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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Ryan Holiday
Read between
October 18, 2017 - December 31, 2018
The philosophy asserts that virtue (meaning, chiefly, the four cardinal virtues of self-control, courage, justice, and wisdom) is happiness, and it is our perceptions of things—rather than the things themselves—that cause most of our trouble. Stoicism teaches that we can’t control or rely on anything outside what Epictetus called our “reasoned choice”—our ability to use our reason to choose how we categorize, respond, and reorient ourselves to external events.
Control your perceptions. Direct your actions properly. Willingly accept what’s outside your control.
our judgments are crooked because we don’t use reason, then everything that follows will be crooked, and we will lose our ability to steady ourselves in the chaos and rush of life.
his is important enough that it bears repeating: a wise person knows what’s inside their circle of control and what is outside of it.
As Viktor Frankl puts it in The Will to Meaning, “Man is pushed by drives but pulled by values.”
Sure, paying attention requires work and awareness, but isn’t that better than being jerked about on a string?
“Keep this thought handy when you feel a fit of rage coming on—it isn’t manly to be enraged. Rather, gentleness and civility are more human, and therefore manlier. A real man doesn’t give way to anger and discontent, and such a person has strength, courage, and endurance—unlike the angry and complaining. The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 11.18.5b
“When I see an anxious person, I ask myself, what do they want? For if a person wasn’t wanting something outside of their own control, why would they be stricken by anxiety?” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.13.1
“You cry, I’m suffering severe pain! Are you then relieved from feeling it, if you bear it in an unmanly way?” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 78.17
“There is no more stupefying thing than anger, nothing more bent on its own strength. If successful, none more arrogant, if foiled, none more insane—since it’s not driven back by weariness even in defeat, when fortune removes its adversary it turns its teeth on itself.” —SENECA, ON ANGER, 3.1.5
Getting upset is like continuing the dream while you’re awake. The thing that provoked you wasn’t real—but your reaction was. And so from the fake comes real consequences.
So then, remember in life that your duties are the sum of individual acts. Pay attention to each of these as you do your duty . . . just methodically complete your task.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 6.26
Eagerly anticipating some future event, passionately imagining something you desire, looking forward to some happy scenario—as pleasurable as these activities might seem, they ruin your chance at happiness here and now. Locate that yearning for more, better, someday and see it for what it is: the enemy of your contentment. Choose it or your happiness. As Epictetus says, the two are not compatible.
As you find yourself getting excited, ready to do anything and everything to get it—the equivalent of reaching across the table and grabbing a dish out of someone’s hands—just remind yourself: that’s bad manners and unnecessary. Then wait patiently for your turn.
It doesn’t matter what the external thing is, the value we place on it subjugates us to another . . . where our heart is set, there our impediment lies.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 4.4.1–2; 15
“It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.”
When it comes to your goals and the things you strive for, ask yourself: Am I in control of them or they in control of me?
So stop acting like getting worked up is having an impact on a given situation. Situations don’t care at all.
Eventually, all of us will pass away and slowly be forgotten. We should enjoy this brief time we have on earth—not be enslaved to emotions that make us miserable and dissatisfied.
In Greece, the lecture hall (scholeion) was a leisure center where students contemplated the higher things (the good, true, and beautiful) for the purpose of living a better life. It was about prioritization, about questioning the priorities of the outside world. Today, we’re too busy getting things, just like kids jamming their hand down a jar of goodies, to do much of this questioning.
take great care with the inside and not what’s outside, which is to say, stand with the philosopher, or else with the mob!”
We have a choice: to stand with the philosopher and focus strenuously on the inside, or to behave like a leader of a mob, becoming whatever the crowd needs at a given moment.
Try your best not to create this fantasy bubble—live in what’s real. Listen and connect with people, don’t perform for them.
Part of the reason we fight against the things that happen is that we’re so focused on our plan that we forget that there might be a bigger plan we don’t know about.
We need to remember that all things are guided by reason—but that it is a vast and universal reason that we cannot always see.
As Epictetus put it, “It is impossible for a person to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
The longest and the shortest life, then, amount to the same, for the present moment lasts the same for all and is all anyone possesses. No one can lose either the past or the future, for how can someone be deprived of what’s not theirs?” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 2.14
“You are not your body and hair-style, but your capacity for choosing well. If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.1.39b–40a
“Today I escaped from the crush of circumstances, or better put, I threw them out, for the crush wasn’t from outside me but in my own assumptions.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 9.13
This is what Epictetus means about the study of philosophy. Study, yes, but go live your life as well. It’s the only way that you’ll actually understand what any of it means. And more important, it’s only from your actions and choices over time that it will be possible to see whether you took any of the teachings to heart.
“Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the human spirit is colored by such impressions.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 5.16
Uninvited guests might arrive at your home, but you don’t have to ask them to stay for dinner. You don’t have to let them into your mind.
Mental xenia?
“There are two things that must be rooted out in human beings—arrogant opinion and mistrust. Arrogant opinion expects that there is nothing further needed, and mistrust assumes that under the torrent of circumstance there can be no happiness.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.14.8
as Epictetus reminds us, “the first and greatest task of the philosopher is to test and separate appearances, and to act on nothing that is untested.”
Which will help your children more—your insight into happiness and meaning, or that you followed breaking political news every day for thirty years?
so that things simply are. Not good or bad, not colored with opinion or judgment. Just are.
Here is how to guarantee you have a good day: do good things. Any other source of joy is outside your control or is nonrenewable. But this one is all you, all the time, and unending. It is the ultimate form of self-reliance.
“Reflect, then,” he said, “that your ancestors set up those trophies, not that you may gaze at them in wonder, but that you may also imitate the virtues of the men who set them up.”
As he says, by pouring ourselves fully and intentionally into the present, it “gentle[s] the passing of time’s precipitous flight.”
Get straight to doing what nature requires of you, and speak as you see most just and fitting—with kindness, modesty, and sincerity.”
Don’t get upset. Do the right thing. That’s it.
we always have some opportunity to practice our philosophy, to make some contribution.
Don’t forget, though, that you come from a long, unbroken line of ancestors who survived unimaginable adversity, difficulty, and struggle.
We have a choice: Do we focus on the ways we have been wronged, or do we use what we’ve been given and get to work?
“Think of those who, not by fault of inconsistency but by lack of effort, are too unstable to live as they wish, but only live as they have begun.”
Whatever happens, don’t add angry or negative emotions to the equation. Don’t react for the sake of reacting. Leave it as it is. Stop digging. Then plan your way out.
“In this way you must understand how laughable it is to say, ‘Tell me what to do!’ What advice could I possibly give? No, a far better request is, ‘Train my mind to adapt to any circumstance.’
Instead of looking for instruction, they cultivate skills like creativity, independence, self-confidence, ingenuity, and the ability to problem solve.
“Philosophy,” he says, helps us tame the “mad frenzy of our greed and tamps down the fury of our fears.”
seeks to correct the faults of the gods rather than their own.”
