Ryan Holiday's Blog, page 16

This Is How and Why You Study Philosophy

My new book Lives of the Stoics is out now!

Small events—a single moment, a simple exchange, an unremarkable decision—are what change the world.

On a fateful day late in the fourth century BCE, after a disastrous voyage on the Mediterranean, the Phoenician merchant Zeno washed up penniless in Athens. He could have despaired. Instead, he studied philosophy and ended up founding a school known as Stoicism. “I made a prosperous voyage,” Zeno would later say, “when I suffered a shipwreck.”

In the first century BCE, Pompey tried to corrupt Marcus Porcius Cato by dangling a marriage alliance. “Go and tell Pompey,” he instructed the go-between, that “Cato is not to be captured by way of the women’s apartments.” A few years later, his daughter, collaborating in an attempt to overthrow Julius Caesar, would stab herself in the leg to test her ability to withstand torture. Able to successfully bear the pain, she and her husband Brutus went ahead with the conspiracy. Several generations would pass and eventually place Marcus Aurelius at the head of the Roman empire. A friend stopped Marcus as he was leaving his home one morning. Where are you going? To handle business? No, Marcus was on his way to attend a philosophy lecture. “Learning is a good thing, even for one who is growing old,” Marcus told the stunned man. “From Sextus the philosopher I shall learn what I do not yet know.”

These little moments—these are insights into the lives of what made the greats great. 

This, the great moral biographer Plutarch said, is why you can often learn more from a single anecdote than a sweeping historical portrait. Unlike the biographers of our time, who publish big, thick books filled with footnotes and postmodern digressions, Plutarch included only the essence of great men and women, so that he might inspire us to follow in their footsteps. He was obsessed by what we could learn from the figures he wrote about. 

“It is not histories I am writing,” Plutarch would write, “but lives; and in the most glorious deeds there is not always an indication of virtue or vice, indeed a small thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of a character than battles where thousands die.”

This distinction is core to Stoicism. Study the philosopher, they said, not the philosophy. Unlike the so-called “pen-and-ink philosophers”—as the type was derisively known even 2000 years ago—the Stoics said not to pay so much attention to what philosophers have thought or written because what counts is what they do. The choices they made, the causes they served, the principles they adhered to in the face of adversity. They cared about what you did, not what you said. 

“Don’t talk about your philosophy,” Epictetus would say, “embody it.” That’s why he would become so frustrated with his students who congratulated themselves on being able to read the obscure writings of Chrysippus: they were missing the point. Philosophy wasn’t about big words or complicated texts. It was about applying concepts to the real world. It was about living a happy and resilient and purposeful life. 

“I know,” Seneca wrote in 55 CE in a book on mercy written for the young emperor Nero, “that the Stoics have a bad reputation among the uninformed for being too callous and therefore unlikely to give good advice to kings and princes: they’re blamed for asserting that the wise man does not feel pity and does not forgive… In fact, no philosophical school is kinder and gentler, nor more loving of humankind and more attentive to the common good, to the degree that its very purpose is to be useful, bring assistance and consider the interests not only of itself as a school but of all people, individually and collectively.” 

It’s on these models that my latest book is written: Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius. With Stephen Hanselman, my co-author on The Daily Stoic, we pored over hundreds of ancient texts and modern scholarship to bring you 26 biographies of the most important—and most interesting—Stoics from history. Inspired by Plutarch, we wrote Lives of the Stoics with an eye towards practical application and advice. We wanted to leave you not only with some facts about these figures, but with a fuller sense of their essence and the aspects of their lives that teach us the most about the art of living. 

That’s the only reason to study philosophy—to become a better person. 

Anything else, as Nietzsche said, is merely a “critique of words by means of other words.” It’s empty talk. Schopenhauer called it “fencing in the mirror.”

This is, unfortunately, the role philosophy plays in the modern world. Today it’s about what smart people say, what big words they use, what paradoxes and riddles they can baffle us with. 

No wonder we dismiss it as impractical. It is!

 “To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school,” Thoreau said. “It is to solve some of the problems of life, not theoretically, but practically.”

That’s what the Stoics were after, what we remain interested in to this day: lights to illuminate the path in life. They wanted to know, as we want to know, how to find tranquility, purpose, self-control, and happiness. This journey, whether it begins in ancient Greece or modern America, is timeless. It is essential. It is difficult. Which is why we ask, as the Stoics asked: Who can help me? What is right? Where is true north? 

“You’ve wandered all over,” Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself in Meditations, “and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere.” 

If philosophy is anything, it’s an answer to that question—how to live. It’s what we have been looking for. “Would you really know what philosophy offers to humanity?” Seneca asks in his Letters from a Stoic. “Philosophy offers counsel.” Seneca said that was the most powerful lesson he learned from his childhood tutor, Attalus the Stoic. The purpose of studying philosophy, of reading about the great men and women who lived and died before you, of learning about that simple question Zeno asked, that small decision Cato made, that one passage that guided Marcus was to “take away with him some one good thing every day: he should return home a sounder man, or on the way to becoming sounder.”

You must heed this counsel and struggle with what Seneca described as the most important job of a philosopher—the act of turning words into works in the real world. To study the lives of the men and women who came before us for the same reason Plutarch (who wrote about many of the Stoics as well) did: to turn the lessons of the lives, their living and their dying, their succeeding and their failing, into actions in the real world. 

For it is this, and nothing else, that earns one the title: Philosopher.

My new book Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius is finally out. I can’t wait for you to read it. If you’ve gotten anything out of these emails over the years, it would mean a lot to me if you could support this book, which I have been working on for a long time. It’s worth your time, I promise. 

If you do, I’ll still send over these pre-order bonuses which include three extra chapters I couldn’t fit in the book. 

Thank you!

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These 7 Lessons Will Make You Better

Marcus Aurelius‘ reign from 161 to 180 was defined by a pandemic (which originated in the distant east and quickly overwhelmed Rome’s institutions), civil unrest, interminable wars in the provinces, personal health issues, cultural decadence, income inequality, and so much else.

As he would observe in Meditations, people have always been people, and life has always been life. The more things change, the more they stay the same. 

Yet, Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics still found a way to be successful, happy, strong, productive, and good, despite all these difficulties. In this, we must learn from them. The history of Stoic philosophy is filled with all sorts of unique characters from unique backgrounds — from slaves to generals, lawyers to writers, daughters to doctors — who thrived amidst both adversity and prosperity. 

After more than a decade now about writing about the Stoics, most recently with my book Lives of the Stoics, here are seven lessons we can take from the ancient world and apply to our modern times.

1. Find a mentor

“Choose a master whose life, conversation, and soul-expressing face have satisfied you … For we must indeed have someone according to whom we may regulate our characters; you can never straighten that which is crooked unless you use a ruler.” — Seneca

Fittingly, the story of Stoicism begins with misfortune. On a merchant voyage, Zeno was shipwrecked. He lost everything. He washed up in Athens where he walked into a bookstore and listened to the bookseller reading dialogues from Socrates. After the reading, Zeno asked the question that would change his life: “Where can I find a man like that?” That is: Where can I find my own Socrates? Where can I find someone to study under?

In that moment, Crates, a well-known Athenian philosopher, happened to be passing by. The bookseller simply extended his hand and pointed. You could say it was fated. The Stoics of later years certainly would have. According to the ancient biographer Diogenes Laertius, Zeno joked, “Now that I’ve suffered shipwreck, I’m on a good journey,” or according to another account, “You’ve done well, Fortune, driving me thus to philosophy,” he reportedly said. 

Nearly all of the ancient Stoics had a formative mentor, living or dead. Cleanthes had Zeno. Cato had Sarpedon. Seneca had Attalus. Epictetus had Musonius Rufus. Marcus Aurelius had Rusticus — who turned him onto Epictetus. Chrysippus had Cleanthes. Thrasea had Cato. Antipater had Diogenes. Panaetius had Crates. Posidonius had Panaetius.

The Stoics knew that life is hard and requires help. “Only beasts can do it alone,” Marcus said. We need guidance from those who are further ahead on the path. We need mentors. 

2. We don’t control what happened, we control how we respond

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own … ” —Epictetus

Epictetus’ most powerful insight as a teacher derives directly from his experiences as a slave. Although all humans are introduced, at some point, to the laws of the universe, almost from the moment he was born, Epictetus was reminded daily how little control he had, even of his own person. He adopted this lesson into what he described as our “chief task in life” — distinguishing between what is up to us and what is not up to us (in his language, ta eph hemin, ta ouk eph hemin).

Once we have organized our understanding of the world into this black and white bucket, what remains — what was so central to Epictetus’s survival as a slave — is to focus on what is up to us. Our attitudes. Our emotions. Our wants. Our desires. Our opinions about what happened to us. Those choices are up to us.

“You can bind up my leg,” Epictetus would say — indeed, his leg really had been bound and broken — “but not even Zeus has the power to break my freedom of choice.” 

That is your “most efficacious gift,” Epictetus said — the power to always control how you respond. That’s the ingredient of freedom, whatever one’s condition.

3. Be different

“It never ceases to amaze me: We all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.” — Marcus Aurelius

If you want to improve, Epictetus said, if you want to achieve wisdom, you have to be okay with looking strange or even clueless from time to time. 

Epictetus tells us the story of the Stoic Agrippinus, who said we are all threads in a garment — most people were indistinguishable from each other, one thread among countless others. Most people were happy conforming, being anonymous, handling their own tiny, unsung role in the fabric. In a Roman Empire that had given itself over fully to avarice and corruption, the best strategy would have been to keep a low profile, to blend in so one does not catch the attention of the capricious and cruel ruler who holds the power of life and death.

