38 pages • 1 hour read
Ryan Holiday, Stephen HanselmanThe Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Creating Happiness and Stability Through Reasoned Choices
Holiday repeatedly reminds readers of the importance of the Stoic concept prohairesis, or reasoned choices. By focusing on one’s own agency and ability to make rational decisions, Holiday promises that readers will be better able to create happiness and stability in their lives. Explaining that “The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can’t” (9), the author maintains that many people waste their time worrying about external events or possibilities that they cannot influence. Instead, they should redirect that energy.
Holiday uses quotes from Stoic greats such as Seneca and Epictetus to show that reasoned choices should manifest in our lives as consistent discipline and the ability to resist harmful habits. As Seneca writes in Moral Letters, “We must give up many things to which we are addicted, considering them to be good. Otherwise, courage will vanish, which should continually test itself” (16). Holiday adds that only reasoned choices can keep habits from “running our lives” (16) and undermining our freedom. He underlines this point by telling readers “we are studying philosophy precisely to break ourselves of rote behavior” (24). Relying on conscious choices—not reflexes—requires people to examine how they behave and identify what is and isn’t working well.
Passages from Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius demonstrate how reasoning helps people overcome their wants, and emotional or physical reactions. Epictetus identifies any form of desire as potentially destabilizing, even for constructive pursuits like education or travel: “Where our heart is set, there our impediment lies” (61). For Epictetus, only reflection and disciplined choices can keep people from becoming “subjugated” (61) by their own desires. Marcus Aurelius agrees, claiming that pleasure “trips us up,” and that to overcome temptations people should train their minds to prize “freedom, honesty, kindness” (301) above pleasure.
To further persuade readers, Holiday paints a dark picture of those who favor impulse to a reasoned approach: “Look at the lives of most people who reject ethics and discipline, and the chaos and misery that so often follows” (145). The author notes that identifying uncontrollable forces and emphasizing personal choices has long been a feature of recovery programs for people overcoming addictions, as focusing on reasoned choices shows people in recovery a way forward: “They cannot undo the choices they have made or the hurt they have caused. But they can change the future—through the power they have in the present moment. As Epictetus said, they can control the choices they make right now” (9).
Reframing Conflict with Emotional Indifference
Stoic teachings advise people to reframe how they react to insults and conflict to minimize negative feelings, retain their dignity, and become more objective about events in their own lives. One solution is to try to interpret people’s words in the most generous way possible; this would help readers avoid becoming embroiled in conflicts based on misunderstandings. Holiday writes, “A virtuous person does not jump to hasty assumptions about other people […] Meanwhile, assuming malice—the most hasty of judgments—makes everything harder to bear” (308). He points to Epictetus’s instructions to not “let the force of the impression carry you away” (107), since first impressions can be a form of unexamined habit which may result in a harmful false conception.
Of course, sometimes conflict cannot be avoided through positive thinking alone. However, Stoic thinkers argue that it is possible to be attacked and remain emotionally indifferent to the situation. Holiday claims that by staying neutral and not allowing people to provoke knee-jerk reactions, people can retain their power and dignity in a conflict. The distress and anger that people feel when they believe they are being belittled or attacked can become a kind of reflex or habit. Conversely, learning to consciously manage thoughts and emotions allows people to avoid being “pulled like a puppet by every impulse” (42)—Marcus Aurelius image for the out-of-control feeling that overwhelming emotions bring.
Holiday challenges readers to reflect on the last time they lost their temper and consider if it helped their situation. He urges readers to “Train yourself to give up anger, and you won’t be angry at every fresh slight” (285). To further persuade readers, he quotes Marcus Aurelius who equates emotional calm to strength: “It isn’t manly to be enraged […] A real man doesn’t give way to anger and discontent […] The nearer a man is to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength” (41). For Aurelius, the ability to stay calm when provoked is part of the masculine ideal—as befits the patriarchal views of ancient Rome, the implication is that flying off the handle is an effeminate and thus weak response to provocation. Holiday and the Stoic philosophers suggest that emotional neutrality is strategically sound and personally beneficial—a tool for mental self-mastery and boundary setting.
The Circle of Control and the “Small Picture”
Holiday often revisits the Stoic concept of the “circle of control”—the idea that people can truly affect a very small sphere around themselves. Stoics maintain that the only thing fully within a person’s circle of control is their mind; other things such as their profession, family, friends, and other pursuits are also partially inside the circle, since they have some influence over them. Holiday examination of this concept connects to his argument that readers should focus on the “small picture” to create positive transformation in their lives. Holiday laments how much time and energy people waste by feeling angry or anxious about events outside of their circle of control—this emoting is draining and pointless.
According to Holiday, in modern culture, it is considered normal to spend a great deal of time following the news and trying to be an “informed and worldly individual” (38). He questions the wisdom of these habits, since it is impossible to exert one’s influence over such a myriad of events, which only create a draining distraction from one’s own problems or pursuits. He asks, “How much more time, energy, and pure brainpower would you have if you drastically cut your media consumption?” (38). Similarly, people also distract themselves by worrying about events that have not yet occurred. Holiday quotes Seneca as saying, “It’s ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, engulfed by anxiety” (250).
Stoicism proposes a solution to this problem: grounding one’s thoughts within the circle of control. In addition to being much more pragmatic, focusing on choices within one’s control also helps to establish mental calm and well-being. As Epictetus says, “Who then is invincible? The one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice” (44).
Holiday uses the football training strategy called “The Process” to illustrate how focusing on one’s circle of control, or the “small picture,” can benefit anyone. “The Process” requires players to focus on perfecting the minutiae of each play and not even think about their larger goals of tournaments or awards. Holiday believes that this approach is successful because long-term goals can only be met by taking the right actions in the present moment: “Games and seasons are constituted by seconds” (174). This kind of small-picture thinking encourages consistent action and discourages rumination on negative events or possibilities. Holiday argues that by focusing mostly on what they have influence over, people can “overcome obstacles and make their way to the top without ever having focused on the obstacles directly” (172).
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