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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 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 Epictetus Marks, Relious 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.

This is all you need. We can imagine Epictetus stripped bare by his fate, his freedom stolen from birth, his leg broken by a sadistic master hobbled ever after,

and then as a bonus, he's exiled from Rome. We can imagine stockdale and similar straights, shot down, isolated, tortured.

There must have been moments when they didn't think they could make it. There must have been moments of incredible pain, of fear, of despair.

They had been laid flat by life, deprived of nearly everything. Yet they both retained the one thing that can never be taken from a person.

The thing that can only be relinquished. As the lyrics say, crack of dawn, all is gone, except the will to be.

Remember what Victor Frankl said that no matter what happens, we always possess the ability to decide what we make of our condition.

The Stoic decides as long as they're living, whether they'll carry on. Our will to be, our inner citadel can never be breached by outside forces.

It can be betrayed, it can be surrendered, but it cannot be broken. All we need is that then. All we need is the understanding that desire to keep going,

to persevere, to commit as Stoicdale did, that if we survive, we'll turn this into something. Everything else can go. But if that remains, we'll be fine.

The most secure fortress. Remember that your ruling reason becomes uncontrollable when it rallies and relies on itself,

so that it won't do anything contrary to its own will, even if its position is irrational.

How much more unconquerable if its judgments are careful and made rationally?

Therefore, the mind free from passions is an impenetrable fortress. A person has no more secure place of refuge for all time.

Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, 848. I'm reading to you today from the Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom Perseverance in the Art of Living by yours truly.

My co-author and translator, Steve Enhancelman, you can get signed copies, by the way, in the Daily Stoic store, over a million copies of the Daily Stoic in print now.

It's been just such a lovely experience to watch it. It's been more than 250 weeks, consecutive weeks on the bestseller. It's just an awesome experience.

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