But to Agrippinus, this kind of compromise was inconceivable. Despite what everyone else was doing, Agrippinus refused to keep a low profile during Nero’s reign, refused to conform or tamp down his independent thinking. Why do this, Agrippinus was asked, why not be like the rest of us?

“I want to be the red,” he said, “that small and brilliant portion which causes the rest to appear comely and beautiful ….  ‘Be like the majority of people?’ And if I do that, how shall I any longer be the red?” Years later there would be a song by Alice in Chains, which would say in a nutshell what Agrippinus believed in his heart: “If I can’t be my own, I’d feel better dead.”

Beautifully said. And a reminder to all of us today. Embrace who you really are, embrace what makes you unique. Be red. Be the small part that makes the rest bright.

We desperately need you to do that. 

4. Value virtue

“Be wise and self-controlled, and share in courage and justice … the art by which a human would become good. We must do just that!” —Musonius Rufus

Courage.

Justice.

Temperance. 

Wisdom. 

They are the most essential values in Stoicism. “If, at some point in your life,” Marcus Aurelius wrote, “you should come across anything better than justice, truth, self-control, courage — it must be an extraordinary thing indeed.” That was almost twenty centuries ago. We have discovered a lot of things since then — automobiles, the Internet, cures for diseases that were previously a death sentence — but have we found anything better?

… than being brave

… than doing what’s right

… than moderation and sobriety

… than truth and understanding?

No, we have not. It’s unlikely we ever will. 

So memorize those four virtues. Keep them close to your heart and hand always. Act on them. Live them. Tell everyone you meet about them. 

5. If you can’t do good, at least do not harm 

“To do harm is to do yourself harm. To do an injustice is to do yourself an injustice — it degrades you.” —Marcus Aurelius

Shakespeare, the great observer of the Stoics, said that the good we do in life is easily forgotten, but the evil we do lives on and on. No Stoic philosopher illustrates this principle more than Diotimus.

Sometime around the turn of the first century BC, he committed what can only be described as an unjustifiable crime. He forged dozens and dozens of letters that framed the rival philosopher Epicurus as a sinful glutton and depraved maniac. It was an act of despicable philosophical slander, and Diotimus was quickly brought up on charges.

For a school that prized logic and truth as much as virtuous behavior, Diotimus’s actions were inexcusable. Seneca, who writes about all sorts of philosophers (including the Epicureans some eighty times across his surviving works), never once mentions the incident. It would be, then, Diotimus’s sole contribution to the history of Stoicism.

Musonius Rufus best captured the prevailing lesson when he said, “If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labor passes quickly, but the good endures; if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the same endures.” 

6. Compromise is key

“No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.” — Marcus Aurelius

Cato, one of the most vaunted and towering Stoics, built a reputation and a career out of his refusal to give an inch in the face of pressure. He refused political compromise in every form, to the point that those who did turned his name into an aphorism: “What do you expect of us? We can’t all be Catos.”

But Cato’s inflexibility did not always best serve the public good. When Pompey — one of Rome’s greatest generals and political forces — returned to Rome from his foriegn conquests, he felt out potential alliances with Cato. The two had tangled in the past. So when Pompey proposed a marriage alliance either with Cato’s niece or daughter, Cato dismissed it and dismissed it rudely.

“Go and tell Pompey,” he instructed the go-between, that “Cato is not to be captured by way of the women’s apartments.” 

As Rob Goodman and Jimmy Soni write in “Rome’s Last Citizen,” this “was an unmatched, unmissable opportunity.” In so rejecting the alliance, Cato drove the powerful Pompey into an alliance with Caesar instead, who promptly married his daughter Julia to Pompey. United and unstoppable, the two men would soon overturn centuries of constitutional precedent.

For Cato, to compromise — to play politics with the bedrock laws of his nation at stake — would have been moral capitulation. But this all-or-nothing strategy ended in crushing defeat. Indeed, no one did more than Cato to rage against his Republic’s fall, but few did more, to bring that fall to pass.

7. Memento Mori

“Were all the geniuses of history to focus on this single theme, they could never fully express their bafflement at the darkness of the human mind … No person hands out their money to passersby, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We’re tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers.” —Seneca

Born with a chronic illness that loomed large throughout his life, Seneca was constantly thinking about and writing about the final act of life. “Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life,” he said. “Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.” 

Most interestingly, he quibbled with the idea that death was something that lay ahead of us in the uncertain future. “This is our big mistake,” Seneca wrote, “to think we look forward to death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death.” That was Seneca’s great insight — that we are dying every day and no day, once dead, can be revived. 

So we should listen to the command that Marcus gave himself. “Concentrate every minute like a Roman,” he wrote, “On doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions.” The key to this kind of concentration? “Do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life.”

That’s the power of Memento Mori — of meditating on your mortality. It isn’t about being morbid or making you scared. It’s about giving you power. It’s to inspire, to motivate, to clarify, to concentrate like a Roman on the thing in front of you. Because it may well be the last thing you do in your life. 

The Stoics were philosophers, but more than that they were doers. They didn’t have room for big words or big ideas, just stuff that made you better right here, right now.  As Marcus Aurelius said:

“Justice, honesty, self-control, courage … don’t make room for anything but it — for anything that might lead you astray, tempt you off the road, and leave you unable to devote yourself completely to achieving the goodness that is uniquely yours.”

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It Costs What It Costs

When I first moved to New York, I had dinner with a friend who had lived there a long time. The thing about the city, he told me, is that everything is so expensive, it’s almost freeing. His apartment rented for half of what I would later buy an entire farm for. He was in the middle of planning a wedding in the city, too. In any sane environment, he said, you’d look for a deal; you’d refuse to be gouged or charged exorbitant prices for ordinary things. 

But in New York? You just have to accept it. 

It costs what it costs. That’s it. 

Now, I personally came to believe that almost none of the advantages offered by the city were worth the price—and still don’t, which is why I moved—but this lesson has stuck with me. Because it transcends both geography and finances. 

Reality is indifferent to our preferences. There is no such thing as a fair price. Stuff—life—costs what it costs. You either pay it or you don’t. 

The Stoics had a beautiful phrase for this. They called it the art of acquiescence. 

It would be better if I never had to run into traffic on the way to my office. It would be better if a good chunk of our fellow humans hadn’t hardened their hearts to suffering. It’d be better if I didn’t have to tell my kids that they can’t go to school or see their friends right now. It’d be better if ordinary prices were always attached to ordinary things.

But that’s not how it goes. So if I want to keep living here, in Austin, on Planet Earth, I’ve got to accept it. I have to pay it. 

That’s an idea I’ve loved from Seneca. He points out that taxes are not just levied on income.  They are just the financial form. There are many forms of taxes in life. You can argue with them, you can go to great—but ultimately futile—lengths to evade them, or you can simply pay them and enjoy the fruits of what you get to keep.

“Nothing will ever befall me that I will receive with gloom or a bad disposition,” he writes. “I will pay my taxes gladly. Now, all the things which cause complaint or dread are like the taxes of life—things from which, my dear Lucilius, you should never hope for exemption or seek escape.”

I’ve posted this quote on Instagram on April 15th the last few years and it’s been hilarious to see how angry some get. As if people haven’t been complaining about their taxes for thousands of years! And by the way, where are those people from so long ago? Dead. 

Everything we do has a toll attached to it. Waiting around is a tax on traveling. Rumors and gossip are the taxes that come from acquiring a public persona. Disagreements and occasional frustration are taxes placed on even the happiest of relationships. Theft is a tax on abundance and having things that other people want. Stress and problems are tariffs that come attached to success.

And on and on and on.

This can make you angry, or you can come to terms with it. 

Especially since, like with income, taxes are a good problem to have. Far better than, say, making so little there is nothing left to pay the government or living in anarchy and having to pay for every basic service in a struggle against nature. Remember: There is a certain way to get out of paying taxes—literal or figurative… it’s called death (and actually, because of the estate tax, that’s not true either). 

When the broadcaster Stuart Scott found out he had cancer, possibly fatal cancer, he had this reaction. It wasn’t resignation, it was responsibility. He was an adult about it, a real man—or perhaps almost more than the kind of man that most of us are capable of being. In any case, he was not like these children who get upset the first time something doesn’t go their way. 

When a friend asked if he ever thought, “Why me?” he said, “I have two girls that I love. I have a wonderful job that I love getting up for every day. Why not me? I’m about due.” When another friend said they wished they could take some of his cancer and suffer instead of him, he said, “I wouldn’t let you do it. I got it.”

When you meet someone who has true zen about them, you can bet they are operating on that level. 

They are calm because they have learned what they have to accept. They are happy because they’ve stopped fighting battles they were never going to win. They are grateful for what they get to keep, not what was taken or what they’ve had to put up with. 

Now more than ever we need this attitude, as difficult as it is. 

A pandemic is a pandemic. Does it cost wearing a mask? OK. Does it cost traveling less? OK. Does it cost enduring fools and jerks who can’t understand these things? OK, I’ll come to terms with that too. 

Because what am I going to do? Wear myself down fighting something that can’t be fought? Become crazy myself? Fall prey to magical thinking or conspiracy theories?

No. Like Seneca, I’ll pay my taxes gladly. 

So should you. 

