Book SummaryThe Daily Stoic, by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Daily Stoic

Popular entrepreneur Ryan Holiday and translator Stephen Hanselman wrote The Daily Stoic as a daily devotional to share insights from the ancient Stoic philosophers on how to live a good life. It was a bestseller in 2016 and was widely featured in media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. It’s also been expanded into a podcast and website that serves as a treasure trove of Stoic wisdom for daily living.

Stoicism was founded in the third century BCE in Greece, but it came to be associated with the Romans. Some of its most noteworthy early practitioners include the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and the Roman slave Epictetus. In time, the philosophy was practiced by numerous leading historical figures, including George Washington and Immanuel Kant, and it has a long list of modern admirers and practitioners.

The popularity of Stoic philosophy, according to Holiday and Hanselman, is due to its practicality: From early on it was meant to be a way of life, not just a set of abstract ideas. At the core of Stoicism is the belief that the cardinal virtues—self-control, courage, justice, and wisdom—are the source of internal stability and peace of mind and the measure of a good life.

We’ve organized our guide according to the three broad categories of Stoic practices Holiday and Hanselman include in The Daily Stoic, including viewing life with self-control, responding to life with justice and courage, and managing our lives with wisdom. Within...

The Daily Stoic Summary Stoic Practices

In The Daily Stoic, Holiday reflects on quotes from Stoic thinkers, such as Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, and suggests ways their insights might be practiced today. However, Holiday warns that no Stoic claimed to perfectly embody every Stoic tenet—instead, they strove for that ideal.

(Shortform note: The authors emphasize practicing the Stoic insights in your daily life but only mention in passing that, in the Stoic view, a perfect life is an...

The Daily Stoic Summary Viewing Life With *Self-Control*

According to the Stoics, living a virtuous life starts with self-control. The authors explain that Stoics equate self-control with being the captain of your ship, not the passenger. Stoics argue that to practice self-control, you must actively make sense of life with reason. Through reason, you can control your view of life: the foundation of your understanding, your intentions, and even your actions.

The Stoics assert that when you don’t actively use reason, you end up a passive participant in life controlled by circumstances, emotions, and unchecked desires and thoughts. When this happens, you’ll lack self-control and will be unable to live virtuously.

In this section, we’ll consider four central aspects of how you can live virtuously by practicing self-control through reason.

The Role of Reason in Stoicism

The authors associate the virtue of self-control with the way we perceive the world—we’ve described this as viewing life with self-control. The glue in this association is reason. While the authors aren’t clear about how this association works, some basic principles of Stoic thought make it more apparent.

The Stoics believed that [the...

The Daily Stoic Summary Responding to Life With *Justice *and *Courage*

By controlling her view of life, the Stoic can discern right from wrong and act accordingly. In any situation, she can use her mind to cut through the noise of distracting emotions and impressions that could make her think or act in ways that aren’t virtuous. When someone tries to provoke her anger or fear, for instance, she recognizes the temptation to vice and chooses to think and act virtuously instead—with equanimity. This right action requires a sense of justice to know what’s right and the exercise of courage to follow through on it. In this section, we’ll consider four ways we can put justice and courage into action.

(Shortform note: The authors associate justice and courage with our actions, but they don’t claim the association is exclusive—all the virtues (justice, courage, self-control, and wisdom) can manifest in action. Self-control, for instance, is characterized by good discipline, and wisdom by discretion, both of which manifest in our actions. In fact, the Stoics believed you couldn’t truly possess one of the virtues without the other. In this sense, all four virtues influence every aspect of ourselves: our will, thoughts, and...

The Daily Stoic Summary Managing Our Lives With *Wisdom*

To view life with self-control and respond to life with justice and courage, the Stoics tried to manage their lives wisely. Wisdom entails applying good judgment to the way you live life so that you can stay focused on living virtuously. In this final section, we’ll consider four points of advice the Stoics offer for living wisely.

(Shortform note: Like Aristotle before them, the Stoics distinguished between two kinds of wisdom: theoretical wisdom (sophos or knowledge about reality) and practical wisdom (phronesis or knowing how to live well). Phronesis is sometimes equated with virtue as a whole: In this sense, all the virtues are the exercise of wisdom. This presents a difficulty because the Roman Stoics also had another term for wisdom: prudentia or “prudence.” Though Holiday and Hanselman only use the term wisdom, some modern Stoic thinkers believe prudence gets at the meaning better—to live prudently is to discipline yourself with reason. Bear this meaning in mind as you consider how you might follow the...

Shortform Exercise: Put the Principles Into Practice

The Daily Stoic is meant to motivate you to action, so consider how you can do just that.

The Stoics believed in regulating their emotions. Take a moment to identify what you’re feeling right now, then try being mindful of what your emotions reveal about your thoughts. (For example, if you’re feeling anxious, what’s the source of that anxiety? Identify it. Then, consider whether your anxiety will do anything to improve the situation.)nnUse the space below to identify an emotion and analyze its cause(s) and effect(s).