Is Stoicism the Secret to a Good Life?

**Ryan Holiday** (0:00)
People think Stoic means has no emotions. I sort of define Stoicism as this idea that we don't control what happens, but we control how we respond to what happens.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:09)
Do you think that the Stoicism's principles of ancient wisdom are relevant for our times right now?

**Ryan Holiday** (0:16)
The popularity of Stoicism is a reaction against what's clearly not working for us and clearly making us miserable. We're all obviously just overstimulated and stressed and overwhelmed trying to make sense of the world. There's nothing so bad that you can't learn something from it. It's in those moments that I think we're really being tested. We have an opportunity to learn what we're made of.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:40)
I love that. Nothing is wasted.

**Ryan Holiday** (0:44)
Unless we waste it.

**Oprah Winfrey** (0:44)
Unless we waste it.
Hello and thank you for joining me on The Oprah Podcast. My book club selection this past April was Go Gentle by novelist Maria Simple. And in the story that she tells, the lead character practices and teaches Stoicism. But before I read Go Gentle, the novel, I think I had a vague idea of what Stoicism was. I thought it meant grin and bear it, stuff your feelings, tough it out. But the more her character spoke of Stoic principles in the novel, the more interested I became. Then I started ordering books about Stoicism. So I wasn't just reading the novel, I was reading books about what the character in the novel was talking about.
Then I hear this ancient philosophy is having a big comeback, even among younger people. So I invited the man who has written 15 books on Stoicism, including The Daily Stoic and really one of the most popular, The Obstacle Is The Way, which has sold millions of copies and has been published in 40 different languages. He is a podcaster, he is an author, and one of the leading voices behind the modern Stoicism movement. Welcome to my front porch, Ryan Holiday.

**Ryan Holiday** (2:11)
Thank you so much for having me. This is a total honor.

**Oprah Winfrey** (2:13)
So tell us how that became an interest for you.

**Ryan Holiday** (2:17)
Yeah. I don't think when people think of ancient philosophy, they think, oh, this will help me with modern problems. And so I had an experience, I guess that people have been having for thousands of years, which is you pick up Marcus Aurelius or Seneca or Epictetus, and you go, wait, this can't possibly be from 2000 years ago.

**Oprah Winfrey** (2:35)
Those are all famous Stoics you just named.

**Ryan Holiday** (2:37)
Yeah. I mean, there's a passage in Marcus Aurelius' Meditations that I remember reading as a college student, where the most powerful man in the world is talking about not wanting to get out of bed in the morning because it's nice and warm under the covers.
And in that second, all these centuries, you know, disappear, the different cultures is totally, you know, surreal circumstances disappear and you realize like human beings have been struggling with the same things for all time.

**Oprah Winfrey** (3:04)
Yes.

**Ryan Holiday** (3:04)
And actually, that's what philosophy is about. It's philosophy isn't riddles and, you know, names you can't pronounce. Philosophy is designed to help you live a good life, to fulfill your potential, to get up and get after it to deal with the ups and downs of what they would say fortune could throw at you.

**Oprah Winfrey** (3:21)
So 15 books you've written about this, what is Stoicism and how do you explain it?

**Ryan Holiday** (3:27)
Well, I think the stereotype you mentioned is a good place to start. People think Stoic means has no emotions, invulnerable. Yeah. That's what we would call lowercase Stoic. That's what the word means. And it was just like Epicurean means loves food, but it's actually also a 2500 year old ancient philosophy.
And so I sort of define Stoicism as this idea that we don't control what happens, but we control how we respond to what happens. And the Stoics believed that everything was an opportunity to practice virtue. And those four virtues for the Stoics were courage, temperance or self-discipline, justice, and wisdom. And so the idea is that life can throw a lot at you, but it can't prevent you from acting with virtue. That's something you could do in prison. You could also do as the Emperor of Rome. And so Stoicism then is this sort of toolkit for dealing with a world where the vast majority-

**Oprah Winfrey** (4:24)
So it's not a religion?

**Ryan Holiday** (4:25)
I don't think so. Yeah.
It's a way of living. And there have been, the Stoics lived in a world of the gods, and there have been Stoics since, you know, God. It's, I think, perfectly compatible with a variety of different faiths. But it's mostly a way of living, a set of ideas.