My latest book Lives of the Stoics is available for preorder now—and there’s all sorts of bonus chapters and extra material that you’ll only get if you preorder it right now . Preorder your copy today and receive:

An audio interview between the two authors of Lives of the Stoics, Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman


Three bonus chapters on some of the most Stoic figures in modern US history, James Mattis, James Stockdale, and Arianna Huffington


Preorder five or more copies and receive a free Marcus Aurelius “Waste No More Time Arguing What A Good Man Should Be. Be One.” print from the Daily Stoic Store (shipping not included) 

Click here to preorder your copy now .

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Moderation Is the Highest Form of Greatness. Here’s Why.

You can preorder signed copies of my new book Lives of the Stoics here.

This is not a political argument.

But it says something about our politics right now that the right in America is convinced that Joe Biden is a radical leftist, while the progressive left holds up their collective nose at his unacceptable reputation as an establishment Democrat, which is to say, a “moderate.”

As if moderation hasn’t been considered a key virtue for thousands of years!

Just look at Aristotle’s Golden Mean. Most virtues, the philosopher explained, exist as a midpoint between two vices. Courage, for example, exists in the middle of recklessness on the one end and cowardice on the other. Love sits between obsession and apathy. Justice, between authoritarianism and anarchy.

Instead of understanding and admiring moderation, we’ve come to see it as a kind of weakness wherever it shows up in the culture. The reaction to the retirement of Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck at the beginning of last year’s NFL season is just one of many recent illustrations. Despite four appearances in the Pro Bowl, three trips to the playoffs, two AFC South titles and nearly $100 million in career earnings, Luck was derided by many sportswriters for choosing not to continue to play through the pain, or grind himself down for the game. How dare he have enough, they said. How dare he leave $450 million on the table. He should be driven to win at all costs. Leave it all out there on the field… including his future. Why not? He should have no interests worth pursuing outside football, anyway!

In politics, we have similarly deranged priorities. We’re not looking for competency, we’re not looking for experience, we’re not looking for somebody who can effectively compromise and collaborate with others to actually pass legislation or lead diverse interests, locally or nationally. No. We want stridency! Purity! We either want someone who will burn it all down or someone who will build it back up, but only if it’s to our exacting, ambitious specifications, no exceptions. A destroyer of worlds or a builder of fantasy—nothing in between. 

Moderation? Someone who understands there is merit in the grievances from both sides of the political spectrum? That’s a vice. You’re either an unpatriotic cuck and a simp or a xenophobic white supremacist. If that sounds crazy, watch what happens anytime anybody says anything reasonable these days. They are immediately besieged by both sides. 

And let’s not even get started with pleasure or money or anything else like that. More is better. The person with the most is obviously the happiest and the best, right? Would there even be reality television without immoderate people? Or is pop and influencer culture almost entirely predicated on people who, with no sense of self-awareness, have given themselves over entirely to the pursuit of total pleasure, mega fame, multi-millions and absolute power?

We even get the word “Epicurean” wrong. In reality, Epicurus was a very moderate guy. There’s a letter he once sent to a patron who had offered him whatever he wanted. Epicurus could have requested money or exotic goods. Instead, he asked for a small pot of cheese. That’s it! That’s all the famous Epicurean wanted. We’re so depraved, we’ve come to use that word as a cover for our own excesses.

Epicurus made this specific request of his patron because he knew that simple, ordinary pleasures, enjoyed in moderation, were actually the most enjoyable. As he wrote in a letter: 

By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the mind. It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of merrymaking, not the satisfaction of lusts, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the motives of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest disturbances take possession of the soul. Of all this the greatest good is prudence. For this reason prudence is a more precious thing even than the other virtues, for a life of pleasure which is not also a life of prudence, honour, and justice; nor lead a life of prudence, honour, and justice, which is not also a life of pleasure. For the virtues have grown into one with a pleasant life, and a pleasant life is inseparable from them.

That idea of avoiding the hangover—of knowing the reasonable limits and prudently following them? This is just another way of thinking about moderation. Better that Andrew Luck walk away from football while he could still walk away, than to hang on for one hit too many and regret it for the rest of his painful life. In Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs talk condescendingly about people who sold their companies too early—as if $1B for Instagram wasn’t more money than a person could spend in a lifetime. The people who let it ride and lost everything? We seem to pretend those folks don’t exist. 

Moderation is not being a pussy. It’s being smart. It’s knowing what enough is. It’s getting out while the getting is good. Sure, it’s also about leaving a little on the table sometimes, even in the most critical moments, but there are far worse sins in this world. It mean even mean *gasp* being merciful to the other side when you win.

To bring this back to where I began—politics—but in a non-partisan way, I think this passage from David Brooks is worth reading, whatever party you belong to.

If you look at who actually leads change over the course of American history, it’s not the radicals. 

At a certain point, radicals give way to the more prudent and moderate wings of their coalitions. In the 1770s, the rabble-rousing Samuel Adams gave way to the more moderate John Adams (not to mention George Washington, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton). In the middle of the 19th century, radicals like John Brown and purists like Horace Greeley gave way to the incrementalist Abraham Lincoln. In the Progressive era, the radicals and anarchists who started the labor movement in the 1880s gave way to Theodore Roosevelt. 

Radicals are not good at producing change because while they are good at shaking up the culture, they don’t have practical strategies to pass legislation when you have to get the support of 50 percent plus one.

What Brooks is doing is making an argument for moderates—not Biden specifically, but moderates generally. Not strident purists or populists, but people who understand that both sides are likely to have good ideas and, more essentially, that you need buy-in from more than just your own side to create change. 

Moderation is not just splitting the difference. It’s not refusing to take a stand. It’s actually a pretty radical and difficult position to hold. Aristotle defined it as the hardest thing in the world to do—to find the right “feelings at the right time, on the right occasion, towards the right people, for the right purpose and in the right manner, is to feel the best amount of them, which is the mean amount—and the best amount.” He says that since feelings and actions are the objects of greatness, “feelings and actions excess and deficiency are errors, while the mean amount is praised, and constitutes success.”

I’ll grant you that it’s more exciting, more inspiring to be idealistic… but only on paper. The real work—the tangible, sustainable work—is done by the people who are neither pessimistic or delusional. It’s done by the pragmatists, who know how to balance what could be done with what can be done. 

In fact, the entire American system is designed around moderation. Almost all the decisions of the founders were designed to make it really hard to rule from an extreme or minority position. The need for compromise and settling was a feature, not a bug of the system. It was to prevent lurching from one set of policies to the other. It was to reduce the changes of ideological swings made in the heat of a crisis, or in reaction to a trend.

There is even a supposed exchange between Washington and Jefferson over breakfast. Why do we pour our coffee from the cup to the saucer, Washington asked? (This was how coffee used to be consumed.) To cool it, Jefferson replied. The Senate, Washington replied, with its longer term lengths and smaller size, was designed for the same purpose. To cool legislation instead of being burned by political pressure that is more constant and severe in the House with its larger numbers, smaller constituencies and biennial elections. 

It’s not just about the noun—being “a moderate”—it’s about the verb, too. Moderating. 

I’m not saying any of this to necessarily endorse Joe Biden. I am just making a plea for that old but forgotten virtue in politics as well as in life. 

You don’t respond to a lurch in one direction by lurching the opposite way with equal force. The dangers of right-wing populism should not be answered with left-wing populism. Both are dumb and impossible to govern with. Just because everyone else is running their life to the extreme, just because other people are unhealthy, doesn’t mean you have to be, too.

Moderation is key. 

My new book Lives of the Stoics is of course in part about moderation–as that’s a key virtue of Stoicism—and I think a running theme through the lives of the 26 ancient Stoic philosophers I study in the book. I’m really excited about this one and can’t wait for you to read it. If you pre-order it now, there are a bunch of awesome free bonuses and of course it helps me out a great deal. B&N has a limited run of signed copies as well. It hits stores 9/29, but please do preorder it now !

The post Moderation Is the Highest Form of Greatness. Here’s Why. appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

10 Ways to Find Stillness in Turbulent Times

Perhaps it takes something as crazy as the world right now to understand what that word stillness means. Intuitively, instinctively, when we hear it—especially right now—we know the importance of stillness. 

The quiet. The confidence. The gratitude and happiness. The beauty. The ability to step back and reflect. Being steady while everything spins around you. Acting without frenzy. Hearing only what needs to be heard. 

As Rome was being scourged by plague and war, Marcus Aurelius wrote about being “like the rock that the waves keep crashing over,” the one that “stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.” “Shrug it all off,” he writes, “wipe it clean—every annoyance and distraction—and reach utter stillness.”

YES! 

But how?

Thankfully, there are thousands of years of teachings about how to get there, proven exercises that will help you keep steady, disciplined, focused, at peace, and able to access your full capabilities at any time, in any place, despite any distraction and every difficulty. 

They come from across all the wisdom of the ancient world. I detail all of them in my book Stillness Is the Key, but here are 10 I adapted specifically for the crazy times we currently find ourselves in. These 10 ways to achieve stillness will work… but only if you work them.

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Stop Watching the News. The number-one thing to filter out if you want more equanimity in your life? The news! Epictetus had it right: “You become what you give your attention to… If you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will.” He also said that if we wish to improve, we must be content to be clueless on extraneous matters— the chatter, the idiots, the breaking gossip and the trivia that everyone else obsesses over. Not only does the news cost us our peace of mind, but it actually prevents us from creating real change, right now. Being informed is important… watching the news in real time is not how you get there. If you’d turned off the news in the US in March, what would have missed? You’re still supposed to wear a mask, it’s still wrong to be a racist, still wrong to loot or burn, incompetent leaders are still incompetent. But if you’d spent that time productively working, what could you have accomplished? And how much less anxious would you be?

