You Don’t Have The Right | 9 Habits To QUIT (From The Stoics)
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I think when things are difficult or we know things are going to lead to hard conversations or changes we have to make in our life, we come up with reasons not to do them. When I think about therapy, I think, how can I make this as easy to do as possible? Whether that's like scheduling a bunch of appointments in a row, whether it's doing it remotely so I don't have to get in my car and drive somewhere. Like, I want to eliminate the excuses that

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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them.

to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com. You don't have the right. When we think of philosophy, we think of the mind. We think of Seneca pouring over his books. We think of Epictetus sitting and listening to the lectures of Musonius Rufus. We see Marcus Aurelius writing his meditations.

It is an academic pursuit, right? A mental journey. Yet the most famous philosopher who ever lived, Socrates, was no sedentary academic. He was not a weakling. He was active and tough. He was always on the move. No citizen has any right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training, he once said. To be able to be of use to his country, to his family, to his cause, a person had to have a physical practice, had to always be training not just his mind, but his body, Socrates believed.

Besides, Socrates said, it was a disgrace for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and the strength of which his body is capable. Indeed, we see the Stoics' practices across the board.

Marcus hunted and wrestled. Chrysippus, an early Stoic, was a runner. Cleanthes was a boxer. Seneca, although he lived a rich and sometimes luxurious life, subsisted on such lean fare, often foraging for his food himself in the countryside, that Nero had trouble finding an opportunity to poison him.

Today, a majority of young people could not qualify to join the armed forces if they wanted to. That's how out of shape they are. Obesity and diabetes are public health crises of epic proportions. People are not active enough, not disciplined enough for their basic health needs, let alone to come close to knowing the beauty and strength of what their body is capable of. And this is tragic. It is sad. And it is also very avoidable.

We must all see the pursuit of philosophy as both a mental and a physical exercise. Mens sana in corpore sano, a strong mind in a strong body. None of us can reach our destiny without discipline. None of us can make our full contributions to the country, our family, our cause, if we are not taking care of ourselves, if we're not pushing ourselves to see what we are capable of.

Anyways, I talked to Arnold Schwarzenegger about this in the episode of the podcast we did. I'll link to that in today's show notes. I think it's worth checking out. And then, of course, Discipline is Destiny is out there also, which you can grab as an e-book, audio book, or a signed copy at store.dailystoic.com.

Rome was a dirty, dusty place. Life is a dirty, dusty thing. It always has been and it always will be. We wake up in the morning and we're fresh and clean. And by the end of the day, we are covered in dust and dirt, metaphorically and metaphorically.

Literally the dust of work, the dust of stress. I think about how fresh and new a new year seemed just three months ago. You know, we had the best of intentions. We were turning over a new leaf. We were starting a new page. And here we are just a few months later. Old habits have come back. New bad habits have formed. Stuff has already piled up. We are already behind. And I think that's why we have spring cleaning.

We've got pounds to lose. We've got vices to quit. We've got things to declutter. We have a chance to bring a new us to a new season. And that's what we're going to talk about in today's video.

The Stoics speak of this idea of the inner citadel, this sort of part inside yourself that can't be touched by externals. Good news, bad news, good fortune, misfortune. Marcus Aurelius writes that stuff cannot touch the soul. And I think that's what we see despite all the things that we know happened to Marcus in his life. All the good fortune that he did not meet with, all the misfortune that he did not deserve, nothing touches the inner goodness inside him. That's what meditation shows.

It shows that despite the filth, the dust, the stress of life, what remains is the goodness. He keeps that pure bubbling up always.

Part of the reason your life sucks is because your thoughts suck. Marx really says that our life is dyed by the color of our thoughts. So if we see only negative, if we only see the worst in people, if we only see what's impossible, if we only see how we screwed up, that's gonna color our perception of reality. Your life is dyed by the color of your thoughts.

There's a limit of the amount of time that's assigned to each of us, Mark Strelitz would say. And if you don't use that time to free yourself, he said, it'll be gone forever and it will never return. His point was you can't wait until tomorrow. He says that's what we do. We could be good today. Instead, we choose tomorrow. We put it off. We don't say we're never going to do it. We say we're going to do it later. But

The result is the same. We never end up doing. We don't end up making the changes. We don't end up becoming what we're capable of being, who we know we should be, what we know we ought to be. When a new season is upon you, it's a chance to ask yourself, how many more winters am I going to

let go by. How many more springs am I going to waste? Am I going to wait until summer, until fall, until another 365 days around another rotation of the earth before I get serious about this? Before I do what I know I need to do? Before I do what I know would be good for me? Stokes would say, "You got to stop thinking about it and you got to start doing it." And there's no better time than right now.

