Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today.

Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Thursdays, we do double duty, not just reading our daily meditation,

but also reading a passage from the book, The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, which I wrote with my wonderful co-author and collaborator, Steve Enhancelman.

And so today, we'll give you a quick meditation from one of the Stoics, from Epititus Markis, Relius, Seneca, then some analysis for me, and then we send you out into the world to do your best to turn these words into works.

Compete with yourself and root for everybody else. The Stoics said that you should focus on your own improvement, that the only race to run is against yourself. At the same time, they also remind us that we're all tied up in this thing together, that we're all bees in the same hive.

Aren't those two things that odds with each other? When you focus on your own race, don't you necessarily want to win the expense of others, or at the very least have to disregard them and their interests?

Well, no. We've talked about this. What one does ripples through the collective. Markis, Relius, said that when one bee is injured, the whole hive suffers.

Goes the other way too, when one bee succeeds, the whole hive thrives. A tweet from Candice Millard squares this tension perfectly. My advice for what it's worth, she says, for success and happiness is this. Compete with yourself and root for everybody else.

In his letters to Lucilius, Senica was explicit in his writing aspirations. He wanted to be one of the greats. But unlike some writers, he didn't view other writers as competition. If he read a great work, he didn't see it as a threat. In fact, in his 46 letter, Senica says he received his copy of a book that Lucilius wrote.

With the intention of just quickly skimming it, the sunlight called to me, he said, hunger warned and the clouds were lowering. But I absorbed the book from beginning to end. I was not merely pleased. I rejoiced. So full of wit and spirit it was. He was happy for his friend. He was rooting for him. And we can imagine he was inspired to better himself and get better at his own craft as well.

Seeking out shipwrecks. I was shipwrecked before I even boarded. The journey showed me this. How much of what we have is unnecessary and how easily we can decide to rid ourselves of these things whenever it's necessary. Never suffering the loss.

That's from Senica's moral letters 87. And this is today's entry in the Daily Stoke, 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance and the art of living from yours truly Ryan Holiday with my co author and translator Steve Hanselman.

You can get the book anywhere books are sold including signed copies in the Daily Stoke store and our limited edition, a leather bound edition as well. Zeno widely considered to be the founder of the School of Stoicism was a merchant before he was a philosopher.

On a voyage between islands in the Mediterranean, his ship sank along with its cargo. Zeno ended up in Athens and while visiting a bookstore, he was introduced to the philosophy of Socrates and later an Athenian philosopher named Cratees.

These influences drastically changed the course of his life leading him to develop the thinking and principles that we now know as Stoicism. And according to the ancient biographer Diogeanese, Zeno joke, now that I've suffered a shipwreck, I'm on a good journey.

Or according to another account, you've done well fortune driving me thus to philosophy. The Stoics weren't being hypocritical when they said we ought to act with the reverse clause or that even the most unfortunate events can turn out to be for the best.

In fact, the entire philosophy is founded on that idea. You know, I tell this story at greater length in lives of the Stoics.

I'll read you a chunk of that as well, just because it's one of my favorite stories in all of Stoicism. And I think it's just so fitting.

I write, the story of Stoicism begins fittingly in misfortune on a fateful day late in the fourth century BC, the Phoenician merchant Zeno sent sail on the Mediterranean with cargo full of Tyrion Purple Die.

This family's trade was in one of the most valuable goods in the ancient world. And as for many entrepreneurs, their business was on the line every day.

No one knows what caused the wreck. Was it a storm? Pirates, human air? Doesn't matter. Zeno lost everything. Ship and cargo in a time before insurance and venture capital.

It was an irreplaceable fortune. And yet the unlucky merchant would later rejoice in his loss claiming, I made a prosperous voyage when I suffered a shipwreck for it was the shipwreck that sent Zeno to Athens and on the path to creating what would become Stoic philosophy.

...