Read Books. When I look at the stack of books I have managed to get through since the pandemic began seriously in America in March, not only do I feel fondness for the hours spent in those pages, but I know I am better off for what I learned. Dorothy Day, the Catholic journalist and social activist, wrote in her diary in 1942, “Put away your daily paper… and spend time reading.” She meant books. Read big, smart, wonderful books. Read the works of writers who took more time thinking about what they write than their readers do. Read what a writer poured their heart into, not what tries to pull yours out. Read what’s timeless, not timely. If you’re stressed, stop whatever you’re doing and sit down with a book. You’ll find yourself calming down. You’ll get absorbed into a different world. William Osler, one of the four founders of Johns Hopkins University, told aspiring medical students that when chemistry or anatomy distressed their soul, to “seek peace in the great pacifier, Shakespeare.” It doesn’t have to be plays—any great literature will do. Books are a way to get stillness on demand.

Journal. According to her father Otto, Anne Frank didn’t write in her journal every day, but she always wrote when she was upset or dealing with a problem. One of her best and most insightful lines must have come on a particularly difficult day. “Paper,” she said, “has more patience than people.” I journal each morning as a way of starting the day off fresh—I put my baggage down on the page so that I don’t have to carry it to meetings or to breakfast with my family. I start the day with stillness by pouring out what is not still into my journal. It’s a frustrating world out there, and Anne Frank is right: Paper is more patient than people. Don’t forget that there’s no right way or wrong way to journal. The point is just to do it. Whether you’re brand-new to the concept of journaling or you’ve journaled in the past and fallen out of practice, this ultimate guide to journaling will tell you everything you need to know to help you make journaling one of the best things you do.

Go for a Walk (or a Run). We are an ambulatory species and often the best way to find stillness—in our hearts and in our heads—is to get up and out on our feet. Personally, I’ve run and walked close to 1,300 miles since lockdown started. It’s not about burning calories or getting your heart rate up. On the contrary, it’s not about anything. It is instead just a manifestation, an embodiment of the concepts of presence, of detachment, of emptying the mind, of noticing and appreciating the beauty of the world around you. Walk away from the thoughts that need to be walked away from; walk toward the ones that have now appeared. On a good walk, the mind is not completely blank. It can’t be—otherwise you might trip over a root or get hit by a car or a bicyclist. The point is not, as in traditional meditation, to push every thought or observation from your mind. The point is to see what’s around you. The mind might be active while you do this, but it is still. It’s a different kind of thinking, a healthier kind if you do it right. A study at New Mexico Highlands University has found that the force from our footsteps can increase the supply of blood to the brain. Researchers at Stanford have found that walkers perform better on tests that measure “creative divergent thinking” during and after their walks. A study out of Duke University found that walking could be as effective a treatment for major depression in some patients as medication. When you inevitably find yourself a little stuck or frustrated today—go for a walk. Or better yet, go for a run.

Enjoy the Simple Pleasures. If you can teach yourself to be grateful for and to enjoy the ordinary pleasures, you will be happier than just about everyone. A bowl of cereal. A good sunset. A nice conversation with a friend. These are the moments to treasure. We don’t need to become emperor to feel good. We don’t need fancy restaurants. We don’t need to travel to exotic locations. We have so much available to us right now. The only catch is that you have to be here for it. You have to be present. You have to be grateful. You have to understand that every day you wake up alive and well is wonderful.  

Build a Routine. When things are chaotic and crazy, when the world feels like it’s falling apart, we need to create structure. Eisenhower famously said that freedom was properly defined as the opportunity for self-discipline, and so it is with disorder—it’s an opportunity to create order. Without a disciplined schedule, chaos and complacency and confusion move in. What was I going to do? What do I wear? What should I eat? What should I do first? What should I do after that? What sort of work should I do? Should I scramble to address this problem or rush to put out this fire? That’s not stillness, that’s torture. But when you routinize, disturbances give you less trouble. They’re boxed out—by the order and clarity you built. We need that order and clarity, especially now. (If you need some ideas on how to structure your day, here’s the routine Marcus Aurelius followed every day.) 

Seek Solitude. Randall Stutman, who for decades has been the behind-the-scenes advisor for many of the biggest CEOs and leaders on Wall Street, once studied how several hundred senior executives of major corporations recharged in their downtime. The answers were things like swimming, sailing, long-distance cycling, listening quietly to classical music, scuba diving, riding motorcycles, and fly fishing. All these activities, he noticed, had one thing in common: an absence of voices. Bill Gates schedules “think weeks” where he goes off by himself and just reads and thinks. I like to do my thinking while running and swimming and taking walks—and many of my book ideas have come from these activities. And how wonderful have the last few months been with fewer meetings? Fewer events? With quiet time to yourself? To think? To learn? To reconnect with what matters?  

Zoom Out. Marcus Aurelius wanted us “to bear in mind constantly that all of this has happened before. And will happen again—the same plot from beginning to end, the identical staging.” That’s not to say this problem isn’t serious. That’s not to say we aren’t facing real troubles. Of course we are. But we can turn down the volume of our anxiety and fear when we realize that this is just history unfolding before us. When we get overwhelmed or puffed up, we must find relief in remembering that none of this is new. That, in fact, this pattern of disease is nauseatingly familiar. It’s a pattern that has repeated itself like a fractal across history. Indeed, we could be talking about the “Antonine Plague” that killed millions of people during Marcus Aurelius’s reign, the Black Death, the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, or the cholera pandemics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, just as easily as we are today talking about COVID-19. As Marcus would say, all we’d have to do is change a few dates and names. All of this is running according to a tired script as old as time. Don’t let it get you down. This, Seneca believed, is the way to make all our problems, even the really vexing and painful ones, loosen their grip on us and seem less severe as a result. All you have to do, he says, is this: “Draw further back and laugh.” 

Make Time for Hobbies. “If action tires your body but puts your heart at ease,” Xunzi said, “do it.” Winston Churchill loved to paint and lay bricks on his country estate; his predecessor William Gladstone loved to chop down trees by hand. Even Jesus liked to go fishing with his friends! Assembling a puzzle, struggling with a guitar lesson, sitting on a quiet morning in a hunting blind, steadying a rifle or a bow while we wait for a deer, ladling soup in a homeless shelter, a long swim, lifting heavy weights—these are all great hobbies. One of the lovely trends I’ve been seeing is people baking bread, canning jams and pickles, and making food for friends and neighbors. They are rediscovering that life is made for living, not just for working. They are discovering the joy of simple activity. Mine are running and swimming and working on my farm. The last five evenings, my four-year-old and I went fishing for a few minutes after dinner. Engaged in these activities, my body is busy but my mind is open. My heart is, too.

Do Something for the Greater Good. The phrase “common good” appears more than 80 times in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. He said a good life is simply about moving from one unselfish action to another—“Only there,” he said, can we find “delight and stillness.” If we want to be good and feel good, we have to do good. Remember the Boy Scout slogan: Do a good turn daily. It can be big, or it can be small. It can be picking up trash you find on the ground or rushing to the scene of an accident. Doing good creates spiritual stillness. It makes the world a better place. Especially in a time where we seem to have lost our community-mindedness. Instinctually, overwhelmingly, everyone is now focused on themselves and their immediate unit. Gone is the spirit of the common good that Marcus talked so much about. Replacing it is anti-vaxxing, anti-masks, people having COVID parties so they can get the virus and be done with the hassle, the immuno-compromised be damned. Don’t let the modern spirit of selfishness infect you. Instead, focus on remembering what we are here. We are here for each other. We are part of something bigger than ourselves, a greater good to which we all owe a duty, above and beyond our own selfish concerns and desires. There is no one more still and admirable than the person who takes that duty seriously—and no one less still and admirable than the person who blows it off. 

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Stillness has been the secret weapon of the Stoics and the Buddhists, the Christians, the followers of Confucius, Epicurus, and so many others for thousands of years for a reason. Because it can help us thrive in a world that’s spinning faster than ever. 

Stillness is the key to the good life, whatever that looks like for you. It’s the key to career success, to happiness, to enduring adversity, to appreciating the wonders of existence. You know you want more of it. You know how special it is. We have all felt its power.

Now go get more of it.

It’s so easy to be overwhelmed by what’s happening in the world, but there is no greatness without stillness. It’s why the Stoics, the Buddhists, the Christians all talked about it as an essential virtue. My latest book, Stillness Is the Key debuted #1 on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists and is a formula for finding calm (and focus) amidst the din of everyday life. Check it out now.

The post 10 Ways to Find Stillness in Turbulent Times appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

Welcome to Life. There Are Only Hard Facts and Harder Decisions.

One thing this pandemic has shown is that people have a problem facing facts. 

I don’t mean facts in the sense of the scientific data, although that’s clearly a problem as well judging by the litany of conspiracy theories that have become acceptable even in polite company. 

I mean “facts” in the more colloquial sense—of coming to terms with reality and accepting it on reality’s terms. Just look at COVID-19.

We’ve taken a merciless, apolitical, indifferent but pretty well-understood virus, scientifically speaking, and turned it into a divisive, partisan argument. Every molecule seems subject to debate, because we have somehow come to believe that what we think about it, or our own personal needs in relation to it, have some relevance to its airborne spread from person to person, and its ability to kill with ruthlessness and painful efficiency. 

Perhaps nothing captures this impotent rage better than a tweet I saw from Laura Ingraham…

OK, Karen, would you like to speak to COVID-19’s manager?

