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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,

365 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living, which I wrote my wonderful co-author and collaborator Steven Hanselman.

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.

Perfect is not the goal. In martial arts, the black belt is the highest level of the master. In religion, perhaps it's the priest or even the saint.

You can get a doctorate in philosophy, but that's not really what the Stoics admired.

To them, the highest level that one could attain was the sage. Did Epititus get there? Perhaps according to us he did.

But Epititus was far too humble to ever claim that himself. Yet while he did say perfection was impossible,

he still believed that perfection was something to which we could be making progress. And that's what we're trying to do here.

We're trying to get better. We quoted Longfellow a while back. But to act that each tomorrow find us farther than today.

That's the goal to make improvements, to push ourselves. Seneca said the goal was to inquire one thing a day, a quote, an idea, an insight, a story, something that fortifies you against poverty, against death, against adversity.

He didn't say that one thing makes you perfect. He said that one thing makes you better.

So we read this email, we crack open the Stoics or the Daily Stoic, we can listen to that podcast, we can ask that question of a mentor or an advisor, we can get feedback from a friend.

We're not trying to be perfect. We are trying to get better.

No one has a gun to your head. Nothing is noble. If it's done unwillingly or under compulsion, every noble deed is voluntary. That's Seneca's moral letters, 66.

This is from today's entry in the Daily Stoic 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance and the art of living, featuring new translations of Seneca, epictetus and Marcus Aurelius,

written by me, Ryan Holliday, my partner in crime, Steve Hanselman, you can get this book anywhere, books are sold, you can even get a leather bound edition, premium edition at store.dailystoic.com.

Let's look at today's meditation. You don't have to do the right thing. You always have the option of being selfish, rude, awful, short-sighted, pedantic, evil or stupid.

In fact, sometimes there are incentives to break bad. Certainly not every criminal gets taught.

But how does this line of thinking usually work out for people what is their life like? You don't have to do the right thing just as you don't have to do your duty.

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