12 Stoic Rules For A Better Life
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What rules did Marcus Aurelius treat as a design for living?
Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Marcus Aurelius never claimed to be a Stoic. If you look in his famous Meditations, one of the greatest books ever written, nowhere in here does Marcus Aurelius claim to be a Stoic philosopher. And Gregory Hayes, who is perhaps Marcus Aurelius' greatest translator, says that Marcus identifies more as a philosopher than as a Stoic. And Hayes says that for Marcus Aurelius, philosophy was not merely a subject to write or argue about, but one that was expected to provide a design for living. He says it was a set of rules to live one's life by. So what were those rules?
What did philosophy do for Marcus Aurelius? That's what I want to talk about in today's Daily Stoic video. Some rules, some lessons from Marcus Aurelius, from the Stoics, from philosophy that can help us live a better life. One of my favorite stories about Marcus Aurelius comes in the depths of the Antonine Plague, which is a horrible time in Roman history. It's this pandemic that overwhelms Rome. It kills millions and millions of people. It lasts years and years and years. It devastates the economy. The streets are filled with bodies. Marcus Aurelius holds a sale on the lawn of the Imperial Palace where he sells off his most valuable possessions. He sells jewels and goblets. He even sells, we're told, some of his wife's fineries.
He's doing this to send a message that, first off, my needs don't come before the people. I don't need these fancy things when people are suffering, when people are struggling, and I'm going to take the hit first. which is what great leaders do, right? The CEO takes a pay cut during a dip in the economy and doesn't lay people off, right? A great athlete renegotiates their contract so the team can bring on new players. A leader has to be willing to sacrifice and signal commitment. It has to put other people ahead of themselves, right? In the Marines, they talk about how leaders eat last. That's what greatness is. Rank has some privileges, but it also has obligations and responsibilities. One of the things we know is that Marcus Aurelius didn't particularly enjoy being emperor.
It's not a job he would have chosen. It's not a job that he did choose. But once he was in it, he chose not to complain. This is something he says in meditations. He says, don't be overheard complaining at court, not even to yourself. None of our situations are ideal. We don't like everything about them. There are things we're frustrated about that we wish were better, and we can seek to change them. We can have very real reasons for being dissatisfied by them, but complaining and whining and throwing ourselves a pity party, who and what does that serve? So Marcus Aurelius was saying like, look, this is the role you were assigned in life. This is what you have to put up with. So put up with it, make the best of it, get to work.
Don't waste time complaining. My absolute favorite question in meditations is where Marcus Aurelius says, ask yourself, is what you're doing essential? And he says, cause so much of what we do and say is not essential. And his point wasn't just elimination, right? He's saying that when we eliminate these inessential things, what we get is the double benefit of doing those essential things. better. So this is about putting more wood behind fewer arrows, as the expression goes. This is about eliminating the extraneous, the irrelevant, the inefficient, all of that, so you can do the important things that actually do matter even better. This decision to double down on the things that really are moving the needle, that are important, that are worth doing, that are in your control, is one of the fundamental lessons for Marx to realize.
I said that I had a favorite question in meditations, but, but I actually have a close second. Mark says, ask yourself, am I afraid of death? Because I won't be able to do this anymore. And that this that's the operative thing, right?
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What rules did Marcus Aurelius treat as a design for living?
0:00β4:51
2
How did Marcus model leadership and sacrifice during the Antonine Plague?
4:51β10:34
3
Why did Marcus Aurelius refuse to complain about his role as emperor?
10:34β13:24
4
How should we decide what is essential in our daily lives?
13:24β16:06
5
How does remembering mortality (memento mori) change how we spend time?
16:06β17:20
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The Daily Stoic
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