Have You Considered This? | Don't Hide From Your Feelings

Summary

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The Daily Stoic – “Have You Considered This? | Don't Hide From Your Feelings”

Host: Ryan Holiday
Date: December 8, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Daily Stoic with Ryan Holiday focuses on two primary Stoic teachings: the need to recognize that not everything is meant for everyone (“Have You Considered This?”), and the importance of confronting one’s emotions, particularly grief, rather than avoiding or suppressing them (“Don’t Hide From Your Feelings”).

Ryan Holiday draws on the writings of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca to challenge common misconceptions about Stoicism, especially the stereotype of the Stoic as unemotional or detached. Through personal anecdotes and references to other thinkers, he argues for a balanced, emotionally honest engagement with life’s difficulties.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

I. Not Everything is Meant for You — Understanding the Context of Creation

Timestamp: 00:56–02:56

• Ryan Holiday begins by reflecting on criticisms of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations as repetitive — particularly regarding death, fame, and the burdens of leadership.

  • He points out the misconception: Meditations wasn’t written for an audience, but for Marcus himself.
  • Quote:

    "It's because the book is not for you. ...He was thinking about what he needed." — Ryan Holiday [01:24]

• This serves as a broader lesson:

  • Just as Meditations has its own context and purpose, so do other works of art, comedy, literature, and media.
  • Holiday gives modern examples: people complaining about repetitiveness in Daily Stoic videos, or disliking books and movies that were never aimed at them.
  • Quote:

    "Not everything is for you. Not everything is about you. ...The sooner you realize that you are not the center of the universe... the more understanding you can be, the less judgment you'll feel required to have." — Ryan Holiday [02:08]

• Key Insight:

  • Appreciating the telos (purpose) and intended audience of creative works breeds tolerance, humility, and understanding.

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II. Stoicism, Grief, and Emotional Honesty

Timestamp: 05:44–10:03

• Ryan transitions to the day’s entry—based on a quote from Seneca’s essay to his mother Helvia:

  • Quote:

    "It's better to conquer grief... than to deceive it." — Seneca [05:47]

• He challenges the stereotype that Stoics suppress or ignore emotion. Rather:

  • Stoicism is about facing, processing, and dealing with emotions directly, not avoiding them.
  • Well-meaning efforts to distract those grieving may be pleasant in the short term but avoid deeper healing.
  • Quote:

    "The Stoics are stereotyped as suppressing their emotions, but their philosophy was actually intended to teach us to face, to process, and deal with emotions immediately instead of running from them." — Ryan Holiday [06:16]

• He cites author Kate Bowler, who, facing cancer, was told, “Everything happens for a reason.” Bowler’s retort:

  • Quote:

    "I'd love to know the reason." — Kate Bowler (as recounted by Ryan Holiday) [07:05]

  • These platitudes, he argues, are an avoidance of uncomfortable feelings—both for the comforter and the grieving.

• Holiday delves into the personal context of grief experienced by Marcus Aurelius:

  • The emperor’s repeated meditations on loss were responses to real, personal suffering (he lost at least five or six children).
  • Quote:

    "Almost more of his children did not survive to adulthood than did... just the magnitude of that grief." — Ryan Holiday [08:16]

  • Marcus's writings are thus evidence of a person actively working through unimaginable loss, not a display of robotic detachment.

• The episode’s central message:

  • It’s not only acceptable to feel grief, sorrow, or pain — it’s necessary to process and integrate these emotions rather than avoid them.
  • If grief becomes overwhelming and paralyzing for extended periods, seeking help is necessary.
  • Quote:

    "There is no way out but through." — Ryan Holiday [09:46]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On audience and creation:

  "The sooner you realize that you are not the center of the universe or the intended recipient of everything, the more understanding you can be." — Ryan Holiday [02:15]

• On the real Stoic approach to emotion:

  "They were feeling. They just tried not to be overwhelmed, overcome, paralyzed by those feelings. And part of the way they did it was by working on them." — Ryan Holiday [08:49]

• On the process of grief:

  "You gotta deal with it. You gotta face it. You gotta process it. That's the only way out. There is no way out but through." — Ryan Holiday [09:45]

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Important Timestamps & Segment Highlights

• 00:56–02:56: Reflection on Meditations, artistic intent, and audience; the importance of understanding creative context.
• 05:44–07:37: Introduction of Seneca’s quote; Stoic approach to emotions; anecdote about Kate Bowler and the inadequacy of platitudes.
• 07:37–09:46: Deep dive into Marcus Aurelius’s personal grief, the myth of the “unfeeling Stoic,” and the value of emotional processing.
• 09:46–10:03: Closing advice: permission to feel and process grief, constructive action if grief becomes overwhelming.

