How I Became A Stoic (Podcast)

Marcus Aurelius's Meditations: http://amzn.to/2ywjd2U

Download This Podcast Episode on Itunes: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/renaissance-humans-podcast/id1108166179?mt=2

Direct Podcast Download: http://traffic.libsyn.com/renaissancehumanspodcast/05__How_I_Became_A_Stoic.mp3

My article about the three lessons: http://renaissancehumans.com/?page_id=1067&preview=true

I found the solution I needed while snooping through an 1820 year-old journal.

It was a kind of operating system for my brain, and after I'd adopted it, my health and emotional problems more or less sorted themselves out over the course of a few years.

I'm talking about stoicism, which I was accidentally introduced to at age 16 due to my interest in Greco-Roman history and culture.

In today's podcast, I talk about the first three stoic insights I got from reading Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, how they had an immediate impact on me, and why they're still with me more than 16 years later.

I talk about:

1) How messed up 16-year-old me was, and how I ended up finding solutions in the journal of a long-dead Roman emperor

2) Why Marcus was so unusual among ancient monarchs

3) The insight Marcus gave me about "having it all," vs "being disadvantaged."

4) A key stoic idea Marcus keeps repeating about controlling your emotions and staying away from negative thinking.

5) The line from Marcus that got me to stop caring more about what others thought of me than what I thought of myself.

If you're not interested in the whole episode, you can skip around to the specific topics you'd care to hear about with the show noteslist below:


Show Notes:

3:14 - My health and depression problems when I was a young man.

5:26 - Who was Marcus Aurelius

6:17 -How Marcus's book was a lot different than what was written by other ancient rulers

9:36 - What happened when I first picked up meditations

10:20 - The three points I took away from Marcus's book

11:17 - Concept One: "Having It All" Vs "Having Nothing" And Still Being Happy

14:56 - The importance of controlling what thoughts you let yourself think for optimal happiness

15:46 - Concept Two: Why being the the best version of yourself is way more critical than achieving goals when it comes to a a life worth living.

19:48 - What happened when I put concept two into effect in my life.

22:57 - Concept Three: Society shouldn't be your bellwether