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Book#046 – The Daily Stoic

The Daily Stoic

366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
Ryan Holiday
20161018

Of all people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only they truly live. Not satisfied to merely keep good watch over their own days, they annex every age to their own. All the harvest of the past is added to their store. Only an ingrate would fail to see that these great architects of venerable thoughts were born for us and have designed a way of life for us.
—Seneca

About This Book

A PHILOSOPHICAL BOOK FOR THE PHILOSOPHICAL LIFE

Some of us are stressed. Others are overworked. Perhaps you’re struggling with the new responsibilities of parenthood. Or the chaos of a new venture. Or are you already successful and grappling with the duties of power or influence? Wrestling with an addiction? Deeply in love? Or moving from one flawed relationship to another? Are you approaching your golden years? Or enjoying the spoils of youth? Busy and active? Or bored out of your mind?

Whatever it is, whatever you’re going through, there is wisdom from the Stoics that can help. In fact, in many cases they have addressed it explicitly in terms that feel shockingly modern. That’s what we’re going to focus on in this book.

Drawing directly from the Stoic canon, we present a selection of original translations of the greatest passages from the three major figures of late StoicismSeneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius—along with a few assorted sayings from their Stoic predecessors. Accompanying each quotation is our attempt to tell a story, provide context, ask a question, prompt an exercise, or explain the perspective of the Stoic who said it so that you may find deeper understanding of whatever answers you are seeking.

The works of the Stoics have always been fresh and current, regardless of the historical ebb and flow of their popularity. It was not our intention with this book to fix them or modernize them or freshen them up. Instead, we sought to organize and present the vast collective wisdom of the Stoics into as digestible, accessible, and coherent a form as possible. One can—and should—pick up the original works of the Stoics in whole form. In the meantime, here, for the busy and active reader, we have attempted to produce a daily devotional that is as functional and to the point as the philosophers behind it. And in the Stoic tradition, we’ve added material to provoke and facilitate the asking of big questions.

Organized along the lines of the three disciplines (Perception, Action, and Will) and then further divided into important themes within those disciplines, you’ll find that each month will stress a particular trait and each day will offer a new way to think or act. 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. We’ve written this book to be helpful with both. 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. It is our hope that there is not a word in this book that can’t or shouldn’t, to paraphrase Seneca, be turned into works.

To that end, we offer this book.

Introduction

The private diaries of one of Rome’s greatest emperors, the personal letters of one of Rome’s best playwrights and wisest power brokers, the lectures of a former slave and exile, turned influential teacher. Against all odds and the passing of some two millennia, these incredible documents survive.

What do they say? Could these ancient and obscure pages really contain anything relevant to modern life? The answer, it turns out, is yes. They contain some of the greatest wisdom in the history of the world.

Together these documents constitute the bedrock of what is known as Stoicism, an ancient philosophy that was once one of the most popular civic disciplines in the West, practiced by the rich and the improverished, the powerful and the struggling alike in the pursuit of the Good Life. But over the centuries, knowledge of this way of thinking, once essential to so many, slowly faded from view.

Except to the most avid seekers of wisdom, Stoicism is either unknown or misunderstood. Indeed, it would be hard to find a word dealt a greater injustice at the hands of the English language than “Stoic.” To the average person, this vibrant, action-oriented, and paradigm-shifting way of living has become shorthand for “emotionlessness.” Given the fact that the more mention of philosophy makes most nervous or bored, “Stoic philosophy” on the surface sounds like the last thing anyone would want to learn about, let alone urgently need in the course of daily life.

What a sad fate for a philosophy that even one of its occasional critics, Arthur Schopenhauer, would describe as “the highest point to which man can attain by the mere use of his faculty of reason.”

Our goal with this book is to restore Stoicism to its rightful place as a tool in the pursuit of self-mastery, perseverance, and wisdom: something one uses to live a great life, rather than some esoteric field of academic inquiry.

Contents

PART I: THE DISCIPLINE OF PERCEPTION
(how we see and perceive the world around us)

January: Clarity

February: Passions and Emotions

March: Awareness

April: Unbiased Thought

PART II: THE DISCIPLINE OF ACTION
(the decisions and actions we take—and to what end)

May: Right Actions

June: Problem Solving

July: Duty

August: Pragmatism

PART III: THE DISCIPLINE OF WILL
(how we deal with the things we cannot change, attain clear and convincing
 judgment, and come to a true understanding of our place in the world)

September: Fortitude and Resilience

October: Virtue and Kindness

November: Acceptance

December: Meditation on Mortality

By controlling our perceptions, the Stoics tell us, we can find mental clarity. In directing our actions properly and justly, we’ll be effective. In utilizing and aligning our will, we will find the wisdom and perspective to deal with anything the world puts before us. It was their belief that by strengthening themselves and their fellow citizens in these disciplines, they could cultivate resilience, purpose, and even joy.

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