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Concluding Thoughts

Ryan Holiday reminds listeners that Stoic philosophy is not about evading feeling but about embracing life’s emotional realities with courage and honesty. By recognizing our own vantage point as limited — and that not everything in culture is for us — we can be more mature, appreciative, and less judgmental. When it comes to feelings, especially grief, the only true path to healing is through mindful acknowledgement and processing, resisting both false stoicism and well-meaning distractions.

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For more insight and Stoic reflections, visit DailyStoic.com.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

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 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. 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.

Have you considered this? One of the most remarkable and revealing criticisms of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations is that it's repetitive. Marcus talks about death a lot, talks about fame a lot, talks about the weight of being the leader of an empire a lot. So yeah, some people ask why is it so repetitive? To which the reply is pretty obvious. That's because the book is not for you. It seems to escape people that the most powerful man in the world was not writing Meditations, whose title in Greek is To himself, was not thinking about them when he wrote it. No, he was thinking about what he needed. And when you realize this, it helps you not only appreciate Meditations as a unique work of literature, but should help you be a little more accepting and tolerant of other things you don't like. That comedian that you don't think is funny. Has it occurred to you that perhaps they don't think of you as their audience? That author whose books have never appealed to you, Maybe she wasn't writing it for you. That new movie that came out last week that you refused to see. What if the director never intended for someone like you to enjoy it? We have this experience even at Daily Stoic. People will sometimes complain about a video we've done, that it's similar to something we've done in the past, or that people ought to just read the original Stoics as if everyone in the world saw the first video we did, and as if everyone in the world is as comfortable reading an ancient text as they are. Not everything is for you. Not everything is about you. Most things in fact have a context, a specific audience, a telos. The sooner you realize that you are not the center of the universe or the intended recipient of everything, the more understanding you can be, the less judgment you'll feel required to have. And you can appreciate things for what they are. A work of art or a product that was made for the audience it was intended for, whether that be a certain demographic or the emperor himself.

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Don'T hide from your feelings. This is today's entry in the Daily Stoic and our quote today is from Seneca in his essay to Helvia, his mother. It's better to conquer grief, he says, than to deceive it. We've all lost people we're close to, a friend, a colleague, a parent, a grandparent. And while we were suffering from our grief, some well meaning person did their best to take our mind off of it or make us think about something else for a couple hours. However kind, these gestures are misguided. The Stoics are stereotyped as suppressing their emotions, but their philosophy was actually intended to teach us to face, to process and deal with emotions immediately instead of running from them. Tempting as it is to deceive yourself or hide from a powerful emotion like grief by telling yourself and other people that you're fine, awareness and understanding are better. Distraction might be pleasant in the short term, going to the gladiatorial games as a Roman might have done, but focusing is better in the long term. That means facing it now. Process and parse what you are feeling. Remove your expectations, your entitlements, your sense of having been wrong. Find the positive in the situation, but also sit with your pain and accept it, remembering that it is a part of life and that is how we conquer grief. I had Kate Bowler on the podcast. She has this book called Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Been Told. And the point she finds out she has cancer and all these people come and go, oh, it happened for a reason. Everything happens for a reason. And her response was I'd love to know the reason she was rejecting these sort of platitudes that we give people when they are grieving to try to take their mind off it. We distract them, we want to make them laugh. We say, oh, I've been through that too.

There's no way out but through feeling, thinking, dealing with you Know the Stoics knew grief. As Seneca was writing that essay to his mother, he was grieving himself. He'd lost a child. As I've been going back through Meditations, we have this leather bound edition and I rereading it like a fresh copy, and for whatever reason, I was just skipping through and I found all the different instances where Marcus was talking about, like, loss in children, which is extra haunting when you think about how many he lost. Five, six, we don't know exactly. But almost more of his children did not survive to adulthood than did he buried five, six children. Just the magnitude of that grief.

And if we take Meditations, then as a much more personal book, a book of a man working through his grief, trying to conquer it, not deceive it, it's both very humanizing and haunting at the same time. Marcus isn't different than you and I. He's not this magical robot, but he was someone who put in the work to deal with, to think through, to talk about his emotions. I just, I hate this stereotype of the Stoics as being unfeeling. They were feeling, they just tried not to be overwhelmed, overcome, paralyzed by those feelings. And part of the way they did it was by working on them. So, you know, this month in the Daily Stoic is about death and grief and mortality. And I think it's important for those of you who are grieving, for those of us who are grieving, who have lost someone or may lose someone, you know, it's okay to cry about that. There's a story about Marcus crying about the loss of one of his tutors. That's a human thing. If you're still crying about it, paralyzed by it a year later, you should probably get some help. You're probably torturing yourself. You're probably doing something that they, the person you are mourning would not dream of wanting or cursing you with. So you got to deal with it. You got to face it. You gotta process it. That's the only way out. There is no way out but through. That's today's message from the Daily Stoic. And I hope you guys are getting ready for the holidays. I hope you're thinking about your New Year's resolutions. Happy holidays. We'll talk soon.

Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.

Foreign.

[B]

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