the rivals took as they grew and gained power in Rome, as well as how their journeys shaped their personalities. You can listen to Ryan’s recent conversation with Josiah here . ✉️  Sign up fo...

In the second of a two-part interview, Ryan speaks with Rick Rubin about his new book The Creative Act: A Way of Being , respecting everyone’s unique approach to the creative process during collaboration, his new podcast Tetragrammaton , the importance of studying art created long ago, and more. Rick Rubin is a renowned American record producer and the co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, founder of...

We are so busy. We think we’re supposed to be. We think that’s how we get better. We think that moving is the only way to move forward. You might think that  Marcus Aurelius  could relate. Yet when he speaks most beautifully it’s of moments of quiet and calm. "If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind," he said, "free of the future and the past—can make yourself, as Emped...

It’s hard not to look at the lives of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Epictetus and Cato and Zeno and not see what seems like one trauma after another. The loss of young children. Civil wars. Betrayals. Sickness. Criticism. Droughts, deforestation and powerful storms. Then again, it’s hard not to look at our lives and see the same thing. Financial crises. Political unrest. Political violence. A pan...

In the first of a two-part interview, Ryan speaks with Rick Rubin about his new book The Creative Act: A Way of Being , the importance of allowing creativity to happen rather than willing it into existence, working with the unique facets of the artist’s ego, the importance of changing up the way that you do things, the phases of the creative process, and more. Rick Rubin is a renowned American rec...

We live in modern, cutting edge times. Each day, there are breakthroughs in neuroscience, microcomputing, medicine, and in how we make, save, and spend money. Our ability to beam information around the world, instantaneously, also means that we can get breaking news from all corners of the planet. Big data gives us the power to scrap enormous amounts of inputs and draw new insights from them....

The Stoics believed in the concept of "amor fati," or "love of fate." This means accepting and embracing everything that happens, including the fact that we are all replaceable. As Marcus Aurelius wrote, "All things are ephemeral – fame and the famous as well." No matter how great or important we may feel in the moment, time marches on and eventually someone else will fill our place. But this shou...

While most of us will never be an emperor or a rock star, we can imagine what it would be like. It would be so abnormal as to be dehumanizing. Indeed, this is what a lot of famous people say—that they often feel like an animal at a zoo. The point isn’t to say that we should pity famous people or even that we should try to avoid fame. The point is to say that, when we come across a famous person wh...

To the Stoics, it wasn’t that we read. It’s what we read. We should seek out books that make a difference in our lives…not ones that win prizes. What matters is what we think of the books, not what other people think. What’s impressive is what we get out of them, not how they look on our shelves or that they might impress certain types of company. Read widely. Read aggressively. But don’t be a glu...

Ryan speaks with William D. Cohan about his new book Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon , the link between Marcus Aurelius and the “imperial CEO” of General Electric Jack Welch, the legacy of Thomas Edison and GE, the egos of powerful CEOs, and more. William D. Cohan is a business writer and former investigative reporter. He is a graduate of Phillips Academy, Duke University, and...

Punctuality is a matter of self-discipline, but also respect. We must be aware of and in command of our schedule and the time we’ve allocated to different people and activities. We must also care about how our decisions affect those people. Which is why it’s not hard to imagine Marcus Aurelius or Cato being quite diligent about when they arrived and when things started, even though they were power...

What’s the opposite of Stoicism, this austere philosophy based on toughness and resilience, virtue and service? Well, in the ancient world, it was Epicureanism–a philosophy that said that pleasure was the highest good. Could there be anything more different than Stoicism? As it happens, the Epicureans got a bad rap in the ancient world and in today’s. --- And in today's Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan prese...

Ryan speaks with Anthony Everitt about his book Nero: Matricide, Music, and Murder in Imperial Rome , how Rome would have been different if Nero were free to become a musician, why Nero’s overbearing mother contributed to his lack of moral compass, and more. Anthony Everitt is a British professor, author and historian of ancient Rome. His critically acclaimed books about Roman history include Cice...

One way to go through life is to turn away from the things that are hard. You can close your eyes and ears to what is unpleasant. You can take the easy way, forgoing difficulty whenever possible. The other way is the Stoic way—it entails not only  not  avoiding hardship, but actively seeking it out. ✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Check out...

We all have reasons we don’t like something. We think a certain comedian isn’t funny or is a hack. We think a certain author is too basic or overhyped. We think that Oscar-winning movie is total garbage. We know what’s stupid and lame, what’s low brow or trash, what’s fake and what’s real, authentic and commercial. It’s interesting how certain we are with these opinions about particular people or...

It’s always been difficult to concentrate. In one of his letters, Seneca talks about trying to write while Rome resounds beneath him with cacophony. There are street sellers and protestors and a fight and blacksmiths screaming and yelling and hammering down below. Now add to those typical sounds of the outside world, the chaos of our personal world–a buzzing iPhone, an overflowing inbox and e...

Today’s audiobook reading features the second excerpt from The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello . Anthony was an Indian Jesuit priest, psychotherapist, and spiritual teacher, writer, and public speaker who wrote several books on spirituality, including this collection of his last meditations on love and awareness. In today’s excerpt, Anthony discusses why awareness is a key pa...

Ryan speaks with Sam Harris about the overlap between eastern and western philosophy, how mindfulness practices like meditation help us become better Stoics, why he is so dedicated to providing his content for free, and more. Sam Harris is a philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and host of the Making Sense Podcast . His work touches on a range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, fr...

Life was just one thing after another for Marcus Aurelius . The plague. The flooding. The wars. He did not meet with, “the good fortune he deserved,” one ancient historian noted, “as his whole reign was a series of troubles.” Anyone who has had a run of bad luck knows the feeling. It’s frustrating and annoying and sometimes deeply unfair, but there is also something freeing about it. Because after...