Back here in reality where the rest of us live, it is an inescapable truth of human existence that there are some crises and problems so bad that they force those affected by them to live with the uncertainty that the crises create. They force us to stop doing things we’d like to do. They cost us things we really can’t afford. 

But, alas, there is no degree of forcefulness to an opinion nor staggering amount of need that can change those facts. 

Imagine someone living in America in 1942. No one could have told them when they’d be able to travel to Europe to see their aging parents again. No one could have told them when the rationing would stop. No one would have been able to say when their son would be released from the Army. No one could promise them that they were safe in their homes and would ultimately survive. The world war was a fact, and everybody had to deal with it. Like it or not. 

Life is like this. It’s uncertain. It’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t really care whether we really want or need something. It doesn’t care about us at all, really, it just is. 

Many years ago, I wrote a piece about our tendency to think that we could “vote on reality,” and how the internet was designed to encourage this impulse. From Twitter to Facebook to blogging, the platforms of social media are designed around the insidious idea that your opinion about things changes what they unflinchingly are. 

I think this is what Foster the People is singing about in their song, “The Truth”:

Well an absolute measure won’t change with opinion

no matter how hard you try

It’s an immovable thing

We are seduced by the idea that not liking some element of reality is powerful enough to will it to be different. That a simple objection is more powerful than objectivity. Of course, the Stoics had no time for this. Facts are facts, they say. Fate or Fortune or death have no care for your opinion. 

They were like Civil War historian James McPherson who, responding to Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 claim that European allies seemed to care more about tiny Northern defeats than his major victories, said simply: “Unreasonable it may have been, but it was a reality.” 

When we talk about facing facts, we are in part talking about making the hard choices that life demands—which usually means doing the harder thing. “At the top,” Secretary of State Dean Acheson once observed about the presidency, “there are no easy choices. All are between evils, the consequences of which are hard to judge.” He meant that all the simple, easy stuff gets handled by people lower down on the chain. The obvious stuff never makes it to the Oval Office. And so it is with life, too—the easy stuff is never much of an issue. There’s never any uncertainty about the things that don’t require any sacrifice and pain. 

I think he also means that it’s not the choices that are hard. In fact, the right thing is often obvious. It’s the consequences and the costs of that choice that are hard. It’s the complicated, difficult, unpleasant stuff that we adults end up having to wrestle with on the other side of our decisions that make the decisions seem so difficult. 

In reality, when it comes to a pandemic or a bankruptcy or a failing marriage, the choices are easy to the extent that they are simple and clear. It’s this or this. It’s A or B or C. The difficulty comes with the hard facts that must be swallowed as a consequence of picking one of those easy choices. Don’t you dare think that Acheson, when he said the consequences were hard to judge, was excusing leaders who preferred their own fantasies or wishful thinking to the hard realities of geopolitics.  

I see this with some of my friends, now considering whether to send their kids back to school. Even though most of the advice is against it; even though they regularly go overboard protecting their families from all sorts of much less dangerous things than a pandemic; even though they are otherwise good people who care about how their actions affect others—here they are saying something to the effect of “Well, it’s just so hard to know what the right thing is.”

Or my favorite: “How much longer can this go on?”

Truth goes on as long as it’s true!

What we’re saying when we throw up our hands at something like reopening the schools is, “I have a sense that I’m not making the right decision, but if I act bewildered, it excuses me from the consequences.” Or they are saying, “I get that generally this is a really bad idea, but my specific circumstances should be exempt from the otherwise unfavorable facts because it hasn’t been a problem in my town yet and the consequences of the other choice are more difficult than I’m comfortable with.” No! 

How has the track record for not listening to expert opinion gone in the United States over the last five months? Oh, right, it’s created one of the worst coronavirus breakouts in the world, one that has seen US citizens banned from international travel en masse, and has mayors from Texas to New York City requesting extra freezer trucks to support their overflowing morgues. We’re zeroing in on 200,000 dead! 67 9/11s. Four Vietnams. Eight times more than the American Revolution. (And the fact that lots of people also die of heart disease is not a response. They are dying of that too.) The country that, for a century, was called to rescue other countries from natural disasters is now the unlikely recipient of pity from New Zealand, Italy and Denmark. People love to talk about American exceptionalism—well, we are being exceptionally stupid.

And so we are now entering another phase of the crisis that will undeniably be shaped by people who, instead of dealing honestly and critically with the reality of the situation, are letting all sorts of other factors shape what they’re seeing (note: obviously the real blame lies with the feckless leaders who put them in the position in the first place). No sane person would look at a country with tens of thousands of new cases and 1,000+ deaths a day and think: “I should probably send my kid to hang out with thousands of other kids in small rooms, right?” Yet here we are, talking about how life has to go back to normal sometime…

But kids need school! you reply. 

I am reminded of a conversation between Col. Harry G. Summers and a North Vietnamese colonel after the Vietnam War. Summers pointed out that the US was never beaten on the battlefield. The man replied, “That is true. It is also irrelevant.”

We need a lot of things. My kids certainly do. But the facts come first, so we’re staying home. Not because we want to, but because, in truth, there is no choice. It’s why my businesses remain closed too. 

There is not much upside in a pandemic—not one that has killed nearly 200,000 Americans and close to a million people worldwide. But there is a lesson in it. 

It’s a lesson that we have done our best not to learn, that we have fought for some time now. 

That lesson is this: Life is hard. It is filled with hard facts and hard decisions. 

You cannot flee it. You can only defer the consequences for so long or, perhaps, if you are content to be an asshole, shirk them onto some other innocent person. 

Facts don’t care how hard they are. Just because you can’t bear something doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be borne. Just because you have an opinion—or a need—doesn’t mean it’s relevant. 

“There is a truth,” it says in the song I mentioned earlier, “I can promise you that.” 

It’s time to wake up, put on our big boy pants, and accept that we are living through a period of great discomfort and frightening uncertainty, and what you think or feel about that fact has precisely zero impact on the truth of our new reality  

We have to face the truth. Do the hard thing. 

*Two wrap up notes:

If you really really disagree with me on the school thing, just plug in any number of other examples: People going ahead with their weddings. Random hookups on Tinder because they “need the spontaneity.” People going on vacations. Pro football stadiums in Florida filled with fans. People who say things like, I like Trump but hate his tweets. 

And most importantly, if you disagree with me so much that this article makes you angry? Do me a favor and don’t reply. Your opinion will not change the facts, and I’m too tired to deal with anyone’s cognitive dissonance these days.

The post Welcome to Life. There Are Only Hard Facts and Harder Decisions. appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

10 Books That Will Blow Your Mind

In a book that changed my life, Marcus Aurelius thanks his mentor for introducing him to the book that changed his life. 

One person passing along brilliant writing to another: it’s a tradition as old as time. You may even already be a part of that tradition. You may have been introduced to a life-changing book by a friend or a family member.

But do you actively seek out more of these experiences? When was the last time you asked someone you admired for a book recommendation—or more specifically, for the book that changed their life? You hear smart people talking about books they’re reading or thinking about all the time, but do you make the effort to read them too? Or do they just sit on your mental to-do list or your Amazon “save for later” list, never to be read?

Imagine if Marcus just let that book sit on his desk. Imagine if he kept saving it for later. His whole life would have turned out differently. The history of the Western world may have been altered. Don’t let a version of that happen to you. Read these books. They will change your life.

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Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

To me, this is the greatest book ever written. I’ve read it a couple hundred times and have a large passage that I printed out and posted above my desk to look at before I start each day. For me, it was what Tyler Cowen calls a “quake book”—shaking everything I thought I knew about the world. It is the definitive text on self-discipline, personal ethics, humility, self-actualization and strength. If you read it and aren’t profoundly changed by it, it’s probably because, as Aurelius says, “what doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.” You HAVE to read the Gregory Hays translation. If you want a preview of Marcus, here are five of his best quotes in a video I did. 

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

If you want to live life on your terms, climb as high as you know you’re capable, and avoid being controlled by others—you need to read this book. Robert is an amazing researcher and storyteller. He has a profound ability to explain timeless truths through story and example. You can read the classics and not always understand the lessons. But if you read The 48 Laws of Power, I promise you will leave not just with actionable lessons but an indelible sense of what to do in many trying and confusing situations. Is there a darkness to this book? Yes. But there is a darkness to life, too. You have to understand it, be able to defend against it, and know how to know what you’re not willing to do. Here is my podcast with Robert about this book and others. 

The Autobiography of Malcolm X 

In 1946, Malcolm Little went to jail. Looking at a decade behind bars, he faced what Robert Greene calls an “Alive Time or Dead Time” scenario. He could have served his time simply counting the days. Instead, he started reading. He literally copied the dictionary word for word. Every minute he wasn’t in his bunk, he was in the library. That was how Malcolm Little was transformed into Malcolm X, one of the great civil rights leaders of the 20th century. There’s a lot to learn from his life and his choices. Two other timelessly relevant books these days are Invisible Man and My Bondage and My Freedom.

How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell 

Montaigne is one of humanity’s greatest treasures—a wise and insightful thinker who never takes himself too seriously. This book is spectacular. The format is a bit unusual—instead of chapters, it is made up of 20 Montaigne-style essays that discuss the man from a variety of different perspectives. Montaigne was a man obsessed with figuring himself out: why he thought the way he did, how he could find happiness, his fetishes, his near-death experiences. He lived in tumultuous times too, and he coped by looking inward. We’re lucky that he did, and we can do the same. (You might also like this piece I wrote almost a decade ago for Tim Ferriss’ blog, The Experimental Life: An Introduction to Michel de Montaigne.) This year I also re-read Stefan Zweig’s book about Montaigne, which is incredible. It’s the biography of a man who retreated from the chaos of 16th century France to study himself, written by a man fleeing the chaos of 20th century Europe. When I say it’s timely, I mean that it’s hard to be a thinking person and not see alarming warning signs about today’s world while reading this book.

