Hello Family - Welcome to Vol. 9 of Move Fast, Think Slow. If you want to join other curious, smart readers of this newsletter you can do so here:
Let’s get it started 🔥
If you are not new here then scroll down to read this week’s dispatch. If you are new here, a little bit about Move Fast, Think Slow. This Newsletter was started to focus on two areas. One, cultural and business trends. Two, musings on mindful meditations and philosophy. Ultimately, it’s an excuse for me to write more but also, hopefully, dear reader, it’s an opportunity for you to learn something new or just be inspired. And with that, let’s dive in!
Praise be | The Daily Stoic 🙏🏻
I’m unsure if Stoicism will actually change your life but I can confidently say that it has changed mine. Specifically, I want to call out the great book The Daily Stoic. Upon drafting this week’s dispatch I realized I can’t tell you about The Daily Stoic without telling you a bit more about stoicism and my journey towards discovering it.
Stoicism changed my life because once I considered the teachings deeply on a consistent day-to-day, week-to-week level, toxic thoughts started to leave my everyday life. Those toxic thoughts included: comparing myself to others, looking to and investing in external elements to measure my life's worth, or removing emotional knee-jerk reactions to things that came at me on a day-to-day basis. Net-net, I started to have tools for the war I was having with myself (and the war of life). Even though I didn’t even realize I was at war.
Over time, this was a net-net good because my energy shifted from one that was heavy about the things happening outside of my control to an energy that was more neutral, or at least as neutral as I could be. We can never control what comes our way but we can control how we react to those events. And that in of itself is a form of power. It is a form of living life in the here and now. It’s a form of doing the very best we can.
Going down the Stoicism Rabbit Hole 📖
I am pretty sure it was Austin Kleon's reading list where I first saw Meditations by Marcus Aurelius nearly 10 years ago. The book shares private notes Marcus wrote to himself from AD 161 to 180 focused on observations and hot takes on Stoic philosophy. The book is masterful. It holds some amazing ideas and philosophical filters on how to see one's life.
“Let no act be done without purpose, nor otherwise than according to the perfect principles of art.”
"The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength."
“Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts."
“Do every act of your life as if it were your last.”
I was definitely vibing with what Marcus was putting down.
It’s quite astonishing when you think about the fact this book was written 1860+ years ago by a great ruler of Rome. For me, that is the cherry on top with Stoicism. It’s teachings stretch back to the beginning of time and the wisdom it holds still has merit today. After I read Meditations, I started to seek out more on Stoicism.
Wait a second, what is Stoicism? 🏛️
Stoicism a Western/Greek philosophy founded in Athens in early 3rd Century BC. Alongside Aristotelian ethics, Stoic tradition forms one of the major founding approaches to virtue ethics. Stoicism flourished throughout the Roman and Greek world until the 3rd century AD, and among its adherents was Emperor Marcus Aurelius. It experienced a decline after Christianity became the state religion in the 4th century AD. Since then, it has seen revivals, notably in the Renaissance (Neostoicism) and in the contemporary era (modern Stoicism).
The heyday of stoicism lasted some 550 some odd years back in the day in Rome and Greece. The great stoic philosophers, like Marcus, left us a lot of great insights and wisdom scribbled throughout their journals. And this is where The Daily Stoic comes in.
The Daily Stoic 🧘
This book by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman is nothing short of a masterpiece. How it works is described within the title - The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance and the Art of Living is a daily devotional book of stoic philosophy.
They take the teachings of Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Zeno, and others to provide lessons about personal growth, life management, and practicing mindfulness. By the way, as a side but important note, the stoic philosophers themselves had some pretty epic lives filled with twists, turns, and drama. Some were slaves that were free and banished all in one life. Others were raised to be noblemen and Stoicism guided their virtues. I find it very interesting that these great thinkers found the time to hone in on their practice. A practice of philosophy that would help them find perspective no matter what came screaming at them in the night.
Years have passed since I first picked up this book and it’s phenomenal how much value and meditative clarity it has brought into my life. Ryan and Stephen do an extraordinary job curating Stoic writings and better yet interpreting them to fit the confines of our modern-day ethos.
