Robert Greene's 6 Stoic Concepts For A Fulfilling Life

you're going to have failure in life people are going to hurt you but that is life that's what it is so to resist that to be angry about that means to not love life itself to me he's one of the great living philosophers of our time certainly one of the best selling philosophers of our time his books have sold millions of copies all over the world his Works have changed the lives of athletes and musicians and world leaders and he directly changed my life talking about the great Robert Greene 48 Laws of Power Art of Seduction Mastery laws of human nature the daily laws I'm Ryan Holliday not only have I written a number of books about philosophy I've spoken about it to the NBA in the NFL sitting senators in Special Forces leaders and in today's episode I want to give you not just some really genius things from the one and only Robert Greene but I want to give you Robert Greene talking about Steward philosophy and some stoic lessons that he's applied that you can apply that connect still to his work on Power and warfare and strategy and human psychology [Music] the thing that you and I made together which is the Amor Fati coin yes which is the idea that it's also a nature phrase of a sort of loving everything that happens to you not resenting it not fighting against it not carrying around a grudge or a burden but sort of embracing it and finding the good in it yeah where does that fit in with our human nature well it doesn't fit in because it's not natural to us our natural frame our natural starting position is when something bad happens why me to feel sort of a grievance to feel that things aren't fair to feel that other people aren't giving you what you want or what you deserve we start from a position of feeling kind of sorry for ourselves right we deserve more than what we're getting and so overcoming some of these natural elements in human nature and turning them around and using them for another purpose another way and Amor Fati is very powerful in that you you train yourself to accept everything that happens it's sort of a banality to say that things happen for a reason but there's some truth to it for Nietzsche it was this is life life involves pain life involves adversity you're going to die one day and it's not going to be pleasant your friends and family members they're going to die one day and it's not going to be pleasant you're going to have failure in life people are going to hurt you but that is life that's what it is so to resist that to be angry about that means to not love life itself [Music] Seneca has this thing but I still struggle with what it means he says we suffer more in imagination than reality now I think he's saying and I was talking to a friend who's sort of dreading this thing that's going to happen he's worried about this negative news article that's going to come out I was talking to him about it I was saying look like it's gonna happen and it's going to either be really negative or not that negative but you're you're borrowing the suffering in advance you're you're feeling crappy about it before it's happened I'm just curious what does that quote mean to you I often have the ideas I'm meditating there's a world out there that has nothing to do with me that's completely indifferent to Robert Greene the birds could care less about my faith the trees don't know anything about my existence the sky doesn't care at all about me right okay that's the reality that's the world but my thinking creates this thing as if I'm the most important thing in the universe that everything that happens is going to happen to me and is going to be bad Etc so to be able to see the thinking traps you so many times into patterns that you've been programmed to respond to situations a lot of times by anxiety thoughts pop up about I've got to do this phone call or oh I forgot to email that person or damn this this interview is coming up and I don't want to do it so much of the thoughts are are anxieties that you're anticipating right what's going to happen right if you can just control that if you could just see that that is the source of your problem and that the world is indifferent to you and that the circumstances are totally neutral and that newspaper article that comes out you can't control it and maybe the bad stuff will actually in the end rebound to your favor or it'll make you tougher it'll make you realize certain things if you can just see them as facts then you've got the power my floss is always been you have to make ideas your own you have to take what somebody teaches and you have to put it into your own experience it can't just be these dead words yes that you kind of digest that have no relevance to your daily experience you have to take them they have to come to life within you within your own experience so you read a passage and uh that's not maybe what I'm really going through right now but to kind of maybe recall some experiences in the past that might be relevant and then the second day you come up on something that is maybe a little bit closer and then as you go through it more and more and more the kind of soaks in and you see more and more access points to your daily experience and then it can kind of become something that you internalize death is the ultimate barrier for all of us not just physically but psychologically I maintained that human beings are messed up screwed up in so many ways because of their awareness of death and their fear of death it is through this fear that we created all kinds of superstitions that we created the idea of an afterlife you're enslaved by this fear you're not aware of it it's controlling you overcoming it is the ultimate Freedom most people are going to say oh that's not me as they say in for all of these chapters of other people they're irrational not me yeah oh I'm not really afraid of death I I play video games and I'm always killing people and it I watch movies and people are always diet so I'm not afraid our culture was permeated with cartoon versions of death your death is something physical it's going to happen to you it's a very visceral thing you are afraid of it and that fear is creates what I call latent anxiety it makes you fearful of a lot of things in life and you're not aware of it it makes you cautious about failure it makes you cautious about taking risks so I'm trying to show you that your fear of death has infected you on many many levels and so I compare it to this I use the metaphor in the book I don't use many metaphors but this is one I use is that death is like this vast ocean that we stand on the shore of most animals are not aware of their mortality we are the only species as far as we know that's aware of its mortality and here you are on the debt on the shore of this immense vast ocean you don't know what death is or what it's going to be and you're afraid of it and you turn your back to it and we humans have the ability to explore things to conquer our fear and I want you instead of turning your back to actually enter that vast ocean and get and explore it and I show you ways of exploring the actual thought of your own mortality and how it can free you and inspire you in many ways foreign of the 20th century was no Alfred Hitchcock directing a film if you've known other people who've done it is an extremely stressful job it's like directing an army into a campaign because problems are arising that you cannot anticipate there's all this pressure there's all this money you've got insane egos of actors producers Etc it's a constant Adrenaline Rush going through you can't control your emotions so Hitchcock people would look at him on the set and he'd be falling asleep in the director's chair he'd look like Buddha his eyes were closed why because he prepared for everything he anticipated everything that was going to happen and so by the time the film came he was completely bored because he knew he was able to control every aspect of the production foreign you the reader to look at is to not look at people's what they say or their appearance but to look at their actions and the patterns of their behavior so for instance I talk about Howard Hughes in chapter four as somebody who's got a very weak character who was a horrific businessman and people were lured in by his image of this sort of Maverick Aviator right kind of you know great Hollywood person Etc but if you looked at the patterns of his behavior you would have seen that he was actually quite toxic so stop looking at what people say about themselves and look at their actions I hope you like this video I hope you subscribe but what I really want you to subscribe to is our daily stoic email one bit of stoic wisdom totally for free to the largest community of stoics ever in existence you can sign up at dailystoke.com email there's no spam you can unsubscribe at any time I love sending it I've sent it every day for the last six years and hope to see you there at dailystoke.com 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Channel: Daily Stoic

Views: 451,470

Keywords: Stoic, Stoicism, Ryan Holiday, Ryan Holiday Stoicism, Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday Interview, Ryan Holiday Stoic, Ryan Holiday Daily Stoic, Stoicism TED talk, marcus aurelius, marcus aurelius meditations, ryan holiday podcast

Id: 2fejC6-k7pM

Length: 9min 42sec (582 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 06 2023