History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

“There is no History, perhaps, better adapted to this useful purpose than that of Thucydides,” as John Adams wrote to his son in 1777. “You will find it full of Instruction to the Orator, the Statesman, the General, as well as to the Historian and the Philosopher.” Indeed, people in the State Department right now are reading Thucydides to better understand the rising threat of China. Countless millions—including many of the Stoics—have read it over the last 2000 years to understand the ethical dilemmas inherent in leadership, in war, in politics, and in life. Because Thucydides was so smart, so timeless, he is able to teach lessons to us even now. And because the countries and the events are so distant and impersonal to us, we can actually hear them, learn them, and apply them to the political situations we face today. 

Plutarch’s Lives

The structure and style of my next book—Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius—was inspired by Plutarch, the master of one of my favorite categories of books to recommend—moral biographies. That is, short biographical sketches about great men and women, written with an eye towards practical application and advice. As Plutarch prefaced his portrait of Alexander the Great, “I am writing biography, not history, and the truth is that the most brilliant exploits often tell us nothing of the virtues or vices of the men who performed them, while on the other hand a chance remark or a joke may reveal far more of a man’s character than the mere feat of winning battles in which thousands fall.” That’s why Shakespeare based many of his plays on the stories of Plutarch; not only are they well-written and exciting, but they exhibit everything that is good and bad about the human condition. Greed, love, pain, hate, success, selflessness, leadership, stupidity—it’s all there. 

What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg

This was one of the first books I read when I started working in Hollywood, and it had a powerful impact on me at 19. Some 10 years later, I pulled the book from my shelf while finishing the first draft of Ego Is the Enemy and rediscovered three handwritten pages of notes I folded and stuck in the back. Those notes expressed many of the painful lessons I wanted to share in Ego, so I adapted them into the epilogue that made it to publication. What Makes Sammy Run? is a novel that reminds us that even when egotists “win,” they lose. My favorite quote: “What a tremendous burning and blinding light ambition can be where there is something behind it, and what a puny flickering sparkler when there isn’t.” It’s also a fascinating look at the entertainment industry and what makes hustlers and strivers do the things they do.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

A man is sent to a concentration camp and finds some way for good to come of it. He finds some way to turn it into the ultimate metaphor for life: that we have little control over our circumstances, but complete control over our attitude and the ability to make meaning out of the things which happen to us. In Frankl’s case, we are lucky that he was a brilliant psychologist and writer and managed to turn all this into one of the most important books of the 20th century. I constantly think of his line about the man who asks, “What is the meaning of life?” The answer is that you don’t get to ask the question. Life is the one who asks and we must reply with our actions.

Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen

There is nobody who has exposed me to more books and ideas than Tyler Cowen. Tyler is a polymath, a diverse and contrarian thinker who has incredible taste in ideas, ways of thinking, and modern and classical wisdom. In terms of business/economics, Average Is Over is one of the more important books I’ve ever read. For a long time, I even kept a framed passage from it on my wall (it also inspired a piece of writing I am proud of). Although much of what Cowen proposes will be uncomfortable, he has a tone that borders on cheerful. I think that’s what makes this so convincing and so eye-opening.

Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin

This is an absolutely incredible book. It is a study of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and Lyndon Johnson, and it is so clearly the culmination of a lifetime of research… and yet, somehow, it is not overwhelming or boring. Distillation at its best! I have read extensively on each of those figures and I got a ton out of it. Even with things I already knew, I benefited from Goodwin’s perspective. This is the perfect book to read right now. 

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Now, the most important part. “To read attentively,” as Marcus put it, “not to be satisfied with ‘just getting the gist of.’” Go to the library. Pull up Amazon and buy the cheapest used copy you can find. “Borrow it” from a friend. Whatever it takes—read. It will change your life!

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9 Short Quotes That Changed My Life and Why

Like a lot of people, I try to collect words to live by. Most of these words come from reading, but also from conversations, from teachers, and from everyday life. As Seneca, the philosopher and playwright, so eloquently put it:

We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application—not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech—and learn them so well that words become works.

In my commonplace book, I keep these little sayings under the heading “Life.” That is, things that help me live better, more meaningfully, and with happiness and honesty. Below are 9 sayings, what they mean, and how they changed my life. Perhaps they will strike you and be of service. Hopefully the words might become works for you too.

“If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.” —Nassim Taleb

This little epigram from Nassim Taleb has been a driving force in my life. It fuels my writing, but mostly it has fueled difficult personal decisions. A few years ago, I was in the middle of a difficult personal situation in which my financial incentives were not necessarily aligned with the right thing. Speaking out would cost me money. I actually emailed Nassim. I asked: “What does ‘saying’ entail? To the person? To the public? At what cost? And how do you know where/when ego might be the influencing factor in determining where you decide to go on that public/private spectrum?” His response was simple: If it harms the collective, you speak up until it no longer does. There’s another line in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Caesar, having returned from the conquest of Gaul, is reminded to tread lightly when speaking to the senators. He replies, “Have I accomplished so much in battle, but now I’m afraid to tell some old men the truth?” That is what I think about with Nassim’s quote. What’s the point of working hard and being successful if it means biting your tongue (or declining to act) when you see something unfair or untoward? What do you care what everyone else thinks?

“It can have meaning if it changes you for the better.” —Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl, who was imprisoned and survived three separate Nazi concentration camps, lost his wife, his parents, job, his home and the manuscript that his entire life’s work had gone into. Yet, he emerged from this horrific nightmare convinced that life was not meaningless and that suffering was not without purpose. His work in psychology—now known as logotherapy—is reminiscent of the Stoics: We don’t control what happens to us, only how we respond. Nothing deprives us of this ability to respond, even if only in the slightest way, even if that response is only acceptance. In bad moments, I think of this line. It reminds me that I can change for the better because of it and find meaning in everything—even if my “suffering” pales in comparison to what others have gone through.

“Thou knowest this man’s fall; but thou knowest not his wrassling.” —James Baldwin

As James Baldwin reflected on the death of his father, a man who he loved and hated, he realized that he only saw the man’s outsides. Yes, he had his problems but hidden behind those external manifestations was his own unique internal struggle which no other person is ever able to fully comprehend. The same is true for everyone—your parents, your boss, the person behind you in line. We can see their flaws but not their struggles. If we can focus on this, we’ll have so much more patience and so much less anger and resentment. It reminds me of another line that means a lot to me from Pascal: “To understand is to forgive.” You don’t have to fully understand or know, but it does help to try.

“This is not your responsibility but it is your problem.” —Cheryl Strayed

Though I came to Cheryl Strayed late, the impact has been significant. In the letter this quote came from, she was speaking to someone who had something unfair done to them. But you see, life is unfair. Just because you should not have to deal with something doesn’t change whether you in fact need to. It reminds me of something my parents told me when I was learning to drive: It doesn’t matter that you had the right of way if you end up dying in an accident. Deal with the situation at hand, even if you don’t want to, even if someone else should have to, because you’re the one that’s being affected by it. End of story. Her quote is the best articulation I’ve found of that fact.

“Dogs bark at what they cannot understand.” —Heraclitus

People are going to criticize you. They are going to resist or resent what you try to do. You’re going to face obstacles and a lot of those obstacles will be other human beings. Heraclitus is explaining why. People don’t like change. They don’t like to be confused. It’s also a fact that doing new things means forcing change and confusion on other people. So, if you’re looking for an explanation for all the barking you’re hearing, there it is. Let it go, keep working, do your job. My other favorite line from Heraclitus is: “Character is fate.” Who you are and what you stand for will determine who you are and what you do. Surely character makes ignoring the barking a bit easier.

“Life is short—the fruit of this life is a good character and acts for the common good.” —Marcus Aurelius

Marcus wrote this line at some point during the Antonine Plague—a global pandemic spanning the entirety of his reign. He could have fled Rome. Most people of means did. No one would have faulted him if he did too. Instead, Marcus stayed and braved the deadliest plague of Rome’s 900-year history. And we know that he didn’t even consider choosing his safety and fleeing over his responsibility and staying. He wrote repeatedly about the Stoic concept of sympatheia—the idea that all things are mutually woven together, that we were made for eachother, that we are all one. It’s one of the lesser-known Stoic concepts because it’s easier to only think and care about the people immediately around you. It’s tempting to get consumed by your own problems. It’s natural to assume you have more in common and the same interests as the people who look like you or live like you do. But that is an insidious lie—one responsible for monstrous inhumanity and needless pain. When other people suffer, we suffer. When the world suffers, we suffer. What’s bad for the hive is bad for the bee, Marcus said. When we take actions, we have to always think: What would happen if everyone did this? What are the costs of my decisions for other people? What risks am I externalizing? Is this really what a person with good character and a concern for others would do? You have to care about others. It’s sometimes the hardest thing to do, but it’s the only thing that counts. As Heraclitus (one of Marcus’ favorites) said, character is fate. It’s the fruit of this life. 

