Ryan Holiday

And there, at the head of an alliance of nations totaling an upward of 700 million citizens, he discovered that far from being exempt from the rules, he had to be stricter with himself than ever.

And he came to find that the best way to lead was not by force or fiat, but through persuasion, through compromise, through patience, by controlling his temper, and most of all, by example.

and he recalls in this moment and moments throughout his life something that his mother used to quote from the book of proverbs in the bible that he that is slow to anger is better than the mighty and he that rules his spirit is better than he that taketh a city and this is something the stoics talk about that that to be in power you have to first be under your own power

and so we have to understand that eisenhower conquers the world he is victorious at d-day you know over eight decades ago because he is first victorious over himself victorious over you know delusions of grandeur wishful thinking and then later victorious over

pessimistic thinking, over panic, over doubt, over fear.

But when we control our emotions, when we can see things objectively, when we can stand steadily despite everything that's happening around us, it becomes possible to do that mental flip, to not just see what's bad about a situation, what's hard about a situation, what's going wrong, but the opportunity within it.

I mean, imagine being in Eisenhower's shoes.

This enormous army is racing on you.

You've pushed all your chips into the center.

Everyone around you is discouraged and disillusioned and doubtful.

And he was able to see not just a way to muddle through it,

but to use this to his advantage to turn the whole thing around.

And that's what stoicism is.

It's not this passive, resigned, hopeless thing, but it's something deeper than that.

It's something more profound than that.

And it's something we cultivate in our study and in our thinking so that in these big moments, big in the scheme of the world and in our own lives, so that we can use them when it counts.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

We could use more people like this.

It's a dark world.

It's a world with cheats and cowards, liars and monsters.