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by
Ryan Holiday
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September 25 - October 21, 2019
Learning not to kick and scream about matters we can’t control is one thing. Indifference and acceptance are certainly better than disappointment or rage. Very few understand or practice that art. But it is only a first step. Better than all of that is love for all that happens to us, for every situation. The goal is: Not: I’m okay with this. Not: I think I feel good about this. But: I feel great about it. Because if it happened, then it was meant to happen, and I am glad that it did when it did. I am meant to make the best of it. And proceed to do exactly that. We don’t get to choose what
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Learn to love and feel good about EVERYTHING that happens you
If persistence is attempting to solve some difficult problem with dogged determination and hammering until the break occurs, then plenty of people can be said to be persistent. But perseverance is something larger. It’s the long game. It’s about what happens not just in round one but in round two and every round after—and then the fight after that and the fight after that, until the end.
Persistence vs. Perseverance
There are far more failures in the world due to a collapse of will than there will ever be from objectively conclusive external events.
Loss of will causes more failures
A few years ago, in the middle of the financial crisis, the artist and musician Henry Rollins managed to express this deeply human obligation better than millennia of religious doctrine ever have: People are getting a little desperate. People might not show their best elements to you. You must never lower yourself to being a person you don’t like. There is no better time than now to have a moral and civic backbone. To have a moral and civic true north. This is a tremendous opportunity for you, a young person, to be heroic.
Henry Rollins' quote on human obligation
Sometimes when we are personally stuck with some intractable or impossible problem, one of the best ways to create opportunities or new avenues for movement is to think: If I can’t solve this for myself, how can I at least make this better for other people? Take it for granted, for a second, that there is nothing else in it for us, nothing we can do for ourselves. How can we use this situation to benefit others? How can we salvage some good out of this? If not for me, then for my family or the others I’m leading or those who might later find themselves in a similar situation.
How can i make this obstacle im facing better for others?
Whatever you’re going through, whatever is holding you down or standing in your way, can be turned into a source of strength—by thinking of people other than yourself. You won’t have time to think of your own suffering because there are other people suffering and you’re too focused on them. Pride can be broken. Toughness has its limits. But a desire to help? No harshness, no deprivation, no toil should interfere with our empathy toward others. Compassion is always an option. Camaraderie as well. That’s a power of the will that can never be taken away, only relinquished. Stop pretending that
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I am not the center of the universe
In Montaigne’s essays, we see proof of the fact that one can meditate on death—be well aware of our own mortality—without being morbid or a downer. In fact, his experience gave him a uniquely playful relationship with his existence and a sense of clarity and euphoria that he carried with him from that point forward. This is encouraging: It means that embracing the precariousness of our own existence can be exhilarating and empowering. Our fear of death is a looming obstacle in our lives. It shapes our decisions, our outlook, and our actions.
Embracing our mortality can be exhilirating and rewarding
It’s a cliché question to ask, What would I change about my life if the doctor told me I had cancer? After our answer, we inevitably comfort ourselves with the same insidious lie: Well, thank God I don’t have cancer. But we do. The diagnosis is terminal for all of us. A death sentence has been decreed. Each second, probability is eating away at the chances that we’ll be alive tomorrow; something is coming and you’ll never be able to stop it. Be ready for when that day comes. Remember the serenity prayer: If something is in our control, it’s worth every ounce of our efforts and energy. Death is
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Reminding ourselves each day thata we will die makes us treat each day as a gift
Knowing that life is a marathon and not a sprint is important. Conserve your energy. Understand that each battle is only one of many and that you can use it to make the next one easier. More important, you must keep them all in real perspective. Passing one obstacle simply says you’re worthy of more. The world seems to keep throwing them at you once it knows you can take it. Which is good, because we get better with every attempt. Never rattled. Never frantic. Always hustling and acting with creativity. Never anything but deliberate. Never attempting to do the impossible—but everything up to
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Improvement is a result of every obstacle
Something stands in someone’s way. They stare it down, they aren’t intimidated. Leaning into their problem or weakness or issue, they give everything they have, mentally and physically. Even though they did not always overcome it in the way they intended or expected, each individual emerged better, stronger. What stood in the way became the way. What impeded action in some way advanced it. It’s inspiring. It’s moving. It’s an art we need to bring to our own lives.
A great book summary
First, see clearly. Next, act correctly. Finally, endure and accept the world as it is.
Another good summary
See things for what they are. Do what we can. Endure and bear what we must. What blocked the path now is a path. What once impeded action advances action. The Obstacle is the Way.
And one last good summary
Stoicism is perhaps the only “philosophy” where the original, primary texts are actually cleaner and easier to read than anything academics have written afterward. Which is awesome because it means you can dive into the subject and go straight to the source. I firmly believe everyone is capable of reading these very accessible writers. Below are my recommendations both on specific translations and then some additional texts worth looking at. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (Modern Library). There is one translation of Marcus Aurelius to read and that is Gregory Hayes’s amazing edition for the
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Stoic reading list
clear of most of the other books about Stoicism (and I’ve read them) with one exception: the works of Pierre Hadot. While all the other academics and popularizers of Stoicism mostly miss the point or needlessly complicate things, Hadot clarifies. His interpretation of Marcus Aurelius in the book The Inner Citadel—that Marcus was not writing some systemic explanation of the universe but creating a set of practical exercises the emperor was actually practicing himself—was a huge leap forward. His book Philosophy as a Way of Life explains how philosophy has been wrongly interpreted as a thing
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Readinglist continued
