The Daily Stoic30 Aug 2018

This Is The Only Thing That Matters in Life

In 1940, while he was struggling as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Walker Percy wrote to his uncle and adopted father, William Alexander Percy, to give him the bad news about his grades.William Alexander, who introduced his young ward to the writings of Marcus Aurelius and had himself gone to Harvard, did not care for one second about the grades. As he wrote back to Walker, “My whole theory about life is that glory and accomplishment are of far less importance than the creation of character and the individual good life.”How lucky we might have been to get such a lesson from our own parents at that impressionable age! To hear, emphatically, that marks on a report card are not a reflection of who we are and that their recognition is such a hollow thing. Because it’s clear that most of us internalized the exact opposite: We think that fame and fortune are the marks of a good person. We connect them, like cause and effect. If/then statements in the logic of human existence. We chase these things, because like grades, they are quantifiable and easy to game.But character? The trait the Stoics believed was like fate, the determining factor in life? Well, that we mostly ignore. We assume it will take care of itself.It won’t. If we directed half the time we spend trying to advance our careers or ace a test, toward our individual moral improvement, the world would be transformed. And so would our individual lives--good lives.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(3171)

Most Things Haven’t Changed (But This Has) | What Do the Stoics Say About Attachment?

Human beings are human beings. We have the same weaknesses. We have the same tendencies. We have the same potential.The new 10th Anniversary Edition of The Daily Stoic is out NOW! 👉 Grab your copy he...

13 Okt 24min

This Isn’t How Anyone Wants It To Go (So This Is What We Have To Do) | Practice Love

Nobody would choose most of the difficulties and troubles that they face. The question is how do you react when you get those difficulties and troubles anyway?🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE | Ryan Holiday is co...

12 Okt 7min

The Most Important Things You Need To Stop Doing

We’re not the first culture to burn out and dream of getting away from it all. But the Stoics understood why the life you’re trying to escape has a way of following you.Watch this episode on YouTube: ...

11 Okt 16min

The New Gilded Age: Are We Repeating the Gold Rush? | Nathaniel Philbrick

From the California Gold Rush to the railroad boom to Silicon Valley, the promise of instant riches keeps convincing us that this time will be different. Nathaniel Philbrick, a bestselling author and ...

10 Okt 42min

Not Everyone Is Lucky Enough To Do This | 9 Core Stoic Beliefs

We have power of movement—literally and figuratively—that not everyone has, that we ourselves might not get forever, either. The new 10th Anniversary Edition of The Daily Stoic is out NOW! 👉 Grab you...

9 Okt 25min

Go Back And Pick It Up Again | Is This the Life You Worked For?

Everyone has a book that changed their life. But how long has it been since you first read the book that hit you so hard?The new 10th Anniversary Edition of The Daily Stoic is out NOW! 👉 Grab your co...

8 Okt 10min

BONUS | A Selfish Reason To Be Good

“The person who does wrong, does wrong to themselves. The unjust person is unjust to themselves—making themselves evil.”—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.4The new 10th Anniversary Edition of The Daily ...

7 Okt 2min

How to Get the Most Out of Reading (A Stoic Guide)

To be a great reader, it's not enough that you read. It's how you read. In this episode, Ryan shares time-tested reading habits of the ancient Stoics (Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and more) tha...

7 Okt 12min