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Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom every day life.

Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

Have you ever had a motionless moment? We are so busy, we think we're supposed to be. We think that's how we get better. We think that moving is the only way forward.

You might think that Mark as a realist could relate after all he headed an entire empire. He had books to read, writing to do, laws to pass, cases to hear, troops to lead.

So yes, he was a busy man. He, like us, was pulled in many directions. He had ambitions, worries, hopes, dreams.

And yet when he speaks most beautifully, it's of moments of quiet and calm. If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind, he said, free of the future and the past and can make yourself, as impetically says, a sphere rejoicing in its perfect stillness.

Have you ever had a moment like that? If you have, you know how special it is. You know what kind of insights you were able to access, what kind of happiness crept in, what kind of peace you were able to feel.

Marcus wrote that having that stillness allows us to concentrate on what living can be lived, the present moment. Only then he said, could you spend the time you have left in tranquility and in kindness and at peace with the spirit within you.

You deserve moments like that moments where you watch the snowfall moments when you sit quietly with a book moments when you look out the train window, not on a conference call, not checking email, not wondering how long until you arrive in the city.

But a moment to check in with yourself to think about your life and what you want to do with it moments with loved ones moments when you are grateful, connected, happy, creative in the zone, doing whatever it is that you do best.

When the Stoics talk about stillness, they're not talking about some abstract notion, they're talking about maybe the most important thing you can be doing in your life.

They are saying that all the work you are doing, all the thoughts you're expending, trying to get ahead, trying to force as a breakthrough, are pointless.

The real way to charge ahead is to slow down, to clear your mind, to rejoice in perfect stillness, free of the future and the past, fully present and locked in. You can do it, you deserve that.

I know for me one of the things I was really thinking about when I wrote stillness is the key was the idea that all the special moments in my life came not when I was doing stuff but when I was not doing stuff.

I was in a college apartment and Marcus really felt like a ton of bricks. It was moments now with my kids or moments in a run through a forest when I didn't hear anything but this buzzing sound and I couldn't figure out what this buzzing sound was and I realized all I could hear were bugs.

I was so loud, it sounded like a chain saw, that's how quiet it was where I was. These are the moments that I think we know our life is about. We've talked before about how easy it is to become a slave to your stuff and how success can take you further from where you want to go.

I think we know that what we want in life where we're trying to go is moments of stillness in peace and tranquility and reflection and happiness and yet we make decisions that take us away from that thing.

So when the Stokes are asking if you've had a motionless moment they're asking how are you spending your life or are you getting the one thing that's supposed to make your life worth living or are you doing what you need to be doing, are you getting what you deserve, are you living what can be lived as Marcus said, are you experiencing the present moment.

The present moment can be all that you need if you so choose and so these motionless moments to me are the greatest moments. It's sitting on a porch swing, it's sitting in an airplane cabin when everyone is falling asleep and you're not watching the movie, you're not doing anything, you're just there with yourself.

It's moments with the journal in the morning, it's moments with the book, it's a quiet dinner with people you love or it's a loud dinner with people you love. It doesn't have to literally be still but it's moments when you've tuned out the inessential you've focused on what really matters and you're there and happy and present and full.

And that is what the Stokes would define joy as and that's what the Stokes would say we're doing this work for.

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