A philosopher goes to the house of a stoic named Agrippinus and he says, "Hey, I've been asked to attend this party that Nero's throwing on. We all know Nero is awful and corrupt and evil. I'm wondering whether I should go or not. I'm thinking about it, you know, should I go?" And Agrippinus says, "Yes, you should go."

And the guy says, "Why? You're not going." And he says, "Yeah, but I didn't even think about going." His point is, Agrippinus wasn't, "Ah, do I want to, do I not?" He wouldn't even consider doing something like that that would be so compromising or corruptive. The sort of hell yes or hell no rule. He's saying this for effect.

a tad and so is the hell yes, hell no thing. But the idea is we should be really clear about what we are willing to do and what we aren't willing to do, the things we accept and the things we don't accept. We should have a clear sense of our moral compass, also our priorities. So we're not hemming and hawing. We're not having to ask for advice. We're not even thinking about it. It's a hard pass or it's an enthusiastic yes.

Actually, Ramit Sethi said this to me once. He said, "You don't owe anyone a response." And his point was that just because an unsolicited email comes in doesn't mean you have to reply to that person. There was a time early in my life when I believed in inbox zero and that plan has had to get abandoned as I've gotten older and more successful because I value other things. Of course, again, I want to reply and

And there are people I do get back quickly to, but I've had to realize that the preconceived notion I have of what being caught up is, is actually preventing me from getting caught up on what's truly important. Eisenhower has that decision matrix about what's urgent and what's important. And sometimes the things that come in, the inbound inquiries, they feel important, but actually they're just urgent. And as you're tackling them, what you're ignoring is what's actually important, but not necessarily urgent.

You make haste slowly. This is a Latin proverb. It's actually the favorite of the Emperor Augustus, festina lente, make haste slowly. You know, we're driven. We want to go quickly. We want to hustle. We want to get there. But oftentimes that's the slowest way to do it. There's the expression measure twice, cut once. There's the expression in the military,

that slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Of course we want to rush, of course we want to do it with all deliberate speed, but the deliberate part is the word there. You have to be disciplined about this. You have to make haste slowly.

The grudge you're holding, it's meaningless. Mark Stratus says, look at the people who held these grudges, who raged about things, who held on to things. He says, where are they now? They're dead and gone. The grudge went nowhere. And the same is going to happen to your thing. Whatever it is you're upset about, however significant it was for you, eventually,

It disappears along with you. So how can you work on letting it go? How can you move on? How can you process? How can you not carry it around? How can you not let it consume you?

It's easy to get swept away, to get carried away, to get worked up. There are forces that have always been howling and blowing at people. Today it's the news and social media, but in the past it was the frenzy of the mob or public opinion, floor of the Colosseum. Our job, the task of Stoicism, is to help us keep that even keel. Marcus Aurelius says to be like the rocks that the waves crash over, eventually the sea falls still around. Chrysippus, one of the early Stoics, he said, look, if I wanted to

follow the mob, I wouldn't have become a philosopher. Our task, the purpose of stoicism is to help us slow down, to act with some restraint, to be able to reflect, to put every impression or opinion to the test, as Epictetus said, to not get swept away, to not be buffeted by forces beyond our control, to keep our bearings, to keep our values, to keep from losing our minds when everyone else around us is losing theirs.

At one point in meditations, Mark Cerullo says, "Avoid false friendship at all costs." He says, "Nothing is more painful, nothing is worse."

And he knows this from experience. I tell in Obstacle is the Way, the story of Marcus being betrayed by Avidius Cassius, his most trusted general, one of his best friends. He declares himself emperor. He essentially attempts to orchestrate a coup. Marcus Aurelius knew that although we wanted to be trusting of people, although we wanted to assume the best in people, we had to understand that people were not perfect. People could be led astray. People could have evil intentions in their heart. We have to be aware of this. We have to be prepared for it.

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Have you ever wondered how a circus performer could become the most powerful woman in the Byzantine Empire? Even the Royals is a podcast from Wondery that pulls back the curtain on royal families from ancient empires to modern monarchs to show you the darker side of what it means to be royalty. Before we get into the podcast,

Before she ruled an empire, Theodora was a teen sensation in circus shows featuring dancing bears, burlesque performers, and blood-soaked chariot races. But when her star came crashing down, she clawed her way from rock bottom to the very top, using everything from comedy to espionage to get there.

Empress Theodora didn't just survive. She revolutionized women's rights across the Byzantine Empire, like changing laws to let women divorce men, own property, and bring abusive men to justice. For all her work in pioneering, she's remembered as the most powerful Byzantine empress in history. Follow Even the Royals on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Even the Royals early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus.