A Stoic's Guide To Looksmaxxing
The Daily Stoic
Daily Stoic | Backyard Ventures
4.5 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 14 June 2026
⏱️ 23 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
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Summary
Looksmaxxing promises to make you more attractive, more confident, and more powerful. But at what point does self-improvement become obsession? In today’s episode, Ryan looks at what the Stoics would say about this viral trend, the dangers of chasing external validation, and what it actually means to become your best self.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. |
| 0:14.7 | Look, I wish I didn't have to talk about this, but since a lot of young men follow the Daily Stoic and spend a lot of time on YouTube, |
| 0:22.6 | I feel like I have to address this word that's all over the internet right now, which is |
| 0:27.1 | looks maxing, looks maxing, looks maxing, looks maxing, looks maxing. |
| 0:31.6 | It's a TikTok trend taking hold of men seeking to maximize their physical appearance. And it can be hard to know how real some of these trends are, but this one is real enough, |
| 0:42.3 | and it speaks to something timeless too. |
| 0:45.3 | But right now, because of social media, because of algorithms, because of toxic online influencers, |
| 0:51.3 | young men are particularly obsessed with their looks, their muscles being |
| 0:56.4 | more attractive, being alpha, being dominant. Some of this is harmless. Some of it's totally |
| 1:02.2 | fine, whether we're talking about fitness or take care of your skin or nutrition or getting proper |
| 1:06.8 | rest. But some of it is actively harmful, if not absurd. |
| 1:11.0 | I think it's worth saying that the Stoics were in no way against improving yourself. |
| 1:16.3 | We can tell from the statues, they were in good shape, they were handsome, they were strong, |
| 1:20.4 | they tried to take care of themselves. |
| 1:22.6 | And so that's what we're going to talk about today, not just what the Stoics would warn us |
| 1:26.3 | against as far as some of these |
| 1:27.7 | extreme and dangerous behaviors, but what they would tell us about being beautiful, about |
| 1:33.0 | attraction, and about being your very best self. |
| 1:40.8 | There's nothing wrong with beauty or being beautiful. |
| 1:44.1 | But Epictetus said that beauty wasn't in our |
| 1:46.4 | genetics. It was in our choices. He said, if your choices are beautiful, then you will be beautiful. |
| 1:52.1 | Okay, so what does he mean by that? We are the product of our choices. And by that, I think he means |
... |
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