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The Daily Stoic
Ask Yourself For Peace (And You’ll Find It At Your Feet) | A Week Without Complaining
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Welcome to the daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice and wisdom into the real world. Ask yourself for peace and you'll find it at your feet. All you want is some quiet. All you want is some peace. All you want is some calm. More than want it, you need it. You need it for your sanity, for. For your survival. So you fantasize, as we all do, as Marcus Aurelius did in 4, 3 and Meditations, fantasize about getting away from it all. About travel, about the beach, about the country, about the mountains. And look, you may well find some quiet and space and calm there. But you should know that you can find it much closer to home, too. It's one of my favorite songs, goes. Wrestled by the sea, A lonely and me. I asked myself for peace. And found it at my feet. The ocean, the resort, the couple of weeks away from work, that's not where you'll find the peace you seek, because it is already within you. Nowhere you can go, Marcus Rioli says in that passage in Meditations, is more peaceful, more free of interruptions than your own soul. You have the power to calm yourself down. You have the power to give yourself clarity. You have the power to let go of what is making you miserable, to stop chasing what is making you so frantic and insecure. As the summer comes to a close, as vacation ends, as school begins again, as work ramps up in earnest, it's worth remembering this. Instead of looking outward, instead of thinking you need to get away, to go somewhere else to find yourself or find peace, look inward. Find. Find it within yourself. It's there whenever you need it. That's the idea. And stillness is the key, by the way. Which is, what is it? Almost eight years old now? That's incredible. I can grab. Stillness is the key. I'll sign your copy, I'll link to it in today's show. Notes. Recording this on a Sunday. Just spent a nice lovely day at home, kind of redecorating the house. Just, you know, school's gonna start soon. We wanna get the space, like less stressful, just set up better. And so the first place we checked was Wayfair, because on Wayfair you'll find the stuff you need, stuff that stands up to real life. They've got furniture and decor, all of it built to last. And when you shop with Wayfair Verified, you get pieces that are hand vetted by product specialists using a 10 point quality inspection. They test the materials, the functionality, the feature, how long it takes to build one of the good things about Wayfair is the reviews. They've got more than 20 million verified five star reviews from real shoppers. You get to see real customer photos and feedback before you buy, right? Sometimes it looks good in the photo, but you know if you've experienced this like the hotel lobby looks good but you want to see the actual room from an actual human being. Well, Wayfair lets you see that with the stuff you're buying for your house and Wayfair Rewards members get 5% back every day, helping you get more value from your Wayfair purchases. Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase and start saving on your next home upgrade. Head over to Wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's Wayfair W A Y-F-A-I R.com Wayfair Every style every Home Wayfair Every Style Every Home. A Week Without Complaining Epictetus spoke often to his students about the need to give up blaming and complaining. In fact, he saw it as one of the primary measuring sticks of progress in the art of living. How much of life is wasted pointed fingers? Has complaining ever solved a single problem? Marcus Aurelius would say, blame yourself or no one. This week try constructive feedback over complaining and responsibility over blame. And if something goes wrong, spend some time reflecting on what the true causes were. Don't waste a minute with complaints in your journal or out loud. This is from this week's entry in The Daily Stoic Journal, 366 days of writing, On Reflection and the Art of Living by me, Ryan Holiday, and my co author Steven Hanselman. You can get this anywhere books are sold, although we also have signed copies in the Daily Stoic store and of course at my bookstore, the Painted Porch here in Bastrop, Texas. But we have three quotes from Epictetus today about complaints. He says, you must stop blaming God and not blame any person. You must completely control your desire and shift your avoidance to what lies within your reasoned choice. You must no longer feel anger, resentment, envy, or regret. That's the discourses 3:22. For nothing outside my reasoned choice, he says, can hinder or harm it. My reasoned choice alone can do this to itself. If we would lean this way whenever we fail, and would blame only ourselves and remember that nothing but opinion is the cause of a troubled mind and uneasiness, then by God I swear we would be making progress. That's Discourses 3:19. Then he also says in 13 but if you deem as your own only what is yours, and what belongs to others is truly not yours, then no one will ever be able to coerce or stop you. And you will find no one to blame or accuse. You will do nothing against your will, and you will have no enemy and no one will harm you, because no harm will can affect you. It's funny, just as I was sitting here, I was thinking to myself, man, it's so hot. It's hot in my office. I have to turn off the AC when I record. But one of my favorite quotes from Marcus Reelis about complaining, which I actually also have in sort of fictionalized in the Boy who Would Be King, he says, don't be heard complaining at court, not even to yourself. Right? There are so many parts of Marcus Aurelius job that we get the sense that he didn't really like. He's kind of an introverted person. He's a good person. He wants to do what's right. He's not an ambitious person in the sense he doesn't want to dominate or win everything. And so it must have been so frustrating to be around these obnoxious, annoying, you know, dishonest people, these professional politicians, basically. But he catches himself. He's like, it's not even enough not to complain publicly. And of course, everyone would have indulged his complaints. He's emperor. But he says, don't even complain in your own mind. And that is some higher level shit right there. Isn't it right to not only be able to stop yourself from complaining? I think it was Will Bowen, he had the no complaint challenge. Every time you say a complaint, you have to move the bracelet from one wrist to the other. And the idea is, can you leave it on one wrist for 30 days? Can you get it in one spot for 30 days? No complaints. But imagine how most of us would fail if even thinking about a complaint, not even verbalizing it, disqualified us. But that's the challenge of the Stoics. And I think Epictetus, though, is more honest when he talks about just progress. The less blame, the less complaining, the more responsibility you're taking, the more constructive you are. That's what matters. Are you making a little bit of progress every day? Are you moving forward? Are you complaining less? Right. I think that's a fair way to think about it. So I thought the complaint, but I didn't say it. That's progress. But maybe next time I can just go, the temperature is what the temperature is. If I want to do this thing, that's what I have to put up with. So that's what it is. Thinking about it doesn't help me. It doesn't make me any cooler. Right? It just makes me frustrated. And that's why we try not to complain. So don't be heard complaining today, not even to yourself. That's the standard we're ascribing to. But could we just make some progress? Could we just blame only ourselves? Or ideally no one? That's progress. Let's do it. Let's work for it. Let's make ourselves a little bit stronger. As a result.
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