This bite-sized episode is about the essence of stoicism, the philosophy that's both practical

and focused on action with Ryan Holliday, the prolific author of books, including the outstanding

obstacle is the way. Now, stoicism is really about how you live

and deal with whatever life throws at you, much like a phrase you may have heard of, Amor Farty,

which means love of fate. That too is all about embracing life as it is, using any challenges

or setbacks as fuel to grow and improve.

Here is Ryan Holiday.

To me, this is the framework that is responsible for, you know, the success I've had as an

author. I think it's responsible for the, you know, the things I've maybe bounced back from

as a person. I am trying to apply these ideas, you know, day in and day out. And that in and of

itself is an important, I think, idea in stoicism. I think most people, when you ask them what

philosophy is, you know, they think it's like, you know, a bunch of sort of

inscrutable ideas from, you know, people with big names that they can't pronounce.

We tend to think of philosophy as an academic discipline or a theoretical exercise.

And what I am so drawn to in the Stoicsics what i am most inspired by and what i try to

you know sort of portray in my books is like no no marcus aurelius was a philosopher but is he was also the

emperor or kato one of the famousics, didn't write anything down.

He was a philosopher because of how he lived the Stoic ideas.

And so, again, this is, I think, a very important distinction.

It's not the beautiful, you know, turns of phrase they came up with. It's what they do when the chips were down.

Yeah, it's a practical way of approaching life. So you mentioned, well, before we get on to Marcus Aurelius, who I know is the guy you tend to quote or look to most. Yeah. You've already kind of explained it.

If you had to sum up stoicism in a phrase or a sentence or two, how would you?

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