Tag / stoic philosophy

by Nathan Coumbe

Make people better

What’s the purpose of a leader?

If you subscribe to Ryan Holiday’s “Daily Stoic” newsletter, you’ve probably seen he’s done a week-long feature on leadership and Stoic philosophy.

One email he wrote earlier this week stood out to me… I’ve been able to think of little else since. It’s about the sole purpose of being a leader. Here are some of the quotes used in the email:

“Happy is the man who can make others better, not merely when he is in their company, but even when he is in their thoughts. —Seneca

Another one here from Seneca:

“Nobody can live happy [sic] if he cares only for himself, if he turns everything to his own benefit: you have to live for others, if you want to live for yourself.”

Then, near the end of the email, he sums up an idea from Marcus Aurelius:

“As Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations, people are our proper occupation. ‘[My] job is to do them good.’ When we make others better, he writes elsewhere, ‘we perform our function.’“

Summing up his newsletter, he makes this statement:

Leaders make people better.

We’re all leaders. And we’re all philosophers.

So let’s make other people better.

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by Nathan Coumbe

No Job Is Beneath You If You’re Fighting Against Your Own Poverty

Today’s Daily Stoic email so inspired me, I had to share it with you.

“The Stoic doesn’t believe that any job—any profession or action—is beneath them if it is what life is demanding of them. To the Stoic, a dollar earned honestly is a good one. To a Stoic, a job done well is a good one.

—Ryan Holiday

If you have a job and are able to put food on the table for yourself and your family, you’re incredible. If you’re paying your bills and have a roof over your head, you’re a rockstar.

“I am solving the problem of poverty,” said Ulysses S. Grant when asked why he was selling firewood.

Don’t think of it as demeaning. But also don’t stop striving for something different if that’s what you want.

Sometimes you just have to work.

Check out the full post here.