“Happiness does not come from the seeking, it is never ours by right.” —Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt was a remarkable woman. Her father killed himself. Her mother was verbally abusive. Her husband repeatedly betrayed her—even up to the moment he died. Yet she slowly but steadily became one of the most influential and important people in the world. I think you could argue that happiness and meaning came from this journey too. Her line here is reminiscent of something explained by both Aristotle and Viktor Frankl—happiness is not pursued, it ensues. It is the result of principles and the fulfillment of our potential. It is also transitory—we get glimpses of it. We don’t have it forever and we must continually re-engage with it. Whatever quote you need to understand this truth, use it. Because it will get you through bad times and to very good ones.

“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” —Marcus Aurelius

If there is better advice than this, it has yet to be written. For many civilizations, the first time that their citizens realize just how vulnerable they are is when they find out they’ve been conquered, or are at the mercy of some cruel tyrant, or some uncontainable disease. It’s when somebody famous—like Tom Hanks or Marcus Aurelius—falls ill that they get serious. The result of this delayed awakening is a critical realization: We are mortal and fragile, and fate can inflict horrible things on our tiny, powerless bodies. There is no amount of fleeing or quarantining we can do to insulate ourselves from the reality of human existence: memento mori—thou art mortal. No one, no country, no planet is as safe or as special as we like to think we are. We are all at the mercy of enormous events outside our control. You can go at any moment, Marcus was constantly reminding himself with each of the events swirling around him. He made sure this fact shaped every choice and action and thought. 

“Some lack the fickleness to live as they wish and just live as they have begun.” —Seneca

After beginning with Seneca, let’s end with him. Inertia is a powerful force. The status quo—even if self-created—is comforting. So people find themselves on certain paths in life and cannot conceive of changing them, even if such a change would result in more personal happiness. We think that fickleness is a negative trait, but if it pushes you to be better and find and explore new, better things, it certainly isn’t. I’ve always been a proponent of dropping out, of quitting paths that have gotten stale. Seneca’s quote has helped me with that and I actually have it framed next to my desk so that I might look at it each day. It’s a constant reminder: Why am I still doing this? Is it for the right reasons? Or is it just because it’s been that way for a while?

—

The power of these quotes is that they say a lot with a little. They help guide us through the complexity of life with their unswerving directness. They make us better, keep us centered, give us something to rest on—a kind of backstop to prevent backsliding. That’s what these 9 quotes have done for me in my life. Borrow them or dig into history or religion or philosophy to find some to add to your own commonplace book. 

And then turn those words… into works.

The post 9 Short Quotes That Changed My Life and Why appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

How to Have the Best Week Ever

Life is short, so it matters how you spend it.

As Seneca points out, “We are not given a short life, but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.” A minute is long if you know how to use it. A week is plenty of time if you don’t waste it.

So that’s what the Stoics thought so much about: How to break down and organize their time. What to do—and not do—in the course of a life in order to ensure we effectively live the time we have been given.

We now have 2,000 years of stress testing applied to some of their insights and so based on their time-proven wisdom, I present to you how to have a great week, per the Stoics.

1: Rise and Shine

“On those mornings you struggle with getting up, keep this thought in mind—I am awakening to the work of a human being. Why then am I annoyed that I am going to do what I’m made for, the very things for which I was put into this world? Or was I made for this, to snuggle under the covers and keep warm? It’s so pleasurable. Were you then made for pleasure? In short, to be coddled or to exert yourself?” —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.1

It’s comforting to think that the emperor of Rome (who was reportedly an insomniac) had to give himself a pep talk in order to summon the willpower to throw off the blankets and get out of bed.

From the time we’re first sent off to school until the day we retire, we’re faced with that same struggle. It always seems nicer to shut our eyes and hit the snooze button a few times.

But we can’t—because we have a job to do. Not only do we have the calling we’re dedicated to, but we have the larger cause that the Stoics speak about: the greater good. We cannot be of service to ourselves, to other people, or to the world unless we get up and get working—the earlier the better. So c’mon. Get in the shower, have your coffee, and get going.

2: Prepare Yourself for Negativity
“When you first rise in the morning tell yourself: I will encounter busybodies, ingrates, egomaniacs, liars, the jealous, and cranks. They are all stricken with these afflictions because they don’t know the difference between good and evil. Because I have understood the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, I know that these wrong-doers are still akin to me … and that none can do me harm, or implicate me in ugliness—nor can I be angry at my relatives or hate them. For we are made for cooperation.” —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.1

Life is full of suffering, acute and benign. We come down with the flu. We are hit with a costly expense. Someone with power over us abuses their responsibility. Someone we love lies or hurts us. People die. People commit crimes. Natural disasters strike.

All of this is commonplace and inevitable. It happens. Everyday. To us and to everyone else.

That would be bad enough, yet we choose to make this pain worse. How? By pretending we are immune from it. By assuming we will be exempted. Or that only those who have somehow deserved it will find themselves in the crosshairs of Fortune. Then we are surprised when our number comes up, and so we add to our troubles a sense of unfairness and a stumbling lack of preparedness. Our denial deprives us even of the ability to tense up before the blow lands.

“You should assume that there are many things ahead you will have to suffer,” Seneca reminds us. “Is anyone surprised at getting a chill in winter? Or getting seasick while on the sea? Or that they get bumped walking a city street? The mind is strong against things it has prepared for.”

This is premeditatio malorum. What is likely to happen? What can possibly happen? What are the tortures that life inflicts on human beings? And then, more importantly, am I ready for them?

3: Clarify Your Principles
“You’ve wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere. Then where is it to be found? In doing what human nature requires. How? Through first principles. Which should govern your intentions and your actions.” —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.1

In the opening chapter of his book Call Sign Chaos: Learning To Lead, the retired US Marine Corps general and former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis talks about the fundamental lessons he learned in his early years as a Marine. In particular, he writes: “Know what you will stand for and, more important, what you won’t stand for… State your flat-ass rules and stick to them. They shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.” Least of all, you.

Marcus Aurelius called them “epithets for the self.” Upright. Modest. Straightforward. Sane. Cooperative. Disinterested. Those were his non-negotiables. Think for a second about the position Marcus was in. He had absolute power. In his own time, his statue was displayed in homes across the empire. He could have done whatever he wanted.

Isn’t that why people chase power, success, greatness? So they can be freed from trivial rules and regulations? So they can do whatever they want?

But what the truly great know is that complete freedom is a nightmare. They know that no one has less serenity than the person who does not know what is right or wrong. No one is more exhausted than the person who, because they lack a moral code, must belabor every decision and consider every temptation. No one wastes more time than the person who is winging it. Life is meaningless to the person who decides their choices have no meaning. Meanwhile, the person who knows what they value? Who knows what they will and won’t stand for?Who has a strong sense of decency and principle and behaves accordingly? Who possesses easy moral self-command, who leans comfortably upon this goodness, day in and day out? This person has clarity and tranquility.

That’s what Marcus promised would happen if one followed this prescription. “If you maintain your claim to these epithets,” he wrote, “without caring if others apply them to you or not—you’ll become a new person, living a new life.”

What are your flat-ass rules? What are your principles? Your epithets? Don’t wing it. Life is chaotic and confusing enough. Give yourself some clarity and some certainty.

4: Be Ruthless to the Things That Don’t Matter
“How many have laid waste to your life when you weren’t aware of what you were losing, how much was wasted in pointless grief, foolish joy, greedy desire, and social amusements—how little of your own was left to you. You will realize you are dying before your time!” —Seneca, On the Brevity of Life, 3.3b

One of the hardest things to do in life is say “no.” To invitations, to requests, to obligations, to the stuff that everyone else is doing. 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 commitments like anything else.

If you’re not careful, these are precisely the impositions that will overwhelm and consume your life. Do you ever wonder how you can get some of your time back or how you can feel less busy? Start today off by utilizing the power of “no”—as in “No, thank you,” and “No, I’m not going to get caught up in that,” and “No, I just can’t right now.”

It may hurt some feelings. It may turn people off. It may take hard work. But the more you say no to the things that don’t matter, the more you can say yes to the things that do. This will let you live and enjoy the life that you want.

For more on saying “no,” you can check out this video, Why You Should Say No, as well as this article, To Everyone Who Asks For “Just A Little” Of Your Time: Here’s What It Costs To Say Yes.

5: Turn “Have To” Into “Get To”
“The task of a philosopher: We should bring our will into harmony with whatever happens, so that nothing happens against our will and nothing that we wish for fails to happen.” —Epictetus, Discourses, 2.14.7

What does a Stoic say to adversity? To recessions? To pandemics? To setbacks and struggles and months stuck inside? To uncertainty and cramped quarters and a collapse of confidence? What do they say to the looming question that has so many people scared—“What if things get worse?”

They say what Bruce Springsteen said:

Bring on your wrecking ball

Come on and take your best shot, let me see what you’ve got

Bring on your wrecking ball

Marcus Aurelius didn’t believe that it was unfortunate that bad things happened to him. He said, “No, this is fortunate that it happened to me.” Because not everyone would have been able to handle it.

But you can. Because you trained for this. Because you know how to find the opportunity inside of difficulty, because you have harnessed the power of amor fati. Other people might be thrown back by what has happened, others still might be able to muddle through, but not you. You’re going to be improved by this. You’re going to triumph over this. You get to prove your mettle.

That’s why you say: Bring it on. That’s why you say hit me with your best shot. Because you have plans to use it. Because you’re going to step up and make something of this moment. Because you know that’s the only part of this that’s up to you.

