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Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom and temperance.

And here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare, we think deeply about the challenging issues of our time.

And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school, when we have the time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals and to prepare for what the future will bring.

Hey, this is Ryan Holliday, welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic. Today's topic is going to be an interesting one. When the Stoics talk about happiness, they don't mean sort of the western definition of happiness, which is like, everything's easy, everything's fun, you're having a great time, you're, you know, we tend to, we tend to think of happiness in our world as like getting everything you want, everything's going great.

So the Stoics, it was sort of the absence of the passions, it's getting to that place of adoraxia or apothea, that getting to a place of feeling enough, feeling content, I think is really maybe for the Stoics contentment and but also excellence, like getting, getting to that philosophical sweet spot is it is it.

And so in today's episode, we are going to look at how you get there, how do you get to that place of enough. And part of it is me, this is something I recorded when I was in Vancouver, putting out the launch of stillness and I gave a talk and I sat down and sort of riffing on this idea of enough, something I was really thinking about as I was putting out the book.

And then during the tour for that, I ended up talking about this on Rich Rolls Podcast, so you're a little segment of me talking about this on Rich's Podcast. And then I also went and talked about it on Aubrey Marcus's podcast, so you'll, you'll get a little riff of me talking about it there.

We're going to talk about this really key Stoic idea of getting to a place of enough, so thanks to Aubrey and thanks to Rich for having me on. And I wish you all much stillness and and happiness, those are actually the same thing. So see in today's clip.

Seneca had an interesting definition of poverty, he said, poverty isn't having too little, poverty is wanting more. And so obviously look, if you don't have enough to live, you don't have shelter, that's what real poverty is. That's not what we're talking about.

I think what he meant is that real poverty, really being poor in our times is the sense that you don't have enough, that you need more and more. But the truth is very little is needed to have a happy life. And chances are you have everything you need right now to be happy.

And this is something I try to remind myself, as I'm putting out a book, I'm just looking around my house, you have everything that you need to be happy, you don't need more. It's the idea of conditional happiness. It fools us. We go, I will be happy when I have a million dollars, I will be happy when I have a million Instagram followers, I will be happy when my parents finally admit they were wrong and apologize.

You're never going to get those things or really what the Stokes want you to realize is that since those things are not in your control, they're not worth craving after.

It'd be nice to have and hopefully they do fall in your lap, but this wanting, this needing is really the source of so much of our misery.

So in Marcus really says you could be happy today instead you choose tomorrow. I think that's what he means, you're putting off what you could be grateful for today in favor of what you hope to have in the future, what you think will magically fulfill you.

The truth is no amount of external possessions will ever make you feel good or feel good enough. And there's no greater proof of this than looking at some of the richest, most powerful, most famous people in the world.

How many of them are miserable? How many of them sadly kill themselves? So the idea that it's going to be different when you get them is just a lie that we tell ourselves.

It might be good for the human species, it might move the ball forward, but it ultimately takes us to a kind of place of spiritual and personal bankruptcy.

So the, at the core of stoicism is a contentment with this present moment because that's all you have.

And it's a gratitude for the present moment. I don't think it's a coincidence that they call it the present moment. It's a gift.

And so you want to learn to be grateful to focus on what you have, not on what you want more of to make use of what you have, not to think about all the schemes and work you can put into getting more.

So this idea of being present, this idea of being grateful, this idea of enough is just so deeply powerful and I think deeply rewarding.

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