PNTV: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (#56)

Foreign. Hey, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got one of my favorite teachers, Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor philosopher in his great book Meditations. We've got that book, six page PDF philosopher's note as our guide. I've got like 15 big ideas here. It's one of my favorite books. He's one of my favorite teachers. Fell in love with him even more in 2001. I went for a little traveling, studied Jesus in Jerusalem and Socrates in Athens and Rumi in Konya, Turkey, where he's buried. And Marcus Aurelius near the Danube of Hungary, which is where he wrote this book. He was running the Roman Empire very much like the opening scene from the Gladiator. You've got that old emperor, that's Marcus Aurelius. So you already know him more than you may have thought if you haven't read his stuff yet. But just an awesome guy. They had a statue and a tribute to him in the Hungarian National Museum when I was traveling there. And I just got a book of his first chance I could in Austria and studied him there, which was really cool. But this book is packed with big ideas. The book actually is excerpts from his meditations to himself. And it actually means meditations means to himself because these were notes he wrote to himself in the battlefields and in other challenging times of his empire where he was reminding himself of what he was taught as a young man being groomed to run the Roman Empire. He's one of the most wise rulers that we've seen. And just really good stuff to imagine an emperor going through very similar challenges that we all face. Bite sized nuggets of wisdom, if you're into it. Old school language, of course, but good stuff. So one of my favorite ideas is that I've mentioned a bunch of times, actually. I'm going to start with. Which one am I going to start with? I'm going to start with this idea common among all Stoic philosophers. Seneca and Epictetus, two other guys. We profile that we were made for a purpose. We each have a unique purpose, a dharma, if you will. He says, for what were you made? Everything was made with a purpose. What's your purpose? He was asking himself in his journal. Amazing stuff. So we talk about this all the time. What's your purpose? We talk about it in Deepak Chopra's Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. The seventh law was the law of Dharma. A really cool question to help us understand what our purpose might be is if you had all the time and all the money in the world, what would you do? All the time? All the money in the world, what would you do? Another big idea, Martin Seligman and authentic Happiness. He talks about signature strengths. We all have a unique constellation of strengths, and we're happier when we use those strengths. Well, we've been talking about this for thousands of years. The Buddha and Krishna in the Dhammapada and the Bhagavad Gita, they say the same things. What's really cool? And in the note, I talk about the fact that we all have a certain purpose. And Aurelius says, let your one delight to go from one service to the community to the next. Isn't that cool? Let your one delight be going from one service to the community to the next. So we have this unique constellation of gifts and experiences and dharma and purpose, and we're here to give them in service to the world. It's a really cool idea, and it's paralleled in, in Martin Seligman's book, Authentic Happiness, the Science of Happiness. Know your signature strengths. Use them often. You will be scientifically, statistically happier than those who don't. Very cool. Now, if you want a truly meaningful life, use your strengths often for something bigger than yourself. Give yourself to the world in service. As Aurelius says, let your one delight be going from one act of service to the community to the next. Really, really cool ideas there. So purpose and service, awesome themes we come back to again and again and again. Aurelius says that one thing we can do to live more powerfully is to imagine that we've already died. Imagine that our life ended right now and that every moment we get is a gift. It's a surplus of time. What would you do? What would you do if you lived with that reverence for the time you now have to live? It's a really cool, empowering, humbling, inspiring place to live from. A lot of these great teachers talk about death. As an advisor, we never know when our time is going to come. Now is the time to start living as if this life is a gift, which it is. He also says, let's not confuse ourselves with visions of a lifetime. Oftentimes we can get overwhelmed trying to imagine what everything's going to look like 10, 25, 50 years down the road, or even 10, 25, 50 weeks down the road. He says, don't confuse yourself with visions of a lifetime. Yes, it's nice to look forward and set some inspiring goals. But he says, it's ever the present moment that's asking us to show up. So find that balance between this vision of what's possible and this moment. It's a theme we come back to again and again and again. Idea here is don't confuse yourself with visions of a lifetime. Don't ignore having a vision and just fall into kind of that hedonist trap of just being in the moment. We need to have a healthy tension of having goals and a vision. But also, let's not overwhelm ourselves by deluding ourselves into thinking we're ever going to have it figured out perfectly. And we can't take action until we have it all figured out. Neither one's going to work. We want to have a vision, hold the tension and. And take steps in this moment. He's got some great ideas that I reference often on ignoring the opinions of others, right? So you can imagine him, the emperor, writing to himself in his journal. Remember, don't worry about what other people think of you. It means nothing. And he says it especially makes no sense to care what someone thinks of us when that person doesn't even like themselves. If someone doesn't even like themselves, why do we care whether or not they like us? It makes no sense. And he has a great line about it that I cover in the note. Think about that. If someone doesn't even like themselves, why should we care whether they. What they think of us makes no sense. And I mention this again and again whenever I talk about this theme. The irony is that those people who are most critical with themselves, who like themselves the least, are the ones who tend to be most critical of other people and of us. And the people who really like themselves are the ones who tend to bless us and to see our inner power and radiance and overall potential. And when we make mistakes, they're cool. They realize they make mistakes as well. And they've made peace with that. They're not projecting their issues onto you. So, really cool idea. We want to maintain independence from the good or bad opinion of others. That's a mantra from Deepak Chopra you might remember from one of the episodes. I am totally independent of the good or bad opinion of others. It's the. What is it? The second or third agreement in Don Miguel Ruiz. Don't take anything personally. Nothing anyone ever does has anything to do with us. It's their own story. It's their own projection. I talk about Ayn Rand and Byron, Katie, in the note as well. We need to get over other people's opinions of us. Really big idea. He's got a cool Game here, an idea I call the Equanimity game. He says, whenever you're distressed, whenever you've come off your balance point, right? See how quickly you can regain your balance. Play the Equanimity game. Find equanimity, which is literally balance of mind, right? So if you get knocked off center, see how fast you can get back to center. You get knocked off, see how fast you can come back. It's a really cool thing that I made a game consciously for quite a while, and I still do when I get off to notice it and to bring myself back on, which, again, is what we talk about all the time. What are things you can do that, you know, work that have worked for you in the past to recover when you get stressed or overwhelmed or depressed or helpless or whatever, do those things. See how quickly you can recover your balance. And what I've discovered in my life is I used to be off for months or weeks, days, and now it's a matter of hours and minutes. It's an awesome thing with the practices that I've set up and the tools that I'm employing. Of course, I still have ups and downs, but the highs are higher and the lows are higher. And I feel more power the more I play this game and practice the stuff I know. So really cool. Think about that Equanimity game. So many other ideas we can cover here. I'll just say one more. Aurelius reminds us again that nothing outside of us has the power to affect us. We always have the choice of how we're going to respond. He has a beautiful way of describing that. And at that, I will leave it. Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor, philosopher from the second century. You know him from the Gladiator. He rocks. Hope you enjoyed. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have an awesome day. See you.