Shortly after getting the book I started a weekly exercise where I’d read the weekend’s entry and then draft notes. What was and still is profound about this book is no matter what can be happening in my life, the teachings hold direct resonance on the matters of day. And in turn, I have learned that much of what ails my mind, many times, is an unnecessary burden I am putting onto myself. I am able to pivot the thinking, and in turn, look inwards towards the things I can control. And in that journey, I have been able to find peace.
In short, I had discovered a practice and a way of inviting stoicism into my life and it started to help me immensely.
What Can Stoicism Mean For You? 🤔
If you are reading this and you are a human being and the odds are you have at some moment in time suffered from thoughts that have brought you down. Thoughts that have taken the joy out of your life. Thoughts that have stolen your energy from yourself. The reason I know that, is because you are a human being. We all struggle with these thoughts.
Did we do enough to make our parents proud? Do we have parents we even liked? Do we live a life filled with purpose and meaning? Why won’t people give us the thing we want when we want them? Why won’t the world reward me for my hard work and labor? Why can’t I find someone who will love me back? Maybe if I do this one thing my life will change forever. Why do bad things happen to me, I am a good person.
These are examples of the kind of thoughts one might have. And they can have a tendency to overtake your entire flow. And what Stoicism might offer you, is a door towards a world where you can see things in a new light. Perspective. One where you don’t have to consider the emptiness of trying to control something you have no control of. And instead, focus on what you can control. Living in the moment with an eye on reflection and the ideas you can control. Sitting back and assessing what’s the best move or non-move to make. Sometimes, the non-move is the power move for yourself.
Finding a Practice | The Daily Stoic ✍️
One of the great aspects of stoicism is you can read one line and that one line holds a world of power and insight on this life we live. And that’s exactly how The Daily Stoic approaches it’s teaching. They take one line or a few from a philosopher and bundle it up into stoic themes for anyone to understand. It follows themes in three parts through the year and every month it’s own focus. February is focused on passion and emotions under theme of Discipline of Perception.
The other great gift from The Daily Stoic is it offers you a way to have Stoicism be part of your everyday practice. Like anything in life, you get what you put in. And with stoicism, I found if you keep a practice you keep consistency. And it’s within that consistency different textures of thought, discipline, and clarity start to form.
“Protect your clear conviction in every appearance.” I mean what a line. This notion of protecting your conviction in everything you do is a profound one. It’s a way of saying, think before you act. But actually, he says something else within the use of “protect.” As if to say, you are watching your own back by processing and then acting versus responding and reacting. There is a difference. And 90% of the time when we act on impulse we end up regretting it later.
The other big takeaway on Saturday’s note is it directly relates to things happening in my life just this last week. The book’s ability to hit me on an immediate or broad level is just absolutely profound.
Sunday’s note hit me on a much more broader life level. I see a bit of myself in having a similar engine as old Teddy Roosevelt in that I always wanted to move. I wanted to take it on. This is in my blood. Yet, as I have gotten older I realized that beneath that drive and need to go-go-go, to move-move-move was an unhealthy neurosis. I had to learn the hard way a few times that the arena can’t be your entire life. That is why it’s the arena. You step into it. You step out of it.
Seneca is saying a wise person will endure this but won’t choose it. They will find things to remove in their life, not things to add. Choosing clarity versus choosing clutter. And that is some real talk.
As I have gotten older, I still want and get into the arena. But I’d argue my practice inside of the arena has shifted completely. It’s more so about being in the arena versus running in it.
And I love what Ryan points out in his analysis of Seneca’s note. We choose to be at war-when peace is in fact the more honorable and fitting choice. The power move isn’t the combat, but the path towards peace. Pretty profound when you consider it.
In Conclusion 🙌
Life throws a lot your way. And so do your thoughts. That’s why before I embraced stoicism and a practice around it, I definitely struggled with the thoughts roaming my head, primarily my ego. And I definitely paid a price for it. But I didn’t have to. And neither do you.
If you are curious, I encourage you to get a copy of Meditations and The Daily Stoic and get to reading. It’s had a profound effect on how I see myself, how I tackle any situation, and how I find peace and gratitude within the now. There is great power in self-reflection. There is great power in using filters to understand what is this life. And the combination of reflection and philosophical filters just might be the help you need to weather the storm.
Go forth. Be kind. Do your best.