That’s why the philosophers warn us not to be satisfied with mere learning, but to add practice and then training. For as time passes we forget what we learned and end up doing the opposite, and hold opinions the opposite of what we should.
—Epictetus, Discourses, 2.9.13-14
Very few people can simply watch an instructional video or hear something explained and then know, backward and forward, how to do it. Most of us actually have to do something several times in order to truly learn. One of the hallmarks of the martial arts, military training, and athletic training of almost any kind is the hours upon hours upon hours of monotonous practice. An athlete at the highest level will train for years to perform movements that can last mere seconds—or less. The two-minute drill, how to escape from a chokehold, the perfect jumper. Simply knowing isn’t enough. It must be absorbed into the muscles and the body. It must become part of us. Or we risk losing it the second that we experience stress or difficulty.
It is true with philosophical principles as well. You can’t just hear something once and expect to rely on it when the world is crashing down around us. Remember, Marcus Aurelius wasn’t writing his meditations for other people. He was actively meditating for himself. Even as a successful, wise, and experienced man, he was until the last days of his life practicing and training himself to do the right thing. Like a black belt, he was still showing up to the dojo every day to roll; like a professional athlete, he still showed up to practice each week—even though others probably thought it was unnecessary.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Pay attention to what’s in front of you—the principle, the task, or what’s being portrayed.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.22
It’s fun to think about the future. It’s easy to ruminate on the past. It’s harder to put that energy into what’s in front of us right at this moment—especially if it’s something we don’t want to do. We think: This is just a job; it isn’t who I am. It doesn’t matter. But it does matter. Who knows—it might be the last thing you ever do. Here lies Dave, buried alive under a mountain of unfinished business.
There is an old saying: “How you do anything is how you do everything.” It’s true. How you handle today is how you’ll handle every day. How you handle this minute is how you’ll handle every minute.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Show me someone sick and happy, in danger and happy, dying and happy, exiled and happy, disgraced and happy. Show me! By God, how much I’d like to see a Stoic. But since you can’t show me someone that perfectly formed, at least show me someone actively forming themselves so, inclined in this way…. Show me!
—Epictetus, Discourses, 2.19.24-25a, 28
Instead of seeing philosophy as an end to which one aspires, see it as something one applies. Not occasionally, but over the course of a life—making incremental progress along the way. Sustained execution, not shapeless epiphanies.
Epictetus loved to shake his students out of their smug satisfaction with their own progress. He wanted to remind them—and now you—of the constant work and serious training needed every day if we are ever to approach that perfect form.
It’s important for us to remember in our own journey to self-improvement: one never arrives. The sage—the perfect Stoic who behaves perfectly in every situation—is an ideal, not an end.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
If you don’t wish to be a hot-head, don’t feed your habit. Try as a first step to remain calm and count the days you haven’t been angry. I used to be angry every day, now every other day, then every third or fourth … if you make it as far as 30 days, thank God! For habit is first weakened and then obliterated. When you can say “I didn’t lose my temper today, or the next day, or for three or four months, but kept my cool under provocation,” you will know you are in better health.
—Epictetus, Discourses, 2.18.11b-14
The comedian Jerry Seinfeld once gave a young comic named Brad Isaac some advice about how to write and create material. Keep a calendar, he told him, and each day that you write jokes, put an X. Soon enough, you get a chain going—and then your job is to simply not break the chain. Success becomes a matter of momentum. Once you get a little, it’s easier to keep it going.
Whereas Seinfeld used the chain method to build a positive habit, Epictetus was saying that it can also be used to eliminate a negative one. It’s not all that different than taking sobriety “one day at a time.” Start with one day doing whatever it is, be it managing your temper or wandering eyes or procrastination. Then do the same the following day and the day after that. Build a chain and then work not to break it. Don’t ruin your streak.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Don’t set your mind on things you don’t possess as if they were yours, but count the blessings you actually possess and think how much you would desire them if they weren’t already yours. But watch yourself, that you don’t value these things to the point of being troubled if you should lose them.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.27
We regularly covet what other people have. We desperately try to keep up with the Joneses, all the while the Joneses are miserable trying to keep up with us.
It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. So today, stop trying to get what other people have. Fight your urge to gather and hoard. That’s not the right way to live and act. Appreciate and take advantage of what you already do have, and let that attitude guide your actions.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Those obsessed with glory attach their well-being to the regard of others, those who love pleasure tie it to feelings, but the one with true understanding seeks it only in their own actions…. Think on the character of the people one wishes to please, the possessions one means to gain, and the tactics one employs to such ends. How quickly time erases such things, and how many will yet be wiped away.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6:51,59
If your happiness is dependent on accomplishing certain goals, what happens if fate intervenes? What if you’re snubbed? If outside events interrupt? What if you do achieve everything but find that nobody is impressed? That’s the problem with letting your happiness be determined by things you can’t control. It’s an insane risk.
If an actor focuses on the public reception to a project—whether critics like it or whether it’s a hit, they will be constantly disappointed and hurt. But if they love their performance—and put everything they have into making it the best that they’re capable of—they will always find satisfaction in their job. Like them, we should take pleasure from our actions—in taking the right actions—rather than the results that come from them.
Our ambition should not be to win, then, but to play with our full effort. Our intention is not to be thanked or recognized, but to help and to do what we think is right. Our focus is not on what happens to us but on how we respond. In this, we will always find contentment and resilience.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Every habit and capability is confirmed and grows in its corresponding actions, walking by walking, and running by running … therefore, if you want to do something make a habit of it, if you don’t want to do that, don’t, but make a habit of something else instead. The same principle is at work in our state of mind. When you get angry, you’ve not only experienced that evil, but you’ve also reinforced a bad habit, adding fuel to the fire.
—Epictetus, Discourses, 2.18.1-5
“We are what we repeatedly do,” Aristotle said, “therefore, excellence is not an act but a habit.” The Stoics add to that that we are a product of our thoughts (“Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind,” Marcus Aurelius put it).
Think about your activities of the last week as well as what you have planned for today and the week that follows. The person you’d like to be, or the person you see yourself as—how closely do your actions actually correspond to him or her? Which fire are you fueling? Which person are you becoming?
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
Kindness is invincible, but only when it’s sincere, with no hypocrisy or faking. For what can even the most malicious person do if you keep showing kindness and, if given the chance, you gently point out where they went wrong—right as they are trying to harm you?
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11.18.5.9a
What if the next time you were treated meanly, you didn’t just restrain yourself from fighting back—what if you responded with unmitigated kindness? What if you could “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you?” What kind of effect do you think that would have?
The Bible says that when you can do something nice and care to a hateful enemy, it is like “heap[ing] burning coals on his head.” The expected reaction to hatred is more hatred. When someone says something pointed or mean today, they expect you to respond in kind—not with kindness. When that doesn’t happen, they are embarrassed. It’s a shock to their system—it makes them and you better.
Most rudeness, meanness, and cruelty are a mask for deep-seated weakness. Kindness in these situations is only possible for people of great strength. You have that strength. Use it.
* Source: The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
