As we look to a new month, we present the following #RandomThoughts On Leadership as we look forward to the continued privilege to serve:
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After everything that’s happened in the last few years, we’re tired. After everything that’s happened in your life, after everything that’s gone wrong the last couple weeks, you think to yourself, “I can’t handle one more thing going wrong.” Certainly, Marcus Aurelius would have related to the sentiment. Floods. Plagues. Wars. A troubled son. Personal health issues. “Haven’t I given enough?” we had him say in a recent Daily Stoic video. But the thing is, life doesn’t care. It has no time for your questions. It pays no mind to your limits. “I don’t think I’m up for this,” the novelist John Gregory Dunne said to his wife as they left the hospital after rushing to check on their daughter who had just been admitted. He was down about his career. He wasn’t feeling great about his own health. He was sick about his only child. He was worried it would be a long and hard road out for all of them. Joan Didion, his steely, stoic wife, responded with something we can imagine Marcus Aurelius reminding himself of in Meditations: “You don’t get a choice.” Fortune behaves as she pleases, the Stoics said. Life disposes. It decides. The only thing we get a choice in is how we respond.
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PASSAGE OF THE WEEK:What we go through in life, the knocks we take, the losses we experience—they aren’t fun. If we had a choice, we may choose for them not to happen. But still, we have no idea how they are preparing us, shaping us, even saving us. All we can do is try to find meaning, find lessons, find the opportunities in these moments, however tragic and painful they may be in the moment. Read: We Can Find The Gift In It YOUTUBE TAKEAWAY OF THE WEEK: In a recent video on the Daily Stoic YouTube Channel, Ryan Holiday speaks 12 Stoic remedies for feeling lonely or depressed, including changing your perspective, asking for help, and being a better friend to yourself: “When we’re down in those depths, when we’re in dark places, when we’re isolated and feel disconnected from people, we have to remember that we’re not bad people. How we talk to ourselves matters, and the decision to treat yourself poorly is not a good decision…If you don’t think you’re worthy of friendships or relationships or connection or love, then how is anyone else going to see that in you? It started by realizing you’re not a bad person, and, as Seneca says, being a better friend to yourself.”
Subscribe to Daily Stoic YouTube PODCAST TAKEAWAY OF THE WEEK: In a recent episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast, Ryan Holiday speaks with author and legal scholar Kermit Roosevelt III on his latest book The Nation That Never Was, why people’s values are collapsing, and how cognitive dissonance can steer us away from the truth: “It’s hard to hold these contradictory ideas in your mind because there’s a natural tendency to try to make things coherent — so you squeeze out the inconvenient splinter, even if it turns out to be a splinter of truth.”
Subscribe to Daily Stoic Podcast Listen ad-free with Wondery plus or on Amazon Music with your Prime membership. WHAT RYAN HOLIDAY IS READING: |
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