6: Take a Walk (or a Run)
“We should take wandering outdoor walks, so that the mind might be nourished and refreshed by the open air and deep breathing.” —Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind, 17.8

In his famous Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laertes tells us that the philosopher Chrysippus trained as a long-distance runner before he discovered Stoicism. One can only imagine the influence this training had on Chrysippus, and how it put him in a position to understand a philosophy based on self-discipline, inner-control and endurance. The saying in the ancient world was, “But for Chrysippus, there had been no Porch” (the stoa in Stoicism). But if not for the many miles of running, would there have been a Chrysippus?

There are plenty more philosophers, writers, and poets who have found the same benefits not just in running but in walking. In a notoriously loud city like Rome, it was impossible to get much peace and quiet. The noise of wagons, the shouting of vendors, and the hammering of blacksmiths all filled the streets with piercing auditory violence. So philosophers went on a lot of walks—to get where they needed to go, to clear their heads, and to get fresh air. In the process they discovered an important side-effect: it helped them make better work. As Nietzsche would later say, “It is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.” Thoreau, another avid walker, claimed “the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.”

Remember that if you find yourself a little stuck or frustrated today. Go for a walk. Or better yet, go for a run. And in the future, when you get stressed or overwhelmed, take a walk. When you have a tough problem to solve or a decision to make, take a walk. When you want to be creative, take a walk. When you need to get some air, take a walk. When you have a phone call to make, take a walk. When you need some exercise, take a long walk. When you have a meeting or a friend over, take a walk together.

Nourish yourself and your mind and solve problems along the way.

If you’re not yet convinced of the power of walking, I encourage you to read this piece: Take A Walk: The Work & Life Benefits of Walking.

7: Review
“I will keep constant watch over myself and—most usefully—will put each day up for review. 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.” —Seneca, Moral Letters, 83.2

Winston Churchill was famously afraid of going to bed at the end of the day having not created, written or done anything that moved his life forward. “Every night,” he wrote, “I try myself by Court Martial to see if I have done anything effective during the day. I don’t mean just pawing the ground, anyone can go through the motions, but something really effective.”

In a letter to his older brother Novatus, Seneca describes the exercise he borrowed from another prominent philosopher. At the end of each day, he would sit down with a journal and 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, and what could be improved. It’s for this reason that Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations is a somewhat inscrutable book—it was for personal clarity, not public benefit. Writing down Stoic exercises was and is a form of practicing them, just as repeating a prayer or hymn might be.

Keep your own journal, whether it’s saved on a computer or on paper. 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. Write down what you’d like to work on or quotes that you like. By making the effort to record such thoughts, you’re less likely to forget them. An added bonus: You’ll have a running tally to track your progress.

If there’s been a silver lining in the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that we were reminded immediately and unceremoniously that life should never be taken for granted. Sometime during the Antonine Plague, Marcus admonished himself to not put anything off until tomorrow because today was the only thing he controlled (and to get out of bed and get moving for the same reason). The Stoics knew that fate was unpredictable and that death could come at any moment. Therefore, it was a sin (and stupidity) to take time for granted.

Today is the most valuable thing you own. It is the only thing you have. Don’t waste it. Seize it. Live it.

The post How to Have the Best Week Ever appeared first on RyanHoliday.net.

It’s Not About Routine, but About Practice

In a world where everything is uncertain.

Where things are changing quickly. 

Where chaos reigns. 

And very little is under our control.

What we need is simple. 

It’s something that human beings have needed for all time—whether they were kings or artists, parents or farmers, senators or soldiers. 

We need practices.

What I’m not talking about are routines. Although daily routines are important, and many of us rely on them, the truth is that routines are fragile. 

Hasn’t this pandemic shown that? Suddenly you aren’t taking your kids to school. And then every part of your routine that is triggered by dropping the kids off starts to shift, like tectonic plates after an earthquake. Assuming, of course, that those other parts haven’t been crushed or subducted themselves. Suddenly you’re not able to go to your favorite  gym at your favorite time. Suddenly you’re not going into the office at all… because there is no office to go to. Your job no longer exists. 

Practices are different. Practices are things you do regularly—perhaps daily, perhaps not—but in no particular order. They are things you return to, time and time again, to center yourself. To reset. To reconnect. To focus. 

Waking up everyday at 6 a.m. and watching the news while you have your coffee: that’s part of a routine. Prayer or meditation: that’s a practice. Eating at the same lunch place and same time everyday is a routine. Being vegan or eating kosher is a practice. Journaling is a practice. Going to the 9 a.m. CrossFit class is a routine. Exercising regularly is a practice. 

The difference is in the flexibility. 

One is about daily rhythm. The other is a lifelong pursuit. One can be ruined by something as simple as hitting the snooze button one too many times or getting called into work unexpectedly. The other can adapt accordingly. One is something you made up. The other is something you do. 

Over the last couple years, I’ve gotten to interview some of the best artists on the planet about the behind-the-scenes of their work. “It’s a wild collage of human behavior,” as Austin Kleon has said about studying the routines of creative people, “like visiting a human zoo.” Some artists like the quiet before everyone else wakes up. Others like the quiet after everyone has gone to sleep. Some treat it like a 9-5. Others like a shift worker. Some break up the day with a nap. Others with a run. Some stop working when they run out of momentum, so they know where to pick back up tomorrow. Others when they are building momentum, so they know where to pick back up tomorrow. No two routines are the same.

And yet the key practices are nearly universal…

…journaling

…set wake up time

…quiet moments of reflection

…exercise

…reading

…walks

Think of someone like Marcus Aurelius. As we’ve talked about, he lived in a time of chaos and dysfunction, featuring brutal wars, devastating plagues, natural disasters, famines, political turmoil, and a plummeting economy. That’s to say nothing of his personal life—he buried eight children, his wife was probably unfaithful, his stepbrother and co-emperor was a ne’er-do-well, and his only son to outlive him was deranged. While his adopted father and cherished mentor, Antoninus, enjoyed a peaceful reign for over two decades, from the day Marcus put on the purple, it was one obstacle after the next. And it didn’t let up for any of the 15 years during which he ruled. 

It’d be hard to sum it up better than Cassius Dio: “He didn’t have the luck which he deserved… but was confronted, throughout his reign, by a multitude of disasters.”

But what centered him through all this were his daily practices. Journaling. Reading. Hunting and riding horses. A quick dip in the baths. Some friendly philosophical banter with Fronto or Sextus. Family time. If any of these were routine, he would have written somewhere in his journals or letters about when he preferred doing this or that. He didn’t have the luck or luxury to be rigid. Instead, he said, “to live life in peace” requires resilience and adaptability. Resilience is “keeping your mind calm… sizing up what’s around—and ready to make good use of whatever happens… while Adaptability adds, ‘You’re just what I was looking for.’”

Same with Seneca. His daily routine was undoubtedly subject to intrusion from his health problems, his exiles, and Nero’s descent into madness. But what remained remarkably consistent and unperturbed was his practice of letter writing, his habit of “wandering walks,” his cold plunges, and his search for “one piece of wisdom” per day. 

When we talk about stillness, we don’t mean the absence of activity. In fact, what we are referring to are activities that create stillness while the world is spinning out of control around us. Marcus Aurelius used the image of the rock surrounded by the raging sea. Perhaps a better image is of the Buddhist that Eugen Herrigal writes about in The Method of Zen, who calmly meditated through a terrible earthquake. 

This is what daily practices give us. 

Winston Churchill is a great example of how a good life should have both routine and practices. When at Chartwell, his estate, he liked to wake up at the same time each day, do the same things each day—especially when he was writing. There was the time he took his afternoon nap, the time he poured his first drink, the time he took his bath. That was part of the routine. But the bedrock practices—reading history and poetry, painting, bricklaying—these things transcended the day. They were lifelong pursuits. They were things he turned to whether a war was breaking out or whether his depression was creeping back into view. 

If he had time for these practices, then certainly you do too.

There is not a lot of good that can come out of a global pandemic, but one thing we can use it for is to reset and reorganize the building blocks our lives and our days are set upon.We can get our act together. We can create and adjust and fine-tune our habits and practices while we have the time. Because in a world filled with despair and chaos, what we need is hope and dependability. We have the power to create ritual and the moments of peace that ripple out from them. 

Maybe right now you’re stuck at home. Maybe you’re not working. Your kids might be home with you. Certainly the normal way of doing things has been significantly altered. Almost certainly, your routines have been blown apart. 

I experienced this when I had kids. I also experience it when I travel. As much as I would like this to be simple and controllable, it isn’t. So I’ve had to work to loosen my grip on the routines (plural) I’ve built over time and focus more on practices that don’t depend on my ability to do the same thing everyday in a precise way to be “successful.” 

Maybe your work is shift-based, or it’s the feast or famine life of a freelancer. It doesn’t matter. Routine might be out of reach, but practices never are. 

Wherever I am, whatever is going on, what know is that every single day, I am able to make time to journal, to exercise, to walk, to write. The order can change, but the activities remain the same. I have rules too—for instance, no touching the phone for one hour after I wake up, I don’t watch television news, I’m only reachable through three channels, I never put more than three things on my calendar per day if I can help it, I fast for 16 hours, I don’t buy wi-fi on planes, I always carry a book with me. And if I am unable to do these things, or if the rules are violated, my productivity and my mental health suffers. 

That’s what the Stoics meant when they said you don’t control what happens, you only control how you respond. That’s what they meant when they said the one thing people can always change is themselves. And that’s what they meant when they said we are what we repeatedly do—when or how we manage to squeeze them in is less important than our religious commitment to their continued existence. 

Start today. Focus on your practices. In a world where everything and everyone else seems to be falling apart, you can make good use of this time and say, “You’re just what I was looking for.”

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