Marcus Aurelius's Rules for Living a Better Life

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 was the most powerful man in the world, But he knew that even so the vast majority of things were outside of his control. He couldn't control what other people did, he couldn't control what other people said, certainly, even though some emperors tried couldn't control what other people said about him. But even within these constraints, he tried to be the best person he was capable of being.

You know, he's born in the year 121. He comes to power in the year 161 AD. He rules for nearly two decades through all sorts of difficulty, things that we're unfortunately familiar with today, political unrest, floods, issues at the border, a plague. even the Antonine plague. And so I find him just an endlessly fascinating model for life.

And so in today's episode, I want to give you some rules for life from Marcus Aurelius. Practices, strategies, things I've taken from meditations, things I've taken from the biographical information we have about Marcus, things we can guess about Marcus, but real practices rules, standards, ways of thinking that we can apply to our actual life. I just, you know, again, you think about the power this guy had. And I love this line from Matthew Arnold.

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